Undoubtedly conflicting influences, such as Byron, Pushkin and Lermontov, are visible in Turgenev's youthful, romantic poems, "Parasha," and various others (1837-47), which we shall not discuss here, or his half-dozen plays (1845-52), which last, however excellent, did not give his genius sufficient scope.[7] Much ingenuity has been exercised, especially by French critics,[8] in ascribing Turgenev's literary debts to authors as diverse as Maria Edgeworth, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Schiller, Goethe, Heine, Auerbach, Dal, Grigorovitch, Dickens, etc. But it would be a waste of time to analyse Turgenev's work for traces of contemporary authors, though George Sand's stories of French peasant life had undoubtedly deeply influenced him. With Pushkin as classical model for clarity of style, and with Gogol as his model for direct painting from everyday life, Turgenev belongs to "the natural school" of the 'forties, the school of the realists championed by the critic Byelinsky, then all-powerful with the rising men. It is true that a vein of romanticism crops up here and there in various of Turgenev's tales, and that a definite strain of lyrical sentimentalism in occasional passages may be credited to German influence. But in almost his first story, _The Duellist_ (1846), we find a complete break with the traditions of the romantic school, traditions which are indeed here turned inside out.[9] Here it is evident that a new master is in the field, "a painter of realities" as Byelinsky soon declared.[10] The story is of much significance, as exemplifying Turgenev's clear-eyed, deep apprehension of character, and his creative penetration through _beauty of feeling_. It is to be noted how the coarse bullying insolence of the officer, Lutchkov (who out of envious spleen kills in a duel his friend, the refined and generous Kister), is betrayed _by the absence of any tender or chivalrous emotion for women_. Filled with his own male self-complacency, and contemptuous of women, Lutchkov comes to his interview with the fresh, innocent girl Masha, whom he alarms by his coarse swagger. To cover his brutal egoistic feeling he roughly kisses the shrinking girl, but she shudders and darts away. "What are you afraid of? Come, stop that.... That's all nonsense," he says hoarsely, as he approaches her, terribly confused, with a disagreeable smile on his twisted lips, while patches of red came out on his face. [7] "Parasha" was warmly praised by Byelinsky in 1843, in an article in _Annals of the Fatherland_. Of the six Plays, which were revived from time to time, _The Bachelor_ (1849) is perhaps the strongest. In later years Turgenev disclaimed any interest in his dramas, and declared that towards his poems he felt an antipathy almost physical. [8] Haumant, Delines, Waliszewski, etc.