The action of the novel "Fathers and Sons" takes place in the summer of 1859, the epilogue tells about the events that took place after the fall of serfdom in 1861. Turgenev created a work, the content of which almost coincided in time with the moment of work on it. On the very eve of the reform of 1861, Turgenev shows the crisis in the way of life of both the master and the peasant, the nationwide need to abolish serfdom. The theme of the crisis arises at the very beginning of the novel and in the sad appearance of a devastated Russian village, and in the features of the collapse of the patriarchal foundations of a peasant family noticed by the writer, and in the lamentations of the landowner Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, and in his son Arkady's reflections on the need for transformation.
The fate of Russia, the ways of its further progressive development deeply worried the writer. The stupidity and helplessness of all classes threatens to develop into confusion and chaos. Against this background, heated debates are unfolding about the ways to save Russia, which are waged by the heroes of the novel, representing the two main parts of the Russian intelligentsia - the liberal nobility and the democrats of the common people. These two groups represent socially different environments with directly opposite interests and views. On the one hand, these are “fathers” (Pavel Petrovich and Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanovs), on the other hand, “children” (Bazarov, Arkady).
The most striking, although not quite typical, representative of the cultural provincial nobility is Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, Bazarov's main opponent. Turgenev describes in detail the life path of this hero. The father of both Kirsanov brothers was a military general in 1812, a semi-literate, rude, but not an evil Russian man. All his life he pulled the strap, commanding first a brigade, then a division, and constantly lived in the provinces, where, by virtue of his character, he played a rather significant role. Their mother, Agafya Kuzminishna Kirsanova, belonged to the “mother commanders”, in the church she was the first to approach the cross, spoke loudly and a lot. Pavel Petrovich was born in the south of Russia and brought up at home, surrounded by cheap tutors, cheeky but obsequious adjutants and other regimental, staff personalities.
Pavel Petrovich entered the military service: he graduated from the Corps of Pages, and a brilliant military career awaited him. Pavel Kirsanov was distinguished by remarkable beauty and was self-confident. Having become an officer of the Guards Regiment, he began to appear in society. Women were crazy about him, and men envied him. Kirsanov lived at that time in the same apartment with his brother Nikolai Petrovich, whom he loved sincerely. In the twenty-eighth year, Pavel Petrovich was already a captain. But unhappy love for a woman with a mysterious look, Princess R., turned his whole life upside down. He retired, spent four years abroad, then returned to Russia, lived as a lonely bachelor. And so ten years passed, colorless, fruitless. When Nikolai Petrovich's wife died, he invited his brother to his estate Maryino, and a year and a half later Pavel Petrovich settled there and did not leave the village, even when Nikolai Petrovich left for St. Petersburg.
Pavel Petrovich arranged his life in an English way, he was known as a proud man among his neighbors, but he was respected for his excellent aristocratic manners, for rumors about his victories, for his masterful game of screw, and especially for his impeccable honesty. Living in the village, Pavel Petrovich retained all the severity and stiffness of the old secular habits.
The aristocrat Pavel Petrovich and the raznochinets, the son of the doctor Bazarov disliked each other at first sight. Bazarov was outraged by Kirsanov's panache in the provincial wilderness and especially by long pink nails. Later it turned out that in their views there is not a single point of contact. Pavel Petrovich valued “principles” above all else, without which, in his opinion, one cannot take a step, one cannot breathe. Bazarov, on the other hand, categorically did not recognize any authorities and did not take a single principle on faith.
Pavel Petrovich appreciates poetry, loves art. Bazarov, on the other hand, believes that "a decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet." Gradually, Pavel Petrovich develops a hostile feeling towards Bazarov - this plebeian without clan and tribe, without that high culture, whose traditions Pavel Petrovich felt behind him, towards this commoner, who dares boldly and self-confidently deny the age-old principles on which the existence of the elder Kirsanov is based.
Although Pavel Petrovich called himself a liberal and progress-loving person, by liberalism he understood the condescending aristocratic love for the patriarchal Russian people, whom he looked down on and despised (when talking with peasants, he frowns and sniffs cologne). Having not found a place for himself in modern Russia, after the weddings of Arkady and Katerina, Nikolai Petrovich and Fenichka, he went abroad to live out his life. He settled in Dresden and enjoyed general respect there as a perfect gentleman. However, life is hard for him: he does not read anything Russian, but on his desk there is a silver ashtray in the form of a peasant's bast shoes - all his connection with his homeland.
Another representative of the noble intelligentsia is Pavel Petrovich's brother, Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov. He, too, was supposed to enter the military service, but broke his leg on the very day when the news of his appointment had already arrived. Nikolai Petrovich remained lame for the rest of his life. Unlike his older brother, Nikolai Petrovich read a lot. In 1835 he graduated from the university with the title of candidate. Soon after, his parents died, and he marries the daughter of the former owner of his apartment. He settled in the village, where he happily lived with his young wife. Ten years later, his wife died unexpectedly - Nikolai Petrovich survived it with difficulty, he was about to go abroad, but changed his mind and stayed in the village, took up household chores. In 1855, he took his son Arkady to the university, lived with him for three winters, during which he tried to make acquaintances with his comrades.
Nikolai Petrovich is modest, provincial, weak in character, sensitive and shy. Even his appearance speaks of this: completely gray-haired, plump and slightly hunched. He was somewhat ingratiatingly kind to Bazarov, was afraid of his older brother, and was embarrassed in front of his son. There is a lot in it that Bazarov hates so much: dreaminess, romanticism, poetry and musicality.
The figure of his brother stands next to Nikolai Petrovich in very contrast. Unlike him, Nikolai Petrovich tries to take care of the household, but at the same time shows complete helplessness. “His household creaked like an unoiled wheel, creaked like home-made furniture of raw wood.” Nothing worked out for Nikolai Petrovich: chores on the farm grew, relations with hired workers became unbearable, the peasants put on quitrent did not pay money on time, they stole the wood. Nikolai Petrovich cannot understand what is the reason for his economic failures. He also does not understand why Bazarov called him a "retired man."
In the ideological plan of the novel, the face of Nikolai Petrovich is determined by his reflections after the fight with the nihilists over evening tea: “... it seems to me that they are further from the truth than we are, but at the same time I feel that there is something behind them, what we don’t have, some kind of advantage over us ... Isn’t the advantage that they have fewer traces of nobility than us? ”,“ weak ”, more emotional than a brother.
The son of Nikolai Petrovich Arkady pretends to be a follower of Bazarov, before whom he revered at the university. But Arkady is just his imitator, a dependent person. The ostentatious desire to keep up with the times makes him repeat Bazarov’s thoughts that are completely alien to him, although the views of his father and uncle are much closer to Arkady. In his native estate, he gradually moves away from Bazarov, and acquaintance with Katya finally alienates Arkady. By definition, Bazarov, he is a gentle soul, a weakling. Bazarov is right in predicting to him that the energetic Katya, becoming his wife, will take everything into her own hands. In the epilogue of the novel, it is said that Arkady has become a zealous owner, and his farm is already generating significant income.
In the novel "Fathers and Sons" by the Kirsanov family, three characteristic types of the liberal noble intelligentsia are presented: Pavel Petrovich, who does not accept any changes, Nikolai Petrovich, who tries to keep up with the times, but all his innovations fail, and, finally, Arkady, who, having no ideas of his own, uses those of others, confirming the fact that the youth of the nobility ceased to play any significant role in the progressive social movement, taking advantage of what the raznochintsy created.
Reflections of I.S. Turgenev about the fate of the best among the Russian nobility underlie the novel "The Nest of Nobles" (1858). In this novel, the noble environment is presented in almost all of its states - from a provincial small estate to the ruling elite. Everything in noble morality Turgenev condemns at the very core. How unanimously in the house of Marya Dmitrievna Kalitina and in the whole "society" they condemn Varvara Pavlovna Lavretskaya for her adventures abroad, how they pity Lavretsky and, it seems, are about to help him. But as soon as Varvara Pavlovna appeared and put into play the charms of her stereotyped Cocotte charm, everyone - both Maria Dmitrievna and the entire provincial beau monde - were delighted with her.
This depraved creature, pernicious and distorted by the same noble morality, is quite to the taste of the highest noble environment. Panshin, who embodies "exemplary" noble morality, is presented by the author without sarcastic pressure. One can understand Liza, who for a long time could not properly determine her attitude towards Panshin and, in essence, did not resist Marya Dmitrievna's intention to marry her to Panshin. He is courteous, tactful, moderately educated, knows how to keep up a conversation, he is even interested in art: he is engaged in painting - but he always writes the same landscape, - composes music and poetry.
True, his giftedness is superficial; strong and deep experiences are simply inaccessible to him. The true artist Lemm saw this, but Lisa, perhaps, only vaguely guessed about it. And who knows how Lisa's fate would have turned out if it weren't for the dispute. In the composition of Turgenev's novels, ideological disputes always play a huge role. Usually in a dispute, either the plot of the novel is formed, or the struggle of the parties reaches a culminating intensity.
In The Nest of Nobles, the dispute between Panshin and Lavretsky about the people is of great importance. Turgenev later remarked that this was a dispute between a Westerner and a Slavophile. This characterization cannot be taken literally. The fact is that Panshin is a Westerner of a special kind, and Lavretsky is not an orthodox Slavophile. In his attitude towards the people, Lavretsky is most of all similar to Turgenev: he does not try to give the character of the Russian people some simple, easy-to-remember definition. Like Turgenev, he believes that before inventing and imposing recipes for organizing people's life, it is necessary to understand the character of the people, their morality, their true ideals.
