Byaly, Grigory Abramovich - Turgenev and Russian realism. Book: G

Chapter seven. "Smoke" among Turgenev's novels

The idea of Turgenev's new novel "Smoke" dates back to the very end of 1862, and the action of the novel was timed to coincide with the same year. The idea matured in an atmosphere of intense disputes between Turgenev and Herzen about the future of Russia, about its historical path, about Russia and the West, about the artel and the community. In essence, it was a dispute about the populist socialism of Herzen and Ogarev, which was opposed by Turgenev, annoyed that Herzen’s “Bell”, not limiting itself to the fight against government spheres, took the path of socialist propaganda.

In this dispute, Turgenev expressed many sober and fair truths to Herzen. Denying the populist idealization of the peasantry, with its supposed socialist aspirations, Turgenev astutely noted the growth of kulak, bourgeois elements in the Russian village. “The people before whom you bow,” he wrote to Herzen on October 18, 1862, “are the conservative par excellence and even bear within themselves the germs of such a bourgeoisie in a tanned sheepskin coat, a warm and dirty hut, with a belly always stuffed to the point of heartburn and an aversion to any civic responsibility.” and initiative, which will far leave behind all the aptly true features with which you portrayed the Western bourgeoisie..." Turgenev also reacted ironically to the populist calculations of the “newly found trinity: zemstvo, artel and community.” 1*

One could say that on all these points Turgenev was right in his dispute with his revolutionary opponent. However, the whole point is that for Herzen, his false theory of “Russian socialism” served as a justification for the inevitability and necessity of waging a revolutionary struggle among the people, and for Turgenev, his skepticism, albeit well-founded, was an argument in favor of slow changes as a result of long-term civilizing work among the people , which will have to be carried on patiently and persistently by “the minority of the educated class in Russia.”

The dispute between Turgenev and Herzen is one of the episodes of the long-term struggle between two utopias, liberal and populist. Sixty years after Turgenev’s significant dispute with Herzen, V.I. Lenin wrote an article “Two Utopias,” which contains the following lines: “The liberal utopia weans the peasant masses from fighting. The populist one expresses their desire to fight...” 2* V. Ibid. I. Lenin recalls Engels’ remarkable saying regarding utopian socialism: “What is false in the formal economic sense can be true in the world-historical sense.” 3* Applying this profound position of Engels to the struggle between two utopias on Russian soil, V.I. Lenin came to the following conclusion: “False in the formal economic sense, populist democracy is the truth in the historical sense; false, as a socialist utopia, this democracy “is the truth of that unique historically determined democratic struggle of the peasant masses, which constitutes an inextricable element of the bourgeois transformation and the condition for its complete victory.” 4*

This means that in the dispute between Turgenev and Herzen, despite the validity of many of Turgenev’s arguments, the truth in a broad - historical - sense was not on his side. In the “old socialist theories” being developed anew by London emigrants, he saw only “a significant misunderstanding of people’s life and its modern needs.” 5* He placed responsibility for these theories primarily on Ogarev, whom he considered their main creator.

It is not surprising, therefore, that when conceiving a new novel, Turgenev in 1862 put the letter O in the list of characters next to Gubarev’s name, indicating that this character was somehow supposed to be connected with Ogarev. At the same time, Turgenev was going to direct the blow in the other direction. By the end of 1862, the government reaction had already become quite clear, although the time for its complete triumph was still ahead. In the new novel, Turgenev intended to give vent to his irritation and indignation against the new, backward course of government policy. The image of the general outlined in the novel's plan (Selunsky, who later became Ratmirov) was supposed to serve as a target for Turgenev's attacks on the reactionary clique.

However, this plan came true much later: the novel was written in 1866-1867. The gap between "Fathers and Sons" and the new novel was filled with two stories - "Ghosts" (1864) and "Enough" (1865), closely related to one another. The idea for "Ghosts", of which "Enough" was a spin-off, dates back to 1855. The appearance of these stories in the interval between two novels was, as it were, the implementation of the old Turgenev tradition - to surround each of his novels with a chain of stories of intimate-lyrical or lyrical-philosophical content. Antonovich ironized this custom of Turgenev in connection with “Ghosts” in Sovremennik. “In Mr. Turgenev,” he wrote, “until now, poetry and tendencies have appeared periodically, interspersed; “Asya” - pure poetry - was followed by “On the Eve” with tendencies; then “First Love” - poetry, and after it “Fathers” and children" with a clearly expressed tendency; finally, "Ghosts" is poetry, a trend must follow them in turn, and now the question arises: will it follow or not? 6*

As for the “poetry” of “Ghosts” “Enough”, the general tone and meaning of this poetry is already familiar to us from Turgenev’s previous stories and novels. This is tragic poetry, based on that feeling of “own insignificance” that so “stank” Bazarov. Bazarov's mean and angry remarks on this topic are developed and brought to the point of clarity and refinement of philosophical definitions and aphorisms in "Ghosts" and "Enough". Fortunately, they sound even stronger in these stories than in the previous ones, but, just like in the previous ones, they are balanced by an inexhaustible desire to “run after every new image of beauty... to catch every flutter of her thin and strong wings.” Poetry of beauty and love bursts into Turgenev's pessimistic declarations and gives rise to such episodes as the scene of a beautiful Italian woman singing in "Ghosts" and a chain of lyrical love memories in "Enough." Moreover, the poetry of love, deployed in the form of "poems in prose" in the first part of "Enough" , acquired the character of such emphasized emotion that it became the subject of parodies and ridicule. Memories of past love are also presented in “Enough” as the only spiritual wealth of a person, even after he has comprehended his insignificance before the formidable elements of nature.

But if the pessimistic philosophy of "Ghosts" and "Enough" did not close the paths to the unrest and anxieties of private life, then even less did it close the paths to socio-political interests and aspirations. In Turgenev’s new stories (and this is their cardinal difference from the previous ones) we observe constant transitions from cosmic pessimism, from general judgments about the meaninglessness of human life - to social pessimism, directed against specific forms of modern, social life, in particular Russian. Instead of “crossing unnecessary arms on an empty chest,” Turgenev reacts lively and caustically to the growing reaction in Russia and abroad. With contempt and disgust, he unfolds pictures of barracks-based Petersburg in “Ghosts,” gives sharply satirical sketches of Russian tourists in Paris and the native Parisian philistinism, and pronounces angry tirades against Napoleon I and Napoleon III. A peculiar satirical symbol of bourgeois Paris during the era of Napoleon III is represented by Turgenev’s grotesque portrait of a street Parisian lorette drawn in “Ghosts”: “a stone, high-cheeked, greedy, flat Parisian face, usurious eyes, whitewash, rouge, fluffed hair and a bouquet of bright fake flowers under a pointed hat, scraped nails like claws, an ugly crinoline...". The narrator of "The Phantom" imagines a Russian steppe landowner "running with a crappy hop after a corrupt doll," and a feeling of disgust overcomes him. The same feeling arouses in him the entire lifestyle of bourgeois Paris, and he is irresistibly drawn away from “shaved soldiers’ foreheads and polished barracks... from liberal lectures and government pamphlets, from Parisian comedies and Parisian operas, from Parisian witticisms and Parisian ignorance... . Away! Away! Away!"

