to literary critic Pavel Annenkov
Paris 15 April 1857 (Turgenev is 39 years old)
I am still here, dear P.V., but all by myself. Tolstoy [29 years old at the time] suddenly left for Geneva, and has already written an amazing letter in which he calls Paris Sodom and Gomorrah and compares himself to a rock on a river-bed which is slowly getting silted over and suddenly feels it has to tear itself away and seek another where there may be less silt. Paris certainly doesn't suit his personality. He's a strange man and I can't quite understand him. A mixture of poet, Calvinist, fanatic and landowner's son; somewhat reminiscent of Rousseau, but more honest; highly moral but at the same time not someone you can warm to. He intends to stay for a long time on the shore of Lake Geneva, but I expect to see him in London in a month's time. I'm going there on May 1...
Yours,
Iv. Turgenev
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