Publisher's Synopsis
This challenging novel contrasts the two forms of love that the Russian Sanin is confronted with - his beloved Gemma and the 'free' woman, Maria Nikolaevna. Maria warns Sanin that he will have to be able to forget as she diverts him from Gemma for her own pleasure - the frenzy of physical love. For Turgenev this was clearly not an easy matter - he wanted the purity of untarnished love - apparently what the French call 'amities amoureuses'; erotic but not genital. But Sanin is a man - how can he resist the passion when the opportunity arises, the passion that all of nature calls to action? Having been sullied by his actions - in his own eyes - he flees his Gemma, fails to forget, and slips into an unsatisfactory existence. But Turgenev is kind to us - and Sanin, because at the end of the novel he allows Sanin to make contact again with Gemma (then living in America) and to be comforted by her mature forgiveness and learn that her life has been good despite the disaster of Sanin's abandonment. Perhaps the hardest of all human experiences is just not knowing .....
