A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures?

His last substantial work attempting to do justice to the problems of contemporary Russian society Virgin Soil ("Новь") was publiIvan Turgenevd in 1877. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Russian: Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́нев; IPA: [ɪˈvan sʲɪrˈɡʲeɪvʲɪtɕ tʊrˈɡʲenʲɪf]; November 9 [O. Nabokov stated that Turgenev "is not a great writer though a pleasant one" and ranked him fourth among nineteenth-century Russian prose writers behind Tolstoy Gogol and Anton Chekhov but ahead of Dostoyevsky.

October 28] 1818 – September 3 1883) was a Russian novelist short story writer and playwright. S.