In Enough, he sets out for the new Shakespeare, if he were to be born, the rewarding task of creating a new Richard III, “a modern type of tyrant who is almost ready to believe in his own virtue and sleeps peacefully at night or complains about an overly elegant dinner at the same time , when his half-crushed victims try to at least console themselves by imagining him, like Richard III, surrounded by the ghosts of the people he destroyed..." This deep disgust for the leaders of European reaction was not a fleeting mood of Turgenev, it remained with him throughout his life. To be convinced of this, it is enough to recall his later poem “Croquet at Windsor” (1876), full of contempt and anger against the inhumane policies of the rulers of England, who encouraged Turkish atrocities in the Balkans. However, for all his indignation against the reaction, Turgenev remained at the mercy of liberal prejudices. Turning to history, he struck right and left, equally rejecting both the ghost of Caesar and the ghost of Razin (the story “Ghosts”), and these ghosts of the past, equally unacceptable to him, only confirmed in his eyes the strength and immutability of social evil, which from his point of view, it has not decreased at all in the modern world, but has only changed external forms: “the same grasps of power, the same habits of slavery, the same naturalness of untruth...”

In the second half of the 60s, Turgenev's indignation against the reaction intensified even more and found fertile ground in socio-political conditions. The revolutionary situation of the late 50s and early 60s is ending, reaction is triumphant, and difficult times are coming for Russian democracy. Slavophiles are joining the government clique, taking advantage of the victory of reaction to launch pan-Slavist propaganda. This seemed all the more dangerous to Turgenev because in the socialist propaganda of Herzen and Ogarev such characteristically populist features as faith in the community and the doctrine of “originality” appeared, which Turgenev mistakenly perceived as a rapprochement with Slavophilism, while in reality “the essence of populism lies deeper: not in the doctrine of originality and not in Slavophilism, but in the representation of the interests and ideas of the Russian small producer." 7*

It was in this environment that “Smoke” was created, which occupies a completely separate position among Turgenev’s novels.

In the chronicle of the ideological life of Russian society, which is formed by Turgenev’s novels, “Smoke” seems to have no place. People of the 40s were reflected in “Rudin” and “Noble Nest”, democrats - commoners - in “On the Eve” and “Fathers and Sons”, the populist generation - in “Novi”. There is no such central theme in Smoke. In Turgenev's novels, successive representatives of the social trends of their time pass through - Rudin, Lavretsky, Insarov, Bazarov, Nezhdanov. The main character of "Smoke" Litvinov does not stand in line with these brothers of his. Even in the novel itself, he does not occupy the same place as the characters listed above in the works dedicated to them: in “Smoke” Litvinov is overshadowed by Potugin.

This isolated position of "Smoke" was always felt and sometimes led even researchers to think about the fall of Turgenev's novelistic creativity in "Smoke", about the collapse of the genre of Turgenev's novel itself. 8* Naturally, the difference between “Smoke” and “Rudin”, “On the Eve” and “Fathers and Sons” should have been particularly clear to contemporaries when the novel was published.

And in fact, in the critical controversy that flared up around “Smoke,” notes were heard that had never been heard in disputes about Turgenev’s previous novels. Then the bewilderment of critics was the question of whose side the author’s sympathies were on, whether the hero of the novel was his personal hero, whether he approved or condemned a new worldview, a new type of culture, which is shown in the image of the central character.

Now the situation has changed dramatically. Critics, writers and readers of different camps and trends unanimously agreed that “Smoke” is generally more a novel of antipathies than of sympathies, and that the usual Turgenev hero who would express the new aspirations of the new Russia is not in the novel at all.

“In “Smoke” there is almost no love for anything and there is almost no poetry,” Leo Tolstoy was indignant. 9*

And the smoke of the fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us! -
This is how the last century speaks poetically,
And our talent itself is always looking for spots in the sun,
And he smokes the fatherland with stinking smoke! -

wrote F.I. Tyutchev, and in his famous poetic appeal to Turgenev, he irritably reproached the author of “Smoke” for the same thing:

What is this? ghost, some kind of spell?
Where are we? And should you believe your eyes?
There is only smoke here, like the fifth element,
Desolate smoke, endless smoke.

The critic of “Notes of the Fatherland” (A. Skabichevsky) saw “unconditional denial” in the novel. 10*

N. Strakhov, in his famous article “The Last Works of Turgenev” 11*, refused to classify the author of “Smoke” as any of the parties shown in the novel, and came to the following conclusion: “It seems best to us to call Turgenev a skeptic. As a skeptic, he, naturally, had to equally push away from both of our parties, both from the Slavophiles and from the Westerners."

With the same irritation, critics noted the disappearance of Turgenev’s former hero, in one sense or another a new man, a hero of his time. Litvinov aroused general indignation precisely because he seemed to have taken a vacant position without any reason.

“Litvinov is not a strong man, but some kind of rubbish”, “Litvinov cannot stand the most lenient criticism”, he cannot be a “hero”, he is “a ship without ballast and a rudder”, “this Litvinov is no good” - such assessments The article from Otechestvennye Zapiski has been sprinkled throughout.

Litvinov embodies “lack of will” - this is how Strakhov perceived Turgenev’s hero in the article already cited.

Orest Miller directly hints at the reasons for the general (and his own) irritation against Litvinov, posing the question: “But what is he himself - is he not a new person?” He, like everyone else, answers this question with a categorical denial: with all Litvinov’s desire for activity, “he is still a weak person.” 12*

Strakhov summarizes all these rumors about Litvinov, seeing a new feature of Turgenev’s work after “Fathers and Sons,” among other things, in the fact that Turgenev “stopped bringing us representatives of our progress, these heroes of our society.”

In connection with this general search for the disappeared Turgenev hero, there are also Pisarev’s famous questions addressed to Turgenev: “I would like to ask you, Ivan Sergeevich, where did you put Bazarov?” - You look at the phenomena of Russian life through the eyes of Litvinov, you sum up from his point of view vision, you make him the center and hero of the novel, and yet Litvinov is the same Arkady Nikolaevich, whom Bazarov unsuccessfully asked not to speak beautifully. To look around and orient yourself, you stand on this low and loose ant mound, while at your disposal is "A real tower, which you yourself discovered and described. What happened to this tower? Where did it go?" 13*

This brilliant tirade reflected not only Pisarev’s passion for Bazarov as a specific image, but also the desire to see Turgenev’s hero in Turgenev’s novel - a new “representative of progress,” a new “hero of society,” a “new man.”

