Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883)
'To finish my big novel, and then start translating Don Quixote'. 1856
Autograph letter signed (‘Iv. Turgenev’) to August Viedert, Saint Petersburg, 13 March 1856.

In Russian. Three pages, 131 x 106mm, on a bifolium. Provenance: Serge Lifar (1905-1986), stamp to upper left of p.1 – Sotheby’s, 10 June 2009, lot 107 (part).

'I would like, God willing, to finish my big novel, and then to start translating Don Quixote'. Turgenev asks Viedert to excuse him for not writing; he wishes to be able one day to travel abroad and meet again in person. [Nikololay] Nekrasov (whose ill-health Turgenev had reported in his letter of 20 October 1855) is feeling better and should be able to visit Europe. As for his own activities, he is busy with the publication of the poems of [Afanasy] Fet, and announces the impending publication of his own collected works in three volumes: 'During the coming year I would like, God willing, to finish my big novel, and then to start translating Don Quixote'.

Published in New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1991, 44-45. The 'big novel' is A Nest of the Gentlefolk, first published in the January 1859 edition of Sovremennik. He never did complete his translation of Don Quixote.

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