How did I.S. Turgenev become famous all over the world?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

2018 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (09.11.1818 - 03.09.1883), a classic of Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century.

On October 24, 2017, at the 39th session of the United Nations General Conference of UNESCO in Paris, it was decided to include the anniversary of I. S. Turgenev to the List of UNESCO memorable dates of significance for all mankind.

I. S. Turgenev was the first Russian writer to become world famous during his lifetime. The artistic skill of Turgenev as a novelist was highly appreciated by famous contemporaries in Russia, Western Europe and America.

The literary successor of A. S. Pushkin, the keeper of the "great and mighty" Russian language, Turgenev laid the foundations of the Russian classic novel, was the creator of classical images that became the embodiment of the Russian character, the Russian man.

His works have been translated into all European languages and are known all over the world. Unfortunately, in Russia, not the 150th anniversary of A. M. Gorky (1868-28-03 - 1936-18-06), nor the 200th anniversary of I. S. Turgenev, in contrast to the upcoming 100th anniversary of A. I. Solzhenitsyn, is not so widely covered and celebrated.

In 2018, there were other memorable dates related to famous Russian (Soviet) writers and poets, such as the 110th anniversary of N. N. Nosov (1908-23-11 - 1976-26-07), the 195th anniversary of A. N. Ostrovsky (12.04.1823 -14.06.1886), 110th anniversary of I. A. Efremov (1908-22-04 - 1972-05-10), 125th anniversary of V. V. Mayakovsky (1893-19-07 - 1930-14-04), the 100th anniversary of V. D. Dudintsev (1918-29-07 - 1998-22-07) and others who did not become public domain, and who, you see, do not deserve either historical oblivion or neglect of the authorities.

We continue the series of articles about the Life of Remarkable People (ZhZL) and this one is about Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev.

“I. S. Turgenev is one of the most amazing Russian writers who, with ingenious perspicacity and sensitivity, saw Russia as a gifted people with high moral strength."

200th anniversary of the birth of I. S. Turgenev in 2018 is an international event. The works of I. S. Turgenev are known on all continents and translated into all European languages. His name is included in the galaxy of great classics of the 19th century and is on a par with A. S. Pushkin, L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky.

Turgenev defended human rights, advocated the liberation of peasants in Russia from serfdom, was an ardent opponent of wars, revolutions and the death penalty. It is Turgenev who owns the term "nihilism." Turgenev's credo throughout his life:

"That which is eternal and incorruptible is art serving a great idea and an idea in the name of a great cause."

The Russian writer advocated human evolution through culture, called for the reconciliation of adherents of opposing opinions and opposed extremism in any of its manifestations. Turgenev advocated public education and, in the words of the French philosopher and writer Ernest Renan, was the spokesman for "popular consciousness."

Native places were a richest source for Turgenev, from where he drew abundant material for his work. The entire life and creative path of the writer is marked by close ties with them. In his creations, we seek and find answers to many questions of life.

Short biography. The beginning of life

“I have learned one conviction from the experience of recent years: life is not a joke or fun, life is not even a pleasure … life is hard work.

Renunciation, renunciation is constant - this is its secret meaning, its solution: not the fulfillment of favorite thoughts and dreams, no matter how sublime they are, - the fulfillment of duty, this is what a person should take care of; without imposing on himself the chains, the iron chains of duty, he cannot reach the end of his career without falling; and in our youth we think: the freer, the better, the further you will go.

It is permissible for youth to think so; but you are ashamed to amuse yourself with deception, when the stern face of truth finally looked into your eyes. (I. S. Turgenev)

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was born on October 28 (November 9) in Orel. According to his father (Sergei Nikolaevich, 1793 -1834) he belonged to the old noble family of the Turgenevs, known since the 15th century. By mother (Varvara Petrovna, 1788-1850) - to the Lutovinov family, dating back to the 17th century.

The future writer spent his childhood on the estate and estate of Spasskoye-Lutovinovo near the town of Mtsensk, Oryol province.

"Rudin", "Noble Nest", "Faust", "Fathers and Sons", "On the Eve", "Ghosts", "New", "Song of Triumphant Love", prose poems - this is not a complete list of Turgenev's works, history the creation of which is associated with Spassky-Lutovinov - the family estate of the writer in the Mtsensk district of the Oryol province.