It was in vain that Turgenev referred to Potugin in his reply letter: Pisarev could not accept this link. Turgenev was right when he pointed out to Pisarev that his “bump” was not Litvinov, but Potugin; “Well, I chose the hummock, in my opinion, not as low as you think,” he assured (XII, 376). And yet Potugin could not pretend to replace Turgenev’s former hero, the “new man,” since he was introduced by the author into the novel precisely as an “inveterate and sworn” bearer of the old principles. Despite all the differences in the positions of Pisarev and, for example, O. Miller, Pisarev could well join him on this issue: “The strongest personality in “Smoke” is, of course, Potugin, but he is decidedly far from being a new person.” , says Orest Miller, characterizing Potugin as one of the last Mohicans of Westernism.

Thus, in the responses to “Smoke,” two positions emerged with complete clarity: first, that “Smoke” is, so to speak, a negative novel, and second, that it is a novel without a hero. This modification of Turgenev’s novel seemed so new, unexpected and stunning that Strakhov found it possible to express the general impression in such pathetic words: “Some event happened in his activity, a revolution, a turning point, a cataclysm...”

This “cataclysm” was associated primarily with the fact that the reaction that occurred after 1861-1862 caused a crisis of the Bazarov type in life and in literature. When Turgenev began work on "Smoke", the time of the Bazarovs was already in the past. A hero of this type was possible only in the modified socio-psychological appearance that V. A. Sleptsov gave him in “Difficult Time” (1865). The hero is defeated, although he has not given up, eager to fight, but tragically experiencing a period of forced inaction; the main person of the novel without programmatic monologues, with cynical paradoxes and bitter omissions instead of direct declarations, with speech that is inevitably vague - such a person was fit to be the hero of a “encrypted” novel, designed for a strictly defined circle of like-minded readers. Turgenev was not prepared to create a novel of this type: he was accustomed to addressing all of educated Russia in his novels, carrying out a public trial on his heroes. In relation to a hero who was defeated or, perhaps, gathering strength in silence for a new struggle, Turgenev was constrained both in the possibilities and, most importantly, in the moral right of the court. He himself clearly indicated this in his answer to Pisarev’s question to the latter: “Where did you put Bazarov?” “You remind me of Bazarov and cry out to me: “Cain, where is your brother Abel?” from a critical point it shouldn’t be, on the other hand it’s inconvenient; and finally, now he can only declare himself - that’s why he’s Bazarov; and until he declares himself, talking about him or through his mouth would be a complete whim - even false ". The only thing that was possible for Turgenev under these conditions was only to hint at the existence of such defeated but not surrendered heroes; however, this too seemed to Turgenev too external and therefore an unworthy response to a great and tragic theme.

“It would be very easy for me to introduce a phrase like this: “however, we now have efficient and strong workers who work in silence,” but out of respect for both these workers and this silence, I preferred to do without this phrases..." (XII, 376-377).

So, the possibilities of an objective-historical trial of the novelist over the new Russia were closed to Turgenev for reasons of both internal and external nature. But the possibilities of a trial over old Russia were completely open to him: as mentioned above, Turgenev’s social and philosophical views and moods at the time of work on “Smoke” included, in a contradictory combination with other elements, motives of social denunciation, and the social atmosphere of the mid-60s 's made these motifs as timely as possible and gave them a particularly poignant meaning.

The trial of the reviving forces of old Russia is concluded primarily in the episode with the Baden generals. The generals' scenes in "Smoke" reflect the initial stage of the reactionary offensive and the preparation for the future revelry of reactionary forces, which Turgenev in 1865-1867 could only foresee and anticipate. The policy of counter-reforms is maturing, developing alongside the policy of reforms and maturing with such fierce force that it threatens to destroy all the results and consequences of the act of February 19 - this is the meaning of the accusatory pages of Turgenev’s novel, directed against the aristocratic reactionary party. "... We need to redo... yes... redo everything that has been done", "And the nineteenth of February - as far as possible", "you need to stop... and stop", "go back, go back...", "Completely ; quite back, mon tres cher. The further back, the better." These are the general formulas of the beginning backward movement, condemned by "Smoke", and to these general demands is added a whole chain of specific tasks of reactionary aggression: a campaign against the press ("Magazines! Exposure!"), against the democratic intelligentsia ("these students, priests, commoners, all this small fry, tout ce fond du sac, la petite propriete, pire que le proletariat"), against education at all levels ("all these universities, and seminaries there, and public schools"), against the so-called "legal order" ("De la poigne et des formes! .. de la poigne surtout. And this in Russian can be translated tako: politely, but in the teeth!").

All these general and specific formulas in their meaning, tone, style and phraseology provide a complete and detailed program for the reactionary movement of the 60s.

At first glance, it may seem that Turgenev separates the political calls and aspirations of the Baden generals from the official course of government policy, that the generals’ company in “Smoke” is only an aristocratic opposition on the right, an imperious opposition, socially significant, but nothing more than an opposition. However, with a few subtle touches and laconic, but extremely expressive details, he makes it clear that official policy differs from the policy of open reactionary onslaught only in phraseological nuances and the desire to maintain diplomatic decorum. The representative of government ideology is in the same circle of Baden generals, he is his own man among them and even the center of their circle. This is General Ratmirov; he is preparing for a big bureaucratic career, they say about him: “you are aiming to be a government person,” and at the same time his figure is introduced into the novel not to contrast with the society of voluntary knights of reaction, but as a necessary addition to it. He can allow himself slight criticism of the “exaggerations” that his friends allow, not constrained by the demands of an official tone; he sometimes drops phrases about the need for progress (“Progress is a manifestation of social life, that’s what we shouldn’t forget; it’s a symptom. Here we need to watch "), but he does not reject the essence of the aspirations of his colleagues, but only introduces into their words and speeches a shade of "general, light-as-down liberalism." Turgenev even made sure that Ratmir’s liberalism could not be taken at least seriously, introducing the following remark from the author into the novel: “This liberalism did not prevent him, however, from flogging fifty peasants in a rebellious Belarusian village, where he was sent to pacify " (Chapter XII). To depict the program of government-aristocratic reaction with such thoroughness and accuracy, as Turgenev did in “Smoke,” would be quite enough for its political condemnation: the very enumeration of the points of this program sounded like an accusatory speech. But Turgenev did not want to limit himself to one political court and added a moral court to it.

The moral judgment of the reactionary party lies in the fact that its direction is shown by Turgenev not as the fruit of political conviction, but as the result of the absence of any convictions, the absence of political thought and passion. The general party is guided only by selfish instincts, rude, vulgar and base. The political program covers up a dirty void.

