Kassyan of Fair Springs

By Ivan Turgenev

A poignant tale about a lonely and isolated man named Kassyan who lives in a small village in rural Russia. Kassyan is known for his exceptional skill as a beekeeper and his honey is highly sought after. However, Kassyan is also known for his strange and reclusive behavior, which has earned him the nickname of "the madman" among the villagers. Despite his eccentricities, Kassyan longs for companionship and finds solace in his beloved bees. One day, a young girl named Luba comes to him seeking help for her sick mother. Kassyan, who has some medical knowledge, becomes determined to save the woman's life and begins to care for her in his own home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Interactive Media
• Release date: Feb 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787241657

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev was a Russian writer whose work is exemplary of Russian Realism. A student of Hegel, Turgenev’s political views and writing were heavily influenced by the Age of Enlightenment. Among his most recognized works are the classic Fathers and Sons, A Sportsman’s Sketches, and A Month in the Country. Turgenev is today recognized for his artistic purity, which influenced writers such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Turgenev died in 1883, and is credited with returning Leo Tolstoy to writing as the result of his death-bed plea.

Book preview

KASSYAN OF FAIR SPRINGS

I was returning from hunting in a jolting little trap, and overcome by the stifling heat of a cloudy summer day (it is well known that the heat is often more insupportable on such days than in bright days, especially when there is no wind), I dozed and was shaken about, resigning myself with sullen fortitude to being persecuted by the fine white dust which was incessantly raised from the beaten road by the warped and creaking wheels, when suddenly my attention was aroused by the extraordinary uneasiness and agitated movements of my coachman, who had till that instant been more soundly dozing than I. He began tugging at the reins, moved uneasily on the box, and started shouting to the horses, staring all the while in one direction. I looked round. We were driving through a wide ploughed plain; low hills, also ploughed over, ran in gently sloping, swelling waves over it; the eye took in some five miles of deserted country; in the distance the round-scolloped tree-tops of some small birch-copses were the only objects to break the almost straight line of the horizon. Narrow paths ran over the fields, disappeared into the hollows, and wound round the hillocks. On one of these paths, which happened to run into our road five hundred paces ahead of us, I made out a kind of procession. At this my coachman was looking.

It was a funeral. In front, in a little cart harnessed with one horse, and advancing at a walking pace, came the priest; beside him sat the deacon driving; behind the cart four peasants, bareheaded, carried the coffin, covered with a white cloth; two women followed the coffin. The shrill wailing voice of one of them suddenly reached my ears; I listened; she was intoning a dirge. Very dismal sounded this chanted, monotonous, hopelessly-sorrowful lament among the empty fields. The coachman whipped up the horses; he wanted to get in front of this procession. To meet a corpse on the road is a bad omen. And he did succeed in galloping ahead beyond this path before the funeral had had time to turn out of it into the