Information about the biography of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. Turgenev Ivan Sergeevich - famous writer

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev is a Russian writer and poet, playwright, publicist, critic and translator. He was born on October 28, 1818 in the city of Orel. His works are remembered for their vivid descriptions of nature, vivid images and characters. Critics especially highlight the cycle of stories "Notes of a Hunter", which reflects the best moral qualities of a simple peasant. There were many strong and selfless women in Turgenev's stories. The poet had a strong influence on the development of world literature. He died on August 22, 1883 near Paris.

Childhood and education

Turgenev was born into a noble family. His father was a retired officer. The writer's mother, Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova, was of noble origin. Ivan's childhood was spent in the hereditary estate of her family. Parents did everything to ensure a comfortable existence for their son. He was taught by the best teachers and tutors, and at a young age, Ivan and his family moved to Moscow for higher education. From childhood, the guy studied foreign languages, he was fluent in English, French and German.

The move to Moscow took place in 1827. There Ivan studied at the boarding house of Weidenhammer, he also studied with private teachers. Five years later, the future writer became a student of the verbal department of the prestigious Moscow University. In 1834, Turgenev transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy in St. Petersburg, as his family moved to this city. It was then that Ivan began to write his first poems.

For three years he created more than a hundred lyrical works, including the poem "Steno". Professor Pletnev P.A., who taught Turgenev, immediately noticed the undoubted talent of the young man. Thanks to him, the publication of Ivan's poems "To the Venus of Medicine" and "Evening" in the journal "Contemporary".

In 1838, two years after graduating from university, he went to Berlin to listen to philological lectures. At that time, Turgenev managed to get a Ph.D. In Germany, the young man continues his studies, he studies the grammar of the ancient Greek language and Latin. He was also interested in studying Roman and Greek literature. At the same time, Turgenev makes acquaintance with Bakunin and Stankevich. For two years he travels, visiting France, Italy and Holland.

Homecoming

Ivan returned to Moscow in 1841, at the same time he meets Gogol, Herzen and Aksakov. The poet greatly appreciated the acquaintance with each of his colleagues. Together they attend literary circles. The following year, Turgenev asks for admission to the exam for a master's degree in philosophy.

In 1843, for some time, the writer went to work in the ministerial office, but the official's monotonous activity did not bring him satisfaction. At the same time, his poem "Parasha" was published, which was highly appreciated by V. Belinsky. The year 1843 was also remembered by the writer for his acquaintance with the French singer Pauline Viardot. After that, Turgenev decides to devote himself entirely to creativity.

In 1846, the novels Three Portraits and Bretter were published. Some time after that, the writer creates other well-known works, including "Breakfast at the Leader", "Provincial Girl", "Bachelor", "Mumu", "A Month in the Village" and others. A collection of short stories, Notes of a Hunter, was published by Turgenev in 1852. At the same time, his obituary dedicated to Nikolai Gogol was published. This work was banned in St. Petersburg, but published in Moscow. For his radical views, Ivan Sergeevich was exiled to Spasskoye.

Later, he wrote four more works, which later became the largest in his work. In 1856, the book "Rudin" was published, three years after that, the prose writer wrote the novel "The Noble Nest". 1860 was marked by the release of the work "On the Eve". One of the most famous works of the author, "Fathers and Sons", dates back to 1862.

This period of life was also marked by a break in the poet's relationship with the Sovremennik magazine. This happened after Dobrolyubov's article entitled "When will the real day come?", Which was filled with negativity about the novel "On the Eve". Turgenev spent the next few years of his life in Baden-Baden. The city inspired his most voluminous novel, Nov, published in 1877.

last years of life

The writer was especially interested in Western European cultural trends. He entered into correspondence with famous writers, among whom were Maupassant, George Sand, Victor Hugo and others. Thanks to their communication, literature was enriched. In 1874, Turgenev organized dinners with Zola, Flaubert, Daudet and Edmond Goncourt. In 1878, an international literary congress is held in Paris, during which Ivan is elected vice president. At the same time, he becomes a respected doctor at Oxford University.

Despite the fact that the prose writer lived far from Russia, his works were known in his homeland. In 1867, the novel "Smoke" was published, dividing compatriots into two oppositions. Many criticized him, while others were sure that the work opens a new literary era.

In the spring of 1882, for the first time, a physical ailment called microsarcoma manifested itself, which caused Turgenev terrible pain. It was because of him that the writer later died. He struggled with pain to the last, Ivan's last work was Poems in Prose, released a few months before his death. On September 3 (according to the old style on August 22), 1883, Ivan Sergeevich died in Bougival. He was buried in St. Petersburg at the Volkovskoye cemetery. The funeral was attended by many people who wanted to say goodbye to a talented writer.

Personal life

The first love of the poet was Princess Shakhovskaya, who was in a relationship with his father. They met in 1833, and only in 1860 Turgenev was able to describe his feelings in the story "First Love". Ten years after meeting Princess Ivan meets Pauline Viardot, whom he falls in love with almost immediately. He accompanies her on tour, it is with this woman that the prose writer subsequently moves to Baden-Baden. After some time, the couple had a daughter who was brought up in Paris.

Problems in relations with the singer began due to the distance, her husband Louis also acted as an obstacle. Turgenev starts an affair with a distant relative. They were even planning to get married. In the early sixties, the prose writer again becomes close to Viardot, they live together in Baden-Baden, then move to Paris. In the last years of his life, Ivan Sergeevich is fond of the young actress Maria Savina, who reciprocates his feelings.

1818 , October 28 (November 9) - was born in Orel in a noble family. He spent his childhood in the family estate of his mother, Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, Oryol province.

1822–1823 - a trip abroad for the whole Turgenev family along the route: with. Spasskoye, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Narva, Riga, Memel, Koenigsberg, Berlin, Dresden, Karlsbad, Augsburg, Konstanz, ... Kiev, Orel, Mtsensk. The Turgenevs lived in Paris for six months.

1827 - The Turgenevs move to Moscow, where they acquire a house on Samoteka. Ivan Turgenev is placed in the Weidenhammer boarding house, where he stayed for about two years.

1829 , August - Ivan and Nikolai Turgenev are placed in the boarding house of the Armenian Institute.
november- Ivan Turgenev leaves the boarding school and continues his training with home teachers - Pogorelov, Dubensky, Klyushnikov.

1833–1837 - studies at the Moscow (language faculty) and St. Petersburg (philological department of the philosophical faculty) universities.

1834 , December - finishes work on the poem "Steno".

1836 , April 19 (May 1) - attends the first performance of The Inspector General in St. Petersburg.
The end of the year- submits the poem "The Wall" for consideration by P. A. Pletnev. After a condescending response, he gives him a few more poems.

1837 - A. V. Nikitenko sends his literary works: "Wall", "The Old Man's Tale", "Our Century". He reports that he has three completed short poems: “Calm at Sea”, “Phantasmagoria on a Midsummer Night”, “Dream” and about a hundred small poems.

1838 , beginning of April - the book is published. I of Sovremennik, in it: the poem "Evening" (signature: "---v").
May 15 (27)- went abroad on the steamer "Nikolai". E. Tyutcheva, the first wife of the poet F.I. Tyutchev, P. A. Vyazemsky and D. Rosen left on the same ship.
Early October- the book comes out. 4 of Sovremennik, in it: the poem "To the Venus of Medicine" (signed "---v").

1838–1841 - studies at the University of Berlin.

1883 , August 22 (September 3) - died in Bougival near Paris, was buried at the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Ivan Turgenev is one of the world's greatest classics. Thanks to his work, Russian literature in the 19th century became popular abroad. Moreover, the artistic system created by Turgenev influenced the Western European novel.

There are many interesting things to be said about literary work of this outstanding personality. But in today's article we will talk about Turgenev not as a writer, but as a person with an interesting and vibrant biography. How were the early years of the prose writer? Where was Turgenev born? In which city did he create his most famous works?

Origin

The writer was a representative of an ancient noble family. His father, Sergei Nikolaevich, once served in the cavalry regiment. He led a carefree lifestyle, was known as a handsome man, loved to live in a big way. He was probably quite a practical person, because in 1816 he married Varvara Lutovinova, the heiress of a huge fortune. In the small village where Turgenev was born, this lady had a huge estate. Now there is a state museum, which will be discussed later.

When was Turgenev born? The future writer was born in 1818. Twelve years later, his father left the family - a profitable marriage turned out to be unhappy. In 1834, Turgenev Sr. died.

The mother of the classic was a difficult woman. It miraculously coexisted serf habits with progressive views. Despotism nevertheless prevailed in her manner of education. It has already been said above in what year Turgenev was born. Varvara Lutovinova by that time was 25 years old. She had two more sons - Nikolai and Sergei, who died at an early age from epilepsy.

This woman beaten not only serfs, but also her own children. At the same time, she gave each of them an excellent education. The family spoke only French. But the mother of the future writer was not indifferent to Russian literature either.

Where was Turgenev born?

Ten kilometers from Mtsensk there is a small settlement called Spasskoye-Lutovinovo. Now there is a museum-reserve dedicated to the life and work of the writer.

The family estate of the Lutovinovs, where Turgenev was born, has a long and interesting history. One of the representatives of an old noble family, the village of Spasskoye was granted by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. The settlement where Turgenev was born cannot be called a city. This is a small village, known today thanks to the estate, converted into a museum in the 20th century. The history of the Lutovinov estate is described below. Let's return to the life and work of the creator of "Spring Waters" and other wonderful books.

early years

The future writer lived in his mother's estate until he was nine years old. It is noteworthy that a serf valet instilled in him a love of literature. This man, by the way, became the prototype of one of Turgenev's characters. In 1822 the family went to Europe. Five years later, the Turgenevs settled in Moscow.

At the age of 15, Ivan entered the verbal faculty, where Belinsky and Herzen also studied at that time. However, Moscow University did not have a chance to graduate Turgenev Ivan Sergeevich. Where did the idea to become a writer come from? This happened in St. Petersburg, where the family moved after the eldest son entered the guards artillery. Ivan Turgenev moved to a local university at the Faculty of Philosophy. Here he decided to connect his life with literature. However, initially he wanted to become not a writer, but a poet.

The beginning of creativity

And in 1834, Ivan Turgenev was a third-year student at the Faculty of Philosophy. It was at this time that he made his literary debut. He wrote a dramatic poem, then showed his composition to the teacher. The professor of literature reacted quite strictly to the work of the young author. True, he replied that there is "something" in the poem. These seemingly neutral words prompted Turgenev to write a number of other poetic works. Some of them were published in the Sovremennik magazine.

Abroad

Turgenev graduated from the University in 1836. He soon received his Ph.D. In 1838 he left for Germany, where he actively studied ancient languages, attended lectures on Greek and Roman literature. Turgenev met Zhukovsky, Koltsov, Lermontov. There were only a few meetings with the latter, which, although they did not lead to close communication, had a certain influence on Turgenev.

Staying abroad had a strong influence on the writer's work. Turgenev came to the conclusion that only the assimilation of the foundations of universal human culture is capable of leading Russia out of the darkness in which it is immersed. Since then, he has become a convinced "Westernizer".

"Spring Waters"

In 1839 the house where Turgenev was born burned down. In what city was the writer at that time? He then lived in Frankfurt am Main. Upon learning of the fire, he returned home. But soon he left his home again. In Germany, he once met a girl who made a strong impression on him. Returning home once again, the writer sat down for a novel, which, after publication, gained worldwide fame. It is about the book "Spring Waters".

Confession

In the forties, Turgenev became close to Annenkov and Nekrasov. At this time, he took an active part in the activities of the literary magazine Sovremennik. In one of the issues, "Notes of a Hunter" were published. The success of the work was huge, which inspired Turgenev to create other stories.

Turgenev was an ardent opponent of serfdom, which, according to many biographers, forced him to leave Russia so often. However, in 1848, during his stay in Paris, he witnessed revolutionary events, which, as expected, were accompanied by bloodshed. Since then, he forever hated the word "revolution".

At the beginning of the 50s, Turgenev's creativity flourished. Such works as "The Freeloader", "Breakfast at the Leader's", "A Month in the Village" have already been published. The writer also worked on translations of Shakespeare and Byron. In 1855 Turgenev returned to Russia. Shortly before his arrival, Varvara Lutovinova passed away. The writer failed to see his mother for the last time.

Link

In the early fifties, Turgenev often visited St. Petersburg. After Gogol's death, he wrote an obituary that was not passed by the censors. Then the writer sent his note to Moscow, where it was successfully published. The authorities did not like the obituary, the author of which too openly admired the creator of Dead Souls. Turgenev was sent into exile in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo.

True, there is an assumption that the reason for the dissatisfaction of the authorities was not at all a note dedicated to the death of Gogol. In Russia, many people did not like the excessive radicalism of the views of the prose writer, his suspiciously frequent trips abroad, and sympathetic stories about serfs.

With fellow writers, Turgenev was not always able to find a common language. It is known that he left the Sovremennik magazine due to a conflict with Dobrolyubov. Turgenev preferred to communicate with Western writers, to whom Leo Tolstoy belonged for some time. Turgenev had friendly relations with this writer. However, in 1861, a quarrel broke out between the prose writers, which almost ended in a duel. Turgenev and Tolstoy did not communicate for 17 years. The author of Fathers and Sons also had a difficult relationship with Goncharov and Dostoevsky.

Spasskoye-Lutovinovo

The estate, which once belonged to Turgenev's mother, is located in the Mtsensk region. After the death of Varvara Lutovinova, the writer ceded the Moscow house and profitable estates to his brother. He himself became the owner of the family nest, where he spent his early years. Turgenev was in exile until 1853, but after his release he returned more than once to Spasskoe. In the estate he was visited by Fet, Tolstoy, Aksakov.

The last time Ivan Turgenev visited the family estate was in 1881. The writer died in France. The heirs removed almost all the furniture from the estate. It burned down in 1906. And 12 years later, the remaining property of Ivan Turgenev was nationalized.