Ivan was the second son in the family. The mother of the future writer Varvara Petrovna came from a wealthy noble family. Her marriage to Sergei Nikolaevich was not happy. In 1830, the father left the family and died in 1834, leaving three sons - Nikolai, Ivan and Sergei, who died early from epilepsy.

Turgenev's mother Varvara Petrovna ruled "subjects" in the manner of an autocratic empress - with "police" and "ministers" who met in special "institutions" and ceremoniously appeared to her every morning for a report (about this - in the story "Own master's office", 1881).

Her favorite saying was "I want an execution, I want a cute one." She treated her naturally good-natured and dreamy son harshly, wanting to bring up a "real Lutovinov" in him, but in vain. She only wounded the boy's heart, insulting those of his "subjects" to whom he managed to become attached (later she would become the prototype of capricious ladies in Turgenev's stories "Mumu", 1852; "Punin and Baburin", 1874; etc.).

At the same time, Varvara Petrovna was an educated woman and a stranger to literary interests. She did not skimp on mentors for her sons.

From an early age, Turgenev was taken abroad, after the family moved to Moscow in 1827, the best teachers taught (among them - the writer D. N. by the time he entered the verbal department of the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow University in 1833, he already spoke French, German, English and wrote poetry.

In 1834, Turgenev transferred to St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1837 with the title of "real student" (he did not pass the candidate exam). Turgenev's first known literary experience, the romantic drama in verse "Steno" (1834, published in 1913), dates back to this time.

Professor of Russian literature P. A. Pletnev, to whom the young man showed the poem, found it a weak imitation of J. Byron, but noticed that the author had "something", and even published two of his poems in his Sovremennik magazine (Turgenev's poems appeared there and later).

The author himself described this youthful composition as “a completely ridiculous work, in which, with childish ineptitude, a slavish imitation of Byron's“Manfred”was expressed. Despite the obvious similarity between Steno and Manfred, which Turgenev himself never denied, the poem reveals a consistent reproduction of the motives of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Thorny path to creativity

Turgenev's work fell on the time following the so-called "golden age" of Russian literature - the literary era of Griboyedov, Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol. Turgenev's prose reflected a period of historical changes in Russian society and the state, which concerned primarily its social structure, politics and ideology. Defeat in the Crimean War, reforms during the reign of Emperor Alexander II, the liberation of the peasants, the spiritual quest of the intelligentsia, revolutionary sentiments in society were the content of life in Russia in the 1840s - 1880s.

Turgenev was not one of those writers to whom wide recognition came soon or even immediately, as, for example, to Dostoevsky, who, after the publication of his first novel, Poor People, became a celebrity; in this sense, other peers of Turgenev - I. A. Goncharov, V. D. Grigorovich - at first they were much happier than him.

Vissarion Belinsky

Turgenev began his work as a poet: he wrote poetry from the end of the 1830s, and in 1843 he published a collection of poetry. However, the writer soon completely switched to prose.

In the 1840s, Turgenev was an active participant in the literary circle of V. G. Belinsky in St. Petersburg. His work was influenced to a certain extent by the stylistic features of the "natural school" inherent in the writers of Belinsky's circle.

This was manifested primarily in the naturalistic description of reality, the external world. As an original writer with his own individual style, creative and civic stance, Turgenev first appeared in the cycle of essay stories "Notes of a Hunter" (1847 - 1852).

Kasyan, illustration by I. S. Turgenev to "Notes of a Hunter"

In this book, he showed the life of the peasantry, previously unknown in big literature, the bright national characters, the vital energy and soul of the Russian man.

In 1838-1841 he wrote little and found very little of what he wrote worthy of printing. Each of his published poems was "no worse" than those with which the most famous poets (of course, Lermontov, Koltsov, Baratynsky are excluded from this number) "adorned" the pages of literary magazines; but none of them attracted the attention of either readers or criticism.

The main idea of this kind of creativity was to indicate the "sorrows and questions" of the time. Young writers of those years, like the overwhelming majority of readers of Otechestvennye zapiski, where Belinsky's articles were published, understood well that in his mouth these words were one of the designations of a social theme.

It was in the development of this theme that the critic saw the guarantee of further success in the development of Russian literature. Without a big risk of making a mistake, we can say that all of Turgenev's work of the 1840s was subordinated to one, using Stanislavsky's term, a super task - the search for his own solution to a social theme in literature.

