A Minute on Turgenev (or is it Turgenieff?)

Yesterday afternoon I was flipping through Hemingway's Selected Letters looking for the letter where he parodies the French revolution. I couldn't find it and gave up. But I did come across a letter to Archibald MacLeish where Hemingway praises Turgenev and his story "The Rattle of the Wheels" from The Sportsman's Sketches.

This extraordinary book of short stories, narrated by a hunting nobleman who goes across Russia with his trusty servant, Ermolai, looking for sport and game and observing the land and the locals, deserves its long-held place among the classics. Aside from stunning evocations of the countryside and the psychological realism expected of 1852, it is also a masterpiece of the master/servant adventure. It's like a naturalistic interlude between Don Quixote/Sancho Panza and Bertie Wooster/Jeeves. I read it some time ago but did not recall the story Hemingway wrote about...probably because I did not read the whole thing! This story is one for all time...

I proceeded to look for it in my edition (Everyman's Library, 1992), which is translated as The Sportsman's Notebook. In here "The Rattle of the Wheels" is translated as "The Knocking". Immediately I thought that sounds too campy and/or too much like Poe but when I actually read the story I found "the knocking" to be a perfect and truly haunting phrase, more abstact and at the same time more evocative than "the rattle of the wheels".

Plot: The nobleman/narrator is on a hunting vacation deep in the middle of nowhere. He hires a local farmer to drive him in his "well-sprung carriage" to the nearest town, at night, to get more shot for the next day's hunt. For a variety of reasons, the nobleman/narrator does not let his faithful but ultimately unreliable servant go in his stead. The wealthy local farmer he hires to drive him seems like something of a simpleton (at first) but ultimately a good enough fellow. They drive on a good road under the moonlight across beautiful wetlands and meadows. The scene is implicitly and explicitly described on bordering on the enchanted.

Then they hear the knocking!, a the slamming of metal in the distance which breaks the spell.

I will not elaborate on the plot further except to say that it is all handled perfectly. It is truly terrifying high drama, deflated with a dash of humor at just the right time to be realistic and to release the tension of the atmosphere. The story ends up having quite fascinating epistemological themes but the question of reading and interpretation is ultimately the main point. It also has class themes worth giving a whirl around the mind (the mystique of the aristocracy / the naivete of the aristocracy / the trustworthiness of servants, etc etc).

I'm still running the reel of the story through my mind the next day. It's probably the best story in a collection of very fine ones and one of the most thrilling I ever read. "The knocking" chasing the heroes in the moonlight turned out to be bandits but it can represent any doom seen (or heard) approaching and narrowly missed, literal or metaphorical. The fright of its approach and relief of its passing are rendered in just the right key. Today I tip my hat to the master, however his name is spelled.