“In the very cries and exclamations, no passion was heard; in the censure itself, no passion was felt: only occasionally, from under the guise of pseudo-civil indignation, pseudo-contemptuous indifference, the fear of possible losses squealed like a whiny squeak, and a few names that posterity will not forget were uttered with the grinding of teeth... And if only there was a drop of a living stream under all this rubbish and rubbish! What old stuff, what unnecessary nonsense, what bad trifles occupied all these heads, these souls, and not only on this evening did they occupy them, not only in the world - but also at home, at all hours and days, throughout the entire width and depth of their existence! (Chapter XV).

Muffled hints about the life of these people “at home” are the second side of Turgenev’s moral judgment. “At home” “terrible and dark stories” are happening. Turgenev pronounces this formula of direct condemnation three times: once on behalf of Potugin, the second time through the lips of Litvinov and the third time on behalf of the author, clearly seeking to morally brand the hated environment with this persistent formula and just as clearly refusing artistic intimacy in the depiction of this dark world ( "Pass by, reader, pass by!").

Those disgusting, stingy phrases with which Turgenev lifts the veil over Ratmirov’s personal life also acquire the character of a moral stigma: “... Smooth, ruddy, flexible and sticky, he enjoyed amazing success with women: noble old women simply went crazy about him.” This motif, which first appears in ch. XIII, echoed in ch. XV with a quick caricature portrait of a noble old woman who “moved her bare, scary, dark gray shoulders and, covering her mouth with a fan, languidly glanced sideways at Ratmirov with already completely dead eyes,” and ends in the same chapter with a brief episode in the scene of Ratmirov’s explanation with Irina.

“How? Are you? Are you jealous?” she finally said, and, turning her back to her husband, walked out of the room. “He’s jealous!” was heard from behind the doors, and her laughter was heard again.”

Having secured this topic in the reader’s mind with a threefold reminder, Turgenev breaks it off again, again demonstrating the moral impossibility of intimately addressing it.

This is how two assessments of the reactionary world develop in Turgenev’s novel; both lines run side by side, approaching each other so closely that finally the separateness of the criteria ceases to be felt at all. An example of a complete convergence of assessments is the sudden angle in which Ratmirov is shown to the reader at the moment when, irritated by the explanation with Irina and excited by her beauty, he is left alone with himself. “His cheeks suddenly turned pale, a spasm ran down his chin, and his eyes wandered dully and brutally across the floor, as if looking for something... All semblance of grace disappeared from his face. It should have taken a similar expression when he spotted the Belarusian peasants.”

Thus, complete unity of the moral and political character of the people of the reactionary world is established.

Next to the general’s scenes in Turgenev’s new novel stand Gubarev’s episodes, which the author called “Heidelberg arabesques” in a letter to Herzen. In addition to the frank and aggressive reaction, Turgenev also knows a cowardly, hypocritical reaction. Potugin’s very first keynote speech included a mention of that cowardice and “petty servility”, due to which, “look, another important dignitary in our country is being attracted to a student who is insignificant in his eyes, almost flirting with him, running towards him like a hare” (chap. .V). At the very beginning of the novel, in Gubarev’s scene, Turgenev introduces the reader to a company of “officers who had jumped out on a short vacation to Europe and were delighted at the opportunity, of course cautiously and without letting the thought of the regimental commander out of their heads, to dabble with smart and slightly dangerous people” (chapter IV).

Almost all the participants in Gubarev’s circle, consisting of landowners who indulged in Herzen-style democracy in their leisure time, were not far removed from these “officers.” How little Turgenev's intentions in these chapters of the novel could have included a direct attack against Herzen and his London group is shown by the carefully developed social portraits of the participants in Gubarev's circle: all of them (with the exception of Sukhanchikova) return to their homeland, Gubarev becomes a tooth-crushing landowner, Voroshilov joins the military service, Bindasov becomes an excise officer and dies, killed in a tavern with a cue during a fight, Pishchalkin meets Litvinov as a respectable zemstvo figure, freezing in a “fit of well-intentioned sensations.” Turgenev, therefore, did everything possible to prevent direct rapprochement between Gubarev’s circle and the London emigration, represented by names that, in his own words, “posterity will not forget.”

On the contrary, he could not have more clearly revealed his intention to show Herzen’s imaginary like-minded people, always ready for renegade, in the persons of the members of Gubarev’s circle. The latest research by Soviet Turgenev scholars has shown with complete clarity that in Gubarev’s episodes we are talking not about London, but about Heidelberg emigration, among which there were a lot of random people who quickly abandoned ostentatious “Herzenism” as soon as connections with “smart and slightly dangerous people" led to undesirable consequences. 14* If Turgenev in 1862 had pamphlet intentions towards the London exiles, established by researchers based on an analysis of the list of characters in “Smoke”, 15* then by 1867 the novelist’s plan should have changed significantly. In any case, in the text of the novel, Turgenev clearly separates the Gubarev circle from the London emigration. This was understood and correctly accepted by some contemporaries. “There is a Russian proverb: fools are beaten at the altar,” Pisarev wrote to Turgenev. “You act according to this proverb, and for my part I cannot object to this course of action. I myself deeply hate all fools in general, and I especially deeply hate those fools who pretend to be my friends, like-minded people and allies." 16*

A man from a completely different camp, O. Miller, understood the matter in exactly the same way, noting in the quoted article that in Gubarev’s circle “only stupidity or maliciousness can find anything similar to our well-known foreign emigration.” Finally, Herzen himself, whom the image of Gubarev’s company could have offended more than anyone else, in his correspondence with Turgenev did not say a word about these episodes of the novel, without attaching at least some serious significance to them.

Meanwhile, the name “Gubarev” hinted at Ogarev for good reason, and there was an element of polemic with Herzen and his like-minded people in Gubarev’s scenes, although not in the sense of a pamphlet identification of Ogarev or Herzen with Gubarev or Bindasov. This polemic, in our opinion, lies in the fact that Turgenev establishes the external proximity of Herzen’s populist positions to the Slavophil slogans of the officially reactionary party, hinting that the “original” features of his ideology can bring to him such “allies” in which he is less interested in everything. Sending his novel to Herzen, Turgenev wrote: “... I am sending you my new work. As far as I know, it has brought religious people, courtiers, Slavophiles and patriots against me in Russia. You are not a religious person and not a courtier, but you are a Slavophile and a patriot and, You’ll probably get angry too, and besides, you probably won’t like my Heidelberg arabesques.” 17* Here, not without a hint of irony, Turgenev points out to Herzen the points of his involuntary rapprochement (“Slavophile and patriot”) with such people with whom, in any case, Herzen could not desire any closeness (religious people and courtiers), and directly calls him a Slavophile. Some elements of Herzen’s views are included in the circle of ideological signs of a world hostile to him - this is the meaning of the above quote.