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev - famous Russian writer, poet, translator, member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1860).

Orel city

Lithography. 1850s

“On October 28, 1818, on Monday, the son Ivan was born, 12 inches tall, in Orel, in his house, at 12 o’clock in the morning,” Varvara Petrovna Turgeneva made such an entry in her memorial book.
Ivan Sergeevich was her second son. The first - Nikolai - was born two years earlier, and in 1821 another boy appeared in the Turgenev family - Sergey.

Parents
It is difficult to imagine more dissimilar people than the parents of the future writer.
Mother - Varvara Petrovna, nee Lutovinova - a domineering, intelligent and sufficiently educated woman, did not shine with beauty. She was small, squat, with a broad face, spoiled by smallpox. And only the eyes were good: large, dark and shiny.
Varvara Petrovna was already thirty years old when she met the young officer Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev. He came from an old noble family, which, however, had already become impoverished by that time. From the former wealth, only a small estate remained. Sergei Nikolaevich was handsome, graceful, smart. And it is not surprising that he made an irresistible impression on Varvara Petrovna, and she made it clear that if Sergei Nikolayevich wooed, then there would be no refusal.
The young officer thought for a moment. And although the bride was six years older than him and did not differ in attractiveness, however, the vast lands and thousands of serf souls that she owned determined the decision of Sergei Nikolayevich.
At the beginning of 1816, the marriage took place, and the young people settled in Orel.
Varvara Petrovna idolized and feared her husband. She gave him complete freedom and did not restrict anything. Sergei Nikolaevich lived the way he wanted, not burdening himself with worries about his family and household. In 1821, he retired and moved with his family to the estate of his wife, Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, seventy miles from Orel.

The childhood of the future writer passed in Spassky-Lutovinovo near the city of Mtsensk, Oryol province. With this family estate of his mother Varvara Petrovna, a stern and domineering woman, much is connected in the work of Turgenev. In the estates and estates described by him, the features of his native "nest" are invariably visible. Turgenev considered himself indebted to the Oryol region, its nature and inhabitants.

The Turgenev estate Spasskoe-Lutovinovo was located in a birch grove on a gentle hill. Around a spacious two-story manor house with columns, which was adjoined by semicircular galleries, a huge park was laid out with linden alleys, orchards and flower beds.

Years of study
Varvara Petrovna was mainly engaged in the upbringing of children at an early age. Outbursts of solicitude, attention and tenderness gave way to attacks of bitterness and petty tyranny. On her orders, children were punished for the slightest misconduct, and sometimes for no reason. “I have nothing to remember my childhood,” Turgenev said many years later. “Not a single bright memory. I was afraid of my mother like fire. I was punished for every trifle - in a word, they drilled me like a recruit.
There was a fairly large library in the Turgenevs' house. Huge cabinets kept the works of ancient writers and poets, the works of French encyclopedists: Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, novels by V. Scott, de Stael, Chateaubriand; works of Russian writers: Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Karamzin, Dmitriev, Zhukovsky, as well as books on history, natural science, botany. Soon the library became for Turgenev the most favorite place in the house, where he sometimes spent whole days. To a large extent, the boy's interest in literature was supported by his mother, who read quite a lot and knew French literature and Russian poetry of the late 18th and early 19th centuries well.
At the beginning of 1827, the Turgenev family moved to Moscow: it was time to prepare children for entering educational institutions. First, Nikolai and Ivan were placed in the private Winterkeller boarding house, and then in the Krause boarding house, later called the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages. Here the brothers did not study for long - only a few months.
Their further education was entrusted to home teachers. With them they studied Russian literature, history, geography, mathematics, foreign languages ​​- German, French, English - drawing. Russian history was taught by the poet I. P. Klyushnikov, and the Russian language was taught by D. N. Dubensky, a well-known researcher of The Tale of Igor's Campaign.

University years. 1833-1837.
Turgenev was not yet fifteen years old when, having successfully passed the entrance exams, he became a student of the verbal department of Moscow University.
Moscow University at that time was the main center of progressive Russian thought. Among the young people who came to the university in the late 1820s and early 1830s, the memory of the Decembrists, who opposed the autocracy with weapons in their hands, was sacredly kept. Students closely followed the events taking place then in Russia and in Europe. Turgenev later said that it was during these years that “very free, almost republican convictions” began to take shape in him.
Of course, Turgenev had not yet developed a coherent and consistent worldview in those years. He was barely sixteen years old. It was a period of growth, a period of search and doubt.
Turgenev studied at Moscow University for only one year. After his older brother Nikolai entered the guards artillery stationed in St. Petersburg, his father decided that the brothers should not be separated, and therefore, in the summer of 1834, Turgenev applied for a transfer to the philological department of the philosophical faculty of St. Petersburg University.
No sooner had the Turgenev family settled in the capital than Sergei Nikolaevich suddenly died. The death of his father deeply shocked Turgenev and made him think for the first time seriously about life and death, about the place of man in the eternal movement of nature. The thoughts and experiences of the young man were reflected in a number of lyrical poems, as well as in the dramatic poem "Steno" (1834). Turgenev's first literary experiments were created under the strong influence of the then dominant romanticism in literature, and above all Byron's poetry. The hero of Turgenev is an ardent, passionate, full of enthusiastic aspirations man who does not want to put up with the world of evil around him, but cannot find application for his powers and eventually dies tragically. Later, Turgenev was very skeptical about this poem, calling it "an absurd work in which, with childish ineptitude, a slavish imitation of Byron's Manfred was expressed."
However, it should be noted that the poem "Steno" reflected the thoughts of the young poet about the meaning of life and the purpose of a person in it, that is, questions that many great poets of that time tried to resolve: Goethe, Schiller, Byron.
After the Moscow Metropolitan University, Turgenev seemed colorless. Here everything was different: there was no atmosphere of friendship and comradeship to which he was accustomed, there was no desire for lively communication and disputes, few people were interested in issues of public life. And the composition of the students was different. Among them were many young men from aristocratic families who had little interest in science.
Teaching at St. Petersburg University was carried out according to a rather broad program. But students did not receive serious knowledge. There were no interesting teachers. Only the professor of Russian literature Pyotr Aleksandrovich Pletnev turned out to be closer to Turgenev than others.
During his studies at the university, Turgenev showed a deep interest in music and theater. He often visited concerts, opera and drama theaters.
After graduating from university, Turgenev decided to continue his education and in May 1838 went to Berlin.

Studying abroad. 1838-1940.
After St. Petersburg, Berlin seemed to Turgenev a prim and a little boring city. “What do you want to say about the city,” he wrote, “where they get up at six o’clock in the morning, have dinner at two and go to bed before chickens, about the city where at ten o’clock in the evening only melancholy watchmen laden with beer roam the deserted streets ...”
But the university classrooms at the University of Berlin were always crowded. The lecture was attended not only by students, but also by volunteers - officers, officials, who aspired to join science.
Already the first classes at the University of Berlin revealed gaps in Turgenev's education. Later he wrote: “I studied philosophy, ancient languages, history and studied Hegel with particular zeal ... and at home I was forced to cram Latin grammar and Greek, which I knew poorly. And I wasn't one of the worst candidates."
Turgenev diligently comprehended the wisdom of German philosophy, and in his spare time he attended theaters and concerts. Music and theater became a true need for him. He listened to the operas of Mozart and Gluck, the symphonies of Beethoven, watched the dramas of Shakespeare and Schiller.
Living abroad, Turgenev did not stop thinking about his homeland, about his people, about their present and future.
Even then, in 1840, Turgenev believed in the great destiny of his people, in their strength and steadfastness.
Finally, the course of lectures at the University of Berlin ended, and in May 1841 Turgenev returned to Russia and in the most serious way began to prepare himself for scientific activity. He dreamed of becoming a professor of philosophy.

Return to Russia. Service.
Passion for philosophical sciences is one of the characteristic features of the social movement in Russia in the late 1830s and early 1840s. The progressive people of that time tried with the help of abstract philosophical categories to explain the world around them and the contradictions of Russian reality, to find answers to the burning questions of the present that worried them.
However, Turgenev's plans changed. He became disillusioned with idealistic philosophy and gave up hope with its help to solve the questions that worried him. In addition, Turgenev came to the conclusion that science was not his vocation.
At the beginning of 1842, Ivan Sergeevich filed a petition addressed to the Minister of the Interior to enroll him in the service and was soon accepted as an official for special assignments in the office under the command of V. I. Dahl, a famous writer and ethnographer. However, Turgenev did not serve long, and in May 1845 he retired.
Being in the civil service gave him the opportunity to collect a lot of vital material, connected primarily with the tragic situation of the peasants and with the destructive power of serfdom, since in the office where Turgenev served, cases of punishing serfs, all kinds of abuses of officials, etc. were often considered. Terburg officials. In general, Petersburg life made a depressing impression on Turgenev.

Creativity I. S. Turgenev.
The first work I. S. Turgenev can be considered the dramatic poem "Steno" (1834), which he wrote in iambic pentameter as a student, and in 1836 showed it to his university teacher P. A. Pletnev.
The first publication in print was a small review of the book by A. N. Muravyov "Journey to Russian Holy Places" (1836). Many years later, Turgenev explained the appearance of this first printed work in this way: “I had just passed seventeen years then, I was a student at St. Petersburg University; my relatives, in order to ensure my future career, introduced me to Serbinovich, the then publisher of the Journal of the Ministry of Education. Serbinovich, whom I saw only once, probably wanting to test my abilities, handed me ... Muravyov's book so that I could take it apart; I wrote something about it - and now, almost forty years later, I find out that this "something" has been embossed.
His first works were poetic. His poems, beginning in the late 1830s, began to appear in the journals Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski. They clearly heard the motifs of the then dominant romantic trend, echoes of the poetry of Zhukovsky, Kozlov, Benediktov. Most of the poems are elegiac reflections about love, about a wasted youth. They, as a rule, were permeated with motives of sadness, sadness, longing. Turgenev himself was later very skeptical about his poems and poems written at this time, and never included them in collected works. “I feel a positive, almost physical antipathy to my poems...,” he wrote in 1874, “I would give dearly if they didn’t exist at all.”
Turgenev was unfair when he spoke so harshly about his poetic experiments. Among them you can find many talentedly written poems, many of which were highly appreciated by readers and critics: "Ballad", "One Again, One...", "Spring Evening", "Misty Morning, Gray Morning..." and others. Some of them were later set to music and became popular romances.
The beginning of his literary activity Turgenev considered 1843 the year when his poem Parasha appeared in print, opening a whole series of works dedicated to the debunking of the romantic hero. Parasha met with a very sympathetic review from Belinsky, who saw in the young author "an extraordinary poetic talent", "true observation, deep thought", "a son of our time, carrying all his sorrows and questions in his chest."
First prose work I. S. Turgenev - essay "Khor and Kalinych" (1847), published in the journal "Sovremennik" and opened a whole cycle of works under the general title "Notes of a Hunter" (1847-1852). "Notes of a Hunter" were created by Turgenev at the turn of the forties and early fifties and appeared in print in the form of separate stories and essays. In 1852, they were combined by the writer into a book that became a major event in Russian social and literary life. According to M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, “Notes of a Hunter” “laid the foundation of a whole literature that has as its object the people and their needs.”
"Hunter's Notes"- This is a book about people's life in the era of serfdom. The images of peasants, distinguished by a sharp practical mind, a deep understanding of life, a sober look at the world around them, capable of feeling and understanding the beautiful, responding to someone else's grief and suffering, rise up alive from the pages of the Hunter's Notes. Before Turgenev, no one portrayed a people like this in Russian literature. And it is no coincidence that after reading the first essay from the Hunter's Notes - "Khor and Kalinich", "Belinsky noticed that Turgenev "came to the people from such a side, from which no one had come before him."
Turgenev wrote most of the "Notes of a Hunter" in France.

Works by I. S. Turgenev
Stories: a collection of short stories "Notes of a Hunter" (1847-1852), "Mumu" (1852), "The Story of Father Alexei" (1877), etc.;
Tales:"Asya" (1858), "First Love" (1860), "Spring Waters" (1872) and others;
Novels: Rudin (1856), Noble Nest (1859), On the Eve (1860), Fathers and Sons (1862), Smoke (1867), New (1877);
Plays:"Breakfast at the leader" (1846), "Where it is thin, there it breaks" (1847), "Bachelor" (1849), "Provincial" (1850), "A month in the country" (1854) and others;
Poetry: the dramatic poem "The Wall" (1834), poems (1834-1849), the poem "Parasha" (1843) and others, the literary and philosophical "Poems in Prose" (1882);
Translations Byron D., Goethe I., Whitman W., Flaubert G.
As well as criticism, journalism, memoirs and correspondence.

Love through life
Turgenev met the famous French singer Polina Viardot back in 1843, in St. Petersburg, where she came on tour. The singer performed a lot and successfully, Turgenev attended all her performances, told everyone about her, praised her everywhere, and quickly separated from the crowd of her countless fans. Their relationship developed and soon reached a climax. The summer of 1848 (like the previous one, like the next one) he spent in Courtavenel, on the estate of Pauline.
Love for Polina Viardot remained both happiness and torment for Turgenev until his last days: Viardot was married, she was not going to divorce her husband, but Turgenev was not driven either. He felt tied. but he was powerless to break the thread. For more than thirty years, the writer, in fact, has become a member of the Viardot family. Pauline's husband (a man, apparently, of angelic patience), Louis Viardot, he survived by only three months.

