Turgenev is young. Ivan Turgenev: biography, life path and creativity

Ivan Turgenev photography

What does he see in his house?

His parents are an example to him!

Simple in form, but in essence a very wise poem of three lines expresses the idea that a child learns the main science of life in the family.

Please note: in the poem the emphasis is not on what the child hears “in his home”, not on what his parents instill in him, but on what he himself sees. But what exactly does he see that teaches him and educates him? The way he sees us treat each other? How long do we work and for what? What are we reading? What if it’s neither one nor the other, nor the third, but something completely different?! When raising a child, parents do their best. And sometimes he grows up completely differently from what they dreamed of. Why? How could this happen? There is a universal answer to this kind of difficult and bitter questions: “the ways of the Lord are mysterious!..” But let’s try to figure it out using one example: why in a certain family at a certain time a child grew up the way he, it would seem, should not have grown up? We will talk about the great Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, by the way, the author of the famous novel called “Fathers and Sons” - precisely dedicated to the continuity of generations.

About the childhood of the writer himself. we know something. For example, the fact that Turgenev’s parents were rich from the Mtsensk district of the Oryol province, convinced and harsh serf owners. (Don’t expect that new materials will be discovered that refute this fact - there are none!) But have we ever asked the question: why does such parents have a son who grows up to be a convinced anti-serfdom, a kind and kind-hearted person by nature? (There was even a case when young Turgenev took up a gun so as not to offend a peasant needlewoman from his village.) The answer seems to suggest itself: he had seen enough of the horrors and abominations of serfdom in the possession of souls - and so he hated it. Yes, this is the answer, but it’s too simple. Indeed, at the same time, in the neighboring estates of the Mtsensk district, the sons of the landowners, from a young age, kicked and mangled the servants, and having taken possession of the estate, they unbridled themselves worse than their parents, doing to people what is now called lawlessness. Well, they and Ivan Turgenev were not cut from the same cloth? Did you breathe a different air, did you study from more than one textbook?..

To understand what made Turgenev spiritually the direct opposite of his parents, one would need to get to know them better. Firstly, with my mother, Varvara Petrovna. Colorful figure! On the one hand, he speaks and writes fluent French, reads Voltaire and Rousseau, is friends with the great poet V. Zhukovsky, loves the theater, loves growing flowers...

On the other hand, for the disappearance of just one tulip from the garden, he gives the order to flog all the gardeners... He can’t get enough of his sons, especially the middle one, Ivan (not knowing how to express his tenderness for him, sometimes he calls him... . “my beloved Vanya”!), spares neither effort nor money to give them a good education. At the same time, in the Turgenev house, children are often whipped! “Rarely a day passed without rods,” recalled Ivan Sergeevich, “when I dared to ask why I was being punished, my mother categorically declared: “You better know about this, guess.”

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When a son, studying in Moscow or abroad, does not write letters home for a long time, his mother threatens him for this... to flog one of the servants. And so with her, the servant, she does not stand on ceremony. The freedom-loving Voltaire and Rousseau do not in the least prevent her from exiling an offending maid to a remote, remote village, forcing a serf artist to paint the same thing a thousand times, and terrifying the elders and peasants while traveling around their estates...

“I have nothing to remember my childhood with,” Ivan Sergeevich sadly admits. – Not a single bright memory. I was afraid of my mother like hell..."

Let’s not ignore the writer’s father, Sergei Nikolaevich. He behaves more balanced, less cruel and picky than Varvara Petrovna. But his hand is also heavy. Maybe, for example, a home teacher he didn’t like for some reason could be thrown right down a flight of stairs. And he treats children without unnecessary sentimentality and takes almost no part in their upbringing. But, as you know, “the absence of education is also education.”

“My father had a strange influence on me...” writes Turgenev in one of his stories, into which he invested a lot of personal things. - He... never insulted me, he respected my freedom - he was even, so to speak, polite to me... only he did not allow me to come near him. I loved him, I admired him, he seemed to me the model of a man, and, my God, how passionately I would have become attached to him if I had not constantly felt his deflecting hands!..” Let us add on our own: Sergei Nikolaevich is still far from children and because he rarely sees them.

Varvara Petrovna rules the roost in the house. She is the one who is involved in raising her children, she is the one who teaches “beloved Vanechka” object lessons in self-will...