Based on this view, Turgenev throughout the entire novel does not make any distinction between official-reactionary Slavophilism and the Slavophilism of a group of Gubarev’s henchmen playing at Herzen’s democracy. Slavophil tirades are uttered by Prince Koko, Mrs. X (“trashy morel”), and visitors to the salon, where “real secret silence” reigns, while Slavophil conversations about identity, community, etc. are noisily conducted in Gubarev’s gatherings. In Potugin’s speeches, both “Slavophilisms” often come together so closely that sometimes the reader cannot immediately make out which party is meant in a particular case. For example, in ch. V Potugin says: “You see this armyak? That’s where everything will come from. All other idols have been destroyed; let us still believe in the armyak”; one gets the impression that here we are talking about populist “originality,” but the next phrase points to another target of Potugin’s attacks: “Well, what if the Armenian betrays you? No, he won’t betray you, read Kokhanovskaya, and your eyes will be in the ceiling.” The same in ch. XIV: Potugin, having mentioned the community in passing, speaks irritably about a meeting with a genius musician. The reader remembers Bambaev singing Varlamov’s romances, and is ready to attribute the “nugget” to Gubarev’s circle, but a few pages later he finds this same “nugget” in Ratmirov’s salon, where he, sitting at the piano, plays chords “with an absent-minded hand,” “d”une main distraite." These and similar rapprochements achieve two goals at once: the blows striking the ideology of populist “originality” each time turn to the right, and at the same time, such episodes sound like a reproach to Herzen, a reproach and a warning that he is renewing what has been appropriated by the reaction the outdated weapon of Slavophilism gives the Gubarevs the opportunity, at least outwardly, to become like-minded people of Herzen, even if they are stupid and hypocritical.

Gubarev's democracy will disappear as soon as it becomes unsafe ("Others were taken under cover, but nothing to him"). Love for the people will be replaced by the following program: “Men’s filthy things!... You need to beat them, that’s what; hit them in the faces; this is what freedom they have - in the teeth...”. But the Slavophile phrase may remain, and the enthusiastic Bambaev will quickly adapt the old formulas to the new situation: “But still I will say: Rus'... what a Rus'! Look at this pair of geese: after all, there is nothing like this in the whole of Europe. Real Arzamas!"

This special method of Turgenev’s polemic with Herzen, a method designed to ensure that every polemical movement towards Herzen was simultaneously and with much greater force directed against his enemies, obviously Pisarev had in mind when he said to the author of “Smoke”: “.. I see and understand that Gubarev’s scenes constitute an episode, sewn on a living thread, probably so that the author, who directed the full force of his blow to the right, does not completely lose his balance and does not find himself in a society of red democrats that is unusual for him. That the blow really falls to the right, and not to the left, to Ratmirov, and not to Gubarev - even the Ratmirovs themselves understood this.” 18*

This was the only way Turgenev could distinguish himself from the society of “Red Democrats”. Arguing with Herzen in 1862, Turgenev reproached him precisely for the fact that, while proclaiming a social-Slavophile program, he, contrary to his own wishes, was also renouncing the revolution. Seeing the revolutionary role of the “educated class” in the transfer of civilization to the people, who themselves will decide what to reject from this civilization and what to accept, Turgenev wrote: “You, gentlemen, on the contrary, use the German process of thinking (like Slavophiles), abstracting from the barely understood and understandable substance of the people, those principles on which you assume that they will build their lives, you are spinning in the fog and, most importantly, you are essentially renouncing the revolution."... "... Because of your mental pain, your fatigue, your thirst “to put a fresh grain of snow on a withered tongue,” he wrote, “you hit everything that should be dear to every European, and therefore to us, - civilization, legality, the revolution itself, finally...” 19*

This feature in Turgenev’s views on the populism of the London emigration allowed him in “Smoke” to turn the polemic with Herzen first of all to the right - against that common enemy with whom, as it seemed to him, the “Red Democrats,” having “broken their sword,” unexpectedly united .

The meaning of the reproach for “refusal of revolution,” a reproach unexpected from the lips of Turgenev, an opponent of revolutionary upheavals, is that by a revolutionary cause he understands nothing more than the transfer of the basic principles of “civilization” by the educated class to the people. “The role of the educated class in Russia is to be the transmitter of civilization to the people so that they themselves can decide what to reject or accept, this is essentially a modest role, although Peter the Great and Lomonosov worked in it, although it is brought into action by the revolution, this role, in my opinion, it is not over yet,” Turgenev wrote to Herzen. 20* He sees the “guilt” of Herzen and Ogarev in refusing this kind of tasks. In this, contrary to historical truth, he also sees their rapprochement with Slavophilism.

In the novel, the preacher of liberal culturalism and at the same time the enemy of Slavophilism (the true Slavophilism of the reactionary clique and the imaginary Slavophilism of Herzen and Ogarev) is Potugin. Turgenev’s ideological weakness was clearly reflected in this image. Having wrongfully brought Slavophilism closer to Herzen’s “Russian socialism,” Turgenev was doomed to wage his struggle against the Slavophiles based on old Westernizing dogmas. Having embarked on this path, he inserted praise of Western civilization into Potugin’s programmatic reasoning. That is why the attempts of some modern literary critics to “rehabilitate” Potugin as an opponent of Slavophilism in the first place are completely untenable. But for Potugin (by the will of the author), the populists were also Slavophiles. There is no doubt that Potugin’s reasoning is directed against reaction, but there is also no doubt that they are aimed at protecting that very European “ci-vi-li-za-tion”, the dark sides of which Herzen so clearly saw. It was not for nothing that he, ignoring the “Heidelberg arabesques,” spoke sharply against Potugin. "Why didn't you forget half of his chatter?" - he ironically asked Turgenev in a letter dated May 16, 1867.

The general's scenes and Gubarev's episodes gave "Smoke" the character of a sharply satirical novel. Satirical features have always been characteristic of Turgenev’s work, but nowhere have they acquired such sharpness and intensity as in “Smoke.”

This new manner of Turgenev immediately caught the eye of his contemporaries. P. V. Annenkov wrote: “He so accustomed the reader to subtle features, soft sketches, to a sly and cheerful joke when he had to laugh at people, to an elegant choice of details when he drew their moral emptiness, that many did not recognize their beloved author in the current satirist and writer, expressing his impressions directly and frankly. Some even asked: “What happened to him?” 21*

Having abandoned his previous style of “sly and cheerful jokes,” Turgenev generously introduces into his new novel satirical techniques and forms developed in the literature that preceded him. L. V. Pumpyansky pointed out that the entire end of the first chapter of “Smoke” represents a conscious arrangement of Pushkin’s poems from the satirical pamphlet of the eighth chapter of “Eugene Onegin”. “But the sharpness of the attack is extremely intensified, and they are given an acutely political character, which was not present in Pushkin’s poems,” he rightly notes.

Gubarev's scenes forced contemporaries to recall the Repetilovsky episode in "Woe from Wit." O. Miller writes about “repetilovism” in connection with “Gubarev’s foreign circle.” “Here’s Bambaev for you: a chip from Griboyedov’s Repetilov,” writes A. Skabichevsky. Indeed, Bambaev speaks with almost verbatim quotes from Repetilov’s speech:

“But Gubarev, Gubarev, my brothers!! That’s who you have to run to, you have to run! I absolutely revere this man! But I’m not the only one, everyone in a row is in awe. What an essay he’s writing now, oh... oh! ...

