"...night reigned in all the majesty of its empire; the moist freshness of late evening has given place to the dry warmth of midnight, which would lie for some while yet, in a soft veil, over the sleeping fields."
I love how he refers to the "warmth of midnight"- gives this feeling of tranquility and piece.
"It is a strangely enjoyable occupation to lie on one's back in the forest and look upwards. You seem to be looking onto a bottomless sea, extending far and wide beneath you; the trees seem not to rise from the ground, but, like the roots of huge plants, to drop perpendicularly down into those glass-clear waves, and the leaves on the trees are now translucent as emeralds, now opaque with a goldfish, almost blackish, green. Somewhere far, far away, at the end of its slender twig, a single leaf stands motionless against a blue path of pellucid sky, and beside it another one sways with a movement like the play of a fish on a line, a movement that seems spontaneous and not produced by the wind."
Most beautiful description he has ever written. I have never before come upon this concept- that the sky is the ocean, as if everything is backwards...and the trees are in the waters... The leaf has a mind of its own, as if it really was "a fish on a line". That is why I like the Russians the best. Marvelous
"...it was as if some immense forces were lying, sullenly inactive, within him, as if they knew that, once aroused, once let loose, they must destroy themselves and everything they touched."
Such extreme violence can be hidden in the dormant...Makes us wonder how truly "peaceful" we really are...
"The leaves were whispering faintly over my head: you could have told the time of the year from their whisper alone."
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In this book, Turgenev was closest to nature, his talent is most evident. He had beautiful descriptions in this book- about nature and Russian classic characters- like the peasant and the landlord. Seems very real. I can't believe he wrote this in Paris.
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