Yes, but then what about the fact that “the child learns what he sees in his home” and that “parents are an example to him”? According to all the rules of genetics and family pedagogy, a father - a cold egoist and a mother with a despotic character - should have grown into a moral monster. But we know: he grew up to be a great writer, a man of great soul... No, whatever you say, the Turgenev parents are an example to their son, an impressive example of how not to treat people. After all, the child also learns what he hates “in his home”!

Thank God, such a variant of generational continuity is also provided: children grow up, as they say, in the exact opposite direction from their fathers... What young Turgenev was more fortunate in than his peers from landowner families was that his parents, for all their selfishness and cruelty, both are smart, well-educated people. And, most importantly, they are interesting, extraordinary in their own way, as if woven from blatant contradictions. Varvara Petrovna alone is worth so much! A writer (and Ivan Sergeevich was undoubtedly born to him) definitely needs something beyond the norm, something out of the ordinary. In this sense, Turgenev’s parents, with their colorfulness, will serve their talented son well: they will inspire him to create unforgettably believable types of that time...

Of course, a child “in his home” sees not only the bad. He learns (and much more willingly!) from good examples. Did Ivan Turgenev love his parents? Freezing from timidity and fear - yes, he loved. And, probably, for some reason he felt sorry for both of them. After all, if you thoroughly delve into the life of each of them, you won’t envy...Varenka Lutovinova’s (her maiden name) father dies early, and her stepfather is so rude and headstrong (can you smell it?) that she, unable to bear the abuse of herself, runs away from Houses. Her uncle takes her under protection and guardianship. But he is also a man with tricks: he keeps his niece locked up almost always. Perhaps she is afraid that she will lose her virginity before marriage. But, it seems, his fears are in vain: Varenka, to put it delicately, does not shine with beauty... However, when her uncle dies, she, his heir, will one day become the richest landowner of the Oryol province...

Her time has come! Varvara Petrovna now takes everything from life - and even more. The son of a neighboring landowner, lieutenant cavalry guard Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev, catches her eye. A man is good for everyone: handsome, stately, intelligent, six years younger than her. But - poor. However, for the rich woman Lutovinova, the latter does not matter at all. And when the lieutenant proposes to her, she, beside herself with happiness, accepts him...

This is not the first time that wealth has been combined with beauty and youth. This is not the first time it has become fragile. Having given up on his military career, Sergei Nikolaevich indulges in hunting, carousing (usually on the side), card games, and starts one affair after another. Varvara Petrovna knows about everything (there are always more helpful people in this regard than are needed), but she endures: she values and loves her handsome husband to such an extent. And, as they say in these cases, he turns his unspent tenderness into sophisticated mockery of people...

Ivan Sergeevich learns about everything that his mother experienced and felt during her life only after her death. After reading Varvara Petrovna’s diaries, he exclaims: “What a woman!.. May God forgive her everything... But what a life!” Even as a child, observing the behavior of his parents, he sees a lot and guesses a lot. This is how any child works, especially a gifted one: not yet having much knowledge and solid life experience, he uses what caring and wise nature generously endows him with, perhaps even more generously than an adult - intuition. It is she who helps “unreasonable” children make correct, sometimes amazingly correct, conclusions. It is thanks to her that the child sees best “in his home” exactly what adults carefully hide from him. That is why we can say: not just anywhere, but precisely in his home, no matter how rich, just as unhappy, the future writer Ivan Turgenev will understand how incomprehensibly complex life is and what an abyss of secrets any human soul keeps within itself...

When a child is afraid of his mother “like fire,” when he constantly stumbles upon the “rejecting hands” of his father, where should he look for love and understanding, without which life is not life? He goes where children who have not received the warmth of home have always gone and go today - “out into the street.” In Russian estates, the “street” is the courtyard, and its inhabitants are called courtyards. These are nannies, tutors, bartenders, errand boys (there was such a position), grooms, foresters, etc. They may not speak French, they may not have read Voltaire and Rousseau. But they have enough natural intelligence to understand: Barchuk Ivan’s life, like theirs, is not easy. And they are kind enough to at least somehow caress him. One of them, at the risk of being flogged, helps the barchuk open a cabinet with old books, another takes him hunting with him, the third takes him into the depths of the famous Spassky-Lutovinovsky park and together with him reads poems and stories with inspiration...

It is with such love and trepidation that Ivan Sergeevich, who himself said that his biography is in his works, describes childhood episodes dear to his heart in one of his stories: “...And so we managed to escape unnoticed, now we are sitting side by side, now The book is already opening, emitting a sharp, for me then inexplicably pleasant smell of mold and old stuff!.. The first sounds of reading are heard! Everything around disappears... no, it doesn’t disappear, but becomes distant, covered in haze, leaving behind only the impression of something friendly and patronizing! These trees, these green leaves, these tall grasses obscure, shelter us from the rest of the world, no one knows where we are, what we are - and poetry is with us, we are imbued with it, we revel in it, an important, great, secret thing is happening with us ..."

