Finding the Way to Bezhin Meadow

When "Bezhin Meadow" first appeared in Sovremennik in 1851, Turgenev's friend Feoktistov wrote to him that while the story had "produced an enormous effect on the public in Moscow," he found it lacked a "general impression," a "general thread," that would unify its fragmentary parts and give the reader a clue to its general significance. Well might Feoktistov have been puzzled, for the censor had omitted the story's ending! The ending was soon available to the reader in the edition of A Hunter's Notes published in Moscow in 1852: "With sorrow I must add that Pavel died before the year was out. He was not drowned, but killed by a fall from a horse. A pity, he was a splendid lad !" While indicating a "general thread," the theme of mortality, the lines produce what may at first appear to be a facile irony

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