"Notes of a Hunter" - as a reflection of a social theme

In the history of literature there are books that express entire epochs not only in the development of art and literature, but also in society as a whole. Such a book became "Notes of a Hunter". They were the direct and most profound expression of the social and literary struggle of the 1840s of the 19th century, the center of which was the question of serfdom, that is, the question of the fate of the enslaved people.

In 1845 - 1846, Turgenev was still not sure of his writing vocation and even

“… I got it,” as he wrote in his memoirs, “a firm intention to leave literature altogether; only as a result of requests from I. I. Panaev, who did not have anything to fill the mixture section in the 1st issue of Sovremennik, I left him an essay entitled Khor and Kalinich. (The words: "From the Notes of a Hunter" were invented and added by the same II Panaev in order to dispose the reader to indulgence.) The success of this essay prompted me to write others; and I returned to literature."

With the publication of each new essay or story from the "Notes of a Hunter", this conviction was strengthened more and more. First of all, attention was drawn to the breadth of the author's horizons; Turgenev seemed to be writing from life, but his essays and stories did not give the impression of etudes or ethnographic sketches, although he did not skimp on ethnographic and "local history" details. The private life of apparently non-fictional people is usually given by him in a system of comparisons that show that the author's field of vision is the whole of Russia in its connections with the whole world. Thanks to this, each figure, each episode, with all its individual immediacy, and sometimes its seeming fleetingness or chance, acquire special significance, and the content of this or that thing turns out to be wider than the life of ordinary people reproduced in it.

In "Notes of a Hunter" Turgenev often resorted to the method of juxtaposing the times - old and new. Moreover, no matter what the heroes say about this - whether they praise the old years or disapprove - the author's assessment of the past is clear: the "golden age" of the Russian nobility - the age of Catherine and Alexander - is mainly a century of noble revelry, extravagance (you just have to remember the fun and the amusements of Count A. G. Orlov-Chesmensky, about which Luka Petrovich Ovsyannikov, a man of the same palace, speaks), debauchery and arrogant arbitrariness. Well, and new, Nikolaev times? Strange as it may seem, but it was at this time that the state scribblers shouted more than ever before about the successes of enlightenment, especially among the landowners.

The story "Burmistr" just tells about one "enlightened" landowner - about Arkady Pavlych Penochkin. Turgenev leaves nothing for the reader to guess: the mask of "enlightenment" has been torn off right before his eyes. As a matter of fact, Penochkin puts it on only on special occasions. The episode of suppression of the "riot" in Shipilovka is indicative in this sense:

"No, brother, I do not advise you to rebel with me … with me … (Arkady Pavlych stepped forward, yes, he probably remembered my presence, turned away and put his hands in his pockets)."

In this disgusting figure there is a generalization of the enormous power of the arbitrariness of the landlords.

The Hunter's Notes irrefutably convinced the reader of the need to abolish serfdom as the basis of the social system in Russia; in this sense, they are closest to Radishchev's Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The significance of the "Notes of a Hunter" in the creative life of Turgenev is immeasurably great. After the publication of this book, he became the generally recognized creator of Russian literature.

The active work of I. S. Turgenev

The next decade was marked by the high activity of Turgenev's work: starting from the mid-1850s, four novels and two stories were published from his pen. The surge in Turgenev's writing activity is undoubtedly associated with political events in Russia - his works of that time were a direct response to them, and in some cases even outstripped the events themselves, accurately expressing the spirit of the times.

Such are the novels "Rudin" (1856), "Noble Nest" (1859), "On the Eve" (1860). Stories dedicated to the first love belong to this period of creativity: "Asya" (1858), "First Love" (1860). At the same time, the outstanding novel "Fathers and Sons" (1862) was created, in which Turgenev portrayed Russian society during the era of the epochal reform for Russia in the 19th century - the abolition of serfdom.

Political and public views of the writer

Turgenev considered himself a gradual liberal, a supporter of slow political and economic reforms, bringing Russia closer to the advanced countries of the West.

However, throughout his entire career, he had sympathy for the revolutionary democrats. He always admired his “consciously heroic natures”, the integrity of their character, the absence of contradictions between word and deed, the strong-willed temperament of the fighters inspired by the idea.