Russian nobility in the novel "Fathers and children children".
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was a great playwright, an amazing publicist and a great prose writer. One of his best works - the novel "Fathers and Sons" - he wrote in 1860-1861, that is, during the period of the peasant reform. A fierce struggle divided Russian society into 2 irreconcilable camps: on the one side there were revolutionary democrats who believed that Russia needed a radical change in the state system, on the other - conservatives and liberals, in whose opinion the foundations of Russian life should have remained unchanged: landowners - with their land holdings, the peasants - in one way or another depending on their masters. The novel reflects the ideological struggle between the liberal nobility and revolutionary democracy, and the author sympathizes with the latter. “My whole story is directed against the nobility, as an advanced class,” wrote I.S. Turgenev in a letter to K. Sluchevsky. The characteristic types of nobles of this period are represented in the Kirsanov family. “Look into the faces of Nikolai Petrovich, Pavel Petrovich, Arkady. Weakness and lethargy or limitation. Aesthetic feeling forced me to take precisely good representatives of the nobility in order to prove my theme all the more correctly: if cream is bad, what about milk? The author chooses far from the worst representatives of conservatism and liberalism in order to emphasize even more clearly that the discussion will go on to fight not with bad people, but with obsolete social views and phenomena.
Pavel Petrovich is an intelligent and strong-willed person with certain personal virtues: he is honest, noble in his own way, faithful to the convictions learned in his youth. But at the same time, Pavel Kirsanov does not accept what is happening in the surrounding life. The firm principles that this man adheres to are in conflict with life: they are dead. Pavel Petrovich calls himself a person "who loves progress", but by this word he means admiration for everything English. Having gone abroad, he "knows more with the British", does not read anything Russian, although he has a silver ashtray in the form of a bast shoes on his table, which in fact exhausts his "connection with the people." This man has everything in the past, he has not yet grown old, but he already takes his death for granted during his lifetime ...
Outwardly, his brother is directly opposite to Pavel Petrovich. He is kind, gentle, sentimental. Unlike the idle Pavel, Nikolai tries to take care of the household, but at the same time shows complete helplessness. His "household creaked like an unlubricated wheel, cracked like home-made furniture of raw wood." Nikolai Petrovich cannot understand what is the reason for his failures. He also does not understand why Bazarov called him a "retired man." “It seems,” he says to his brother, “I am doing everything to keep up with the times: I arranged for peasants, started a farm ... I read, I study, in general I try to become up to date with modern requirements, - and they say that my song is sung. Why, brother, I myself begin to think that it is definitely sung.
Despite all the efforts of Nikolai Petrovich to be modern, his whole figure evokes in the reader a feeling of something outdated. This is facilitated by the author's description of his appearance: “chubby; sits with legs bent under him. His good-natured, patriarchal appearance contrasts sharply with the picture of peasant need: "... the peasants met all shabby, in bad nags ..."
The Kirsanov brothers are people of the finally established type. Life has passed them by, and they are not able to change anything; they obediently, albeit with impotent despair, submit to the will of circumstances.
Arkady pretends to be a follower of Bazarov, whom he revered at the university. But in fact, he is only an imitator, that is, a person is not independent. That is repeatedly emphasized in the novel. The ostentatious desire to keep up with the times makes him repeat Bazarov’s thoughts that are completely alien to him; the feelings and views of his father and uncle are much closer to him. In his native estate, Arkady gradually moves away from Eugene. Acquaintance with Katya Lokteva finally alienates the two friends. Subsequently, the younger Kirsanov becomes a more practical master than his father, but his master's well-being means spiritual death.
The nobles Kirsanov are opposed to the nihilist Yevgeny Bazarov. He is the force that can break the old life. Exposing social antagonism in the disputes between Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich, Turgenev shows that the relations between generations here are wider and more complicated than the confrontation of social groups. In the verbal battle between Kirsanov and Bazarov, the inconsistency of the noble foundations is exposed, but there is a certain rightness in the position of the “fathers”, who defend their views in disputes with young people.
Pavel Petrovich is wrong when he clings to his class privileges, to his speculative idea of the life of the people. But perhaps he is right in defending what should remain unshakable in human society. Bazarov does not notice that Pavel Petrovich's conservatism is not always and not in everything self-serving, that there is some truth in his reasoning about the house, about the principles born of certain cultural and historical experience. In disputes, everyone resorts to the use of "opposite common places." Kirsanov talks about the need to follow authorities and believe in them, insists on the need to follow principles, while Bazarov rejects all this. There is a lot of caustic truth in Bazarov's ridicule of noble forms of progress. It's funny when the nobility's claims to progressiveness are limited to the acquisition of English washstands. Pavel Petrovich argues that life with its ready-made, historically established forms can be smarter than any person, more powerful than an individual, but this trust needs to be checked for compliance with an ever-renewing life. The emphatically aristocratic manners of Pavel Kirsanov are rather caused by inner weakness, a secret consciousness of his inferiority. The efforts of the father and son of the Kirsanovs, who are trying to prevent the escalating conflict, only increase the drama of the situation.
Using the example of several bright characters, Turgenev managed to describe the entire noble world and show its problem of that time. In the middle of the 19th century, it stood at a crossroads, not knowing how to develop further, and Ivan Sergeevich very colorfully described this state.
Municipal educational institution
“Secondary school with advanced
the study of individual subjects No. 7 named after A.S. Pushkin".
(According to the novel by I.S. Turgenev “The Nest of Nobles”)
Completed by a student of grade 11b
Smirnov A.
Checked by Sorokina L.I.
1. Introduction…………………………………………………….…………….. 4
2. Complicated “fifties”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
3. Heroes of the “Noble Nest”……..………………………….…….. 10
Fyodor Lavretsky………………………………………………….…… 10
Westerner Panshin………………………………….…………………... 12
Mikhalevich and Lavretsky ……………………………………………….. 13
Lisa Kalitina………………………………………………………….. 13
Lisa and Fedor, music and her role in the disclosure of their relationship ........................................................................
Epistle of Lavretsky to descendants ……..………….…………………… 17
“Why is there such a sad chord at the end of the novel?” .............................................. 19
The moment of Turgenev's life turning point…………………………... 20
4. Analysis of Turgenev's work in the 1850s …………………. 22
5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………..... 30
6. Bibliography…………..………………………………………... 32
Introduction
Before turning to the text of The Nest of Nobles, let's think about why Turgenev decided to write this work. Let us mentally fast-forward to the year 1858, far from us, which became so fateful for the writer.
So, returning in June 1858 to Russia from abroad, Ivan Sergeevich stayed for a short time in St. Petersburg. In the restaurant, the painter Alexander Ivanov, who returned to his homeland, was honored, who brought the brainchild of his life - the painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People”. The dinner was attended by many of the members of the editorial board of Sovremennik, headed by Nekrasov. There was a lively conversation about new plans in the publication of the magazine. Nekrasov believed that the important events that were taking place in Russia required a clearer social position from Sovremennik in the struggle that flared up around the reform. But Turgenev did not yet feel the internal divisions that arose in his absence among the liberal and revolutionary-democratic groups in the editorial office of the journal. Obsessed with the idea of the union and unity of all anti-serfdom forces, he was agitated by something else: reaction was raising its head. The liberal-minded educators of the heir to the throne, V.P. Titov and K.D. Kavelin, were removed from the court. G. A. Shcherbatov resigned at the Ministry of Public Education.
The reaction raises its voice - that's what's scary, Nekrasov. I was told in Paris what a speech the Minister of Education Kovalevsky recently made to you, the editors: “I, they say, am old and cannot fight with obstacles, they will only kick me out - it can be worse for you, gentlemen.” He begged you to be extremely careful, didn't he?
You exaggerate the danger of the conservative party, Ivan Sergeevich. You shouldn't be afraid of them, - answered Nekrasov.
I think so too. No matter what they do, the stone rolled downhill - and it is impossible to keep it. But still, all the same ... Alexander Nikolayevich is surrounded by just such people and, perhaps, even worse than we think. In such circumstances, we all need to hold hands tightly and tightly, and not engage in squabbles and petty disagreements, - Turgenev finished instructively and turned the conversation to a question that had long worried him: - By the way, finally tell me who Laibov is, whose articles in Sovremennik, despite its one-linearity and dryness, do they breathe with the sincere strength of a young, ardent conviction? I read with interest his article on "Interlocutor of Lovers of the Russian Word": only a penetrating mind could so easily draw a lesson useful for the present from the events of the past. This is how the late Granovsky was able to talk about history.
This young man is a godsend for the magazine. Chernyshevsky invited him to cooperate. This is Nikolai Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov, a young man, a native of the clergy. I am sure that getting to know him will give you real pleasure, - Nekrasov said hastily and enthusiastically.
