In “A Correspondence” we again encounter one of Turgénieff’s favourite types, the superfluous man. But the author has taken a stride in advance with Alexyéi Petróvitch. In this case the superfluous man does not blame either the insipidity of life, or society, or people alone,--he blames himself. In Márya Alexándrovna’s friend and correspondent we behold a good and worthy man, cultured in both mind and heart,--but, like many others among Turgénieff’s heroes, suffering, so to speak, from a malady of the will. One critic declares that this story is almost identical, on its exterior, with “Rúdin.” One of the Russian representatives of “the loftiest aspirations” enters into correspondence with a young girl who, as people were fond of expressing it at that period, belonged among the “choice natures.” Disillusioned with life, she is ready to submit to the conditions which encompass her. Under the influence of an ill-defined impulse of affection and sympathy toward this young girl, the hero begins to inflate her sense of being an elect person, and to stir up her energy to contend with the humdrum circle in which she dwells. Just at the moment when he has awakened her courage and her hope that he will join her in this conflict, he stumbles and falls himself, in the most pusillanimous manner. His will is ailing.
Another point worth noting is that in the heroine’s third letter the note of the so-called “woman’s question” is sounded with remarkable feeling and force.
The explanation vouchsafed by one critic for the prevalence of weak men in Turgénieff’s romances, in connection with “A Correspondence,” is that the author did not depict strong natures simply because he did not find suitable material for that purpose in the circle which surrounded him. He was determined to draw the best men of his time as he found them--that is to say, men addicted to self-conviction, fiery in language, but weak in resolution.
“The Region of Dead Calm” was written while Turgénieff was forbidden to leave his estate at Spásskoe-Lutovínovo, after his release from the imprisonment wherewith he was punished for having published in Moscow a eulogy of Gógol which the St. Petersburg censor had prohibited. His idea that all men are divided into two categories which, respectively, possess more or less of the characteristics of Hamlet and of Don Quixote, is illustrated again in this story by Véretyeff, who ruins his talents and his life with liquor.