Conrad and Turgenev’s Delineations of Nature
Conrad and Turgenev’s Delineations of Nature

Summary/Abstract: That Conrad regarded The Mirror of the Sea as a work in the spirit of Turgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches and even contemplated titling it A Seaman’s Sketches is obvious. Both fictional autobiographies, initially published in magazines, demonstrate realistic and faithful observation of life and highly sensory, anthropomorphised and based on impressions (especially visual) delineations of nature – the sea or the forest respectively. Turgenev’s reader is struck by his extraordinary sensitivity to the landscape of Central Russia. Both the impenetrable, sombre forests and the vast solitude of waters become factors that affect or shape the destiny of his heroes. The mysterious nature intensifies the motifs of alienation and diminutiveness of man in the face of powerful nature. Nature in Turgenev’s sketches is often strikingly indifferent, it is a mirror of human problems which occupy the foreground. Conrad shared Turgenev’s view on nature. He presents the natural world as a blind struggle for survival, transformed, in human life, into an intelligent battle for supremacy. The nature being indifferent to men causes his isolation. His protagonists are separated by the sea’s infinity, darkness, calm and stillness in nature as well as the immensity of the elements of nature.

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