I will be glad to meet him. But here's what worries me, Nikolai Alekseevich: isn't our journal taking on a too one-sided and rather dry character? I respect Chernyshevsky for his erudition and intelligence, for the firmness of his convictions. But how far is he from Belinsky, who taught with his articles to understand real art, brought up in his contemporaries an exacting aesthetic taste! We've lost it all lately. In Florence I met Apollon-Grigoriev and, like a boy, spent whole nights talking and arguing with him. He; of course, he falls into Slavophile extremes, and this is his misfortune. But what energy, what temperament! And, most importantly, what an aesthetic taste, flair, nobility, readiness for self-sacrifice in the name of a lofty ideal. He vividly reminded me of the late Belinsky. Why don't we involve him in cooperation in the magazine? His articles would have balanced the critical department, brought liveliness and aesthetic brilliance. They would have served as an excellent complement to Chernyshevsky's clever but rather dry work. Really, think, Nekrasov. Did Botkin write to you? Think. And when I return from Spassky in the autumn, we will discuss everything in detail. The question is so important that haste can only hurt. We need now to unite in the fight against a common enemy, which, alas, is insidious and many-sided. In Paris, I was at a dinner with our envoy Kiselyov. All the Russians were present there, except for one ... It was the Frenchman Gekkeren ... Yes, yes! the same Dantes! The killer of our Pushkin. He is the favorite of Louis Napoleon, the new French Caesar. But what is our dignitary's contempt for Russian culture and the Russian people! Here it is, the face of our court aristocracy surrounding the sovereign, here are our true enemies, Nekrasov ...
Turgenev was in a hurry to return to his homeland in the hope of finding elections to the provincial committee on peasant affairs there in full swing. It was important to influence the local nobility, to ensure that worthy, liberal-minded people got into the committee. The very next day after his arrival in Spasskoye, he went to Orel, but, to his great annoyance, he was late for the committee elections: retarded."
The city brought back vague memories of childhood. Wandering along the familiar green streets, he came to the steep bank of the Orlik. A wooden nobleman's mansion completed a deaf street immersed in gardens. Turgenev went into the courtyard and plunged into the silence of a huge garden. Tall linden trees stood in it like a solid green wall, here and there thickets of lilacs, elders, and hazels grew green. “The bright day was fading into evening, small pink clouds stood high in the sky and, it seemed, did not float past, but went into the very depths of the azure,” the first lines of “The Noble Nest” formed in Turgenev’s mind. “In front of the open window of a beautiful house in one of the extreme streets of the provincial town of O., two women were sitting ...”
Then there was a three-day meeting with Maria Nikolaevna Tolstaya in Yasnaya Polyana, which stirred up old, faded dreams of happiness ...
And then he, together with A. A. Fet, went to his estate Topki - to hunt, and at the same time, according to Turgenev, to solve the peasant question on the spot.
A sharply topical writer, a writer irreconcilable to the main enemy of Russian life of that era, Ivan Sergeevich, like most writers of his contemporaries, entered into battle with this problem with the weapon of the artistic word. And this word of Russian literature broke the enemy, in any case decisively contributed to the victory over him. Turgenev wrote in Literary and Everyday Memoirs (1868): “Serfdom is a yoke, hardly less cruel than the Tatar-Mongolian, according to the just remark of a well-known thinker, a Decembrist (he was sentenced to death in absentia), Nikolai Ivanovich Turgenev , was the lot of only a Russian person. According to the laws of tsarism, “every nobleman, no matter who he is by nationality - an Englishman, Frenchman, German, Italian, as well as a Tatar, Armenian, Indian, can have serfs, under the exceptional condition that they be Russian. If any American came to Russia with a black slave, then, having set foot on Russian soil, the slave would become free. Thus, concludes N. Turgenev, slavery is the privilege of only the Russian people.”
Naturally, he did not limit himself to this, but went further: he began to solve the problems of the peasants in his estate Fet later recalled that the abandoned estate of Lavretsky Vasilyevsky exactly corresponded to Turgenev's Topki.
The peasants appeared in the morning, and Fet witnessed Turgenev's economic orders. “Beautiful and, apparently, well-to-do peasants without hats surrounded the porch on which he stood and, partly turning to the wall, scratched it with his fingernail. Some peasant deftly told Ivan Sergeevich about the lack of taxable land and asked for an increase in it. No sooner had Ivan Sergeevich promised the peasant the land he was asking for, than everyone made such urgent requests, and the matter ended with the distribution of all the land of the lords to the peasants.
This behavior of the writer can not be called surprising. One of the distinguishing features of Turgenev's multifaceted talent is a sense of the new, the ability to capture emerging trends, problems and types of social reality, many of which have become the embodiment of historically significant phenomena. Many writers and critics drew attention to this feature of his talent - Belinsky, Nekrasov, L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. “We can boldly say,” Dobrolyubov wrote, “that even if Mr. Turgenev touched on any issue in his story, if he depicted any side of social relations, then this serves as a guarantee that this issue is really being raised or will be raised. soon in the consciousness of an educated society that this new side of life begins to emerge and will soon show itself brightly before the eyes of all. Therefore, Turgenev always tried to become the number one example for others, including in the peasant question.
The writer left Topki with a sense of accomplishment. But the liberal boss of Spassky did not know that his orders were being turned into a dishonest game by the efforts of the uncle manager, according to the proverb: "Whatever the child amuses, if only he does not cry."
Fet gives one of the examples of the conversation between the uncle-manager and the peasants of the same village of Topki:
“I ask two rich peasants who have a lot of their purchased land: “How are you, Yefim, not ashamed to ask?” - “Why shouldn’t I ask? I hear they give others, why am I worse?”.
Museum Estate Spasskoe-Lutovinovo
At this time, Turgenev wrote to his friends in Paris from Spassky: “Together with my uncle, I am engaged in organizing my relations with the peasants: from autumn they will all be transferred to dues, that is, I will give them half the land for an annual rent, and I myself will land will hire workers. It will only be a transitional state, pending the decision of the committees; but nothing final can be done until then.
Turgenev traveled to Tula in order to help Prince Cherkassky push liberal candidates in the noble elections to the provincial committee. There he "argued a lot, talked, shouted," and returning to Spasskoye, he again went to Orel to attend meetings of the newly elected provincial committee on peasant affairs.
Turgenev lived such an intense, active life for the first time. He felt himself to be one of the leaders of the progressive party, one of the founders of a great historical cause. Of course, he had every moral right to do this, he saw it as his sacred duty. Finally, the hopes and dreams of his youth came true with his own eyes, and the younger friend and, to a certain extent, the student of Maupassant, explaining to the European public the significance of the work of I. S. Turgenev, told that at one of the banquets in memory of the abolition of serfdom, Minister Milyutin, “Proclaiming a toast to Turgenev, he said to him: “The Tsar specifically instructed me to tell you, dear sir, that one of the reasons that most prompted him to free the serfs was your book, Notes of a Hunter.
Yes, we remember the whole gallery of feudal landlords created by Turgenev, serf owners, sometimes even sophisticatedly educated, but still considering the peasants subject to them, who make up the overwhelming majority of the nation, as their “baptized property”. We also remember the impressive figures of Russian peasants - the same ones who, after all, quite recently saved the Fatherland in the war of the 12th from the invasion of "twelve languages", amazing shocked Europe with the greatness of the spirit, the inflexibility of unspent power - heroes, bent, suppressed by the internal enemy - serfdom . In living, full-blooded images, Turgenev showed Russia and the world what the serfdom of heroes turns into. But the main, persuasive power of his artistic weapon was still in something else. As Leo Tolstoy accurately noted, the essential significance and merit of the same "Notes of a Hunter" primarily lies in the fact that Turgenev "managed in the era of serfdom to illuminate peasant life and set off its poetic sides", in what he found in the Russian common people "more good than bad."
Complicated "fifties"
As you must have understood by now, in the 1950s a number of articles and reviews appeared in Sovremennik, defending the principles of materialist philosophy and exposing the groundlessness and flabbiness of Russian liberalism; satirical literature ("Spark", "Whistle") is widely used. Turgenev does not like these new trends, and he seeks to oppose them with something else, purely aesthetic. He writes a number of stories, which were to some extent the antithesis of Gogol's direction of literature, covering in them mainly intimate, psychological topics. Most of them touch upon the problems of happiness and duty, and the motive of the impossibility of personal happiness for a deeply and subtly feeling person in the conditions of Russian reality is brought to the fore (“Calm”, 1854; “Faust”, 1856; “Asya”, 1858; “First Love ", 1860). The motif of the insignificance of all social and everyday concerns of a person in front of the omnipotent and indifferent to everything nature (“Journey to Polissya”, 1857) clearly sounds in these years in the work of Turgenev. The stories interpret moral and aesthetic problems and are fanned with soft and sad lyricism. They bring the writer close to the problems of the new novel - "The Nest of Nobles".
Closest to the "Nest of Nobles" is the story "Faust", written in epistolary form. The epigraph to the story Turgenev put the words of Goethe: "You must renounce yourself." The idea that happiness in our life is transient and that a person should think not about happiness, but about his duty, pervades all nine letters of Faust. The author, together with his heroine, asserts: “there is nothing to think about happiness; it does not come - why chase after it! It is like health: when you do not notice it, it means that it is there.” At the end of the story, the author comes to a very sad conclusion: “Life is not a joke or fun, life is not even pleasure ... life is hard work. Renunciation, constant renunciation - this is its secret meaning, its solution: not the fulfillment of beloved thoughts and dreams, no matter how lofty they may be - the fulfillment of duty, this is what a person should take care of; without putting chains on himself, the iron chains of duty, he cannot reach the end of his career without falling; and in youth we think: the freer the better; the further you go. Youth is allowed to think so; but it is a shame to take pleasure in deceit when the stern face of truth finally looked into your eyes.