Sovremennik magazine
Belinsky and his like-minded people have long dreamed of having their own printed organ. This dream came true only in 1846, when Nekrasov and Panaev managed to rent the Sovremennik magazine, founded at one time by A. S. Pushkin and published by P. A. Pletnev after his death. Turgenev took a direct part in the organization of the new journal. According to P. V. Annenkov, Turgenev was “the soul of the whole plan, its organizer ... Nekrasov consulted with him every day; The magazine was filled with his works.
In January 1847, the first issue of the updated Sovremennik was published. Turgenev published several works in it: a cycle of poems, a review of the tragedy by N.V. Kukolnik "Lieutenant General Patkul ...", "Modern Notes" (together with Nekrasov). But the real decoration of the first book of the magazine was the essay “Khor and Kalinich”, which opened a whole cycle of works under the general title “Notes of a Hunter”.

Recognition in the West
Beginning in the 60s, the name of Turgenev became widely known in the West. Turgenev maintained close friendly relations with many Western European writers. He was well acquainted with P. Mérimée, J. Sand, G. Flaubert, E. Zola, A. Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, and knew many figures of English and German culture closely. All of them considered Turgenev an outstanding realist artist and not only highly appreciated his works, but also learned from him. Addressing Turgenev, J. Sand said: “Teacher! “We all have to go through your school!”
Turgenev spent almost his entire life in Europe, only occasionally visiting Russia. He was a prominent figure in the literary life of the West. He closely communicated with many French writers, and in 1878 he even chaired (together with Victor Hugo) the International Literary Congress in Paris. It is no coincidence that it was with Turgenev that the worldwide recognition of Russian literature began.
The greatest merit of Turgenev was that he was an active propagandist of Russian literature and culture in the West: he himself translated the works of Russian writers into French and German, edited translations of Russian authors, in every possible way contributed to the publication of the works of his compatriots in various countries of Western Europe, introduced the Western European public to the works of Russian composers and artists. About this side of his activity, Turgenev, not without pride, said: “I consider it a great happiness of my life that I brought my fatherland somewhat closer to the perception of the European public.”

Connection with Russia
Almost every spring or summer, Turgenev came to Russia. Each of his visits became a whole event. The writer was a welcome guest everywhere. He was invited to speak at all kinds of literary and charity evenings, at friendly meetings.
At the same time, Ivan Sergeevich retained the "lordly" habits of a native Russian nobleman until the end of his life. The appearance itself betrayed its origin to the inhabitants of European resorts, despite the impeccable command of foreign languages. In the best pages of his prose, there is much from the silence of the estate life of landlord Russia. Hardly any of the writers - contemporaries of Turgenev's Russian language is so pure and correct, capable, as he himself used to say, "perform miracles in capable hands." Turgenev often wrote his novels "on the topic of the day."
The last time Turgenev visited his homeland was in May 1881. To his friends, he repeatedly "expressed his determination to return to Russia and settle there." However, this dream did not come true. In early 1882, Turgenev fell seriously ill, and there was no question of moving. But all his thoughts were at home, in Russia. He thought about her, bedridden by a serious illness, about her future, about the glory of Russian literature.
Shortly before his death, he expressed a wish to be buried in St. Petersburg, at the Volkov cemetery, next to Belinsky.
The last will of the writer was carried out

"Poems in Prose".
"Poems in prose" are rightly considered the final chord of the writer's literary activity. They reflected almost all the themes and motives of his work, as if re-felt by Turgenev in his declining years. He himself considered "Poems in Prose" only sketches of his future works.
Turgenev called his lyrical miniatures "Selenia" ("Old Man"), but the editor of "Bulletin of Europe" Stasyulevich replaced it with another one that remained forever - "Poems in Prose". In his letters, Turgenev sometimes called them "Zigzags", thereby emphasizing the contrast of themes and motives, images and intonations, and the unusual nature of the genre. The writer was afraid that "the river of time in its course" "will carry away these light sheets." But "Poems in Prose" met with the most cordial reception and forever entered the golden fund of our literature. No wonder P. V. Annenkov called them "a fabric of the sun, rainbows and diamonds, women's tears and the nobility of men's thought", expressing the general opinion of the reading public.
"Poems in Prose" is an amazing fusion of poetry and prose into a kind of unity that allows you to fit the "whole world" into the grain of small reflections, called by the author "the last breaths ... of an old man." But these "sighs" have conveyed to our days the inexhaustibility of the writer's vital energy.

Monuments to I. S. Turgenev

Turgenev Ivan Sergeevich
Aliases:	Vb; -e-; I.S.T.; I.T.; L.; Nedobobov, Jeremiah; T.; T…; T. L.; T……in; ***
Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:	City of Orel, Russian Empire
Date of death:
A place of death:	Bougival, French Third Republic
Citizenship:	Russian empire
Occupation:	Prose writer, poet, playwright, translator
Years of creativity:
Direction:
	Short story, novella, novel, elegy, drama
Art language:
	"Evening", 1838

Biography

Origin and early years

After graduation

The heyday of creativity

Dramaturgy

1850s

Last years

Death and funeral

Personal life

"Turgenev girls"

Passion for hunting

The value and appreciation of creativity

Turgenev on stage

Foreign criticism

Bibliography

Novels and stories

Turgenev in illustrations

Screen adaptations

In St. Petersburg

Toponymy

Public institutions

Monuments

Other objects

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev(October 28, 1818, Oryol, Russian Empire - August 22, 1883, Bougival, France) - Russian realist writer, poet, publicist, playwright, translator; corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of Russian language and literature (1860), honorary doctor of Oxford University (1879). One of the classics of Russian literature, who made the most significant contribution to its development in the second half of the 19th century.

The artistic system he created influenced the poetics of not only Russian, but also Western European novels in the second half of the 19th century. Ivan Turgenev was the first in Russian literature to begin to study the personality of the "new man" - the sixties man, his moral qualities and psychological characteristics, thanks to him the term "nihilist" began to be widely used in the Russian language. He was a propagandist of Russian literature and dramaturgy in the West.

The study of the works of I. S. Turgenev is an obligatory part of the general education school programs in Russia. The most famous works are the cycle of stories "Notes of a Hunter", the story "Mumu", the story "Asya", the novels "The Noble Nest", "Fathers and Sons".

Biography

Origin and early years

The family of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev came from an ancient family of Tula nobles, the Turgenevs. In her memorial book, the mother of the future writer wrote: “ On October 28, 1818, on Monday, the son Ivan, 12 inches tall, was born in Orel, in his house, at 12 o'clock in the morning. Baptized on the 4th of November, Feodor Semenovich Uvarov with his sister Fedosya Nikolaevna Teplovoy».

Ivan's father Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev (1793-1834) served at that time in the cavalry regiment. The careless lifestyle of the handsome cavalry guard upset his finances, and in order to improve his position, he entered into a marriage of convenience in 1816 with an elderly, unattractive, but very wealthy Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova (1787-1850). In 1821, with the rank of colonel of the cuirassier regiment, my father retired. 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 Nikolayevich was not happy. The father died in 1834, leaving three sons - Nikolai, Ivan and Sergei, who died early from epilepsy. Mother was a domineering and despotic woman. She herself lost her father early, suffered from the cruel attitude of her mother (whom the grandson later portrayed as an old woman in the essay "Death"), and from a violent, drinking stepfather, who often beat her. Due to constant beatings and humiliation, she later fled to her uncle, after whose death she became the owner of a magnificent estate and 5000 souls.

Varvara Petrovna was a difficult woman. Serfdom habits coexisted in her with erudition and education, she combined care for the upbringing of children with family despotism. Ivan was also subjected to maternal beatings, despite the fact that he was considered her beloved son. The boy was taught literacy by frequently changing French and German tutors. In the family of Varvara Petrovna, everyone spoke exclusively in French among themselves, even prayers in the house were pronounced in French. She traveled a lot and was an enlightened woman, she read a lot, but also mostly in French. But her native language and literature were not alien to her either: she herself had an excellent figurative Russian speech, and Sergei Nikolayevich demanded that the children write letters to him in Russian during their father's absences. The Turgenev family maintained ties with V. A. Zhukovsky and M. N. Zagoskin. Varvara Petrovna followed the novelties of literature, was well aware of the work of N. M. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov and N. V. Gogol, whom she willingly quoted in letters to her son.

Love for Russian literature was also instilled in young Turgenev by one of the serf valets (who later became the prototype of Punin in the story "Punin and Baburin"). Until the age of nine, Ivan Turgenev lived in the hereditary mother's estate, Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, 10 km from Mtsensk, Oryol province. In 1827, the Turgenevs, in order to educate their children, settled in Moscow, buying a house on Samotyok. The future writer studied first at the Weidenhammer boarding house, then became a boarder with the director of the Lazarev Institute, I. F. Krause.

Education. The beginning of literary activity

In 1833, at the age of 15, Turgenev entered the verbal department of Moscow University. At the same time, A. I. Herzen and V. G. Belinsky studied here. A year later, after Ivan's elder brother entered the Guards Artillery, the family moved to St. Petersburg, where Ivan Turgenev moved to the Faculty of Philosophy at St. Petersburg University. At the university, T. N. Granovsky, the future famous historian of the Western school, became his friend.

At first, Turgenev wanted to become a poet. In 1834, as a third-year student, he wrote the dramatic poem "Steno" in iambic pentameter. The young author showed these tests of the pen to his teacher, professor of Russian literature P. A. Pletnev. During one of the lectures, Pletnev analyzed this poem quite strictly, without disclosing its authorship, but at the same time he also admitted that “there is something” in the writer. These words prompted the young poet to write a number of more poems, two of which Pletnev published in 1838 in the Sovremennik magazine, of which he was the editor. They were published under the signature "....v". The debut poems were "Evening" and "To Venus Mediciy".

Turgenev's first publication appeared in 1836 - in the "Journal of the Ministry of Public Education" he published a detailed review "On a Journey to Holy Places" by A. N. Muravyov. By 1837, he had already written about a hundred small poems and several poems (the unfinished "The Old Man's Tale", "Calm at Sea", "Phantasmagoria on a Moonlit Night", "Dream").

After graduation

In 1836 Turgenev graduated from the university with the degree of a real student. Dreaming of scientific activity, the following year he passed the final exam and received a Ph.D. In 1838 he went to Germany, where he settled in Berlin and took up his studies in earnest. At the University of Berlin he attended lectures on the history of Roman and Greek literature, and at home he studied the grammar of ancient Greek and Latin. Knowledge of ancient languages ​​allowed him to freely read the ancient classics. During his studies, he became friends with the Russian writer and thinker N.V. Stankevich, who had a noticeable influence on him. Turgenev attended the lectures of the Hegelians, became interested in German idealism with its doctrine of world development, the "absolute spirit" and the lofty vocation of the philosopher and poet. In general, the whole way of Western European life made a strong impression on Turgenev. The young student came to the conclusion that only the assimilation of the basic principles of universal culture can lead Russia out of the darkness in which it is immersed. In this sense, he became a convinced "Westernizer".

In the 1830-1850s, an extensive circle of literary acquaintances of the writer was formed. Back in 1837 there were fleeting meetings with A. S. Pushkin. Then Turgenev met V. A. Zhukovsky, A. V. Nikitenko, A. V. Koltsov, a little later - with M. Yu. Lermontov. Turgenev had only a few meetings with Lermontov, which did not lead to a close acquaintance, but Lermontov's work had a certain influence on him. He tried to master the rhythm and stanza, style and syntactic features of Lermontov's poetry. Thus, the poem "The Old Landowner" (1841) in some places is close in form to Lermontov's "Testament", in "Ballad" (1841) one feels the influence of "The Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov". But the connection with Lermontov's work is most tangible in the poem "Confession" (1845), whose accusatory pathos brings him closer to Lermontov's poem "Duma".

In May 1839, the old house in Spassky burned down, and Turgenev returned to his homeland, but already in 1840 he again went abroad, visiting Germany, Italy and Austria. Impressed by a meeting with a girl in Frankfurt am Main, Turgenev later wrote the story Spring Waters. In 1841 Ivan returned to Lutovinovo.

In early 1842, he applied to Moscow University for admission to the examination for the degree of Master of Philosophy, but at that time there was no full-time professor of philosophy at the university, and his request was rejected. Not settling in Moscow, Turgenev satisfactorily passed the exam for a master's degree at St. Petersburg University and wrote a dissertation for the verbal department. But by this time, the craving for scientific activity had cooled down, and literary creativity began to attract more and more. Refusing to defend his dissertation, he served until 1844 in the rank of collegiate secretary in the Ministry of the Interior.

In 1843 Turgenev wrote the poem Parasha. Not really hoping for a positive response, he nevertheless took the copy to V. G. Belinsky. Belinsky highly appreciated Parasha, publishing his review in Fatherland Notes two months later. Since that time, their acquaintance began, which later grew into a strong friendship; Turgenev was even godfather to Belinsky's son, Vladimir. The poem was published in the spring of 1843 as a separate book under the initials "T. L." (Turgenev-Lutovinov). In the 1840s, in addition to Pletnev and Belinsky, Turgenev met with A. A. Fet.

In November 1843, Turgenev created the poem "Mistful Morning", set to music in different years by several composers, including A. F. Gedike and G. L. Catuar. The most famous, however, is the romance version, which was originally published under the title "Music of Abaza"; its belonging to V. V. Abaza, E. A. Abaza or Yu. F. Abaza has not been finally established. Upon publication, the poem was seen as a reflection of Turgenev's love for Pauline Viardot, whom he met during this time.

In 1844, the poem "Pop" was written, which the writer himself described rather as fun, devoid of any "deep and significant ideas." Nevertheless, the poem attracted public interest for its anti-clerical orientation. The poem was curtailed by Russian censorship, but it was printed in its entirety abroad.

In 1846, the novels Breter and Three Portraits were published. In Breter, which became Turgenev's second story, the writer tried to present the struggle between Lermontov's influence and the desire to discredit posturing. The plot for his third story, Three Portraits, was drawn from the Lutovinov family chronicle.

