page_title: Rudin
section_title: Dmitrii Nikolaevich Rudin
hierarchical_section_title: Rudin / Main characters / Dmitrii Nikolaevich Rudin
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration by Kardovsky for Turgenev novel «Rudin». Rudin's first appearance at Lasunskaya's Русский: «Рудин» И. С. Тургенева. Илл. Д. Н. Кардовского. Первое появление Рудина у Ласунской
context_page_description: Rudin is the first novel by Ivan Turgenev, a famous Russian writer best known for his short stories and the novel Fathers and Sons. Turgenev started to work on it in 1855, and it was first published in the literary magazine "Sovremennik" in 1856; several changes were made by Turgenev in subsequent editions. It is perhaps the least known of Turgenev's novels.
  Rudin was the first of Turgenev's novels, but already in this work the topic of the superfluous man and his inability to act was explored. Similarly to other Turgenev's novels, the main conflict in Rudin was centred on a love story of the main character and a young, but intellectual and self-conscious woman who is contrasted with the main hero.
context_section_description: The main protagonist of the novel. Rudin is a well-educated, intellectual and extremely eloquent nobleman. His finances are in a poor state and he is dependent on others for his living. His father was a poor member of the gentry and died when Rudin was still very young. He was brought up by his mother, who spent all the money she had on him, and was educated at Moscow University and abroad in Germany, at Heidelberg and Berlin (Turgenev himself studied in Berlin). When he first appears in the novel, he is described as follows: “A man of about thirty-five […] of a tall, somewhat stooping figure, with crisp curly hair and swarthy complexion, an irregular but expressive and intelligent face.[…] His clothes were not new, and were somewhat small, as though he had outgrown them.” In the course of the novel he lives at Dar’ya Mikhailovna's estate and falls in love with her daughter, Natalya. This love is the main conflict of the novel. His eloquence earns him the respect of the estate's inhabitants, but several other characters display a strong dislike of him, and during the course of the novel it becomes apparent that he is “almost a Titan in word and a pigmy in deed” — that is, despite his eloquence he cannot accomplish what he talks of.
caption: Rudin's first appearance at Lasunskaya's, by Dmitry Kardovsky
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