A similar motif sounds in the story "Asya". Turgenev explains the reason for the unfulfilled happiness in this story by the inconsistency of the “superfluous person”, the weak-willed noble Romeo, who gives in to love and shamefully capitulates at the decisive moment of explanation. N. G. Chernyshevsky, in his article “A Russian Man on a Raven-Vois” (“Ateney”, 1858), revealed the social essence of Turgenev’s hero’s lack of will, showed that his personal bankruptcy is an expression of the beginning social bankruptcy.
The writer's pessimistic thoughts about life left their mark on the story "A Trip to Polissya", which was originally conceived as another hunting essay. In this story, Turgenev writes about the relationship of man to nature. The majestic and beautiful nature, which the artist sang in such bright colors and so penetratingly in his early work, in “A Trip to Polissya” turns into a cold and terrible “eternal Isis”, hostile to man: “It is difficult for a person, a creature of one day, born yesterday and already today, doomed to death, it is difficult for him to endure the cold, indifferent gaze of eternal Isis fixed on him; not only the bold hopes and dreams of youth are humbled and extinguished in him, engulfed in the icy breath of the elements; no - his whole soul droops and freezes; he feels that the last of his brothers may disappear from the face of the earth - and not a single needle will falter on these branches.
Heroes of the Noble Nest
In 1858, the novel "The Nest of Nobles" was written and published in the first book of Sovremennik in 1859. This work is distinguished by the classical simplicity of the plot and at the same time by the deep development of characters, which D. Pisarev drew attention to, naming in his reviews Turgenev's novel "the most slender and most complete of his creations". In the novel Rudin, written in 1856, there was a spirit of discussion. The local heroes solved philosophical questions, the truth was born in them in a dispute.
But the heroes of the "Noble Nest" are restrained and laconic. Their inner life is no less intense, and the work of thought is carried out tirelessly in search of truth - only almost without words. They peer, listen, ponder the life around them and their own, with a desire to understand it.
Fyodor Lavretsky
The protagonist of the novel, Fyodor Lavretsky, comes from an old, well-born nobility. What does the character's name tell the reader? Turgenev does not accidentally call him Fedor. This name means "God's gift". The hero was named in honor of one of the holy martyrs Feodor Stratilat, one of the favorite among the Russian people (9th chapter). We can say that the image of Lavretsky carries a temporary beginning. Turgenev emphasizes that Lavretsky's ancestors were cut off from their native national soil, did not understand the people and did not seek to know their needs and interests. It seemed to them that they comprehended a high culture when they communicate with representatives of the aristocracy abroad. But all the theories that they read and amateurishly assimilated from the books of Western philosophers and public figures were inapplicable to Russian feudal reality. Calling themselves "aristocrats of the spirit," these people read the works of Voltaire and Diderot, worshiped Epizhur and talked about lofty matters, pretended to be champions of enlightenment and apostles of progress. But at the same time, despotism and petty tyranny dominated their estates: the beating of peasants, the inhuman treatment of servants, depravity, and the humiliation of courtyards.
A typical "civilized" gentleman was Fyodor Lavretsky's father, Ivan Petrovich, who wanted to see in his Fyodor a "son of nature." A supporter of Spartan education, he ordered to wake up his son at four in the morning, pour cold water on him, ordered him to run around a pole on a rope, eat once a day, and ride a horse. In order to maintain secular chic and to please accepted customs, he forced Fyodor to dress in Scottish style, to study, on the advice of Rousseau, international law and mathematics, and to maintain chivalrous feelings, to study heraldry.
Such an ugly upbringing could spiritually cripple a young man. However, this did not happen. Thoughtful, sober and practically thinking, receptive to everything natural, Fyodor quickly felt the harm of this glaring gap between true life, from which he was artificially fenced off, and bookish philosophy, which he was fed daily. Trying to overcome this gap between theory and practice, between word and deed, he painfully searched for new ways of life. Unlike his ancestors, contrary to the educational system of his father, he sought to get closer to the people, he wanted to work himself. But he was not accustomed to work and knew little of the real conditions of Russian reality. And yet, despite this, Lavretsky, unlike his contemporary Rudin, "demanded, first of all, the recognition of the people's truth and humility before it." In disputes with Panshin, Lavretsky brings this question to the fore. Defending the independence of Russia's development and calling to know and love his native land, Lavretsky sharply criticizes the extremes of Panshin's Westernizing theories. When Panshin asks Lavretsky: “Here you are, returned to Russia - what are you going to do?” Lavretsky proudly replies: “Plow the land and try to plow it as best as possible”
Westerner Panshin
Turgenev made Lavretsky's opponent one of the worst Westernizers - Panshin, who kowtowed before Europe, the symbol of which can be considered Russian by origin, but French at heart, Varvara Pavlovna Lavretskaya. “He was aware that Varvara Pavlovna, as a real, foreign lioness, stood above him, and therefore he did not completely control himself.” A careerist and poseur, a man who “where necessary - respectful, where possible - impudent”, on occasion loving “to use a German phrase, drawing his knowledge from popular French pamphlets, this 27-year-old chamber junker calls Lavretsky a backward conservative, pompously declares: “Russia has lagged behind Europe; you need to adjust it”, “we didn’t even invent mousetraps”.
Turgenev in "Literary and everyday memories", speaking of his belonging to the Westerners, at the same time wrote: "However, I, despite this, with particular pleasure brought out in the person of Panshin (in the "Noble Nest") all the comic and vulgar aspects of Westernism ".
It is no coincidence that Lavretsky emerges victorious from the dispute with Panshin. The old woman Marfa Timofeevna, rejoicing at Fyodor's victory, tells him: "I beat the smart guy, thanks." Liza, who followed the dispute closely, "was all on Lavretsky's side."
In the image of Panshin, Turgenev sharply criticized not only Westernism, but also noble dilettantism. An egoist, a man without definite convictions, smugly believing in his giftedness, cheeky, showing off in front of everyone and in front of himself, Panshin, according to the just remark of Pisarev, combines the features of Molchalin and Chichikov, with the only difference that he is “more decent than both of them and incomparably smarter than the first. Playing out of himself now a statesman, now an artist and artist, ranting about Shakespeare and Beethoven, this mediocre official, in essence, did not go far from Molchalin and Chichikov.
Having created the image of Panshin, Turgenev was more critical than Goncharov, since he realistically showed that it is not the smart and sensible Stoltz and Peter Aduevs who are formed in the public service, in departments, presences and offices, but empty, cold and barren Panshin - people who do not having strong convictions, not striving for anything but a high rank, a secure position and a “brilliant” marital party.
Mikhalevich and Lavretsky
If in disputes with the Westerner Panshin Lavretsky wins, revealing positive traits, and the author's sympathies are on his side, then the same cannot be said about Lavretsky's disputes with his fellow university enthusiast Mikhalevich. Ardent and enthusiastic, prone, like Rudin, to general reasoning, Mikhalevich criticizes Lavretsky for idleness and "gaybachism", for aristocracy, that is, for those qualities that were inherited from their ancestors and were negative components in Lavretsky's character. “You are a bastard,” Mikhalevich says to Lavretsky, “and you are a malicious bastard, a bastard with consciousness, not a naive bastard,” “all your brethren are well-read bastards.” Of course, the idealist Mikhalevich is somewhat fond of criticism, because one can hardly call Fyodor Lavretsky a malicious "bullshit". However, justice requires recognizing that there are traits of laziness and buffoonery, to some extent bringing Lavretsky closer to Oblomov, in him. Oblomov, like Lavretsky, is endowed with excellent spiritual qualities: kindness, meekness, nobility. He does not want and cannot participate in the fuss of the surrounding unfair life. However, Oblomov, like Lavretsky, has no business of his own. Inaction is a tragedy. Oblomov's name has become a household name when referring to a person who is completely incapable of any practical activity. Oblomovism is also strong in Lavretsky. This was also noted by Dobrolyubov.
"The Nest of Nobles" bears a clear reflection of Slavophile ideas. The Slavophiles considered the traits embodied in the characters of the main characters to be an expression of the eternal and unchanging essence of the Russian character. But Turgenev, obviously, could not consider these personality traits of his hero sufficient for life. “As an activist, he is zero” - this is what bothered the author most of all in Lavretsky. The problem of the active principle in man is an acute problem for the writer himself and a topical one both for him and for our era. Therefore, the novel is also interesting to the modern reader.
Along with deep and topical ideological disputes, the novel illuminates the ethical problem of the collision of personal happiness and duty, which is revealed through the relationship between Lavretsky and Lisa, which is the core of the plot of The Noble Nest.
Liza Kalitina
The image of Lisa Kalitina is a huge poetic achievement of Turgenev the artist. Her name means "worshiping God." The heroine, by her behavior, fully justifies its significance. A girl with a natural mind, a subtle feeling, integrity of character and moral responsibility for her actions, Lisa is full of great moral purity,
goodwill towards people; she is demanding
yourself, in difficult moments of life is capable of
self-sacrifice.
Many of these character traits bring Lisa closer to
Pushkinskaya Tatyana, which she repeatedly noted
modern criticism of Turgenev. Brings you even closer
her with the favorite of the great poet the fact that she
brought up under the influence of her nanny, Agafya,
for the girl had no intimacy with either
parents, nor with a French governess.