The heyday of creativity

Since 1847, Ivan Turgenev participated in the reformed Sovremennik, where he became close to N. A. Nekrasov and P. V. Annenkov. His first feuilleton "Modern Notes" was published in the journal, and the first chapters of "Notes of a Hunter" began to be published. In the very first issue of Sovremennik, the story "Khor and Kalinich" was published, which opened countless editions of the famous book. The subtitle "From the notes of a hunter" was added by the editor I. I. Panaev in order to draw the attention of readers to the story. The success of the story turned out to be huge, and it brought

Turgenev to the idea of ​​writing a number of others of the same kind. According to Turgenev, "Notes of a Hunter" was the fulfillment of his Annibal oath to fight to the end with the enemy, whom he had hated since childhood. "This enemy had a certain image, bore a well-known name: this enemy was - serfdom." To carry out his intention, Turgenev decided to leave Russia. “I couldn’t,” wrote Turgenev, “breathe the same air, stay close to what I hated. I needed to move away from my enemy so that from my very place I would be given a stronger attack on him.”

In 1847, Turgenev went abroad with Belinsky and in 1848 lived in Paris, where he witnessed revolutionary events. As an eyewitness to the killing of hostages, the attacks, the barricades of the February French Revolution, he forever endured a deep disgust for revolutions in general. A little later, he became close to A. I. Herzen, fell in love with Ogaryov's wife N. A. Tuchkova.

Dramaturgy

The end of the 1840s - the beginning of the 1850s became the time of Turgenev's most intense activity in the field of dramaturgy and the time of reflection on issues of history and theory of drama. In 1848, he wrote such plays as “Where it is thin, there it breaks” and “The Freeloader”, in 1849 - “Breakfast at the Leader” and “The Bachelor”, in 1850 - “A Month in the Country”, in 1851 - “Provincial Girl”. Of these, "The Freeloader", "The Bachelor", "The Provincial Girl" and "A Month in the Country" were successful due to their excellent productions on stage. The success of The Bachelor was especially dear to him, which became possible largely thanks to the performing skills of A. E. Martynov, who played in four of his plays. Turgenev formulated his views on the position of the Russian theater and the tasks of dramaturgy as early as 1846. He believed that the crisis in the theatrical repertoire that was observed at that time could be overcome by the efforts of writers committed to Gogol's dramaturgy. Turgenev counted himself among the followers of Gogol the playwright.

To master the literary techniques of dramaturgy, the writer also worked on translations of Byron and Shakespeare. At the same time, he did not try to copy Shakespeare's dramatic techniques, he only interpreted his images, and all the attempts of his contemporary playwrights to use Shakespeare's work as a role model, to borrow his theatrical techniques only caused Turgenev's irritation. In 1847 he wrote: “The shadow of Shakespeare hangs over all dramatic writers, they cannot get rid of memories; these unfortunates read too much and lived too little.

1850s

In 1850, Turgenev returned to Russia, but he never saw his mother, who died that same year. Together with his brother Nikolai, he shared a large fortune of his mother and, if possible, tried to alleviate the hardships of the peasants he inherited.

In 1850-1852 he lived either in Russia or abroad, he saw N.V. Gogol. After Gogol's death, Turgenev wrote an obituary, which the St. Petersburg censors did not let through. The reason for her dissatisfaction was that, as the chairman of the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee M. N. Musin-Pushkin put it, “it is criminal to speak so enthusiastically about such a writer.” Then Ivan Sergeevich sent the article to Moscow, V.P. Botkin, who published it in Moskovskie Vedomosti. The authorities saw a rebellion in the text, and the author was placed on the exit, where he spent a month. On May 18, Turgenev was sent to his native village, and only thanks to the efforts of Count A.K. Tolstoy, two years later, the writer again received the right to live in the capitals.

There is an opinion that the real reason for the exile was not a seditious obituary to Gogol, but the excessive radicalism of Turgenev's views, manifested in sympathy for Belinsky, suspiciously frequent trips abroad, sympathetic stories about serfs, a laudatory review of an emigrant Herzen about Turgenev. The enthusiastic tone of the article about Gogol only overwhelmed the gendarmerie's patience, becoming an external reason for punishment, the meaning of which was thought out by the authorities in advance. Turgenev feared that his arrest and exile would interfere with the publication of the first edition of the Hunter's Notes, but his fears were not justified - in August 1852 the book was censored and published.

However, the censor Lvov, who let the “Notes of a Hunter” go to print, was dismissed from service by personal order of Nicholas I and deprived of his pension. Russian censorship also imposed a ban on the re-edition of The Hunter's Notes, explaining this step by the fact that Turgenev, on the one hand, poeticized the serfs, and on the other hand, depicted "that these peasants are oppressed, that the landlords behave indecently and illegally ... finally, that the peasant lives in freedom more freely."

During his exile in Spasskoye, Turgenev went hunting, read books, wrote stories, played chess, listened to Beethoven's Coriolanus performed by A.P. Tyutcheva and his sister, who lived in Spasskoye at that time, and from time to time was subjected to raids by the bailiff.

In 1852, while still in exile in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, he wrote the textbook story "Mumu". Most of the "Notes of a Hunter" was created by the writer in Germany. "Notes of a Hunter" in 1854 was published in Paris as a separate edition, although at the beginning of the Crimean War this publication was in the nature of anti-Russian propaganda, and Turgenev was forced to publicly protest against the poor quality French translation by Ernest Charrière. After the death of Nicholas I, four of the most significant works of the writer were published one after another: Rudin (1856), The Noble Nest (1859), On the Eve (1860) and Fathers and Sons (1862). The first two were published in Nekrasov's Sovremennik, the other two in Russkiy Vestnik by M. N. Katkov.

Employees of Sovremennik I. S. Turgenev, N. A. Nekrasov, I. I. Panaev, M. N. Longinov, V. P. Gaevsky, D. V. Grigorovich sometimes gathered in a circle of “warlocks” organized by A. V. Druzhinin. The humorous improvisations of the “warlocks” sometimes went beyond the scope of censorship, so they had to be published abroad. Later, Turgenev took part in the activities of the Society for Assistance to Needy Writers and Scientists (Literary Fund), founded on the initiative of the same A. V. Druzhinin. From the end of 1856, the writer collaborated with the journal Library for Reading, published under the editorship of A. V. Druzhinin. But his editing did not bring the expected success to the publication, and Turgenev, who in 1856 hoped for a close magazine success, in 1861 called the "Library", edited by that time by A. F. Pisemsky, "a dead hole."

In the autumn of 1855, Leo Tolstoy was added to Turgenev's circle of friends. In September of the same year, Tolstoy's story "The Cutting of the Forest" was published in Sovremennik with a dedication to I. S. Turgenev.

1860s

Turgenev took an ardent part in the discussion of the upcoming Peasant Reform, participated in the development of various collective letters, draft addresses addressed to Tsar Alexander II, protests, and so on. From the first months of publication of Herzen's "The Bell" Turgenev was his active collaborator. He himself did not write in The Bell, but he helped in collecting materials and preparing them for publication. Turgenev's equally important role was to mediate between Herzen and those correspondents from Russia who, for various reasons, did not want to be in direct contact with the disgraced London emigrant. In addition, Turgenev sent detailed review letters to Herzen, information from which, without the author's signature, was also published in Kolokol. At the same time, Turgenev always spoke out against the harsh tone of Herzen’s materials and excessive criticism of government decisions: “Please don’t scold Alexander Nikolaevich, otherwise all the reactionaries in St.

In 1860, Sovremennik published an article by N. A. Dobrolyubov “When will the real day come?” In which the critic spoke very flatteringly about the new novel “On the Eve” and Turgenev’s work in general. Nevertheless, Turgenev was not satisfied with the far-reaching conclusions of Dobrolyubov, made by him after reading the novel. Dobrolyubov connected the idea of ​​Turgenev's work with the events of the approaching revolutionary transformation of Russia, with which the liberal Turgenev could not come to terms. Dobrolyubov wrote: “Then the full, sharply and vividly outlined image of the Russian Insarov will appear in literature. And we do not have to wait long for him: this is vouched for by the feverish, painful impatience with which we await his appearance in life. He will come, finally, this day! And, in any case, the eve is not far from the day following it: just some kind of night separates them! ... ”The writer gave Nekrasov an ultimatum: either he, Turgenev, or Dobrolyubov. Nekrasov preferred Dobrolyubov. After that, Turgenev left Sovremennik and stopped communicating with Nekrasov, and subsequently Dobrolyubov became one of the prototypes for the image of Bazarov in the novel Fathers and Sons.

Turgenev gravitated towards the circle of Western writers who professed the principles of "pure art", opposed to the tendentious creativity of raznochintsev revolutionaries: P. V. Annenkov, V. P. Botkin, D. V. Grigorovich, A. V. Druzhinin. For a short time, Leo Tolstoy also joined this circle. For some time Tolstoy lived in Turgenev's apartment. After Tolstoy's marriage to S. A. Bers, Turgenev found a close relative in Tolstoy, but even before the wedding, in May 1861, when both prose writers were visiting A. A. Fet at the Stepanovo estate, a serious quarrel occurred between them, which almost ended in a duel and ruined relations between writers for a long 17 years. For some time, the writer developed complex relationships with Fet himself, as well as with some other contemporaries - F. M. Dostoevsky, I. A. Goncharov.

In 1862, good relations with former friends of Turgenev's youth, A.I. Herzen and M.A. Bakunin, began to deteriorate. From July 1, 1862 to February 15, 1863, Herzen's Bell published a series of articles, Ends and Beginnings, consisting of eight letters. Without naming the addressee of Turgenev's letters, Herzen defended his understanding of the historical development of Russia, which, in his opinion, should move along the path of peasant socialism. Herzen contrasted peasant Russia with bourgeois Western Europe, whose revolutionary potential he considered already exhausted. Turgenev objected to Herzen in private letters, insisting on the commonality of historical development for different states and peoples.

At the end of 1862, Turgenev was involved in the process of the 32nd in the case of "persons accused of having relations with London propagandists." After the authorities ordered him to immediately appear in the Senate, Turgenev decided to write a letter to the sovereign, trying to convince him of the loyalty of his convictions, "quite independent, but conscientious." He asked interrogation points to be sent to him in Paris. In the end, he was forced to leave for Russia in 1864 for a Senate interrogation, where he managed to avert all suspicions from himself. The Senate found him not guilty. Turgenev's appeal to Emperor Alexander II personally caused Herzen's bilious reaction in Kolokol. Much later, this moment in the relationship between the two writers was used by V. I. Lenin to illustrate the difference between the liberal hesitations of Turgenev and Herzen: “When the liberal Turgenev wrote a private letter to Alexander II with assurance of his loyal feelings and donated two gold pieces to the soldiers wounded during the pacification of the Polish uprising, “The Bell” wrote about the “gray-haired Magdalene (male), who wrote to the sovereign that she did not know sleep, tormented that the sovereign does not know about the repentance that has befallen her. And Turgenev immediately recognized himself. But Turgenev's vacillation between tsarism and revolutionary democracy manifested itself in another way.

In 1863 Turgenev settled in Baden-Baden. The writer actively participated in the cultural life of Western Europe, establishing contacts with the greatest writers of Germany, France and England, promoting Russian literature abroad and acquainting Russian readers with the best works of contemporary Western authors. Among his acquaintances or correspondents were Friedrich Bodenstedt, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Henry James, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Charles Saint-Beuve, Hippolyte Taine, Prosper Mérimée, Ernest Renan, Théophile Gauthier, Edmond Goncourt, Emile Zola, Anatole France, Guy de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, Gustave Flaubert. Since 1874, the famous bachelor's "dinners of five" - ​​Flaubert, Edmond Goncourt, Daudet, Zola and Turgenev - have been held in the Parisian restaurants of Risch or Pellet. The idea belonged to Flaubert, but Turgenev played the main role in them. Lunches were held once a month. They raised various topics - about the features of literature, about the structure of the French language, told stories and simply enjoyed delicious food. Lunches were held not only at the Parisian restaurateurs, but also at the writers' houses.

I. S. Turgenev acted as a consultant and editor of foreign translators of Russian writers, wrote prefaces and notes to translations of Russian writers into European languages, as well as to Russian translations of works by famous European writers. He translated Western writers into Russian and Russian writers and poets into French and German. This is how translations of Flaubert's works Herodias and The Tale of St. Julian the Merciful" for Russian readers and Pushkin's works for French readers. For a while, Turgenev became the most famous and most widely read Russian author in Europe, where critics ranked him among the first writers of the century. In 1878, at the international literary congress in Paris, the writer was elected vice-president. On June 18, 1879, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, despite the fact that the university had not given such an honor to any novelist before him.

Despite living abroad, all Turgenev's thoughts were still connected with Russia. He wrote the novel "Smoke" (1867), which caused a lot of controversy in Russian society. According to the author, everyone scolded the novel: "both red and white, and from above, and from below, and from the side - especially from the side."

In 1868, Turgenev became a permanent contributor to the liberal journal Vestnik Evropy and severed ties with M. N. Katkov. The gap did not go easily - the writer began to be persecuted in the Russky Vestnik and Moskovskie Vedomosti. The attacks were especially toughened in the late 1870s, when, regarding the applause that fell to Turgenev's lot, the Katkov newspaper assured that the writer was "tumbling" in front of progressive youth.

1870s

The fruit of the writer's reflections in the 1870s was the largest of his novels, Nov (1877), which was also criticized. So, for example, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin regarded this novel as a service to the autocracy.

Turgenev was friends with the Minister of Education A. V. Golovnin, with the Milyutin brothers (comrade of the Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of War), N. I. Turgenev, and was closely acquainted with the Minister of Finance M. Kh. Reitern. In the late 1870s, Turgenev became closer to the leaders of the revolutionary emigration from Russia, his circle of acquaintances included P. L. Lavrov, Kropotkin, G. A. Lopatin and many others. Among other revolutionaries, he placed German Lopatin above all, bowing before his mind, courage and moral strength.

