Description

Smoke, the last but one of Turgenev's six great novels, was published in 1867. It was preceded by Fathers and Sons (1862), the prophetic novel of Russian idealism and the coming nihilism as seen in the character of Bazarov, and it was followed by Virgin Soil, (1877), the sympathetic story of the Russian revolutionaries in action. Smoke, in between, is an ironic portrayal of both the decadent traditionalists and the ineffective theorists whose talk always ends in 'smoke.' But philosophy and politics are only a background in most of Turgenev's novels, with vivid individual characters in the foreground, and in Smoke the squabbles of the governing officials and the subversive intellectuals are interwoven with a passionate and poignant love story - the story of the gentle non political Litvinov and his overwhelming infatuation for Irina, the most seductive and complex of all Turgenev's women and characters. The setting of the story is Baden, then a favourite resort for all circles of Russian society, and the place where Turgenev passed several of the many years he spent outside Russia.