The story of Agafya, who twice in her life was marked by lordly attention, who twice suffered disgrace and resigned herself to fate, could make up a whole story. The author introduced the story of Agafya on the advice of the critic Annenkov - otherwise, according to the latter, the end of the novel, Liza's departure to the monastery, was incomprehensible. Turgenev showed how, under the influence of Agafya's severe asceticism and the peculiar poetry of her speeches, Lisa's strict spiritual world was formed. The religious humility of Agafya brought up in Liza the beginning of forgiveness, resignation to fate and self-denial of happiness. Yes, Liza was brought up in religious traditions, but she is attracted not by religious dogmas, but by the preaching of justice, love for people, willingness to suffer for others, accept someone else's guilt, make sacrifices if necessary.
What is most interesting, nothing was more alien to Turgenev by nature than religious self-denial, the rejection of human joys. Turgenev was inherent in the ability to enjoy life in its most diverse manifestations. He subtly feels beauty, feels joy both from the natural beauty of nature and from exquisite creations of art. But most of all he knew how to feel and convey the beauty of the human person, if not close to him, but whole and perfect. And therefore, the image of Lisa is fanned with such tenderness. That is why Lisa is one of those heroines of Russian literature who find it easier to give up personal happiness than to cause suffering to another person. Happiness is not only in the pleasures of love, but in the highest harmony of the spirit. The natural and the moral in man are often in antagonistic conflict. Moral feat - in self-sacrifice. Fulfilling duty, a person acquires moral freedom. These words are the key to the image of Lisa Kalitina.
Liza retains her naturally lively mind, cordiality, love for beauty and - most importantly - love for the simple Russian people and a sense of her blood connection with them. “It never occurred to Lisa,” writes Turgenev, “that she is a patriot; but she liked the Russian people; the Russian mindset pleased her; she, without respect, talked for hours with the headman of her mother's estate when he came to the city, and talked with him, as with an equal, without any lordly indulgence. This healthy, natural and invigorating principle, combined with other positive qualities of Lisa, was already felt by Lavretsky at the first meeting with her.
Returning from abroad after a break with his wife, Lavretsky had lost faith in the purity of human relations, in women's love, in the possibility of personal happiness. However, communication with Lisa gradually resurrects his former faith in everything pure and beautiful. At first, without yet realizing to himself his feelings for Liza, Lavretsky wishes her happiness. Wise with his sad life experience, he inspires her that personal happiness is above all, that life without happiness becomes gray,
dull, unbearable. He urges Lisa to seek
personal happiness and regrets that for him this
the opportunity has already been lost.
Then, realizing that he deeply loves Lisa, and
seeing that their mutual understanding every day
grows, Lavretsky begins to dream of
opportunities for personal happiness and for yourself.
Sudden news of the death of Varvara Pavlovna
stirred him up, inspired him with hope for
the possibility of a life change.
Turgenev does not trace in detail the emergence of spiritual closeness between Liza and Lavretsky. But he finds other means of conveying the rapidly growing and strengthening feeling. The history of the relationship between Lisa and Lavretsky is revealed in their dialogues and with the help of subtle psychological observations and hints of the author.
Lisa and Fedor, music and its role in revealing their relationship
An important role in the poeticization of these relationships and the relationships of other people is played by the music of Lemma.
Old man Lemm is not without reason a German by nationality, this is a reference to German romantic culture. Lemm is an aged romantic, his fate reproduces the milestones of the path of a romantic hero, but the frame in which she is placed - the gloomy Russian reality would definitely turn everything inside out. A lone wanderer, an involuntary exile, dreaming all his life of returning to his homeland, having fallen into the unromantic space of “hated” Russia, turns into a loser and unfortunate. The only thread that connects him with the world of the sublime is music. Music also becomes the ground for Lemm's rapprochement with Lavretsky. Lavretsky shows interest in Lemm, his work, and Lemm reveals himself to him, as if orchestrating Lavretsky's spiritual life, translating it into the language of music. Everything that happens to Lavretsky is understandable to Lemm, since he himself is secretly in love with Liza. Lemm composes a cantata for Liza, writes a romance about “love and stars” and, finally, creates an inspired composition, which Lavretsky plays on the night of his meeting with Liza.
“For a long time Lavretsky had not heard anything like this:
sweet, passionate melody from the first sound
embraced the heart; she was all beaming, all languished
inspiration, happiness, beauty, she grew and
melted; she touched everything on earth
dear, secret, holy...” Sounds of a new
music Lemma breathe love - Lemma to Lisa,
Lavretsky to Lisa, Lisa to Lavretsky, all
everyone. Unfold to her accompaniment
the best movements of Lavretsky's soul; on the background
music, poetic explanations occur
heroes. As it is not paradoxical, lemme, being on
German nationality, was more Russian than
wife of Fyodor Lavretsky. It was only thanks to this that he managed to write such wonderful music, coming from the depths of his ageless soul.
For Varvara Pavlovna, music is an easy game, a necessary means of seduction and self-expression for an artistic nature. Turgenev deliberately uses eloquent and unambiguous characteristics of the heroine's playing and singing: “an amazing virtuoso”; “briskly ran her fingers over the keys”; “masterfully played the brilliant and difficult etude of Hertz. She had a lot of strength and agility”; “suddenly a noisy Straussian waltz began to play in the very middle of the waltz, she suddenly turned into a sad motive ... She realized that cheerful music would not suit her position.” "Varvara Pavlovna's voice had lost its freshness, but she owned it very deftly." She “coquettishly” said “French Ariette”.
With no less irony, the “amateur” (by Lemma’s definition) Panshin is characterized by his attitude to music. Even in the 4th chapter, the author writes about Panshin's "stormy accompaniment" to himself when he performs his own
romance, about how he sighed while singing,
show how hard it is
endure the unrequited feeling of love for Lisa.
Next to Varvara Pavlovna, it is important to show
himself a true artist, and he “at first was shy and
slightly out of tune, then got excited, and if
sang not perfectly, then moved his shoulders,
shook his whole body and lifted
sometimes a hand like a real singer.”
But let us return to Lavretsky. Glittering for
his hope was illusory: the news of
wife's death turned out to be false. And life with
with its inexorable logic, with its own laws, it destroyed the bright illusions of Lavretsky. The arrival of his wife put the hero in front of a dilemma: happiness with Lisa or duty towards his wife and child.
Nevertheless, some disturbing forebodings forced Turgenev, in parallel with a stormy, active life, to compose the elegiacly sad pages of The Noble Nest in a secluded office. Reflecting on the history of the life of the Lavretsky "nest", Turgenev sharply criticizes the groundlessness of the nobility, the isolation of this class from their native culture, from Russian roots, from the people. There is a fear that this groundlessness can cause Russia many troubles. In modern conditions, it gives rise to self-satisfied Western bureaucrats, as it is in Panshin's novel. For the Panshins, Russia is a wasteland where any social and economic experiments can be carried out. Through the mouth of Lavretsky, Turgenev smashes the extreme Western liberals on all points of their main cosmopolitan programs. He warns against the danger of "arrogant alterations" of Russia from the "height of bureaucratic self-consciousness", speaks of the catastrophic consequences of those reforms that "are not justified either by knowledge of their native land, or by faith in an ideal."
The "Nest of Nobles" for the first time embodied the ideal image of Turgenev's Russia, covertly polemical in relation to the extremes of liberal Westernism and revolutionary maximalism. To match the Russian stately and unhurried life, flowing inaudibly, “like water over marsh grasses,” are the best of the nobles and peasants who grew up on its soil.
In the article “When will the real day come?” Dobrolyubov pointed out that Lavretsky, having fallen in love with Lisa, “a pure, bright being, brought up in such concepts in which love for a married person is a terrible crime,” was objectively placed in such conditions when he could not take a free step. Firstly, because he felt morally obligated to his wife, and secondly, this would mean acting contrary to the views of the girl he loved, going against all norms of public morality, traditions, and law. He was forced to submit to sad but inexorable circumstances. Dobrolyubov saw the drama of Lavretsky's situation "not in the struggle with his own impotence, but in the clash with such concepts and morals, with which the struggle should really frighten even an energetic and courageous person."
Epistle of Lavretsky to descendants
Recognizing the impossibility of personal happiness, at the end of the novel Lavretsky sadly addresses the younger generation: “Play, have fun, grow, young forces,” he thought, and there was no bitterness in his thoughts, “you have your life ahead, and it will be easier for you to live: you do not have to, like us, find your way, fight, fall and rise in the midst of darkness; we fussed about how to survive - and how many of us did not survive! - and you need to do business, work, and the blessing of our brother, the old man, will be with you. And after today, after these sensations, it remains for me to give you my last bow - “and although with sadness, but without envy, without any dark feelings, say, in view of the end, in view of the awaiting God: “Hello, lonely old age! Burn down, useless life! Turgenev thus shows that his hero, despite all his sincere attempts to be active, at the end of the novel is forced to admit his complete uselessness. Lavretsky sends his blessing to the younger generation, believing that it is the youth who have to "do the work, work", and gives "themselves, their generation for sacrifice" in the name of new people, in the name of their convictions. Lavretsky's self-restraint was also expressed in the comprehension of his own life goal: "to plow the land", that is, slowly, but thoroughly, without loud phrases and excessive claims to transform reality. Only in this way, according to the writer, it is possible to achieve a change in the entire social and political life in Russia. Therefore, he connected his main hopes primarily with inconspicuous "plowmen", such as Lezhnev ("Rudin"), in later novels - Litvinov ("Smoke"), Solomin ("Nov"). The most significant figure in this series was Lavretsky, who bound himself with "iron chains of duty."
