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A review by janaroos
Three Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev, Richard Freeborn
5.0
06/10: Russia
I love the Russians. The short stories are filled with moments of transcendent nature and glimpses of abject, desperate poverty. Our titular hunter interacts with an uncompromising forest warden, a rejected and humiliated peasant girl, and a former servant trapped in an immobile husk of a body.
It's all offered without comment, without introspection or trying to draw some saccharine lesson from their suffering, as if the author is a butcher slapping down a cut of bleeding life, saying 'Take it'. Pointless and cruel, and beautiful and sublime. There's no questioning why. Just take it.
I love the Russians. The short stories are filled with moments of transcendent nature and glimpses of abject, desperate poverty. Our titular hunter interacts with an uncompromising forest warden, a rejected and humiliated peasant girl, and a former servant trapped in an immobile husk of a body.
It's all offered without comment, without introspection or trying to draw some saccharine lesson from their suffering, as if the author is a butcher slapping down a cut of bleeding life, saying 'Take it'. Pointless and cruel, and beautiful and sublime. There's no questioning why. Just take it.