Revolutionary democrats are mostly commoners, although there were also nobles among them. One of the first - V. G. Belinsky. In the 50s and 60s, the revolutionary democrats led by N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov, A. I. Herzen, N. P. Ogarev and others promoted their ideas on the pages of Sovremennik and Kolokol. They combined the idea of a peasant revolution with the ideas of utopian socialism. They considered the peasantry as the main revolutionary force in the country; believed that after the abolition of serfdom through the peasant revolution, bypassing capitalism, it would come through the peasant community to socialism.

Turgenev admired their heroic impulses, but at the same time believed that they were in too much haste to history, suffered from maximalism and impatience. Therefore, he considered their activities tragically doomed: they are loyal and valiant knights of the revolutionary idea, but history, with its inexorable course, turns them into “knights for an hour”.

In 1859, Turgenev wrote an article entitled "Hamlet and Don Quixote", which is the key to understanding all Turgenev's heroes. Describing the type of Hamlet, Turgenev thinks of "superfluous people", heroes of the nobility, but by Don Quixote he means a new generation of public figures - revolutionary democrats.

A liberal with democratic sympathies, Turgenev wants to be the arbiter in the dispute between these two social forces. He sees strengths and weaknesses in both Hamlets and Quixotes. In the era of the change of generations of public figures, in the era of the displacement of the nobility by commoners, Turgenev dreams of the possibility of an alliance of all anti-serf forces, of the unity of the liberals with the revolutionary democrats. He would like to see more courage and decisiveness in the “Hamlet” nobles, and sobriety and introspection in the “quixote” democrats. The article reveals Turgenev's dream of a hero who removes the extremes of "Hamletism" and "quixotism" in his character.

It turned out that Turgenev the writer constantly sought to rise above the battle, to reconcile the warring parties, to curb opposites. He pushed away from any complete and complacent systems.

“Systems are valued only by those who do not have the whole truth in their hands, who want to catch it by the tail. The system is the tail of truth, but the truth is like a lizard: it will leave its tail, and it will run away”(Turgenev's letter to Leo Tolstoy in 1857).

In Turgenev's call for tolerance, in Turgenev's desire to "remove" the contradictions and extremes of irreconcilable social trends of the 60s and 70s, there was a well-founded concern for the fate of the coming Russian democracy and Russian culture. Turgenev was alarmed by the groundlessness, frightened by the recklessness of some progressive strata of the Russian intelligentsia, ready to slavishly follow every newfangled thought, frivolously turning away from the acquired historical experience, from age-old traditions.

“And we deny it not like a free man who strikes with a sword,” he wrote in his novel Smoke, “but like a footman who hits with his fist, and, perhaps, he also beats by order of the master.”

This servile readiness of the Russian public not to respect their traditions, it is easy to abandon the subject of yesterday's worship, Turgenev branded with a tagged phrase: “A new master was born, down with the old !. … In Yakov's ear, in Sidor's feet."

“In Russia, in a country of every kind, revolutionary and religious, maximalism, a country of self-immolations, a country of the most violent excesses, Turgenev is almost the only one, after Pushkin, the genius of measure and, consequently, the genius of culture,” said the Russian writer and philosopher D. WITH. Merezhkovsky. “In this sense, Turgenev, in contrast to the great creators and destroyers, L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, is our only guardian …”.

"Extra people" in the image of Turgenev

Despite the fact that the tradition of depicting "superfluous people" arose before Turgenev (Chatsky A. S. Griboyedova, Eugene Onegin A. S. Pushkina, Pechorin M. Yu. Lermontova, Beltov A. I. "IA Goncharova), Turgenev has priority in defining this type of literary characters.

The name "Superfluous person" was fixed after the publication in 1850 of Turgenev's story "The Diary of an Extra Person". "Superfluous people" were distinguished, as a rule, by common features of intellectual superiority over others and at the same time passivity, mental discord, skepticism in relation to the realities of the outside world, discrepancy between word and deed. Turgenev created a whole gallery of similar images: Chulkaturin (Diary of an Extra Man, 1850), Rudin (Rudin, 1856), Lavretsky (Noble Nest, 1859), Nezhdanov (Nov, 1877). Turgenev's stories and stories “Asya”, “Yakov Pasynkov”, “Correspondence” and others are also devoted to the problem of the “superfluous person”.

