“Pardon, Monsieur”: Civilization and Civility in Turgenev's “The Execution of Tropmann“

Abstract

In this article, Emma Lieber situates “The Execution of Tropmann,” a late essay by Ivan Turgenev, as a key work in the author's oeuvre. Since the essay's publication, readers from Fedor Dostoevskii to contemporary critics have focused on the scene of the public execution—in which the narrator, one of a crowd of spectators, averts his gaze—as a signal instance of the reserve, moderation, and civilized refinement that are the cornerstone of the author's poetics. Lieber argues that this scene must be understood in the context of the essay as a whole, which she reads as an expression of anxiety about, and a troubled subversion of, the very civilizing influences that have been read as redemptive in Turgenev's novels and short stories. This interpretation therefore urges, not only a reconsideration of the place of “Tropmann” and its central scene in Turgenev's work, but also a reassessment of the tenor of the author's fiction.