What is this essay about? - asked Litvinov.

About everything, my brother..."

So, in Gubarev’s circle there is their own Repetilov, there is also their own Ippolit Udushiev (Voroshilov), there is also something like Griboyedov’s “night robber and duelist” - this is Tit Bindasov, “in appearance a noisy riot, but in essence a fist and a scorcher, according to in speeches a terrorist, by vocation a quarterly, a friend of Russian merchants and Parisian lorettes."

As for the general's scenes, it is not Pushkin's or Griboyedov's tones that predominate in them. Here Turgenev’s pen becomes especially harsh; here the method of political caricature dominates. People are called here not by names, but by satirical nicknames. The reader recognizes only the name - Boris, but it is not this that is remembered, but the classification nicknames of the generals: irritable, condescending, obese, this also includes such a nickname as “a dignitary from among the softly shrill” (Chapter XV). The method of political grotesquery is also reflected in the speeches of the generals: the entire political program of the generals’ party, developed by Turgenev with deliberate accuracy and completeness, is expressed in sharply caricatured aphorisms (“politely, but in the teeth,” “go back, go back,” etc.); thanks to this, the very form of expression of political views becomes a method of discrediting them. The same purpose is also served by Turgenev’s technique of intertwining the grotesque language of politics with the grotesque language of everyday vulgarity: the exclamation of a condescending general in response to the remarks of the corpulent general (“Oh, you naughty, incorrigible naughty!”), the babble of a lady in a yellow cap: “J” adore les questions politiques", direct transitions from the language of politics to the language of salon vulgarity ("And Boris turned to the lady grimacing in the empty space, and, without lowering his voice, without even changing his facial expression, began asking her about when she " will crown him with flame,” since he is amazingly in love with her and suffers extraordinarily.” Let us add here the satirical use of the French language in its Russian-noble, salon-vulgar dialect.

Turgenev's grotesque speech is also accompanied by grotesque images with features of bestiality (the handsome Finikov with a flat skull and a soulless bestial expression), inanimateness ("a trashy morel, which reeked of vegetable oil and exhausted poison"), with features of a corpse and at the same time a mannequin, producing, due to some eerie automatism, human movements (the aforementioned terrible wreck with bare dark gray shoulders, which - in Chapter XV - languidly glanced sideways at Ratmirov with already completely dead eyes and then struck the corpulent general’s hand with a fan, and “a piece of white fell off her forehead from this sudden movement”).

It is quite obvious that all the signs of this satirical style in Smoke lead us not to Pushkin or Griboyedov, but to Saltykov-Shchedrin, whose “ferocious humor” Turgenev gave an enthusiastic review of a few years later. Shchedrin's traditions do not disappear from Turgenev in the future; they are clearly evident in “Novi”, where the approach to Shchedrin’s style becomes even more obvious than in “Smoke”.

But in “Novi” such “Shchedrinsky” features of Turgenev’s style no longer struck anyone, since the way for them was prepared by “Smoke”, where readers met them in Turgenev for the first time, and some, as P. V. Annenkov testifies, were inclined consider this new form of Turgenev’s satire “an unusual and partly obscene flapping of a satirical whip.”

Describing the change in the usual scheme of Turgenev's novel, we have already talked about the disappearance of the hero. But in “Smoke” there is no Turgenev heroine. Turgenev's heroine has always served as the embodiment of vague, unconscious social aspirations, to which the hero of the novel must respond with his conscious activity. There could not have been such a heroine in Smoke, since this novel had lost the character of a narrative about a Russian figure. Irina replaces the heroine of Turgenev's former novel just as little as Litvinov replaces Turgenev's former hero.

This does not mean, however, that Irina’s role in the novel is similar to Litvinov’s role. On the contrary, it can be said without exaggeration that the modification of Turgenev’s novel in “Smoke” was reflected, among other things, in the fact that this is a novel not about a hero, but about a heroine: Irina appears in the novel as a victim of the environment that provides the author with material for political satire . Therefore, the opinion expressed by L. V. Pumpyansky that “Smoke” falls into several autonomous spheres and that the love story, unlike Turgenev’s previous novels, is in no way connected with the political content of “Smoke” is incorrect. On the contrary, the inextricable connection of the love theme with the political theme is that (perhaps the only) feature of Turgenev’s new novel, which goes back to the old tradition of his novels. The connection between both themes is as undoubted as it is certain that this connection is different than before. Previously, the heroine’s fate was associated with new, affirmed forces; now she is associated with old, denied forces. Previously, the heroine strived for a social feat, now she strives to get rid of the social shackles that bind her. Previously, the heroine lived in anticipation of the future, now she is animated by the desire to get rid of the past. This turns out to be impossible for her, since secular society not only externally drew her into its sphere, but also corrupted her mentally. Therefore, the character of the heroine, simultaneously with the traits of sacrifice, also acquires the traits of tragic guilt.

It was noted in the literature (L. V. Pumpyansky) that the old Turgenev novel ("Rudin", "The Noble Nest", "On the Eve") is a novel about an advanced Russian person, a "personal" novel, cultural and historical, a love and political novel at the same time - arose as a continuation of the tradition bequeathed by Pushkin in Eugene Onegin. Despite the fact that Turgenev’s new novel departed from this tradition of the “personal” novel, it is still connected with Onegin, although again with a different connection.

“This story (of Irina and Litvinov) is extremely similar to the one told in “Eugene Onegin,” wrote N. Strakhov in the cited article, “only a woman is put in the place of a man, and vice versa. Onegin, beloved by Tatyana, first refuses her , and then, when she is married, falls in love with her and suffers. So in “Smoke.” Irina, beloved by the student Litvinov, abandons him, and then, when she herself is married, and Litvinov has a fiancée, falls in love with him and hurts great suffering for both him and himself. In both cases, initially a mistake occurs, which the heroes then realize and try to correct, but it is no longer possible. The moral teaching from both fables is the same: “But happiness was so possible, so close!”

“Onegin and Irina do not see where their real happiness lies, they are blinded by some false views and passions, for which they are punished. To all this, in “Smoke” another sad feature is added. Tatyana does not succumb to Onegin’s persecution; she remains "pure and flawless and personifies the "sweet ideal" of a Russian woman, misunderstood by those whom she fell in love with. Litvinov, playing the role of a woman, could not resist Irina, and thereby inflicted new torment on Irina, himself, and his bride."

