The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Reckless Character, by Ivan Turgenev

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A Reckless Character
And Other Stories

Author: Ivan Turgenev

Translator: Isabel Hapgood

Release Date: June 6, 2005 [EBook #15994]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A RECKLESS CHARACTER ***

Produced by Dave Kline, Tapio Riikonen and PG Distributed Proofreaders

A RECKLESS CHARACTER

And Other Stories

BY

IVAN TURGENIEFF

Translated from the Russian by
ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

NEW YORK, CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 1907.

CONTENTS:

A RECKLESS CHARACTER
THE DREAM
FATHER ALEXYEI'S STORY
OLD PORTRAITS
THE SONG OF LOVE TRIUMPHANT
CLARA MILITCH
POEMS IN PROSE
ENDNOTES

A RECKLESS CHARACTER[1]

(1881)

I

There were eight of us in the room, and we were discussing contemporary
matters and persons,

"I do not understand these gentlemen!" remarked A.--"They are fellows of
a reckless sort.... Really, desperate.... There has never been anything
of the kind before."

"Yes, there has," put in P., a grey-haired old man, who had been born
about the twenties of the present century;--"there were reckless men in
days gone by also. Some one said of the poet Yazykoff, that he had
enthusiasm which was not directed to anything, an objectless enthusiasm;
and it was much the same with those people--their recklessness was
without an object. But see here, if you will permit me, I will narrate
to you the story of my grandnephew, Misha Polteff. It may serve as a
sample of the recklessness of those days."

He made his appearance in God's daylight in the year 1828, I remember,
on his father's ancestral estate, in one of the most remote nooks of a
remote government of the steppes. I still preserve a distinct
recollection of Misha's father, Andrei Nikolaevitch Polteff. He was a
genuine, old-fashioned landed proprietor, a pious inhabitant of the
steppes, sufficiently well educated,--according to the standards of that
epoch,--rather crack-brained, if the truth must be told, and subject, in
addition, to epileptic fits.... That also is an old-fashioned malady....
However, Andrei Nikolaevitch