In the era of the 60s, such an ending was perceived as Turgenev's farewell to the noble period of Russian history. And in the "young forces" they saw new people, raznochintsy, who are replacing the heroes of the nobility.
And so it happened. Already in "On the Eve" the hero of the day was not a nobleman, but the Bulgarian revolutionary raznochinets Insarov.
"The Nest of Nobles" was the biggest success that has ever fallen to the lot of Turgenev's works. According to P. V. Annenkov, this novel was the first time “people of different parties came together in one common sentence; representatives of different systems and views shook hands with each other and expressed the same opinion. The novel was a signal of universal reconciliation."
However, this reconciliation, most likely, resembled the calm before the storm that arose over the "Eve" and reached its climax in the disputes over the "Fathers and Sons".
“Why such a sad chord at the end of the novel?”
Why such a sad chord at the end of the novel?
Chernyshevsky, in his article "The Russian Man on the Ravens" regarded the fiasco of the hero of the story "Asya" as a reflection of his social failure. The critic argued that the liberals of the 1940s did not have that determination and readiness to fight, that willpower that was necessary for the reorganization of life. Chernyshevsky's point of view, as is known, was continued in a number of articles by Dobrolyubov ("What is Oblomovism?", "When will the real day come?", etc.), which criticized the inability of Russian noblemen-liberals to move history forward, to resolve pressing social issues and, finally, the propensity of a certain part of the noble intelligentsia to apathy, inertia, hibernation.
In the light of Chernyshevsky's article about "Ace", the finale of "The Nest of Nobles" should also be considered: Lavretsky expresses sad thoughts at the end of the novel, primarily because he is experiencing great personal grief. But why such a broad generalization: "Burn out, useless life!"? Why such pessimism? The collapse of Lavretsky's illusions, the impossibility for him of personal happiness, are, as it were, a reflection of the social collapse that the nobility experienced during these years. Thus, Turgenev invested great political and concrete historical meaning in resolving this ethical problem.
Despite his sympathies for the liberal nobility, Turgenev depicted the truth of life. With this novel, the writer, as it were, summed up the period of his work, marked by the search for a positive hero among the nobility, showed that the "golden age" of the nobility is a thing of the past. But this is only one side of the coin.
The moment of Turgenev's life turning point
Let's look at it a little differently, because there is something more hidden here than a simple analysis of reality. Lavretsky in Vasilyevsky "as if listening to the flow of the quiet life that surrounded him." For Turgenev, as well as for N.A. Nekrasov, not without whose attention this image appears in the novel, the silence of folk life is “not a precursor to sleep. / The sun of truth shines in her eyes, / And she thinks a thought ”(poem“ Silence ”).
It is no coincidence that the hero exclaims: “And what strength is all around, what health is in this inactive silence!”
The image of silence is associated with the humility of the hero before the people's life and the people's truth. Silence for him is the result of self-denial, the rejection of all selfish thoughts. This is seen as Turgenev's closeness to the Slavophiles, for whom silence is “inner stillness of the spirit”, “higher spiritual beauty”, “internal moral activity”.
Pauline Viardot. Watercolor by artist P. Sokolov. 1843
At the decisive moment, Lavretsky again and again "began to look into his own life." The time has come for personal responsibility, responsibility for oneself alone, the time of life not rooted in the tradition and history of one's own kind, the time when one must "do business." At forty-five, Lavretsky felt like a deep old man, not only because there were other ideas about age in the 19th century, but also because the Lavretskys must forever leave the historical stage. The poetry of contemplation of life emanates from the "Noble Nest". Of course, the personal mood of Turgenev in 1856-1858 affected the tone of this Turgenev novel. Turgenev's contemplation of the novel coincided with a turning point in his life, with a mental crisis. Turgenev was then about forty years old. But it is known that the feeling of aging came to him very early, and now he is already saying that "not only the first and second - the third youth has passed." He has a sad consciousness that life did not work out, that it is too late to count on happiness for himself, that the "time of flowering" has passed. Far from the beloved woman - Pauline Viardot - there is no happiness, but existence near her family, in his words, - "on the edge of someone else's nest", in a foreign land - is painful. Turgenev's own tragic perception of love was also reflected in The Nest of Nobles. This is accompanied by reflections on the writer's fate. Turgenev reproaches himself for the unreasonable waste of time, lack of professionalism. Hence the author's irony in relation to Panshin's dilettantism in the novel - this was preceded by a streak of severe condemnation by Turgenev of himself. The questions that worried Turgenev in 1856-1858 predetermined the range of problems posed in the novel, but there they naturally appear in a different light.
The action of the novel "The Nest of Nobles" takes place in 1842, in the epilogue - in 1850. Deprived of roots, the past, and even more so the family estate, Dostoevsky's hero has not yet entered Russian reality and literature. With the sensitivity of a great artist, Turgenev in The Nest of Nobles foresaw his appearance. You can also add that the novel brought Turgenev popularity in the widest circles of readers. According to Annenkov, "young writers starting their careers came to him one after another, brought their works and waited for his verdict...". Turgenev himself recalled twenty years after the novel: "The Nest of Nobles" was the biggest success that ever fell to my lot. Since the appearance of this novel, I have been considered among the writers who deserve the attention of the public.
I. S. Turgenev. Photo by S. Levitsky. 1880
Analysis of Turgenev's work in the 1850s
According to Turgenev, the world is going through a stage of crisis, when the living connection between the individual and society becomes a difficult problem. This is the most important element of the pan-European historical situation, characteristic of modern times. The content of this era is determined for the writer by the transition from the medieval social structure (with its religious basis) to a new type of society, the features of which have not yet been fully elucidated. Even in the article on Faust (1845), Turgenev gives a detailed description of the "transitional time", and the main ideas of this early article are consistently repeated in Turgenev's later reflections. The essence of Turgenev's concept is as follows.
The basis of the ongoing social upheaval is the complete self-liberation of the individual. The personality becomes an autonomous unit, self-lawful and self-sustaining; society breaks up into many isolated "atoms", thus experiencing a state of a kind of self-negation, the so-called nihilism, which later became the main element in the struggle of socialist activists against the authorities. The transformation of egocentrism into the basic law of human life leads to a variety of relationships between the individual and society. There are two main variants of these relationships, the most typical for modern conditions. The first of them - romantic egocentrism - means the fundamentally justified autonomy of the individual: in defending his rights, a free person recognizes them as universal rights. In the scale of claims lies the difference between this option and ordinary philistine selfishness. At the level of egoism, the self-sustainability of human existence turns into a selfish or senselessly passive adaptation to the existing order (there is no other, and lofty dreams are absurd from the point of view of egoistic common sense). The isolation of the individual contains a threat to the development and existence of society. Even in its highest form, egocentrism is fraught with the denial of moral ties and civic obligations. All the more dangerous is philistine, bourgeois egoism with its "aversion to all civic responsibility." Bourgeois egoism creates favorable conditions for political tyranny, which also undermines the living link between the individual and society, and with it the possibility of social progress.
However, Turgenev distinguished in the social life of Europe the forces and tendencies that oppose the threat of catastrophe. The most important of these seemed to him the democratic movement, which fought with varying success against despotic regimes. Turgenev attached no less importance to certain features of the self-consciousness of the individual, typical of the new era and generated, in the writer's opinion, by the inconsistency of its position in a situation of fragmentation of society. The critical principle, which ensured the autonomy of the individual, destroying the external fetters, turns against herself - this is one of the main ideas of the article about Faust. According to Turgenev, the ability to turn against one's source is the great social function of reflection: reflection does not allow the individual to withdraw into himself, forcing him to seek a new form of unity with the social whole. Self-liberation and the maximum development of human individuality enters into a natural interaction with the process of "free development of free institutions", forming a single anti-despotic and anti-bourgeois trend of modern European history. Turgenev's hopes for the "salvation of civilization" ("Letters on the Franco-Prussian War"), for the progressive course of social development of the entire "European family" are connected with this trend.
Turgenev considered Russia an integral part of this "family". The idea of the unity of the historical development of Russia and Europe is the basis of the worldview of the "radical, incorrigible Westerner." Long-term observations confirm his favorite thesis: the social life of Russia reveals the refraction of the main features of the modern cycle of European history. Peter's transformations and subsequent events, up to the peasant reform of 1861, appear to Turgenev as a transition from a social organization of the medieval type to social forms corresponding to the new time. The transitional era also expresses itself in the disintegration of the traditional form of social unity and in the isolation of the individual. The process of isolation also unfolds in several fundamentally different variants: from the birth of an “independent, critical, protesting personality” (“Memoirs of Belinsky”) to ordinary philistine egoism with all its characteristic signs, including “aversion to any civic responsibility”.
However, under the conditions of Russia, pan-European patterns take on a profoundly peculiar turn. First of all, for Turgenev, the originality of that stage, which in Russian conditions corresponds to the European Middle Ages, is essential. He believes that in Russia the place of the feudal system was occupied by a patriarchal community-family type of social organization. In the note “Some Remarks on the Russian Economy and the Russian Peasant” (1842), the young Turgenev confidently asserts: “The specific system differs so sharply from the feudal system in that it is all imbued with the spirit of patriarchy, peace, the spirit of the family ... Whereas in the West the family circle shrank and disappeared with the incessant expansion of the state - in Russia the whole state was one huge family, whose head was the king, "father and grandfather" of the Russian kingdom, not without reason called the king-father. The writer obviously did not refuse such an idea of pre-Petrine Rus' even later: it was reflected in his novels (which was already discussed in the second chapter).