Close communication with people of the lower class, as they said then, would largely predetermine Turgenev as a writer. It is he who will bring into Russian literature a man from the Russian hinterland - economical, skilled, with a certain amount of cunning and trickery. There is no need to prove the nationality of his works: the many-faced Russian people act, speak, and suffer in them. Many writers are recognized only after their death. Turgenev was read by people even during his lifetime, and among others, ordinary people read books - the very ones whom he bowed to all his life...

Among other things, Turgenev differs from other outstanding writers of Russia in that his descriptions of nature take many, many pages. The modern reader, accustomed to prose with a dynamic (sometimes too much) narrative, sometimes becomes unbearable. But if you read carefully, these are wonderful and unique descriptions, like Russian nature itself! It feels like Turgenev, when writing, saw the mysterious depths of the Russian forest right in front of him, squinted from the silver light of the autumn sun, heard the morning call of sweet-voiced birds. And he really saw and heard all this, even when he lived far from Spassky - in Moscow, Rome, London, Paris... Russian nature is his second home, his second mother, she, too, is his biography. There is a lot of it in Turgenev’s works because then there was a lot of it in general, and a lot in his life, in particular.

Thanks to his parents, Ivan Sergeevich saw the world as a child (the family traveled for many months around European countries), received an excellent education in Russia and abroad, and for a long time, while he was looking for his calling, he lived on money sent by his mother. (Turgenev’s father died quite early.) Having met Turgenev, Dostoevsky wrote about him: “Poet, talent, aristocrat, handsome, rich, smart, 25 years old. I don’t know what nature denied him.” In a word, a difficult childhood, despotic order in the house, apparently, did not outwardly affect him. As for his character, spiritual harmony... Most likely, the strong, domineering nature of his mother was one of the reasons that, for all his beauty and talent, Ivan Sergeevich was often timid and indecisive, especially in relationships with women. His personal life turned out to be somewhat awkward: after several more or less serious hobbies, he gave his heart to the singer Viardot, and since she was a married woman, he entered into a strange coexistence with this family, living with her under the same roof for many years . As if carrying within himself the weakened bacilli of maternal pride and intolerance, Ivan Sergeevich is easily vulnerable, touchy, often quarrels with friends (Nekrasov, Goncharov, Herzen, Tolstoy, etc.), but, it is true, he is often the first to extend the hand of reconciliation. As if to reproach the indifference of his late father, he takes care of his illegitimate daughter Polina as best he can (he pays her mother a lifelong pension), but from an early age the girl cannot remember what the word “bread” means in Russian, and which does not justify, no matter how hard Turgenev tries, the aspirations of his father...

Turgenev, among other things, also differs from other outstanding Russian writers in his height. He was so tall that wherever he appeared, he was visible, like a bell tower, from everywhere. A giant and a bearded man, with a soft, almost childish voice, friendly in character, hospitable, he, living abroad for a long time, being a very famous person there too, contributed greatly to the spread of the legend of the “Russian bear” in the West. But he was a very unusual “bear”: he wrote brilliant prose and fragrant blank verse, knew philosophy and philology very well, spoke German in Germany, Italian in Italy, French in France, Spanish with his beloved woman, Spanish Viardot...

So to whom do Russia and the world owe this miracle of physical and intellectual perfection, multifaceted talent and spiritual wealth? Are we really going to put his mother Varvara Petrovna and father Sergei Nikolaevich out of brackets? Let's pretend that he owes his beauty and outstanding growth, great diligence and aristocratically refined culture not to them, but to someone else?..

It was not without reason that Varvara Petrovna counted her son Ivan among her favorites - you can’t deny her insight. “I love you both passionately, but in different ways,” she writes to “beloved Vanechka,” slightly contrasting him with Nikolai, her eldest son. – You make me especially sick... (How wonderfully they expressed it in the old days!). If I can explain with an example. If they squeezed my hand, it would hurt, but if they stepped on my callus, it would be unbearable.” She realized before many literary critics that her son had a high gift for writing. (Showing a subtle literary taste, she writes to her son that his first published poem “smells of strawberries.”) Towards the end of her life, Varvara Petrovna changes greatly, becomes more tolerant, and in the presence of her son Ivan tries to do something kind and merciful. Well, in this regard, we can say that the continuity of generations is a two-way street: the time comes when parents learn something from their children...

