Description:

Ivan Turgenev Extremely Rare Handwritten Signed Quatrain Quoting Voltaire

Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883). Autograph Quotation Signed, "I. Turgenev", in French, 1p, on his blind-embossed personal stationery, 8vo, Baden, Germany, 1869. Folded to a sight size of 5" x 5.625" and framed with a portrait of Turgenev to an overall size of 16.625" x 11.25" x .875." Not examined out of frame. Beautiful display and very rare in this form.

A quatrain from part of a longer work, “Stances Irregulières”, that Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) sent to King Frederick the Great’s sister, Princess (later Queen) Louisa Ulrika of Sweden (1720-1782), in January 1747: “S’occuper c’est savoir jouir / L’oisiveté pèse et tourmente; L’âme est un feu, qu’il faut nourrir / Et qui s’éteint, s’il ne s’augmente”. Translated in full: “To keep busy is to know how to enjoy / Idleness weighs and torments; / The soul is a fire, which must be fed / And which goes out, if it does not grow”.

Following his education in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Turgenev left for Berlin to study philosophy and history at the university where he became enamored of Germany and its development since the Age of Enlightenment. In 1843, he fell in love with the already married, renowned French mezzo soprano, Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), a passion that dominated the remainder of his life.

In the early 1850s, the political climate in Russia was stifling for many writers. Turgenev moved to Western Europe in 1854, although this decision probably had more to do with his fateful love for Viardot than anything else. What Russians resented was that from this time until his death, Turgenev's home was Europe and close to the Viardots. He went to his estate in Russia from time to time, but as one whose ties are elsewhere. Turgenev’s resolve to emigrate had been strengthened by Russia’s hostile reception to his 1862 masterpiece Fathers and Sons, often regarded as Russia’s first modern novel. It was criticized by the younger generation for slander and by the older for its sympathetic view of nihilism. It was in Baden-Baden that he wrote his only novel of this period, Smoke, published in 1867. When the Franco Prussian War broke out in 1870, the Viardots were forced to leave Germany. Turgenev accompanied them to London and then to Paris, and it was there that Turgenev was enthusiastically received as the ambassador of Russian culture, becoming a great friend of writers Gustave Flaubert, George Sand, Emile Zola, and Henry James.

Voltaire was a considerable influence on Turgenev. In fact, Turgenev’s father bitterly complained of his twenty-year old son when he exclaimed: “He fusses at the table and doesn’t eat; he can’t bear the odor and stuffiness of the room; the sight of people getting drunk upsets him; one doesn’t dare beat anyone in front of him, either; he doesn’t want to enter government service - he’s unhealthy you see. Shame on him, the big baby! And it’s all because he’s got a head full of Voltaire!” (Quoted in The Essential Turgenev, Northwestern University Press, 1994, p. 352).

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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