In April 1878, Leo Tolstoy invited Turgenev to forget all the misunderstandings between them, to which Turgenev happily agreed. Friendship and correspondence resumed. Turgenev explained the meaning of modern Russian literature, including Tolstoy's work, to the Western reader. In general, Ivan Turgenev played a big role in promoting Russian literature abroad.

However, Dostoevsky in the novel "Demons" portrayed Turgenev in the form of "the great writer Karmazinov" - a noisy, petty, scribbled and practically mediocre writer who considers himself a genius and sits out abroad. A similar attitude towards Turgenev by the ever-needy Dostoevsky was caused, among other things, by Turgenev’s well-to-do position in his noble life and the highest literary fees at that time: “To Turgenev for his“ Noble Nest ”(I finally read it. Extremely well) Katkov himself (from whom I ask 100 rubles from a sheet) gave 4,000 rubles, that is, 400 rubles from a sheet. My friend! I know very well that I write worse than Turgenev, but not too worse, and finally, I hope to write not worse at all. Why am I, with my needs, taking only 100 rubles, and Turgenev, who has 2,000 souls, 400 each?

Turgenev, not hiding his dislike for Dostoevsky, in a letter to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in 1882 (after Dostoevsky's death) also did not spare his opponent, calling him "the Russian Marquis de Sade."

In 1880, the writer took part in the Pushkin celebrations dedicated to the opening of the first monument to the poet in Moscow, organized by the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

Last years

The last years of Turgenev's life became for him the pinnacle of fame both in Russia, where the writer again became a universal favorite, and in Europe, where the best critics of that time (I. Ten, E. Renan, G. Brandes, etc.) ranked him among the first writers of the century. His visits to Russia in 1878-1881 were real triumphs. All the more disturbing in 1882 were the reports of a severe exacerbation of his usual gouty pains. In the spring of 1882, the first signs of the disease appeared, which soon turned out to be fatal for Turgenev. With temporary relief of pain, he continued to work and a few months before his death he published the first part of "Poems in Prose" - a cycle of lyrical miniatures, which became his kind of farewell to life, homeland and art. The book was opened by the poem in prose "Village", and completed by "Russian language" - a lyrical hymn in which the author put his faith in the great destiny of his country:

Parisian doctors Charcot and Jacquet diagnosed the writer with angina pectoris; soon she was joined by intercostal neuralgia. The last time Turgenev was in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo was in the summer of 1881. The sick writer spent the winters in Paris, and for the summer he was transported to Bougival, on the estate of Viardot.

By January 1883, the pains had intensified so much that he could not sleep without morphine. He underwent an operation to remove a neuroma in the lower part of the abdominal cavity, but the operation did not help much, since it did not alleviate the pain in the thoracic region of the spine. The disease developed, in March and April the writer was so tormented that those around him began to notice momentary clouding of reason, caused in part by morphine. The writer was fully aware of his imminent death and resigned himself to the consequences of the disease, which made it impossible for him to walk or just stand.

Death and funeral

The confrontation between an unimaginably painful illness and an unimaginably strong organism"(P. V. Annenkov) ended on August 22 (September 3), 1883 in Bougival near Paris. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev died of myxosarcoma (Muho Sarcoma) (a cancerous lesion of the bones of the spine). Doctor S.P. Botkin testified that the true cause of death was clarified only after an autopsy, during which physiologists also weighed his brain. As it turned out, among those whose brains were weighed, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev had the largest brain (2012 grams, which is almost 600 grams more than the average weight).

Turgenev's death was a great shock to his admirers, expressed in a very impressive funeral. The funeral was preceded by mourning celebrations in Paris, at which more than four hundred people took part. Among them were at least a hundred Frenchmen: Edmond Abu, Jules Simon, Emile Ogier, Emile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Juliette Adam, artist Alfred Diedone, composer Jules Massenet. Ernest Renan addressed the mourners with a heartfelt speech. In accordance with the will of the deceased, on September 27, his body was brought to St. Petersburg.

Even from the border station Verzhbolovo, funeral services were served at stops. On the platform of the St. Petersburg Warsaw railway station, a solemn meeting of the coffin with the body of the writer took place. Senator A.F. Koni recalled the funeral at the Volkovsky cemetery:

The reception of the coffin in St. Petersburg and its passage to the Volkovo cemetery presented unusual spectacles in their beauty, majestic character and complete, voluntary and unanimous observance of order. An uninterrupted chain of 176 deputations from literature, from newspapers and magazines, scientists, educational and educational institutions, from zemstvos, Siberians, Poles and Bulgarians occupied a space of several miles, attracting the sympathetic and often touched attention of the huge public that dammed the sidewalks - carried by deputations elegant, magnificent wreaths and banners with meaningful inscriptions. So, there was a wreath “To the Author of Mumu” ​​from the Society for the Protection of Animals ... a wreath with the inscription “Love is stronger than death” from pedagogical women's courses ... - A. F. Koni, "Turgenev's Funeral", Collected Works in eight volumes. T. 6. M., Legal Literature, 1968. Pp. 385-386.

There were no misunderstandings either. The day after the funeral of Turgenev’s body in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on the Rue Daru in Paris, on September 19, the famous populist emigrant P. L. Lavrov published a letter in the Parisian newspaper Justice, edited by the future socialist prime minister Georges Clemenceau, in which he reported that I. S. Turgenev, on his own initiative, transferred Lavrov annually for three years, 500 francs to facilitate the publication of the revolutionary emigrant of the newspaper "Vperyod".

Russian liberals were outraged by this news, considering it a provocation. The conservative press in the person of M. N. Katkov, on the contrary, took advantage of Lavrov’s message for the posthumous persecution of Turgenev in the Russky Vestnik and Moskovskie Vedomosti in order to prevent the honoring of the deceased writer in Russia, whose body “without any publicity, with special care” was supposed to arrive in the capital from Paris for burial. The following of the ashes of Turgenev was very worried about the Minister of the Interior D. A. Tolstoy, who was afraid of spontaneous rallies. According to the editor of Vestnik Evropy, M. M. Stasyulevich, who accompanied the body of Turgenev, the precautions taken by the officials were as inappropriate as if he had accompanied the Nightingale the Robber, and not the body of the great writer.

Personal life

The first romantic passion of young Turgenev was falling in love with the daughter of Princess Shakhovskaya - Catherine (1815-1836), a young poetess. The estates of their parents in the suburbs bordered, they often exchanged visits. He was 15, she was 19. In letters to her son, Varvara Turgeneva called Ekaterina Shakhovskaya a “poet” and a “villain”, since Sergei Nikolayevich himself, Ivan Turgenev’s father, could not resist the charms of the young princess, to whom the girl reciprocated, which broke the heart of the future writer. The episode much later, in 1860, was reflected in the story "First Love", in which the writer endowed some features of Katya Shakhovskaya with the heroine of the story, Zinaida Zasekina.

Henri Troyat, Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev's story at a dinner with G. Flaubert

“My whole life is permeated with the feminine principle. Neither a book nor anything else can replace a woman for me ... How can I explain this? I believe that only love causes such a flowering of the whole being, which nothing else can give. And what do you think? Listen, in my youth I had a mistress - a miller from the outskirts of St. Petersburg. I met her when I went hunting. She was very pretty - a blonde with radiant eyes, which are quite common with us. She didn't want to take anything from me. And once she said: “You must give me a present!” - "What do you want?" - "Bring me soap!" I brought her soap. She took it and disappeared. She returned flushed and said, holding out her fragrant hands to me: “Kiss my hands the way you kiss them to ladies in St. Petersburg drawing rooms!” I threw myself on my knees in front of her ... There is no moment in my life that could compare with this!

In 1841, during his return to Lutovinovo, Ivan became interested in the seamstress Dunyasha (Avdotya Ermolaevna Ivanova). An affair began between the young, which ended in the girl's pregnancy. Ivan Sergeevich immediately expressed a desire to marry her. However, his mother made a serious scandal about this, after which he went to St. Petersburg. Turgenev's mother, having learned about Avdotya's pregnancy, hastily sent her to Moscow to her parents, where Pelageya was born on April 26, 1842. Dunyasha was given in marriage, the daughter was left in an ambiguous position. Turgenev officially recognized the child only in 1857.

Soon after the episode with Avdotya Ivanova, Turgenev met Tatyana Bakunina (1815-1871), the sister of the future revolutionary emigrant M. A. Bakunin. Returning to Moscow after his stay in Spasskoye, he stopped by the Bakunin estate Premukhino. The winter of 1841-1842 passed in close contact with the circle of Bakunin brothers and sisters. All of Turgenev's friends - N.V. Stankevich, V.G. Belinsky and V.P. Botkin - were in love with Mikhail Bakunin's sisters, Lyubov, Varvara and Alexandra.

Tatyana was three years older than Ivan. Like all young Bakunins, she was fascinated by German philosophy and perceived her relationships with others through the prism of Fichte's idealistic concept. She wrote letters to Turgenev in German, full of lengthy reasoning and introspection, despite the fact that young people lived in the same house, and she also expected Turgenev to analyze the motives of her own actions and reciprocal feelings. “The ‘philosophical’ novel,” according to G. A. Byaly, “in the vicissitudes of which the entire younger generation of the Premukhin’s nest took a lively part, lasted several months.” Tatyana was truly in love. Ivan Sergeevich did not remain completely indifferent to the love awakened by him. He wrote several poems (the poem "Parasha" was also inspired by communication with Bakunina) and a story dedicated to this sublimely ideal, mostly literary and epistolary passion. But he could not answer with a serious feeling.

Among other fleeting hobbies of the writer, there were two more that played a certain role in his work. In the 1850s, a fleeting affair broke out with a distant cousin, eighteen-year-old Olga Alexandrovna Turgeneva. The love was mutual, and in 1854 the writer was thinking about marriage, the prospect of which at the same time frightened him. Olga later served as a prototype for the image of Tatiana in the novel "Smoke". Also indecisive was Turgenev with Maria Nikolaevna Tolstaya. Ivan Sergeevich wrote about Leo Tolstoy's sister P. V. Annenkov: “His sister is one of the most attractive creatures that I have ever been able to meet. Sweet, smart, simple - I would not take my eyes off. In my old age (I turned 36 on the fourth day) - I almost fell in love. For the sake of Turgenev, twenty-four-year-old M. N. Tolstaya had already left her husband, she took the writer's attention to herself for true love. But Turgenev, this time too, limited himself to a Platonic hobby, and Maria Nikolaevna served him as a prototype for Verochka from the story Faust.

In the autumn of 1843, Turgenev first saw Pauline Viardot on the stage of the opera house, when the great singer came on tour to St. Petersburg. Turgenev was 25 years old, Viardot - 22 years old. Then, while hunting, he met Pauline's husband, the director of the Italian Theater in Paris, a well-known critic and art critic, Louis Viardot, and on November 1, 1843, he was introduced to Pauline herself. Among the mass of fans, she did not particularly single out Turgenev, known more as an avid hunter, and not a writer. And when her tour ended, Turgenev, together with the Viardot family, left for Paris against the will of his mother, still unknown to Europe and without money. And this despite the fact that everyone considered him a rich man. But this time, his extremely cramped financial situation was explained precisely by his disagreement with his mother, one of the richest women in Russia and the owner of a huge agricultural and industrial empire.

For attachment to damn gypsy» His mother didn't give him money for three years. During these years, his lifestyle did not bear much resemblance to the stereotype of the life of a “rich Russian” that had developed about him. In November 1845, he returned to Russia, and in January 1847, having learned about Viardot's tour in Germany, he left the country again: he went to Berlin, then to London, Paris, a tour of France and again to St. Petersburg. Without an official marriage, Turgenev lived in the Viardot family " on the edge of someone else's nest", as he himself said. Pauline Viardot raised Turgenev's illegitimate daughter. In the early 1860s, the Viardot family settled in Baden-Baden, and with them Turgenev ("Villa Tourgueneff"). Thanks to the Viardot family and Ivan Turgenev, their villa has become an interesting musical and artistic center. The war of 1870 forced the Viardot family to leave Germany and move to Paris, where the writer also moved.

The last love of the writer was the actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater Maria Savina. Their meeting took place in 1879, when the young actress was 25 years old, and Turgenev was 61 years old. The actress at that time played the role of Verochka in Turgenev's play A Month in the Country. The role was so vividly played that the writer himself was amazed. After this performance, he went to the actress backstage with a large bouquet of roses and exclaimed: “ Did I write this Verochka?!". Ivan Turgenev fell in love with her, which he openly admitted. The rarity of their meetings was made up for by regular correspondence, which lasted four years. Despite Turgenev's sincere relationship, for Maria he was rather a good friend. She was going to marry another, but the marriage never took place. The marriage of Savina with Turgenev was also not destined to come true - the writer died in the circle of the Viardot family.

"Turgenev girls"

Turgenev's personal life was not entirely successful. Having lived for 38 years in close contact with the Viardot family, the writer felt deeply alone. Under these conditions, Turgenev's image of love was formed, but love is not quite characteristic of his melancholy creative manner. There is almost no happy ending in his works, and the last chord is more often sad. But nevertheless, almost none of the Russian writers paid so much attention to the depiction of love, no one idealized a woman to such an extent as Ivan Turgenev.

The characters of the female characters in his works of the 1850s - 1880s - the images of whole, pure, selfless, morally strong heroines in total formed a literary phenomenon " Turgenev girl"- a typical heroine of his works. Such are Lisa in the story "The Diary of a Superfluous Man", Natalya Lasunskaya in the novel "Rudin", Asya in the story of the same name, Vera in the story "Faust", Elizaveta Kalitina in the novel "The Noble Nest", Elena Stakhova in the novel "On the Eve", Marianna Sinetskaya in the novel "Nov" and others.

L. N. Tolstoy, noting the merits of the writer, said that Turgenev painted amazing portraits of women, and that Tolstoy himself later observed Turgenev's women in life.