It is the special nature of patriarchal social relations that Turgenev explains the specifics of the further historical development of Russia. In Turgenev's ideas, civic consciousness and civic activity of people are inextricably linked with the legal nature of relations within society. Meanwhile, patriarchal relations are completely devoid of a legal basis. In the same note of 1842, Turgenev speaks directly about this: “Family relations in their spirit are not determined by law, and the relations of our landowners to the peasants were so similar to family ones ...”. Hence his conviction that the "patriarchal state" in which Russia had been before Peter the Great hindered its "civil development."
Turgenev more than once noted the specificity of the Russian transition to a new type of social structure due to this. In France, the form of such a transition is a social revolution, in Germany it is a spiritual upheaval, in Russia it is an administrative reform. All in the same note of 1842, and later in the "Note on the publication of the magazine" Household Index "(1858), in the" Draft Program "Societies for the Propagation of Literacy and Primary Education" (1860), finally, in "Literary and Worldly Memoirs" (1869-1880) the idea of a purely administrative path that Russian history followed from the time of Peter the Great until the time of the liberation of the peasants is repeated many times. With this thought, another usually merges - about the "barbarian", that is, the pre-civil, pre-civilized state of Russian society at the present stage of its history. Turgenev, as far as possible, unambiguously points out the lawlessness of serfdom, the absence of “legality and responsibility in all relations of estates among themselves, in relations between estates and the state, the state and the individual. More than once, the obvious civil underdevelopment of all social groups of Russian society, both higher and lower, is noted, the absence of any public initiative, any authoritative public opinion, etc.
In Turgenev's letter to E. E. Lambert (1858), we can easily find the following judgment: "The Russian people are lazy and clumsy and are not used to thinking independently or acting consistently." We are talking about a mass, quantitatively predominant type of Russian man, whose properties seem to Turgenev to have developed inevitably. The writer nowhere gives a direct explanation of their origin, but his reflections and creative searches reveal two important factors with which, one way or another, the chaotic and philistine nature of the life of the masses in modern-day Russia is associated with Turgenev. The first of these factors is the originality of the process that destroyed the former social unity. In European conditions, this process seems to be associated with the spiritual maturation of the individual, with his revolt against scholasticism, normative religiosity and authoritarian social order, with the conquest of the autonomy of the mind, finally. Turgenev's article on "Faust" contains quite definite judgments on this score. The collapse of the patriarchal social structure in Rus' is thought differently - as a consequence of its violent destruction by Peter's reforms, which, in turn, are considered as a consequence of an impersonal objective necessity not associated with any spiritual factors. With Turgenev, it turns out that the Russian person "falls away" from the traditional whole, as if against his own will. It is not for nothing that Peter’s reforms are equated (in Memories of Belinsky) with a coup d’état, since the “violent measures” coming from above simply put the entire mass of people forming society before the fact of the changes that took place without their participation and sanction. Therefore, the lack of a civic principle in social relations received an adequate addition in the form of a complete unpreparedness for the civic development of the very human “material” of the nation. The situation could change if civic activity was "given" by the new structure of social relations. But Russia is far from any form of "free institutions", and the civic education of the people remains for the time being only an object of dreams. Such is Turgenev's firm conviction.
All these ideas about the nature of Russia's social development are also reflected in Turgenev's novels. But the novels also reveal something else - unexpected consequences of the specifics of Russian progress. The most important of them is an unprecedentedly powerful (in comparison with Europe) outbreak of personal self-affirmation, clearly associated with the transitional state of Russian society. This outbreak is to a certain extent consonant with a similar outbreak in the West: both here and there, the complete independence and sovereignty of the individual is justified by a system of universal values. But Turgenev discovers a fundamental difference between similar phenomena. The article about "Faust" reveals the "secret" of the inner dialectic of European individualism: the universal nature of the ideals put forward serves to substantiate personal needs ("everyone was busy with a person in general, that is, in essence, with his own personality"). Turgenev's novels reveal exactly the opposite dialectic: the deeply personal needs of their characters turn out to be the source of norms and values that they strive to make truly universal, asserting them as the obligatory foundations of morality and the entire social life of an entire nation.
The spiritual autonomy of the Russian personality is distinguished by a paradoxical combination of two principles: boundless inner freedom and some kind of immanent sociality of all the aspirations and properties of a free person. In comparison with the European version, another thing is paradoxical: the combination in one person of mutually exclusive truths, each of which cannot be discarded. Finally, against the European background, the extreme intensity of this contradiction, its catastrophic nature for a person, looks almost like an anomaly. The latter is directly determined by the uncompromising maximalism of the demands of the Russian personality, its all-encompassing striving for the absolute. And in the end, everything returns to the beginning - to the unprecedented initiative of an individual who dared to replace society as a whole and assume its function of establishing universal life norms.
Therefore, the tragic contradiction that tears the personality from the inside, in Turgenev's opinion, is insoluble in its inner world. The resolution of this contradiction could only be a comprehensive harmony that would allow removing the antagonism between the ideal and the real, a complete reworking of the human code of life and the possibility of unity with people living now, between a daring search and a constant connection with the “soil”. In other words, this contradiction could be resolved only by the emergence of a single national goal - social, spiritual and moral - that would bind all Russian people into a gigantic community of seekers of truth and a just order of life. Not a single one of Turgenev's heroes consciously imagines such a perspective. But objectively, only she alone can satisfy them. Acquaintance with their spiritual experience and tragic fate leads to this conclusion.
Moreover, all these requests and impulses appear in Turgenev's novels as a manifestation of the deepest objective need for national development. In modern historical conditions, it breaks through only in the form of individual aspirations of individual people, but this form of manifestation does not cancel the social nature of this need. The absence of a “strong civic life” (letter to E. E. Lambert dated May 9, 1856) and any public initiative explains for Turgenev the emergence in Russian conditions of a kind of personality formation that claims to have a social and moral mission of a national scale. In the light of the writer's views on the current state of society and the course of Russian history, the features of Turgenev's maximalist heroes are natural: the boundlessness of their spiritual freedom, the social orientation of their personal needs, the grandiosity of their demands for the world. Just as natural is their initial repulsion from all objective socio-historical reality accessible to their perception, their complete and hopeless social loneliness, the absence in the surrounding world of any support for their aspirations (although these aspirations manifest a “deep” historical necessity).
The current state of Russia leads to the emergence of such a person with logical inevitability. For Turgenev, it is obvious that all the "choral" forces of Russian society are unable to take the initiative of its purposeful transformation. Thus, a situation is created in which this function passes to an individual, because there is simply no one else to take on this function. And the personality, for its part, objectively needs such a role. The very nature of the individual, which requires a higher justification for its brief and unique existence, compels it again and again to try to introduce ideal criteria and goals into social life. As soon as society does not put forward the ideal necessary for the individual, she is forced to put it forward herself - to put forward and approve as an absolute, universally significant value. The titanism of the Russian personality appears in Turgenev as a peculiar consequence of the "barbaric" state of Russia, the result of the absence of normal conditions for "civil development" in it.
In the ability to put forward ideals that claim to be absolute and universal, in the ability to approve these ideals at the cost of one's own life, for Turgenev, lies the greatness of his heroes and, at the same time, the basis of their historical significance for Russia and mankind. The practical impact of the hero-maximalist on the mass of people and the surrounding circumstances is always disproportionate to its value. From a practical point of view, his life can be considered barren. But the meaning of his spiritual search, struggle and suffering lies elsewhere. The existence of maximalist heroes restores the dignity of their nation, humiliated by the impersonal mechanical course of Russian social life, the dependence of its progress on the blind necessity or arbitrariness of power, the passive subordination of all Russian estates to their social fate. If we exclude the main characters of Turgenev's novels from the general picture of Russian society built by these novels, then we are simply a backward, semi-barbarian country with an uncertain future. But thanks to people of the level of Rudin and Bazarov, Lisa and Elena, the Russian nation already in the present acquires the significance of a great one, because the aspirations, searches, destinies of these people carry an unprecedented and unique solution to universal problems. This ensures Russia's irreplaceable contribution to the moral and social progress of mankind and, therefore, its objective right to a world role. “Everyone from the novels of the 50s and early 60s leads to this conclusion, this conclusion is most clear in Fathers and Sons.
However, thoughts about the titanism of the Russian heroic personality, about the world significance of her quest, do not obscure the tragedy of her position in the eyes of Turgenev. Only national unity based on the universal striving for the ideal of social and moral perfection can satisfy its thirst for harmony. But, according to Turgenev, the specificity of Russian history excludes (at least within the foreseeable limits) national unity on such a basis. For Turgenev, the inevitable gap between the "titanic" formation of the personality, revealed by his novels, and the mass type of the Russian person is obvious. Judging by the article "Hamlet and Don Quixote", such a break seemed to Turgenev a universal situation, constantly repeating itself at the turns of history. But under Russian conditions, this situation turns out to be fatal for the category of heroes, because it makes impossible the emergence of a national goal that can reunite them with other people, with the organic course of living life.
It cannot be said that "civil education of the people" was portrayed by Turgenev as something completely impossible. Turgenev believed (and here is the main source of his liberal illusions) in the special role of state power, which naturally follows, in his opinion, from the uniqueness of Russian history. Turgenev believed that in Russia an autocratic monarchy could be a force for progress. The example of Peter the Great's transformations inspired confidence and allowed us to hope for further Europeanization of the country, for the spread of the beginnings of civilization among the people, for the development of some forms of public initiative.