TURGENEV Ivan Sergeevich(1818 - 1883), Russian writer, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1860). In the cycle of stories “Notes of a Hunter” (1847-52) he showed the high spiritual qualities and talent of the Russian peasant, the poetry of nature. In the socio-psychological novels “Rudin” (1856), “The Noble Nest” (1859), “On the Eve” (1860), “Fathers and Sons” (1862), the stories “Asya” (1858), “Spring Waters” (1872) ) images of the passing noble culture and new heroes of the era of commoners and democrats, images of selfless Russian women were created. In the novels “Smoke” (1867) and “Nov” (1877) he depicted the life of Russians abroad and the populist movement in Russia. In his later years, he created the lyrical and philosophical “Poems in Prose” (1882). A master of language and psychological analysis, Turgenev had a significant influence on the development of Russian and world literature.

TURGENEV Ivan Sergeevich, Russian writer.

On his father's side, Turgenev belonged to an old noble family; his mother, nee Lutovinova, was a wealthy landowner; On her estate, Spasskoye-Lutovinovo (Mtsensk district, Oryol province), the childhood years of the future writer passed, who early learned to have a subtle sense of nature and to hate serfdom. In 1827 the family moved to Moscow; At first, Turgenev studied in private boarding schools and with good home teachers, then, in 1833, he entered the literature department of Moscow University, and in 1834 he transferred to the history and philology department of St. Petersburg University. One of the strongest impressions of his early youth (1833), falling in love with Princess E. L. Shakhovskaya, who was experiencing an affair with Turgenev’s father at that time, was reflected in the story “First Love” (1860).

In 1836, Turgenev showed his poetic experiments in a romantic spirit to the writer of Pushkin’s circle, university professor P. A. Pletnev; he invites the student to a literary evening (at the door Turgenev collided with A.S. Pushkin), and in 1838 he published Turgenev’s poems “Evening” and “To the Venus of Medicine” in Sovremennik (by this time Turgenev had written about a hundred poems, mostly not preserved, and the dramatic poem “Stheno”).

In May 1838, Turgenev went to Germany (the desire to complete his education was combined with rejection of the Russian way of life, based on serfdom). The disaster of the steamship “Nicholas I”, on which Turgenev sailed, will be described by him in the essay “Fire at Sea” (1883; in French). Until August 1839, Turgenev lived in Berlin, attended lectures at the university, studied classical languages, wrote poetry, and communicated with T. N. Granovsky, N. V. Stankevich. After a short stay in Russia, in January 1840 he went to Italy, but from May 1840 to May 1841 he was again in Berlin, where he met M. A. Bakunin. Arriving in Russia, he visits the Bakunins' estate Premukhino, meets with this family: soon an affair with T. A. Bakunina begins, which does not interfere with the connection with the seamstress A. E. Ivanova (in 1842 she will give birth to Turgenev's daughter Pelageya). In January 1843 Turgenev entered service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In 1843, a poem based on modern material, “Parasha,” appeared, which was highly appreciated by V. G. Belinsky. Acquaintance with the critic, which turned into friendship (in 1846 Turgenev became the godfather of his son), rapprochement with his entourage (in particular, with N. A. Nekrasov) changed his literary orientation: from romanticism he turned to an ironic and morally descriptive poem (“The Landowner” , “Andrei”, both 1845) and prose close to the principles of the “natural school” and not alien to the influence of M. Yu. Lermontov (“Andrei Kolosov”, 1844; “Three Portraits”, 1846; “Breter”, 1847).

November 1, 1843 Turgenev meets the singer Pauline Viardot (Viardot-Garcia), whose love will largely determine the external course of his life. In May 1845 Turgenev retired. From the beginning of 1847 to June 1850, he lives abroad (in Germany, France; Turgenev is a witness to the French Revolution of 1848): he takes care of the sick Belinsky during his travels; communicates closely with P. V. Annenkov, A. I. Herzen, meets J. Sand, P. Mérimée, A. de Musset, F. Chopin, C. Gounod; writes the stories “Petushkov” (1848), “Diary of an Extra Man” (1850), the comedy “Bachelor” (1849), “Where it breaks, there it breaks,” “Provincial Girl” (both 1851), the psychological drama “A Month in the Country” (1855).

