"..his face, ....pure in line, as though carved by a light and delicate chisel,"

Read slow and deep to fully extract every drop of meaning from a passage.

There is a famous Russian novel written by Ivan Turgenev that focuses on underlying tensions within 19th-century Russian society over the division between members of the country’s traditional older generation and its younger emancipated one; hence the title of the novel “Fathers and Sons.” In the novel Bazarov a young medical student and denouncer of authoritative principles and traditional values comes into direct conflict with Pavel Kisanov a middle-aged Russian aristocrat and adherent of established customs and institutions. Pavel takes an immediate dislike of Bazarov and his continued attempts to pick arguments with the young nihilist eventually result in a duel. As a reader you will meet Pavel Kisanov as he enters a drawing-room just before being introduced to Bazarov:

“Fathers and Sons”

“…at that instant a man of medium height, dressed in a dark English suit, a fashionable low cravat, and kid shoes, entered the drawing room……He looked about forty-five; his close-cropped gray hair shone with a dark luster, like new silver; his face, yellow but free from wrinkles, was exceptionally regular and pure in line, as though carved by a light and delicate chisel, and showed traces of remarkable good looks; especially fine were his clear, black, almond-shaped eyes. The whole mien….exquisite and thoroughbred, had preserved the gracefulness of youth and that air of striving upward, of spurning the earth, which for the most part is lost after the twenties are past…”

                                               Literary Apparel for the Enlightened Mind