But the paradox of Turgenev's thinking lies in the fact that such a favorable (by the standards of liberalism) outcome does not mean for Turgenev a solution to the problems that torment his main characters. The restoration in Russia of the "usual" conditions of European social life is an achievement too limited in comparison with the maximalist scope of their ideals, with the all-encompassing and absolute nature of the harmony they need. They are from the breed of "final questions" martyrs, and no partial "corrections" of human life can satisfy them at all.
The main tragic collisions of Turgenev's novels are insoluble for their author even in the perspective of the foreseeable future. In the article “Hamlet and Don Quixote”, Turgenev argued that the contradiction between the “hero” and the “crowd” is always removed in the end: “A mass of people always ends up going, selflessly believing, behind those individuals whom she herself mocked whom she even cursed and persecuted ... ". The specific stories of Turgenev's heroes do not give grounds for such an assertion. In the real context of the novels of the 50s - early 60s, there are no signs that at least in the future a lot of people, "selflessly believing", will follow the path of Rudin, Liza, Elena, Bazarov. The maximalist nature of their goals clearly precludes the transformation of these goals into mass norms. It is not surprising that in each new novel the reader encounters the same situation of social loneliness of the central hero or heroine and the same insolubility of the main contradiction between their consciousness and life.
For Turgenev, that synthetic point of view is also excluded, which would allow one to perceive the insoluble conflict between the individual and society as an internal bifurcation of some broader whole. Turgenev's thinking does not presuppose the highest goal of being, which would include ideal human aspirations in the objective logic of the world order. In Turgenev, the claims of the individual are refuted not only by the laws of society, but also by the laws of nature. The "insignificance" of any, even a titanic personality before these laws closes the circle of contradictions that doom Turgenev's heroes to a tragic fate.
It is clear to Turgenev that the "cosmic orphanhood" of the individual is the primary source of his social aspirations and that all his social activity is essentially aimed at searching for what nature denies him. Personality needs an objective justification of its value, and now the indifference of nature forces us to look for this justification in the sphere of social relations. In a world from which everything transcendental is excluded (and this is precisely Turgenev's world), there is no other alternative. From this follows the inevitable need of the individual for universally significant social and moral ideals, for an indestructible, spiritualized and harmonious connection with society. This need draws the individual into the mainstream of social life, and here suffering and death overtake him.
The consciousness of the insolubility of the contradictions that explode the inner life of the individual and her relationship with society determines the originality of artistic unity in Turgenev's novels, that balance of restrained opposites, behind which the impossibility of their reconciliation is easily guessed. Behind this balance is the inevitable divergence of two artistic "reference systems" that oppose each other throughout the novel. One comes from the personality, from its aspirations, ideal criteria and requirements for the world. For another, the initial "premise" is the process of life as a whole. Turgenev is powerless to merge these two systems: there is no “common denominator” for them. There is also no possibility to give them complete freedom of self-manifestation: this would blow up the integrity of Turgenev's thought. There is only one acceptable way out for the author: to balance the opposites in such a way that one cannot prevail over the other, turning into the dominant one. This is what the efforts of Turgenev the novelist are aimed at.
The result of his efforts is the harmonious roundness of the structure of the novel, which essentially opposes the unresolved nature of the social and moral conflicts disclosed here. Poetic harmony carries within itself a peculiar resolution of these conflicts, an artistic resolution, but at the same time capable of leading to a certain position in life. The relative autonomy of the two systems is one of the prerequisites for such a result. But perhaps more important is the complementarity of these systems, the relationship of mutual correction that arises between them.
Conclusion
Mutual adjustment of two opposite truths - personal and universal - leads to a result that allows you to cherish even the doomed and ruined. In the broad context of Turgenev's novels, ideal aspirations and heroic uncompromisingness appear as something undeniably valuable in itself. The appointment of the most perfect manifestations of life is recognized behind them - this determines the irrelativity and unconditionalness of their dignity. The affirmation of deeply peculiar value orientations is perhaps the main merit of Turgenev the novelist. The importance of his novels for the era of social change in the pre- and post-reform years is connected with this merit. “... Turgenev is interesting,” wrote P. N. Sakkulin, “and, moreover, infinitely interesting ... as a great and thinking artist who stood on the verge of two cultures and - on guard of culture.” The advantage of the last formula is its accuracy. If we see the main function of culture in increasing the moral discipline of thinking, feelings and social behavior of people, then the enormous cultural-creating (and, accordingly, cultural-preserving) role of Turgenev's novels is beyond doubt. The very artistic structure of these novels embodies a certain norm of a person's spiritual and moral attitude to the world, a norm that ennobles and purifies, capable of providing an invulnerably worthy position in contradictory, difficult and vague situations. Just such were the crisis situations of the 60s - 70s - 80s of the XIX century with their specific situation of unreliability of progress, uncertainty of prospects, inextricable interweaving of utopian dreams, disappointments and anxieties. Into this atmosphere Turgenev introduced landmarks that possessed high moral reliability. With such guidelines, even hopeless political skepticism did not cancel the idea of civic activity for a person and did not deprive him of the ability to self-sacrifice. The same landmarks could be a source of a special mental attitude, in which sincere and deep world sorrow did not prevent a person from loving life passionately and experiencing the feeling of its fullness. Finally, these were guidelines that made it possible to organically combine religious and philosophical agnosticism (concerning questions about death, about God, about the purpose of everything that exists, etc.) with upholding the need for a higher meaning for a finite and mortal human existence. In general, the norm seemed to be such a level of spiritual education (this concept is most appropriate here), at which a person’s life reaches maximum independence from adverse circumstances and from his own elementary impulses, without at the same time needing any transcendental or speculative support. Putting forward this form of internal culture as a standard, Turgenev created a system of values that was extremely relevant. Its meaning was not immediately understood by the writer's contemporaries. But he himself never doubted the necessity of these values, calling himself in a letter to Tolstoy (1856) "writer".
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(the essay is divided into pages)
I. S. Turgenev began work on the novel “Fathers and Sons” in early August 1860, and finished it in early July 1861. The novel appeared in the February book of the Russky Vestnik magazine. In the same year, it was published as a separate edition with a dedication to V. G. Belinsky.
The action of the novel takes place in the summer of 1859, the epilogue tells about the events that took place after the fall of serfdom in 1861. Turgenev follows, one might say, on the heels of the events of Russian life. He had never created a work, the content of which would almost coincide in time with the moment of work on it. With cursory but expressive strokes, on the very eve of the reform of 1861, Turgenev shows the crisis in the way of life of both the master and the peasant, the nationwide need to abolish serfdom. The theme of the crisis arises at the very beginning of the novel and in the sad appearance of a devastated Russian village, and in the features of the collapse of the patriarchal foundations of a peasant family noticed by the writer, and in the lamentations of the landowner Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, and in his son Arkady's reflections on the need for transformation.
The fate of Russia, the ways of its further progressive development deeply worried the writer. He is trying to show Russian society the tragic nature of the growth of conflicts. The stupidity and helplessness of all classes threatens to develop into confusion and chaos. Against this background, heated debates are unfolding about the ways to save Russia, which are waged by the heroes of the novel, representing the two main parts of the Russian intelligentsia - the liberal nobility and the democrats of the common people. These two groups represent socially different environments with directly opposite interests and views. On the one hand, these are “fathers” (Pavel Petrovich and Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanovs), on the other, “children” (Bazarov, Arkady).
The most striking, although not quite typical, representative of the cultural provincial nobility is Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, Bazarov's main opponent. Turgenev presents the life path of this hero in some detail. The father of both Kirsanov brothers was a military general in 1812, a semi-literate, rude, but not an evil Russian man. All his life he pulled the strap, commanding first a brigade, then a division, and constantly lived in the provinces, where, by virtue of his character, he played a rather significant role. Their mother, Agafya Kuzminshn-na Kirsanova, belonged to the “mother commanders”, wore magnificent caps and noisy dresses, was the first to approach the cross in church, spoke loudly and a lot, in a word, lived for her own pleasure. Pavel Petrovich was born in the south of Russia and brought up at home, surrounded by cheap tutors, cheeky but obsequious adjutants and other regimental, staff personalities.
Pavel Petrovich entered the military service: he graduated from the Corps of Pages, and a brilliant military career awaited him. From childhood, Pavel Kirsanov was distinguished by remarkable beauty; besides, he was self-confident, a little mocking, he could not help but like. Having become an officer of the Guards Regiment, he began to appear in society. Women were crazy about him, and men envied him. Kirsanov lived at that time in the same apartment with his brother Nikolai Petrovich, whom he loved sincerely. In the twenty-eighth year, Pavel Petrovich was already a captain. But unhappy love for a woman with a mysterious look, Princess R., turned his whole life upside down. He retired, spent four years abroad, then returned to Russia, lived as a lonely bachelor. And so ten years passed, colorless, fruitless. When Nikolai Petrovich's wife died, he invited his brother to his estate Maryino, and a year and a half later Pavel Petrovich settled there and did not leave the village, even when Nikolai Petrovich left for St. Petersburg. Pavel Petrovich arranged his life in an English way, and began to read more and more in English. He rarely saw his neighbors, only occasionally went out only to the elections. Pavel Petrovich was reputed to be proud among them, but he was respected for his excellent aristocratic manners, for the rumors about his victories, for the fact that he skillfully played vint and always won, and especially for his impeccable honesty.