Family

Turgenev never got his own family. The daughter of the writer from the seamstress Avdotya Ermolaevna Ivanova, Pelageya Ivanovna Turgeneva, in the marriage of Brewer (1842-1919), from the age of eight she was brought up in the family of Pauline Viardot in France, where Turgenev changed her name from Pelageya to Polinet, which was more pleasant to his literary ear - Polinet Turgeneva. Ivan Sergeevich arrived in France only six years later, when his daughter was already fourteen. Polinet almost forgot Russian and spoke only French, which touched her father. At the same time, he was upset that the girl had a difficult relationship with Viardot herself. The girl did not love her father's beloved, and soon this led to the fact that the girl was sent to a private boarding school. When Turgenev next came to France, he took his daughter from the boarding house, and they settled together, and for Polinet a governess from England, Innis, was invited.

At the age of seventeen, Polinet met a young businessman Gaston Brewer, who made a good impression on Ivan Turgenev, and he agreed to marry his daughter. As a dowry, the father gave a considerable amount for those times - 150 thousand francs. The girl married Brewer, who soon went bankrupt, after which Polinet, with the assistance of her father, hid from her husband in Switzerland. Since Turgenev's heiress was Pauline Viardot, his daughter found herself in a difficult financial situation after his death. She died in 1919 at the age of 76 from cancer. The children of Polinet - Georges-Albert and Jeanne had no descendants. Georges Albert died in 1924. Jeanne Brewer-Turgeneva never married; She lived by tutoring for a living, as she was fluent in five languages. She even dabbled in poetry, writing poetry in French. She died in 1952 at the age of 80, and with her the family branch of the Turgenevs along the line of Ivan Sergeevich broke off.

Passion for hunting

I. S. Turgenev was at one time one of the most famous hunters in Russia. The love of hunting was instilled in the future writer by his uncle Nikolai Turgenev, a recognized connoisseur of horses and hunting dogs in the district, who raised the boy during his summer holidays in Spasskoye. He also taught hunting to the future writer AI Kupfershmidt, whom Turgenev considered his first teacher. Thanks to him, Turgenev, already in his youth, could call himself a gun hunter. Even Ivan's mother, who previously looked at the hunters as idlers, was imbued with her son's passion. Over the years, the hobby has grown into a passion. It happened that for whole seasons he did not let go of his gun, went thousands of miles across many provinces of the central strip of Russia. Turgenev said that hunting is generally characteristic of a Russian person, and that Russian people have loved hunting since time immemorial.

In 1837, Turgenev met Afanasy Alifanov, a peasant hunter, who later became his frequent hunting companion. The writer bought it for a thousand rubles; he settled in the forest, five miles from Spassky. Athanasius was an excellent storyteller, and Turgenev often came to him to sit over a cup of tea and listen to hunting stories. The story "About Nightingales" (1854) was recorded by the writer from the words of Alifanov. It was Athanasius who became the prototype of Yermolai from the Hunter's Notes. He was also known for his talent as a hunter among the writer's friends - A. A. Fet, I. P. Borisov. When Athanasius died in 1872, Turgenev was very sorry for his old hunting companion and asked his manager to provide possible assistance to his daughter Anna.

In 1839, the writer's mother, describing the tragic consequences of the fire that occurred in Spasskoye, does not forget to say: your gun is intact, and the dog is crazy". The resulting fire hastened the arrival of Ivan Turgenev in Spasskoye. In the summer of 1839, he first went hunting in the Teleginsky swamps (on the border of the Bolkhovsky and Oryol counties), visited the Lebedyanskaya fair, which was reflected in the story "Lebedyan" (1847). Varvara Petrovna purchased five packs of greyhounds, nine bowhounds and horses with saddles especially for him.

In the summer of 1843, Ivan Sergeevich lived in a dacha in Pavlovsk and also hunted a lot. This year he met Pauline Viardot. The writer was introduced to her with the words: This is a young Russian landowner. Glorious hunter and bad poet". The husband of the actress Louis was, like Turgenev, a passionate hunter. Ivan Sergeevich invited him more than once to hunt in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. They repeatedly went hunting with friends to the Novgorod province and to Finland. And Pauline Viardot gave Turgenev a beautiful and expensive game bag.

In the late 1840s, the writer lived abroad and worked on the "Notes of a Hunter". The writer spent 1852-1853 in Spasskoye under police supervision. But this exile did not oppress him, since the hunt was again waiting in the village, and quite successful. And the next year he went on hunting expeditions 150 miles from Spassky, where, together with I.F. Yurasov, he hunted on the banks of the Desna. This expedition served as material for Turgenev to work on the story "A Trip to Polissya" (1857).

In August 1854, Turgenev, together with N. A. Nekrasov, went hunting to the estate of the titular adviser I. I. Maslov Osmino, after which both continued to hunt in Spassky. In the mid-1850s, Turgenev met the Tolstoy family. The elder brother of Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai, also turned out to be an avid hunter and, together with Turgenev, made several hunting trips around Spassky and Nikolsko-Vyazemsky. Sometimes they were accompanied by the husband of M. N. Tolstoy - Valerian Petrovich; some traits of his character were reflected in the image of Priimkov in the story "Faust" (1855). In the summer of 1855, Turgenev did not hunt because of the cholera epidemic, but in subsequent seasons he tried to make up for lost time. Together with N. N. Tolstoy, the writer visited Pirogovo, the estate of S. N. Tolstoy, who preferred to hunt with greyhounds and had excellent horses and dogs. Turgenev, on the other hand, preferred to hunt with a gun and a setter dog, and mainly for game birds.

Turgenev kept a kennel of seventy hounds and sixty greyhounds. Together with N. N. Tolstoy, A. A. Fet and A. T. Alifanov, he made a number of hunting expeditions in the central Russian provinces. In the years 1860-1870, Turgenev mainly lived abroad. He also tried to recreate the rituals and atmosphere of Russian hunting abroad, but from all this only a distant resemblance was obtained even when he, together with Louis Viardot, managed to rent quite decent hunting grounds. In the spring of 1880, having visited Spasskoe, Turgenev specially drove to Yasnaya Polyana in order to persuade Leo Tolstoy to take part in the Pushkin celebrations. Tolstoy declined the invitation because he considered formal dinners and liberal toasts in front of the starving Russian peasantry inappropriate. Nevertheless, Turgenev fulfilled his old dream - he hunted with Leo Tolstoy. A whole hunting circle even formed around Turgenev - N. A. Nekrasov, A. A. Fet, A. N. Ostrovsky, N. N. and L. N. Tolstoy, artist P. P. Sokolov (illustrator of the Hunter's Notes). In addition, he happened to hunt with the German writer Karl Muller, as well as with representatives of the royal houses of Russia and Germany - Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and Prince of Hesse.

Ivan Turgenev went with a gun over his shoulders Oryol, Tula, Tambov, Kursk, Kaluga provinces. He was well acquainted with the best hunting grounds in England, France and Germany. He wrote three specialized works devoted to hunting: “On the Notes of the Orenburg Province Rifle Hunter S. T. Aksakov”, “Notes of the Orenburg Province Rifle Hunter” and “Fifty Shortcomings of a Rifle Hunter or Fifty Shortcomings of a Pointing Dog”.

Character traits and writer's life

Biographers of Turgenev noted the unique features of his writing life. From his youth, he combined intelligence, education, artistic talent with passivity, a penchant for introspection, and indecision. All together, in a bizarre way, combined with the habits of a barchonka, who for a long time was dependent on an imperious, despotic mother. Turgenev recalled that at the University of Berlin, while studying Hegel, he could drop out of school when he needed to train his dog or set it on rats. T. N. Granovsky, who came to his apartment, found the student-philosopher playing with a serf servant (Porfiry Kudryashov) in card soldiers. Childishness smoothed out over the years, but the internal split and immaturity of views made themselves felt for a long time: according to A. Ya. Panaeva, young Ivan wanted to be accepted both in literary society and in secular living rooms, while in secular society Turgenev was ashamed to admit his literary earnings, which spoke of his false and frivolous attitude to literature and to the title of writer at that time.

The cowardice of the writer in his youth is evidenced by an episode in 1838 in Germany, when a fire broke out during a trip on a ship, and the passengers miraculously managed to escape. Fearing for his life, Turgenev asked one of the sailors to save him and promised him a reward from his rich mother if he could fulfill his request. Other passengers testified that the young man exclaimed plaintively: Die so young!”, while pushing women and children near the lifeboats. Fortunately, the beach was not far. Once on the shore, the young man was ashamed of his cowardice. Rumors of his cowardice infiltrated society and became the subject of ridicule. The event played a certain negative role in the subsequent life of the author and was described by Turgenev himself in the short story "Fire at Sea".

Researchers note another trait of Turgenev's character, which brought him and those around him a lot of trouble - his optionality, "all-Russian negligence" or "Oblomovism", as E. A. Solovyov writes. Ivan Sergeevich could invite guests to his place and soon forget about it, having gone somewhere on his own business; he could promise a story to N. A. Nekrasov for the next issue of Sovremennik, or even take an advance payment from A. A. Kraevsky and not deliver the promised manuscript on time. Ivan Sergeevich himself subsequently warned the younger generation against such annoying trifles. The Polish-Russian revolutionary Artur Benny once became a victim of this optionality, and he was slanderously accused in Russia of being an agent of Section III. This accusation could only be dispelled by A. I. Herzen, to whom Benny wrote a letter and asked to send it with an opportunity to I. S. Turgenev in London. Turgenev forgot about the letter, which had lain unsent with him for more than two months. During this time, rumors of Benny's betrayal reached catastrophic proportions. The letter, which reached Herzen very late, could not change anything in Benny's reputation.

The reverse side of these flaws was softness of soul, the breadth of nature, a certain generosity, gentleness, but his kindness had its limits. When, during his last visit to Spasskoye, he saw that the mother, who did not know how to please her beloved son, lined up all the serfs along the alley to greet the barchuk " loud and happy”, Ivan was angry with his mother, immediately turned around and left back to St. Petersburg. They did not see each other again until her death, and even lack of money could not shake his decision. Ludwig Peach singled out his modesty among Turgenev's character traits. Abroad, where his work was still poorly known, Turgenev never boasted to those around him that in Russia he was already considered a famous writer. Having become an independent owner of the maternal inheritance, Turgenev did not show any concern for his bread and crops. Unlike Leo Tolstoy, he had no mastery in him.

He calls himself " the most careless of Russian landowners". The writer did not delve into the management of his estate, entrusting it either to his uncle, or to the poet N. S. Tyutchev, or even to random people. Turgenev was very wealthy, he had at least 20 thousand rubles of income per year from the land, but at the same time he always needed money, spending it very imprudently. The habits of a wide Russian master made themselves felt. Turgenev's literary fees were also very significant. He was one of the highest paid writers in Russia. Each edition of the Hunter's Notes brought him 2,500 rubles of net income. The right to publish his works cost 20-25 thousand rubles.

The value and appreciation of creativity

Extra people in the image of Turgenev

Despite the fact that the tradition of portraying “superfluous people” arose before Turgenev (Chatsky A. S. Griboedova, Evgeny Onegin A. S. Pushkin, Pechorin M. Yu. Lermontov, Beltov A. I. Herzen, Aduev Jr. in I. A. Goncharov’s “Ordinary History”), Turgenev has priority in determining this type of literary characters. The name "Extra Man" was fixed after the publication in 1850 of Turgenev's story "The Diary of an Extra Man". "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, and a discrepancy between word and deed. Turgenev created a whole gallery of similar images: Chulkaturin (“The Diary of a Superfluous Man”, 1850), Rudin (“Rudin”, 1856), Lavretsky (“The Noble Nest”, 1859), Nezhdanov (“Nov”, 1877). Turgenev's short stories "Asya", "Yakov Pasynkov", "Correspondence" and others are also devoted to the problem of the "superfluous person".

The protagonist of The Diary of a Superfluous 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 disassembled myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, remembered the slightest glances, smiles, words of people ... Whole days passed in this painful, fruitless work". Soul-corroding introspection 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 the contemplation of his own misfortune.". The failure of apathetic and reflective characters was even more set off by the images of solid and strong Turgenev's heroines.

The result of Turgenev's reflections on the heroes of the Rudin and Chulkaturin 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. "Russian Hamlet" is named in the novel "Nov" one of its main characters, Alexei Dmitrievich Nezhdanov.

Simultaneously with Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov continued to develop the phenomenon of “an extra person” in the novel “Oblomov” (1859), N. A. Nekrasov - Agarin (“Sasha”, 1856), A. F. Pisemsky and many others. But, unlike Goncharov's character, Turgenev's characters have undergone more typification. According to the Soviet literary critic A. Lavretsky (I. M. Frenkel), “If we had all the sources to study the 40s. there is only one “Rudin” or one “Noble Nest”, then it would still be possible to establish the character of the era in its specific features. According to Oblomov, we are not able to do this.

Later, the tradition of depicting Turgenev's "superfluous people" was ironically played up by A.P. Chekhov. The character of his story "Duel" Laevsky is a reduced and parodic 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 chip from Rudin". At the same time, he speaks of Laevsky's claim to be "an extra person" in a mocking tone: " Understand this, they say, that it’s not his fault that state-owned packages lie unopened for weeks and that he himself drinks and gets others drunk, but Onegin, Pechorin and Turgenev, who invented a loser and an extra person, are to blame for this". Later, critics brought the character of Rudin closer to the character of Turgenev himself.