This witty passage is doubly interesting. First of all, here for the first and only time in literature the connection between “Smoke” and “Onegin” is indicated, although the specific form of this connection is outlined by Strakhov more than arbitrarily. In addition, Strakhov’s reasoning suggested a relationship between Irina and Pushkin’s Tatyana. Turgenev (as a Slavophile critic might have thought) in “Smoke” re-evaluates the moral side of the denouement of Pushkin’s novel: Tatyana, who did not want to leave her husband-general, was elevated by Pushkin to the “sweet ideal” of a Russian woman, Irina was condemned for the same by Turgenev.

The moral assessment of the denouement of Eugene Onegin has occupied readers and literature for many decades, and at different times this question has been filled with a wide variety of content.

A few years after the cited article by Strakhov, the question of the denouement of Onegin (and even more broadly, the question of the love story in this novel) arose in connection with Anna Karenina. In critical reviews of Tolstoy’s novel, the name of Pushkin’s Tatiana flashed, and Dostoevsky, discussing the ideological roots of Anna Karenina in “The Diary of a Writer,” came to the conclusion that “we, of course, could point Europe directly to the source, i.e. on Pushkin himself."

B. M. Eikhenbaum in the article “Pushkin and Tolstoy” indicated that “Anna Karenina” was begun under the direct influence of Pushkin’s prose - his style, his manner - and that in Tolstoy’s novel historical and literary connections with “Eugene Onegin” are felt. “Here we are talking, of course, not about direct influence, not about “influence,” but about natural, historical kinship.” In particular, B. M. Eikhenbaum points out, in Anna Karenina the question posed in the denouement of Pushkin’s novel is resolved anew; in this sense, Tolstoy’s novel looks like “a kind of continuation and ending of Eugene Onegin.” 22*

If posing the question of the initial historical origins of Anna Karenina led to Pushkin, to his prose passages and Eugene Onegin, then when searching for the closest example of a novel to Anna Karenina, connected with the tradition of the love story in Onegin, it would be natural remember "Smoke". No one was as well prepared to pose this question as the author of the above-mentioned rapprochement between Smoke and Onegin, Strakhov, who was also on close terms with Tolstoy. And in fact, only having read Anna Karenina in proof in 1874, Strakhov, in a letter to Tolstoy, immediately drew a parallel between Tolstoy’s novel and Smoke, of course, to the latter’s disadvantage.

“It’s terribly disgusting to read such secular stories from Turgenev, for example, in “Smoke.” You feel that he has no point of support, that he condemns something secondary, and not the main thing, that, for example, passion is condemned because it is not strong and consistent enough, and not because it is a passion. He looks at his generals with disgust because they are out of tune when they sing, that they do not speak French well enough, that they do not grimace gracefully enough, etc. Simple and true human he has no standards at all. You are absolutely obliged to publish your novel in order to destroy all this and similar falsehood at once. How angry Turgenev must be! He is an expert in love and women! Your Karenina will immediately kill his Irin and similar heroines (what are the names in "Spring Waters"?)". 23 * And after the publication of L. N. Tolstoy’s novel, Strakhov again returned to the parallel with Turgenev: “No, Lev Nikolaevich,” he wrote on January 3, 1877, “victory is yours! Turgenev cannot write even one page like that.” 24*

Strakhov had every reason to compare and contrast both novels. "Smoke" and "Anna Karenina" should be compared due to the close similarity in the very type of their construction. A novel about a heroine - a victim of a secular environment, worthy of the author's regret and participation and at the same time subject to moral judgment and condemnation; a novel built on the exposure of the “light”; a novel in which the love theme develops side by side and in inextricable connection with the socio-political theme - it is this type of novel that was developed by both Turgenev in Smoke and Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. The typical similarity of both novels highlights even more sharply the features of the ideological differences between them. Tolstoy judges differently than Turgenev, applies different standards, offers different solutions. He does not judge the environment in a political court, like Turgenev, he condemns his heroine not for her inability to break with the world that has corrupted her, and, most importantly, he sees new and complex issues where Turgenev outlines the resolution of these issues.

Litvinov “jumped into the carriage and, turning around, pointed to Irina to a place next to him. She understood him. Time had not yet passed. Just one step, one movement, and two forever united lives would have rushed off into the unknown distance... While she was hesitating, there was a a loud whistle, and the train moved."

Tolstoy realized in his novel the situation outlined here by Turgenev, and showed that instead of an idyll, it should lead to drama. Where Turgenev saw the possibility of a successful conclusion to the novel, Tolstoy saw only its tragic ending. Tolstoy's heroine took her place in the carriage with Vronsky, but their lives did not unite forever. The train rushed them “into an unknown distance,” but for Tolstoy’s heroine this “unknown distance” turned into a small railway station, where she died under the wheels of the train.

With such a correlation between both works, Tolstoy’s novel seems to be polemically pointed against Turgenev’s “Smoke.” The creative history of "Anna Karenina" does not provide facts for the assertion that such polemics were consciously part of Tolstoy's plan. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine that Tolstoy, with his constant and often jealous interest in Turgenev’s work, while working on Anna Karenina, could completely ignore Turgenev’s similar experience, which was close to his novel in genre and type.

But no matter how the question of the meaning of “Smoke” for Tolstoy is resolved, the historical and literary side of the matter does not change. In the history of the Russian novel, "Smoke" turned out to be the most important milestone on the way to "Anna Karenina", a direct harbinger of Tolstoy's novel. And in the novelistic work of Turgenev himself, “Smoke” remained the only experience of this kind. When new people loudly spoke about themselves in literature and politics, Turgenev in Novi returned to the proven type of his cultural-historical novel.

Notes

1* (Letters from K. Dm. Kavelina and Iv. S. Turgenev to Al. Iv. Herzen, Geneva, 1892, p. 172.)

2* ()

3* (V. I. Lenin. Works, ed. 4, vol. 18, p. 328.)

4* (V. I. Lenin. Works, ed. 4, vol. 18, p. 329.)

5* (Letters from K. Dm. Kavelina and Iv. S. Turgenev to Al. Iv. Herzen, p. 175.)

6* (M. A. Antonovich. Selected articles. M., GIHL, 1931 p. 238.)

7* (V. I. Lenin. Works, ed. 4, vol. 1, p. 384.)

8* (L. V. Pumpyansky. "Smoke". Historical and literary essay, - I. S. Turgenev. Collected Works, vol. IX. M. - L., GIHL, 1930.)

9* (L. N. Tolstoy. Complete works, vol. 61. M., GIHL, 1953, p. 172.)

10* (New time and old gods. - "Domestic Notes", 1868, No. 1, pp. 1-40.)

11* ("Dawn", 1871, book. 2, dept. 2, pp. 1-31.)

12* (About social types in the stories of I. S. Turgenev. - "Conversation", 1871, XII, pp. 246-274.)

13* ("Rainbow". Almanac of the Pushkin House. Pg., 1922, pp. 218-219.)

14* (See: A. Muratov. About the “Heidelberg arabesques” in “Smoke” by I. S. Turgenev. - "Russian Literature", 1959, No. 4, pp. 199-202.)

