I recently complained about Dostoevsky’s Игрок [The Gambler], but now that I’ve finished Turgenev’s fifth novel Дым [Smoke], published in the same year (1867) and also set in Baden, I have a far greater respect for the former. I feel that Dostoevsky found a new dimension for literature, and once you’ve gotten accustomed to it everything else seems flat. Finally he returns to Russia heartbroken and embittered: “suddenly everything seemed to him to resemble smoke – everything, his own life, Russian life, everything human, especially everything Russian.” Turgenev’s vision was acute in its perception of the self-deluding tendencies at work among the intelligentsia. I don’t care either way; I’m just looking forward to my next Dostoevsky novel.