Turgenev on stage

By the mid-1850s, Turgenev had become disillusioned with his calling as a playwright. Critics declared his plays unstaged. The author seemed to agree with the opinion of critics and stopped writing for the Russian stage, but in 1868-1869 he wrote four French operetta librettos for Pauline Viardot, intended for production in the Baden-Baden theater. L.P. Grossman noted the validity of many critics' reproaches against Turgenev's plays for the lack of movement in them and the predominance of the conversational element. Nevertheless, he pointed to the paradoxical persistence of Turgenev's productions on stage. Plays by Ivan Sergeevich have not left the repertoire of European and Russian theaters for more than one hundred and sixty years. Famous Russian performers played in them: P. A. Karatygin, V. V. Samoilov, V. V. Samoilova (Samoilova 2nd), A. E. Martynov, V. I. Zhivokini, M. P. Sadovsky, S. V. Shumsky, V. N. Davydov, K. A. Varlamov, M. G. Savina, G. N. Fedotova, V. F. Komissarzhevskaya, K. S. Stanislavsky, V. I. Kachalov, M. N. Ermolova and others.

Turgenev the playwright was widely recognized in Europe. His plays were successful on the stages of the Antoine Theater in Paris, the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Chamber Theater in Munich, Berlin, Koenigsberg and other German theaters. Turgenev's dramaturgy was in the selected repertoire of outstanding Italian tragedians: Ermete Novelli, Tommaso Salvini, Ernesto Rossi, Ermete Zacconi, Austrian, German and French actors Adolf von Sonnenthal, Andre Antoine, Charlotte Voltaire and Franziska Elmenreich.

Of all his plays, "A Month in the Country" had the greatest success. The debut of the performance took place in 1872. At the beginning of the 20th century, the play was staged at the Moscow Art Theater by K. S. Stanislavsky and I. M. Moskvin. The stage designer of the production and the author of sketches for the costumes of the characters was the world artist M. V. Dobuzhinsky. This play has not left the stage of Russian theaters to this day. Even during the author's lifetime, theaters began to stage his novels and stories with varying degrees of success: "The Noble Nest", "The Steppe King Lear", "Spring Waters". This tradition is continued by modern theaters.

XIX century. Turgenev in the assessments of contemporaries

Contemporaries gave Turgenev's work a very high assessment. Critics V. G. Belinsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov, D. I. Pisarev, A. V. Druzhinin, P. V. Annenkov, Apollon Grigoriev, V. P. Botkin, N. N. Strakhov, V. P. Burenin, K. S. Aksakov, I. S. Aksakov, N. K. Mikhailovsky, K. N. Leontiev, A. S. Suvorin, P. L. Lavrov, S. S. Dudyshkin, P. N. Tkachev, N. I. Solovyov, M. A. Antonovich, M. N. Longinov, M. F. De Poulet, N. V. Shelgunov, N. G. Chernyshevsky and many others.

So, V. G. Belinsky noted the writer's extraordinary skill in depicting Russian nature. According to N.V. Gogol, in the Russian literature of that time, Turgenev had the most talent. N. A. Dobrolyubov wrote that as soon as Turgenev raised any issue or a new side of social relations in his story, these problems also rose in the minds of an educated society, appearing before everyone’s eyes. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin stated that Turgenev's literary activity had a value for society equal to that of Nekrasov, Belinsky and Dobrolyubov. According to the Russian literary critic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries S. A. Vengerov, the writer managed to write so realistically that it was difficult to catch the line between literary fiction and real life. His novels were not only read out - his heroes were imitated in life. In each of his major works there is a character in whose mouth the subtle and apt wit of the writer himself is put.

Turgenev was well known in contemporary Western Europe as well. His works were translated into German as early as the 1850s, and in the 1870s and 1880s he became the most beloved and most read Russian writer in Germany, and German critics rated him as one of the most significant modern novelists. Turgenev's first translators were August Wiedert, August Bolz and Paul Fuchs. The translator of many of Turgenev's works into German, the German writer F. Bodenstedt, in the introduction to "Russian Fragments" (1861), argued that Turgenev's works are equal to the works of the best modern novelists in England, Germany and France. The chancellor of the German Empire Chlodwig Hohenlohe (1894-1900), who called Ivan Turgenev the best candidate for the post of prime minister of Russia, spoke about the writer as follows: “ Today I spoke with the smartest man in Russia».

Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter were popular in France. Guy de Maupassant called the writer " great man" And " brilliant novelist", and George Sand wrote to Turgenev:" Teacher! We all have to go through your school". His work was also well known in English literary circles - the Hunter's Notes, the Noble Nest, the Eve and Nov were translated in England. The Western reader was subdued by moral purity in the depiction of love, the image of a Russian woman (Elena Stakhova); struck by the figure of the militant democrat Bazarov. The writer managed to show true Russia to European society, he introduced foreign readers to the Russian peasant, Russian raznochintsy and revolutionaries, to the Russian intelligentsia and revealed the image of a Russian woman. Foreign readers, thanks to the work of Turgenev, assimilated the great traditions of the Russian realistic school.

Leo Tolstoy gave the following description to the writer in a letter to A. N. Pypin (January 1884): “Turgenev is a wonderful person (not very deep, very weak, but a kind, good person), who always says the very thing that he thinks and feels.”

Turgenev in the encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron

According to the encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, "The Hunter's Notes", in addition to the usual reader success, played a certain historical role. The book made a strong impression even on the heir to the throne, Alexander II, who a few years later carried out a series of reforms to abolish serfdom in Russia. Many representatives of the ruling classes were also impressed by the Notes. The book carried a social protest, denouncing serfdom, but serfdom itself was directly touched upon in the "Notes of a Hunter" with restraint and caution. The content of the book was not fictional, it convinced readers that people should not be deprived of the most elementary human rights. But, in addition to protest, the stories also had artistic value, carrying a soft and poetic flavor. According to the literary critic S. A. Vengerov, the landscape painting of the "Hunter's Notes" became one of the best in Russian literature of that time. All the best qualities of Turgenev's talent were vividly expressed in the essays. " Great, powerful, truthful and free Russian language”, to which the last of his “Poems in Prose” (1878-1882) is dedicated, received in the “Notes” its most noble and elegant expression.

In the novel "Rudin" the author managed to successfully portray the generation of the 1840s. To some extent, Rudin himself is the image of the famous Hegelian agitator M. A. Bakunin, whom Belinsky spoke of as a man " with a blush on the cheeks and no blood in the heart. Rudin appeared in an era when society dreamed of a "deed." The author's version of the novel was not passed by the censors due to the episode of Rudin's death at the June barricades, so it was understood by critics in a very one-sided way. According to the author's idea, Rudin was a richly gifted person with noble intentions, but at the same time he was completely at a loss in front of reality; he knew how to passionately appeal and captivate others, but at the same time he himself was completely devoid of passion and temperament. The hero of the novel has become a household name for those people whose word does not agree with the deed. The writer generally did not particularly spare his favorite heroes, even the best representatives of the Russian nobility of the middle of the 19th century. He often emphasized the passivity and lethargy in their characters, as well as the traits of moral helplessness. This manifested the realism of the writer, depicting life as it is.

But if in "Rudin" Turgenev spoke only against the idle chattering people of the generation of the forties, then in "The Nest of Nobles" his criticism already fell upon his entire generation; he favored the younger forces without the slightest bitterness. In the face of the heroine of this novel, a simple Russian girl Liza, a collective image of many women of that time is shown, when the meaning of a woman’s whole life was reduced to love, failing in which, a woman was deprived of any purpose of existence. Turgenev foresaw the emergence of a new type of Russian woman, which he placed at the center of his next novel. The Russian society of that time lived on the eve of radical social and state changes. And the heroine of Turgenev's novel "On the Eve" Elena became the personification of the indefinite desire for something good and new, characteristic of the first years of the reform era, without a clear idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthis new and good. It is no coincidence that the novel was called “On the Eve” - in it Shubin ends his elegy with the question: “ When will our time come? When will we have people?” To which his interlocutor expresses hope for the best: “ Give me time, - answered Uvar Ivanovich, - they will". On the pages of Sovremennik, the novel received an enthusiastic assessment in Dobrolyubov's article "When the real day comes."

In the next novel, Fathers and Sons, one of the most characteristic features of Russian literature of that time, the closest connection between literature and the real currents of social moods, most fully achieved expression. Turgenev was better than other writers in capturing the moment of unanimity of public consciousness, which in the second half of the 1850s buried the old Nikolaev era with its lifeless reactionary isolation, and the turning point of the era: the subsequent confusion of innovators who singled out from their midst moderate representatives of the older generation with their vague hopes for a better future - "fathers", and thirsting for radical changes in the social structure of the younger generation - "children". The Russian Word magazine, represented by D. I. Pisarev, even recognized the hero of the novel, the radical Bazarov, as his ideal. At the same time, if we look at the image of Bazarov from a historical point of view, as a type that reflects the mood of the sixties of the XIX century, then it is rather not fully disclosed, since socio-political radicalism, quite strong at that time, was almost not affected in the novel.

While living abroad, in Paris, the writer became close to many emigrants and foreign youth. He again had a desire to write on the topic of the day - about the revolutionary "going to the people", as a result of which his largest novel, Nov, appeared. But, despite his efforts, Turgenev failed to capture the most characteristic features of the Russian revolutionary movement. His mistake was that he made the center of the novel one of the weak-willed people typical of his works, who could be characteristic of the generation of the 1840s, but not the 1870s. The novel was not well received by critics. Of the later works of the writer, the Song of Triumphant Love and Poems in Prose attracted the most attention.

XIX-XX century

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, critics and literary critics S. A. Vengerov, Yu. I. Aikhenvald, D. S. Merezhkovsky, D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovskiy, A. I. Nezelenov, Yu. N. Govorukha-Otrok, V. V. Rozanov, A. E. Gruzinskiy, E. A. Solovyov-Andreevich, L. A. Tikhomirov, V. E. Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky, A. F. Koni, A. G. Gornfeld, F. D. Batyushkov, V. V. Stasov, G. V. Plekhanov, K. D. Balmont, P. P. Pertsov, M. O. Gershenzon, P. A. Kropotkin, R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik and others.

According to the literary critic and theater critic Yu. I. Aikhenvald, who gave his assessment of the writer at the beginning of the century, Turgenev was not a deep writer, he wrote superficially and in light colors. According to the critic, the writer took life lightly. Knowing all the passions, possibilities and depths of human consciousness, the writer, however, did not have true seriousness: “ The tourist of life, he visits everything, looks everywhere, does not stop anywhere for a long time, and at the end of his road he complains that the journey is over, that there is nowhere to go further. Rich, meaningful, varied, it does not, however, have pathos and genuine seriousness. His softness is his weakness. He showed reality, but first took out of it its tragic core.". According to Aikhenwald, Turgenev is easy to read, easy to live with, but he does not want to worry himself and does not want his readers to worry. The critic also reproached the writer for the monotony in the use of artistic techniques. But at the same time he called Turgenev " patriot of Russian nature for his illustrious landscapes of his native land.

The author of an article about I. S. Turgenev in the six-volume History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century, edited by Professor D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovskii (1911), A. E. Gruzinsky, explains the claims of critics to Turgenev as follows. In his opinion, in the work of Turgenev, most of all, they sought answers to the living questions of our time, the setting of new social tasks. " This element of his novels and stories alone, in fact, was taken into account seriously and attentively by the guiding criticism of the 50s and 60s; he was considered, as it were, obligatory in Turgenev's work". Having not received answers to their questions in new works, criticism was dissatisfied and reprimanded the author " for failure to fulfill their public duties". As a result, the author was declared scribbled and exchanging his talent. Gruzinsky calls this approach to Turgenev's work one-sided and erroneous. Turgenev was not a writer-prophet, a writer-citizen, although he associated all his major works with important and burning themes of his turbulent era, but most of all he was an artist-poet, and his interest in public life had, rather, the nature of careful analysis.

The critic E. A. Solovyov joins this conclusion. He also draws attention to the mission of Turgenev as a translator of Russian literature for European readers. Thanks to him, soon almost all the best works of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy were translated into foreign languages. " No one, we note, was better adapted to this lofty and difficult task than Turgenev. By the very essence of his talent, he was not only a Russian, but also a European, world writer.”, - writes E. A. Solovyov. Stopping on the way of depicting the love of Turgenev's girls, he makes the following observation: Turgenev's heroines fall in love immediately and love only once, and this is for life. They are obviously from the tribe of the poor Asdras, for whom love and death were equivalent. Love and death, love and death are his inseparable artistic associations.". In the character of Turgenev, the critic also finds much of what the writer depicted in his hero Rudin: “ Undoubted chivalry and not particularly high vanity, idealism and a tendency to melancholy, a huge mind and a broken will».

The representative of decadent criticism in Russia, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, treated Turgenev's work ambiguously. He did not appreciate Turgenev's novels, preferring "small prose" to them, in particular the so-called "mysterious stories and novels" of the writer. According to Merezhkovsky, Ivan Turgenev is the first impressionist artist, the forerunner of the later symbolists: “ The value of Turgenev as an artist for the literature of the future is in the creation of an impressionistic style, which is an art education that is not related to the work of this writer as a whole.».

A.P. Chekhov had the same contradictory attitude towards Turgenev. In 1902, in a letter to O. L. Knipper-Chekhova, he wrote: “ Reading Turgenev. This writer will be left with one eighth or one tenth of what he has written. Everything else will go to the archive in 25-35 years". However, the very next year he told her: I have never been so drawn to Turgenev as I am now.».

The symbolist poet and critic Maximilian Voloshin wrote that Turgenev, thanks to his artistic sophistication, which he studied with French writers, occupies a special place in Russian literature. But unlike French literature, with its fragrant and fresh sensuality, the feeling of living and loving flesh, Turgenev bashfully and dreamily idealized a woman. In Voloshin's contemporary literature, he saw a connection between Ivan Bunin's prose and Turgenev's landscape sketches.