The main work of this period is “Notes of a Hunter,” a cycle of lyrical essays and stories that began with the story “Khor and Kalinich” (1847; the subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter” was invented by I. I. Panaev for publication in the “Mixture” section of the Sovremennik magazine) ); a separate two-volume edition of the cycle was published in 1852; later the stories “The End of Chertopkhanov” (1872), “Living Relics”, “Knocking” (1874) were added. The fundamental diversity of human types, isolated for the first time from a previously unnoticed or idealized mass of people, testified to the infinite value of every unique and free human personality; the serfdom appeared as an ominous and dead force, alien to natural harmony (detailed specifics of heterogeneous landscapes), hostile to man, but unable to destroy the soul, love, creative gift. Having discovered Russia and the Russian people, laying the foundation for the “peasant theme” in Russian literature, “Notes of a Hunter” became the semantic foundation of all of Turgenev’s further work: from here the threads stretch to the study of the phenomenon of the “superfluous man” (the problem outlined in “Hamlet of Shchigrovsky District”) , and to the understanding of the mysterious (“Bezhin Meadow”), and to the problem of the artist’s conflict with the everyday life that stifles him (“Singers”).

In April 1852, for his response to the death of N.V. Gogol, which was banned in St. Petersburg and published in Moscow, Turgenev, by imperial command, was put on the congress (the story “Mumu” was written there). In May he was exiled to Spasskoye, where he lived until December 1853 (work on an unfinished novel, the story “Two Friends”, acquaintance with A. A. Fet, active correspondence with S. T. Aksakov and writers from the Sovremennik circle); A.K. Tolstoy played an important role in efforts to free Turgenev.

Until July 1856, Turgenev lived in Russia: in the winter, mainly in St. Petersburg, in the summer in Spassky. His closest environment is the editorial office of Sovremennik; acquaintances took place with I. A. Goncharov, L. N. Tolstoy and A. N. Ostrovsky; Turgenev takes part in the publication of F. I. Tyutchev’s “Poems” (1854) and provides it with a preface. Mutual cooling with the distant Viardot leads to a brief, but almost ending in marriage, affair with a distant relative O. A. Turgeneva. The stories “The Calm” (1854), “Yakov Pasynkov” (1855), “Correspondence”, “Faust” (both 1856) were published.

“Rudin” (1856) opens a series of Turgenev’s novels, compact in volume, unfolding around a hero-ideologist, journalistically accurately capturing current socio-political issues and, ultimately, placing “modernity” in the face of the unchanging and mysterious forces of love, art, nature . Inflaming the audience, but incapable of action, the “superfluous man” Rudin; Lavretsky, dreaming in vain about happiness and coming to humble self-sacrifice and hope for happiness for the people of modern times (“The Noble Nest”, 1859; events take place in the context of the approaching “great reform”); the “iron” Bulgarian revolutionary Insarov, who becomes the chosen one of the heroine (that is, Russia), but is “stranger” and doomed to death (“On the Eve”, 1860); “new man” Bazarov, hiding a romantic rebellion behind nihilism (“Fathers and Sons”, 1862; post-reform Russia is not freed from eternal problems, and “new” people remain people: “dozens” will live, but those captured by passion or idea will die); the characters of “Smoke” (1867), sandwiched between “reactionary” and “revolutionary” vulgarity; revolutionary populist Nezhdanov, an even more “new” person, but still unable to answer the challenge of a changed Russia (“Nov”, 1877); all of them, together with minor characters (with individual dissimilarity, differences in moral and political orientations and spiritual experience, varying degrees of closeness to the author), are closely related, combining in different proportions the features of two eternal psychological types of the heroic enthusiast, Don Quixote, and the absorbed himself as a reflector, Hamlet (cf. programmatic article “Hamlet and Don Quixote”, 1860).

Having departed abroad in July 1856, Turgenev finds himself in a painful whirlpool of ambiguous relationships with Viardot and his daughter, who was raised in Paris. After the difficult Parisian winter of 1856-57 (the gloomy “Trip to Polesie” was completed), he went to England, then to Germany, where he wrote “Asya,” one of the most poetic stories, which, however, can be interpreted in a social way (article by N. G. . Chernyshevsky “Russian man at rendez-vous”, 1858), and spends the autumn and winter in Italy. By the summer of 1858 he was in Spassky; in the future, Turgenev’s year will often be divided into “European, winter” and “Russian, summer” seasons.