15* (For a summary of data and research on the issue, see Yu. G. Oksman’s comments to volume IX of Turgenev’s Works, M. - L., GIHL, 1930.)

16* ("Rainbow", page 217.)

17* (Letters from K. Dm. Kavelina and Iv. S. Turgenev to Al. Yves, Herzen, p. 190.)

18* ("Rainbow, pp. 217-218.)

19* (Letters from K. Dm. Kavelina and Iv. S. Turgenev to Al. Iv. Herzen, pp. 170-172.)

20* (Letters from K. Dm. Kavelina and Iv. S. Turgenev to Al. Iv. Herzen, pp. 160-161.)

21* (P. V. Annenkov. Russian modern history in I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Smoke”. - "Bulletin of Europe", 1867, book. VI, p. 110.)

22* ("Literary Contemporary", 1937, No. 1, p. 145.)

23* (Correspondence between L. N. Tolstoy and N. N. Strakhov. St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 49.)

24* (Correspondence between L. N. Tolstoy and N. N. Strakhov. St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 97.)

The author's first attempts at creative writing (poems) were of a romantic nature. Since the 40s. I. Turgenev with the work “Andrei Kolosov” moves to realism.

At the center of the story, Andrei Kolosov is an impressive man who lives for his own pleasure. The hero turns out to be insensitive and cold towards the girl who is in love with him. But what is more terrible is that, a leader, a “leader” by nature, Kolosov leads not yet lost souls, turning them into a religion of cynicism and consumerism: the narrator also falls into his “net.”

Belinsky played a large role in the formation of Turgenev’s views: he helped the writer determine his place in the struggle of Slavophiles with Westerners. Turgenev took the position of denying all types of backwardness and idealizing the obsolete and national isolation.

The main direction of Turgenev’s work was determined in the essay “Khor and Kalinich” (“Notes of a Hunter”, 1847), and then in “Bezhin Meadow”.

In “Notes of a Hunter,” the author idealizes the simple Russian character of Khor and Kalinich, heroes who are completely different in their life attitudes. ferret– rationalist; all his life he collected his wealth bit by bit; The ferret is closer to society. Kalinich, on the contrary, is a dreamer, a romantic without a practical streak; he is closer to nature, strives for harmony with it and does not pursue material values. Turgenev admires the qualities of the Russian people - their hard work, diligence, original mind, extraordinary imagination, love of nature.

The story “Biryuk” confirms the poeticization of the Russian people: Biryuk raises children alone, carries out his service honestly, but at the same time understands the condition of the common man, whom need and hunger push to steal. Turgenev attached particular importance to the forest and hunting, because believed that when confronted with nature, class differences are erased (Turgenev’s men perceived him as one of their own).

“Bezhin Meadow” is considered one of Turgenev’s most poetic works (at the end of his life he will create a cycle of prose poems “Senilia”). The center of the work becomes Russian nature and the child's soul.

Turgenev is interested in the moral world of people from the people. With great sympathy, the author creates images of peasant boys. Sam ore The number of events is more romantic: a July night, a bonfire, scary stories, unique nature. Nature in “Bezhin Meadow” is not the background of events, but a means of characterizing the characters, albeit indirectly. Natural landscapes and elements that the boys recreate in their imaginations help the author to poeticize the boys’ souls, to see them as bright and alive. The soul of the people in Turgenev's view turns out to be akin to nature - poetic and mysterious.

The main feature of the cycle of stories was truthfulness, which contained the idea of the liberation of the peasantry, representing peasants as spiritually active people capable of independent activity.

The Russian soul - vulnerable and unique - is represented in the work “Mu-mu”, where the dominant theme is the power of one person over another. The spiritual image of Gerasim contains the general features of the Russian national character. The author admires his heroes, suffers with them and zealously protests against serfdom, develops ideas for the liberation of the people.

Despite his reverent attitude towards the Russian people, Turgenev the realist did not idealize the peasantry, seeing, like Leskov and Gogol, their shortcomings.

The author continues to develop realistic tendencies in his novels (“Fathers and Sons”, “Rudin”, “The Noble Nest”, “On the Eve”, etc.). Turgenev influenced many representatives of literature - European and Russian: J. Sand, G. Flaubert, Guy De Maupassant, D. Galsworthy, P. Galdos, L. Tolstoy and others.

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(343 words) Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev is a writer whose work played an important role in Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century. Real life in the author’s works is presented as it is, without embellishment. Of course, this could not help but attract readers, because in his works people saw themselves and the reality around them.

Since Turgenev's literary activity developed during the era of serfdom, this theme was reflected in many of his works. Take, for example, the collection of short stories “Notes of a Hunter.” In it, the writer portrays serfs as wise and talented people, much more humane than their masters. The moral and spiritual qualities of the common people in these stories are worthy of high praise.

The novel “The Noble Nest” shows us the best representatives of the Russian nobility; the images of these people were not invented by the author; in their features we can easily see the writer’s contemporaries. Turgenev also describes the peasants with sympathy and sympathy, because it was one of these village men who taught the writer himself a lot, translating from several languages. Therefore, Ivan Sergeevich considered serfdom to be the main cause of social discord, which cripples absolutely everyone - both peasants and landowners. It hinders the development of the common people and chains the nobles to insignificant idleness, which corrupts them.

Features of realism can also be traced in one of Turgenev’s most famous novels, “Fathers and Sons.” The life of poor peasants under the yoke of landowners is also presented here, but this topic is already fading into the background. The generational conflict shown in this work is nothing more than the cruel reality of the modern world. In this confrontation, the writer did not shield or exalt anyone. With stern directness, he depicted the decline of his native era and the rise of a new time, with which the author himself did not get along. I think the generational conflict will not lose its relevance in a hundred years, or in two hundred. This is what makes the novel different - it is, as they say, “for the ages.” At the same time, it is written honestly, without attempts to justify or condemn anyone.

So, the work of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev not only contributed to the spiritual education of Russian society, but also influenced the history of Russian literature. The writer found inspiration in hatred of serfdom and sympathy for the common people. He managed to notice all the important phenomena of our time that were happening around, and raise in his works exactly those questions that worried people most.

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The book by the famous literary critic G. Byaly is the result of many years of studying the work of I. S. Turgenev and Russian literature of the 19th century. In his book, G. Byaly examines the specifics of I. S. Turgenev’s realism, the historical role of his work in the development of Russian realism, and the significance of the realistic principles of the great writer for our time. In the author's field of vision, the entire work of I. S. Turgenev - from the first experiments to the last works. An interesting analysis of individual books by I. S. Turgenev is combined in the work of G. Byaly with the desire to identify and show the internal logic of the writer’s creative development and its dependence on the movement of history. In a number of chapters, the author dwells in detail on the relationship between I. Turgenev’s artistic method and the art of other masters of Russian realism.

Publisher: "Soviet Writer. Moscow" (1962)

Format: 84x108/32, 246 pages.