Subsequently, the theme of Bunin's superiority over Turgenev in landscape prose will be repeatedly raised by literary critics. Even L. N. Tolstoy, according to the memoirs of pianist A. B. Goldenweiser, said about the description of nature in Bunin’s story: “It’s raining, and it’s written that Turgenev would not have written like that, and there’s nothing to say about me.” Both Turgenev and Bunin were united by the fact that both were writers-poets, writers-hunters, writers-nobles and authors of "noble" stories. Nevertheless, the singer of the "sad poetry of the ruined noble nests" Bunin, according to the literary critic Fyodor Stepun, "as an artist is much more sensual than Turgenev." “The nature of Bunin, for all the realistic accuracy of his writing, is still completely different from that of our two greatest realists, Tolstoy and Turgenev. Bunin's nature is more unsteady, more musical, more psychic and, perhaps, even more mystical than the nature of Tolstoy and Turgenev. Nature in the image of Turgenev is more static than that of Bunin, - says F. A. Stepun, - despite the fact that Turgenev has more purely external picturesqueness and picturesqueness.

In Soviet Union

Russian language

From "Poems in Prose"

In days of doubt, in days of painful reflections on the fate of my homeland, you alone are my support and support, O great, powerful, truthful and free Russian language! Without you - how not to fall into despair at the sight of everything that happens at home? But one cannot believe that such a language was not given to a great people!

June, 1882

In the Soviet Union, Turgenev's work was paid attention not only by critics and literary critics, but also by the leaders and leaders of the Soviet state: V. I. Lenin, M. I. Kalinin, A. V. Lunacharsky. Scientific literary criticism largely depended on the ideological attitudes of the "party" literary criticism. Among those who contributed to Turgen studies are G. N. Pospelov, N. L. Brodsky, B. L. Modzalevsky, V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov, M. B. Khrapchenko, G. A. Byaly, S. M. Petrov, A. I. Batyuto, G. B. Kurlyandskaya, N. I. Prutskov, Yu. I. Kuleshov, V. M. Markovich, V. G. Fridlyand, K. I. Chukovsky, B. V. Tomashevsky, B. M. Eikhenbaum, V. B. Shklovsky, Yu. G. Oksman A. S. Bushmin, M. P. Alekseev and so on.

Turgenev was repeatedly quoted by V. I. Lenin, who especially highly appreciated him “ great and mighty» language.M. I. Kalinin said that Turgenev's work had not only artistic, but also socio-political significance, which gave artistic brilliance to his works, and that the writer showed in a serf a man who, like all people, deserves to have human rights. A. V. Lunacharsky, in his lecture on the work of Ivan Turgenev, called him one of the creators of Russian literature. According to A. M. Gorky, Turgenev left an "excellent legacy" to Russian literature.

According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the artistic system created by the writer influenced the poetics of not only Russian, but also Western European novels in the second half of the 19th century. It largely served as the basis for the "intellectual" novel by L. N. Tolstoy and F. M. Dostoevsky, in which the fate of the central characters depends on their solution of an important philosophical issue of universal significance. The literary principles laid down by the writer were developed in the work of many Soviet writers - A. N. Tolstoy, K. G. Paustovsky and others. His plays have become an integral part of the repertoire of Soviet theaters. Many of Turgenev's works were filmed. Soviet literary critics paid great attention to the creative heritage of Turgenev - many works were published on the life and work of the writer, the study of his role in the Russian and world literary process. Scientific studies of his texts were carried out, commented collected works were published. Museums of Turgenev were opened in the city of Orel and the former estate of his mother, Spassky-Lutovinovo.

According to the academic History of Russian Literature, Turgenev was the first in Russian literature who succeeded in expressing in his work through pictures of everyday village life and various images of ordinary peasants the idea that the enslaved people are the root, the living soul of the nation. And the literary critic Professor V. M. Markovich said that Turgenev was one of the first to try to portray the inconsistency of the national character without embellishment, and he also showed the same people worthy of admiration, admiration and love for the first time.

The Soviet literary critic G. N. Pospelov wrote that Turgenev’s literary style can be called, despite its emotional and romantic elation, realistic. Turgenev saw the social weakness of the advanced people from the nobility and was looking for a different force capable of leading the Russian liberation movement; he later saw such strength in the Russian democrats of 1860-1870.

Foreign criticism

Of the émigré writers and literary critics, V. V. Nabokov, B. K. Zaitsev, and D. P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky turned to Turgenev’s work. Many foreign writers and critics also left their comments on Turgenev's work: Friedrich Bodenstedt, Emile Oman, Ernest Renan, Melchior Vogüe, Saint-Beuve, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Edmond Goncourt, Emile Zola, Henry James, John Galsworthy, George Sand, Virginia Woolf, Anatole France, James Joyce, William Rolston, Alphonse Daudet, Theodor Storm, Hippolyte Taine, Georg Brandes, Thomas Carlyle and so on.

English prose writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature John Galsworthy considered Turgenev's novels the greatest example of the art of prose and noted that Turgenev helped " bring the proportions of the novel to perfection". For him, Turgenev was " the most refined poet who ever wrote novels”, and the Turgenev tradition was important for Galsworthy.

Another British writer, literary critic and representative of modernist literature of the first half of the 20th century, Virginia Woolf, noted that Turgenev’s books not only touch with their poetry, but also seem to belong to today, so they have not lost the perfection of form. She wrote that Ivan Turgenev has a rare quality: a sense of symmetry, balance, which give a generalized and harmonious picture of the world. At the same time, she stipulated that this symmetry triumphs not at all because he is such a great storyteller. On the contrary, Woolf believed that some of his stories were rather badly told, as they contained loops and digressions, confusing obscure information about great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers (as in The Noble Nest). But she pointed out that Turgenev's books are not a sequence of episodes, but a sequence of emotions emanating from the central character, and not objects are connected in them, but feelings, and when you finish reading the book, you experience aesthetic satisfaction. Another well-known representative of modernism, the Russian and American writer and literary critic V. V. Nabokov, in his Lectures on Russian Literature, spoke of Turgenev not as a great writer, but called him “ cute". Nabokov noted that Turgenev's landscapes are good, "Turgenev's girls" are charming, he also spoke approvingly of the musicality of Turgenev's prose. And the novel "Fathers and Sons" called one of the most brilliant works of the XIX century. But he also pointed out the shortcomings of the writer, saying that he " bogged down in disgusting sweetness". According to Nabokov, Turgenev was often too straightforward and did not trust the reader's intuition, trying to dot the "i" himself. Another modernist, the Irish writer James Joyce, singled out from the entire work of the Russian writer “Notes of a Hunter”, which, in his opinion, “ penetrate deeper into life than his novels". Joyce believed that it was from them that Turgenev developed as a great international writer.

According to researcher D. Peterson, the American reader in Turgenev's work was struck by " manner of narration ... far from both Anglo-Saxon moralizing and French frivolity". According to the critic, the model of realism created by Turgenev had a great influence on the formation of realistic principles in the work of American writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

XXI Century

In Russia, much is devoted to the study and memory of Turgenev's work in the 21st century. Every five years, the State Literary Museum of I. S. Turgenev in Orel, together with the Oryol State University and the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, hold major scientific conferences that have international status. As part of the Turgenev Autumn project, the museum annually hosts Turgenev readings, in which researchers from Russia and abroad take part in the writer's work. Turgenev anniversaries are also celebrated in other Russian cities. In addition, his memory is honored abroad. So, in the Museum of Ivan Turgenev in Bougival, which opened on the day of the 100th anniversary of the death of the writer on September 3, 1983, the so-called music salons are held annually, where the music of the composers of the times of Ivan Turgenev and Pauline Viardot is played.

Bibliography

Novels

• Rudin (1855)
• Noble Nest (1858)
• The Eve (1860)
• Fathers and Sons (1862)
• Smoke (1867)
• Nov (1877)

Novels and stories

• Andrei Kolosov (1844)
• Three portraits (1845)
• Gide (1846)
• Breter (1847)
• Petushkov (1848)
• Diary of a Superfluous Man (1849)
• Mumu (1852)
• Inn (1852)
• Notes of a hunter (collection of stories) (1852)
• Yakov Pasynkov (1855)
• Faust (1855)
• Calm (1856)
• Trip to Polissya (1857)
• Asya (1858)
• First Love (1860)
• Ghosts (1864)
• Brigadier (1866)
• Unfortunate (1868)
• Strange Story (1870)
• Steppe King Lear (1870)
• Dog (1870)
• Knock...knock...knock!.. (1871)
• Spring Waters (1872)
• Punin and Baburin (1874)
• Clock (1876)
• Sleep (1877)
• The story of Father Alexei (1877)
• Song of Triumphant Love (1881)
• Own master's office (1881)

Plays

• Where it is thin, it breaks there (1848)
• Freeloader (1848)
• Breakfast at the Leader's (1849)
• Bachelor (1849)
• Month in the Country (1850)
• Provincial (1851)

Turgenev in illustrations

Over the years, the works of I. S. Turgenev were illustrated by illustrators and graphic artists P. M. Boklevsky, N. D. Dmitriev-Orenburgsky, A. A. Kharlamov, V. V. Pukirev, P. P. Sokolov, V. M. Vasnetsov, D. N. Kardovsky, V. A. Taburin, K. I. Rudakov, V. A. Sveshnikov, P. F. Stroev, N. A. Benois, B. M. Kustodiev, K. V. Lebedev and others. The imposing figure of Turgenev is depicted in the sculptures of A. N. Belyaev, M. M. Antokolsky, Zh. drawings by N. A. Stepanov, A. I. Lebedev, V. I. Porfiryev, A. M. Volkov, engravings by Yu. S. Baranovsky, portraits by E. Lamy, A. P. Nikitin, V. G. Perov, I. E. Repin, Ya. , V. A. Bobrova. The works of many painters “based on Turgenev” are known: Ya. P. Polonsky (plots of Spassky-Lutovinov), S. Yu. Zhukovsky (“Poetry of the old noble nest”, “Night”), V. G. Perov, (“Old parents at the grave of their son”) Ivan Sergeevich himself drew well and was an auto-illustrator of his own works.

Screen adaptations

Based on the works of Ivan Turgenev, many films and television films have been shot. His works formed the basis of paintings created in different countries of the world. The first film adaptations appeared at the beginning of the 20th century (the era of silent films). The film The Freeloader was filmed twice in Italy (1913 and 1924). In 1915, the films The Nest of Nobles, After Death (based on the story Clara Milic) and Song of Triumphant Love (with the participation of V. V. Kholodnaya and V. A. Polonsky) were filmed in the Russian Empire. The story "Spring Waters" was filmed 8 times in different countries. Based on the novel "The Nest of Nobles", 4 films were made; based on stories from the "Hunter's Notes" - 4 films; based on the comedy "A Month in the Country" - 10 television films; based on the story "Mumu" - 2 feature films and a cartoon; based on the play "Freeloader" - 5 paintings. The novel "Fathers and Sons" served as the basis for 4 films and a television series, the story "First Love" formed the basis for nine feature films and television films.

The image of Turgenev in the cinema was used by director Vladimir Khotinenko. In the television series "Dostoevsky" in 2011, the role of the writer was played by actor Vladimir Simonov. In the film "Belinsky" by Grigory Kozintsev (1951), the role of Turgenev was played by the actor Igor Litovkin, and in the film "Tchaikovsky" directed by Igor Talankin (1969), the actor Bruno Freindlich played the writer.

Addresses

In Moscow

Biographers in Moscow count over fifty addresses and memorable places associated with Turgenev.

• 1824 - the house of state councilor A. V. Kopteva on B. Nikitskaya (not preserved);
• 1827 - city estate, Valuev's property - Sadovaya-Samotechnaya street, 12/2 (not preserved - rebuilt);
• 1829 - pension Krause, Armenian Institute - Armenian lane, 2;
• 1830 - Shteingel's house - Gagarinsky lane, house 15/7;
• 1830s - House of General N. F. Alekseeva - Sivtsev Vrazhek (corner of Kaloshin Lane), house 24/2;
• 1830s - House of M. A. Smirnov (not preserved, now - a building built in 1903) - Verkhnyaya Kislovka;
• 1830s - House of M. N. Bulgakova - in Maly Uspensky Lane;
• 1830s - House on Malaya Bronnaya Street (not preserved);
• 1839-1850 - Ostozhenka, 37 (corner of the 2nd Ushakovsky lane, now Khilkov lane). It is generally accepted that the house where I. S. Turgenev visited Moscow belonged to his mother, but N. M. Chernov, a researcher of Turgenev’s life and work, indicates that the house was rented from mine surveyor N. V. Loshakovsky;
• 1850s - the house of brother Nikolai Sergeevich Turgenev - Prechistenka, 26 (not preserved)
• 1860s - The house where I. S. Turgenev repeatedly visited the apartment of his friend, the manager of the Moscow appanage office, I. I. Maslov - Prechistensky Boulevard, 10;

In St. Petersburg

Memory

Named after Turgenev:

Toponymy

• Streets and squares of Turgenev in many cities of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia.
• Moscow metro station "Turgenevskaya"

Public institutions

• Orel State Academic Theatre.
• Library-reading room named after I. S. Turgenev in Moscow.
• Turgenev School of Russian Language and Russian Culture (Turin, Italy).
• Russian Public Library named after I. S. Turgenev (Paris, France).

Museums

• Museum of I. S. Turgenev (“ Mumu's house”) - (Moscow, Ostozhenka st., 37).
• State Literary Museum named after I. S. Turgenev (Oryol).
• Spasskoye-Lutovinovo Museum-Reserve, the estate of I. S. Turgenev (Oryol region).
• Street and museum "Turgenev's Dacha" in Bougival, France.

Monuments

In honor of I. S. Turgenev, monuments were erected in the cities:

• Moscow (in Bobrov lane).
• St. Petersburg (on Italianskaya street).
• Eagle:
• Monument in Orel;
• Bust of Turgenev at the Noble Nest.

Other objects

The name of Turgenev is carried by the branded train of Russian Railways Moscow - Simferopol - Moscow (No. 029/030) and Moscow - Oryol - Moscow (No. 33/34)