After “On the Eve” and N. A. Dobrolyubov’s article dedicated to the novel, “When will the real day come?” (1860) Turgenev breaks up with the radicalized Sovremennik (in particular, with N.A. Nekrasov; their mutual hostility persisted until the end). The conflict with the “younger generation” was aggravated by the novel “Fathers and Sons” (pamphlet article by M. A. Antonovich “Asmodeus of Our Time” in Sovremennik, 1862; the so-called “schism in the nihilists” largely motivated the positive assessment of the novel in the article by D. I. Pisarev “Bazarov”, 1862). In the summer of 1861 there was a quarrel with L.N. Tolstoy, which almost turned into a duel (reconciliation in 1878). In the story “Ghosts” (1864), Turgenev condenses the mystical motifs outlined in “Notes of a Hunter” and “Faust”; this line will be developed in “The Dog” (1865), “The Story of Lieutenant Ergunov” (1868), “The Dream”, “The Story of Father Alexei” (both 1877), “Song of Triumphant Love” (1881), “After Death (Klara Milich )" (1883). The theme of the weakness of man, who turns out to be the toy of unknown forces and doomed to non-existence, to a greater or lesser extent colors all of Turgenev’s late prose; it is most directly expressed in the lyrical story “Enough!” (1865), perceived by contemporaries as evidence (sincere or flirtatiously hypocritical) of Turgenev’s situationally determined crisis (cf. F. M. Dostoevsky’s parody in the novel “Demons”, 1871).

In 1863, a new rapprochement between Turgenev and Pauline Viardot took place; until 1871 they lived in Baden, then (at the end of the Franco-Prussian War) in Paris. Turgenev is closely associated with G. Flaubert and through him with E. and J. Goncourt, A. Daudet, E. Zola, G. de Maupassant; he assumes the function of an intermediary between Russian and Western literatures. His pan-European fame is growing: in 1878, at the international literary congress in Paris, the writer was elected vice-president; in 1879 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford. Turgenev maintains contacts with Russian revolutionaries (P. L. Lavrov, G. A. Lopatin) and provides material support to emigrants. In 1880, Turgenev took part in the celebrations in honor of the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow. In 1879-81, the old writer experienced a violent infatuation with actress M. G. Savina, which colored his last visits to his homeland.

Along with stories about the past (“The Steppe King Lear”, 1870; “Punin and Baburin”, 1874) and the above-mentioned “mysterious” stories in the last years of his life, Turgenev turned to memoirs (“Literary and Everyday Memoirs”, 1869-80) and “Poems in Prose” (1877-82), where almost all the main themes of his work are presented, and the summing up takes place as if in the presence of approaching death. Death was preceded by more than a year and a half of painful illness (spinal cord cancer).

Biography of I.S. Turgenev

Film “The Great Singer of Great Russia. I.S. Turgenev"

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, a future world-famous writer, was born on November 9, 1818. Place of birth - the city of Orel, parents - nobles. He began his literary activity not with prose, but with lyrical works and poems. Poetic notes are also felt in many of his subsequent stories and novels.

It is very difficult to briefly introduce Turgenev’s work; the influence of his creations on all Russian literature of that time was too great. He is a prominent representative of the golden age in the history of Russian literature, and his fame extended far beyond Russia - abroad, in Europe the name Turgenev was also familiar to many.

Turgenev's pen includes the typical images of new literary heroes he created - serfs, superfluous people, fragile and strong women and commoners. Some of the topics he touched on more than 150 years ago are still relevant today.

If we briefly characterize Turgenev’s work, then researchers of his works conventionally distinguish three stages in it:

1836 – 1847.
1848 – 1861.
1862 – 1883.

Each of these stages has its own characteristics.

1) Stage one is the beginning of a creative path, writing romantic poems, searching for yourself as a writer and your own style in different genres - poetry, prose, drama. At the beginning of this stage, Turgenev was influenced by the philosophical school of Hegel, and his work was of a romantic and philosophical nature. In 1843, he met the famous critic Belinsky, who became his creative mentor and teacher. A little earlier, Turgenev wrote his first poem called “Parasha”.

Turgenev’s work was greatly influenced by his love for the singer Pauline Viardot, after whom he left for France for several years. It is this feeling that explains the subsequent emotionality and romanticism of his works. Also, during his life in France, Turgenev met many talented wordsmiths of this country.

The creative achievements of this period include the following works:

Poems, lyrics - “Andrey”, “Conversation”, “Landowner”, “Pop”.
Dramaturgy – plays “Carelessness” and “Lack of Money”.
Prose – stories and stories “Petushkov”, “Andrey Kolosov”, “Three Portraits”, “Breter”, “Mumu”.

The future direction of his work—works in prose—is emerging more and more clearly.

2) Stage two is the most successful and fruitful in Turgenev’s work. He enjoys the well-deserved fame that arose after the publication of the first story from “Notes of a Hunter” - the essay story “Khor and Kalinich”, published in 1847 in the Sovremennik magazine. Its success marked the beginning of five years of work on the remaining stories in the series. In the same year, 1847, when Turgenev was abroad, the following 13 stories were written.

The creation of “Notes of a Hunter” carries an important meaning in the work of the writer:

- firstly, Turgenev was one of the first Russian writers to touch upon a new topic - the topic of the peasantry, revealing their image more deeply; He portrayed the landowners in a real light, trying not to embellish or criticize without reason;

- secondly, the stories are imbued with a deep psychological meaning, the writer does not just depict a hero of a certain class, he tries to penetrate his soul, understand his way of thinking;

- thirdly, the authorities did not like these works, and for their creation Turgenev was first arrested and then sent into exile to his family estate.

Creative heritage:

Novels – “Rud”, “On the Eve” and “The Noble Nest”. The first novel was written in 1855 and was a great success among readers, and the next two further strengthened the writer’s fame.
The stories are “Asya” and “Faust”.
Several dozen stories from “Notes of a Hunter.”

3) Stage three is the time of mature and serious works of the writer, in which the writer touches on deeper issues. It was in the sixties that Turgenev’s most famous novel, “Fathers and Sons,” was written. This novel raised questions about the relationship between different generations that are still relevant today and gave rise to many literary discussions.

An interesting fact is also that at the dawn of his creative activity, Turgenev returned to where he started - to lyrics and poetry. He became interested in a special type of poetry - writing prose fragments and miniatures in lyrical form. Over the course of four years, he wrote more than 50 such works. The writer believed that such a literary form could fully express the most secret feelings, emotions and thoughts.

Works from this period:

Novels – “Fathers and Sons”, “Smoke”, “Nov”.
Stories - “Punin and Baburin”, “King of the Steppes Lear”, “Brigadier”.
Mystical works - “Ghosts”, “After Death”, “The Story of Lieutenant Ergunov”.

In the last years of his life, Turgenev was mainly abroad, without forgetting his homeland. His work influenced many other writers, opened up many new questions and images of heroes in Russian literature, therefore Turgenev is rightfully considered one of the most outstanding classics of Russian prose.

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The future master of the living word was born on October 28 (November 9), 1818, to nobles living in Orel. Turgenev's father came from a very old family and at one time was a hussar officer, captain of the Cavalry Guard Regiment. The writer's mother came from a wealthy landowner family.

Ivan Sergeevich spent his childhood on the family estate Spasskoye-Lutovinovo. His trustees and educators were teachers and tutors who came from German and Swiss backgrounds. Nannies looked after the child. Little Ivan grew up in rather harsh conditions. An atmosphere of autocracy reigned on the parents' estate. Rarely did young Turgenev go without punishment from his domineering mother, who in this way taught her son to.

His own experience and observations of the life of forced peasants from a young age awakened in Turgenev an aversion to serfdom.

As a child, Turgenev did not like to tinker with toys. He was very interested in nature, which attracted him with its mystery, mystery and simplicity. Young Turgenev loved to wander for a long time through the forest and park, and often visited the pond. The hunters and foresters who lived on the estate encouraged the future writer’s emerging interest in nature, telling him about the life of birds and forest animals.

In 1827, Turgenev moved to Moscow, where Ivan received his education under the guidance and supervision of private teachers. Much later, the writer admitted that he was very acutely worried about the severance of ties with his former way of life.

History of the House of Turgenev

The house and estate of the Turgenevs were located in the current Sovetsky district of the city of Orel. Since its initial development, the city has been subject to frequent fires. Wooden houses were placed quite close to each other, so entire city blocks often perished in the destructive fire elements. Historical sources contain indications that in one of these fires the house where Turgenev was born subsequently burned down.

The Turgenev estate occupied almost the entire block along Borisoglebskaya and Georgievskaya streets. Unfortunately, historians were unable to find a reliable image of the writer’s home.

A few years after the fire, a one-story house was built on the site of the burned building, which subsequently passed successively to several owners.

In modern Orel there are no buildings on the site of the Turgenevs’ former house. A memorial plaque dedicated to the writer is mounted a little further into the courtyard, on the wall of the administrative building.

Until she was eight years old, Ivan Turgenev’s daughter was called Pelageya. Her mother, Avdotya Ivanova, was from a family of Moscow bourgeoisie - she worked for the landowner Varvara Lutovinova as a civilian seamstress. Sweet, modest and charming Avdotya attracted the attention of the future writer, who had just returned to Spasskoye from the University of Berlin, where he attended a course of lectures. A love affair began between them, which, due to the inexperience of the lovers, ended quite logically - with the girl’s pregnancy.

Desperate in his youth, Ivan Sergeevich immediately expressed a desire to marry her, which brought his mother into indescribable horror and indignation. She threw a huge scandal at her son, after which Turgenev hastily retreated to the capital. Having learned about Avdotya Ivanova’s pregnancy, Turgenev’s mother immediately sent her to Moscow to her parents. There, on April 26, 1842, Pelageya was born. Avdotya was assigned a very good lifetime pension. Such a dowry allowed her to soon get married and live comfortably for the rest of her life, without remembering that she had a daughter. And one-year-old Pelageya was taken to Spasskoye, where she lived as a bastard. Officially, Varvara Petrovna did not recognize her as her granddaughter, but occasionally boasted to guests about her “son’s prank”: she called the girl, stood her in front of the guests, and asked them: “Well, what do you say? Who does she look like?

Turgenev did not know that he had a daughter until she was eight. “I'll tell you what I found here - guess what? “his daughter, eight years old, strikingly similar to me,” he wrote to Pauline Viardot in July 1850. - Looking at this poor little creature, I felt my responsibilities towards her. And I will fulfill them - she will never know poverty. I will make her life as good as possible.” In terms of everyday pragmatism, Pauline Viardot was a worthy competitor to the writer’s mother. She threw out all her romantic emotions from the stage, and in everyday life she was guided solely by reason. Her reaction to Turgenev’s letter was lightning fast: the singer invited him to take the girl under his wing and raise her to be a noble maiden. True, this required certain financial investments... The sensual Turgenev, who idolized Viardot, agreed to everything that she proposed. Pelageya's fate was decided - she was going to France. And in honor of this event, Ivan Sergeevich decided to rename Pelageya to Polynet. His literary ear was pleased with the consonance: Polina Viardot - Polinette Turgeneva.

Ivan Sergeevich arrived in France only six years later - when Pelageya-Polinet was already fourteen. She practically forgot the Russian language and spoke exclusively French, which simply touched her father. “My daughter completely forgot Russian - and I’m very happy about that. She has no reason to remember the language of a country to which she will never return,” he wrote. What upset him was that Polynette had a difficult relationship with Viardot; the girl did not fit in with someone else’s family. Turgenev praised the singer to the skies and demanded the same from his daughter. But Polinette could not and did not want to hide her dislike for her mentor. Their difficult relationship reached the point where the girl had to be sent to a private boarding school.

When Turgenev arrived in France, he took his daughter from the boarding school, and she moved in with him - under the supervision of the English governess Innis. When the girl turned seventeen, she met the young businessman Gaston Brewer. The future son-in-law made the most pleasant impression on Ivan Sergeevich, and he gave the go-ahead for his daughter’s marriage. And he provided a dowry - a considerable sum at that time - 150 thousand francs. Seven years later, Polynette Brewer gave birth to Turgenev’s granddaughter, Zhanna. And then the writer’s grandson, Georges Albar, was born.

Around the same time, things went wrong for my son-in-law - the glass factory he owned went bankrupt. Gaston Brewer became nervous, unrestrained, began to drink and made scandals with his wife almost every day. As a result, Polynet could not stand it, took the children and left her husband for Switzerland. All expenses for settling his daughter in a new place and maintaining her were covered by Ivan Sergeevich. He even wanted to sell the estate in Spassky and transfer all this money to Polynet and her children, but did not have time to do this. The estate, and then all of Turgenev's property, was sold to Viardot, to whom he left absolutely everything in his will - even the copyrights to his works. But Polynet did not receive a single penny from the singer. She tried to challenge the will, but lost the trial and was left with two small children without any means of support. I had to earn a living by giving music lessons. Turgenev's daughter died in Paris at the age of 76 from cancer.

Nine years after this - in 1924 - her son, Georges Albar, died without leaving any heirs. The writer's granddaughter lived the longest - 80 years. Zhanna Brewer-Turgeneva did not marry, she also did not have children. She lived by giving private lessons for a living, as she was fluent in five languages. And I even tried my hand at poetry. True, she wrote poetry exclusively in French. With her death in 1952, the Turgenev family branch along the line of Ivan Sergeevich ended.