The protagonist of the "Diary of an Extra Man" is marked by the desire to analyze all his emotions, to record the slightest shades of the state of his own soul. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, the hero notices the unnaturalness and tension of his thoughts, the lack of will:

"I analyzed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of people … Whole days passed in this painful, fruitless work."

Introspection that corrodes the soul gives the hero an unnatural pleasure:

"Only after my expulsion from the Ozhogins' house did I painfully learn how much pleasure a person can draw from contemplating his own misfortune."

The inconsistency of the apathetic and reflective characters was even more emphasized by the images of the whole and strong Turgenev heroines.

The result of Turgenev's reflections on the heroes of the Rudinsky and Chulkaturinsky types was the article "Hamlet and Don Quixote" (1859) The least "Hamletic" of all Turgenev's "superfluous people" is the hero of the "Noble Nest" Lavretsky. One of its main characters, Aleksey Dmitrievich Nezhdanov, is named "Russian Hamlet" in the novel "Nov".

Simultaneously with Turgenev, the phenomenon of "superfluous person" was developed by I. A. Goncharov in the novel Oblomov (1859), N. A. Nekrasov - Agarin ("Sasha", 1856), A. F. Pisemsky and many others. But, unlike the character of Goncharov, the heroes of Turgenev were subjected to greater typification. According to the Soviet literary critic A. Lavretsky (I. M. Frenkel), “If we had from all sources for the study of the 40s. there was only one "Rudin" or one "Noble nest", it would still be possible to establish the nature of the era in its specific features. We are not in a position to do this with Oblomov."

Later, the tradition of depicting Turgenev's "superfluous people" was ironically played by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The character of his story "Duel" - Laevsky is a reduced and parody version of Turgenev's "superfluous person". He says to his friend von Koren:

"I'm a loser, an extra person."

Von Koren agrees that Laevsky is "a scrap from Rudin." At the same time, he speaks of Laevsky's claim to be a "superfluous person" in a mocking tone:

“Understand this, they say, that he is not to blame for the fact that state-owned packages are not unopened for weeks and that he himself drinks and solders others, but Onegin, Pechorin and Turgenev are to blame for this, who invented a loser and a superfluous person.”

Later, critics brought Rudin's character closer to that of Turgenev himself.

But the writer in his works, in addition to social themes, subtly and wisely describes the theme of love.

The tragic love of Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev's "novel of a lifetime" lasted four decades. Biographers of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev have not yet agreed on whether the writer was intimate with the singer Pauline Viardot or not. It was rumored that she gave birth to a son from him, according to other rumors - a daughter. But there is another version: they were connected only by spiritual relationships, love, but not carnal, but sublime, which may be quite plausible.

In 1843, 25-year-old Ivan Turgenev wrote in his diary: "Meeting with Polina" - and drew a cross next to it. How did he then know that he would have to carry this "cross" throughout his life …

They said about her that she was "stunningly ugly", "soot and bones." Slouching, with an awkward figure, with bulging eyes and a face that, according to the artist Ilya Repin, was impossible to look at from the front. And at the same time, she was endowed with grace, charm, intelligence and talent. Pauline Viardot shocked the whole Petersburg with her extraordinary voice, touring with the Italian opera. The singer's large features and unsightly figure mattered only in the first moments of her appearance on the stage: "Ugly!" But as soon as she led her with her huge black eyes, as soon as she began to sing … "Divine!" - everyone sighed.

The artist Bogomolov wrote about their relationship this way:

"He was happy in his own way, and was boasted by the man who judged two brilliant personalities like him and her."

It is no coincidence that he mentions people who condemned Polina, because of whom the Russian writer spent most of his life outside his homeland. These conversations, which became especially loud at the time of the writer's death, made Polina, a proud, strong-willed woman, woman, say:

“If Russians cherish the name of Turgenev, then I can proudly say that the name Pauline Viardot compiled with him does not diminish, but rather elevates.”

But better than any explanation for this amazing love, which lasted 40 years, is the prose poem "When I Will Not Be", written several years before his death:

“When I’m gone, when everything that was me crumbles to dust - oh you, my only friend, oh you, whom I loved so deeply and so tenderly, you, who will probably outlive me, - do not go to my grave … You have nothing to do there …”.

For your attention a video about Pauline Viardot and I. S. Turgenev: