Criticism of Turgenev's work Asya. “Asya” I.S.

In terms of genre, this work can be classified as a story. It is based on beautiful story love, which, unfortunately, ended in separation.

The beginning is an acquaintance with the Gagins. Development of action - relationships between young people. The climax is N.N.’s explanation with Gagin. The denouement is an explanation with Asya. Conclusion - N.N.’s reflections on the past and present.

Travel N.N.
Acquaintance of N.N. with Gagin and his sister.
N.N. draws attention to the girl’s unusual behavior and comes to the conclusion that Gagin is not her brother.
Explanation of Gagin and Asya. N.N. is an involuntary witness.
Asya's secret is revealed.
Dating between N.N. and Asya.
Gagin and Asya are leaving. N.N. tries to find them, but is unsuccessful.

I. S. Turgenev’s story “Asya” is rather a drama, the drama of this very girl Asya. She meets in her life N.N. a young man who attracts not only her, but also whom her brother, a very well-read and intelligent young man, likes. Maybe...

The story “Asya” is about love and only about love, which, according to Turgenev, “ stronger than death and the fear of death” and with which “life holds and moves.” This story has extraordinary poetic charm, beauty and purity. The story is being told...

At the time of the creation of the story “Asya” (1859), I. S. Turgenev was already considered an author who had a significant influence on public life in Russia. The social significance of Turgenev’s work is explained by the fact that the author had the gift of seeing in ordinary...

I. S. Turgenev belongs to those few writers who are endowed with the wonderful gift of penetrating into the depths of the human soul, in two or three strokes, easily and clearly describing the characters of the heroes of their works. And so, as if alive, Turgenev’s characters...

I. S. Turgenev names his story by the name of the heroine. However, the girl's real name is Anna. Let’s think about the meanings of the names: Anna – “grace, comeliness”, and Anastasia (Asya) – “born again”. Why does the author persistently call the pretty, graceful Anna...

1. New!

A very touching, lyrical and beautiful story from the point of view of literary art, “Asya” was written in 1857 by Ivan Turgenev. Millions of readers were literally captivated by this work - people read, reread and became engrossed in "Asey", it was translated into many foreign languages, and critics did not hide their delight. Turgenev wrote an attractive and simple love story, but how beautiful and unforgettable it turned out! Now we will do a short analysis of the story "Asya" by Ivan Turgenev, and in addition you can read a summary on our website. In the same article, the plot of “Asia” will be presented very briefly.

Writing history and prototypes

The story was published when Turgenev was almost forty years old. It is known that the author was not only well educated, but also possessed a rare talent. Once Ivan Turgenev went on a trip to Germany, and fleetingly saw the following picture: two women looked out of the windows from a two-story house - one was an elderly and decorous lady, and she was looking from the first floor, and the second was a young girl, and looked out she's on top. The writer wondered - who are these women, why do they live in the same house, what brought them together? Reflections on this glimpse of the picture prompted Turgenev to write the lyrical story “Asya,” which we are now analyzing.

Let's discuss who could become the prototype for the main character. Turgenev, as you know, had a daughter, Polina Brewer, who was born illegitimate. She is very reminiscent of the timid and sensual main character Asya. At the same time, the writer had sister, therefore, it is quite possible that Turgenev could have considered Varvara Zhitova as a prototype of Asya. Both girls could not come to terms with their dubious position in society, which worried Asya herself.

The plot of the story "Asya" is very short

A short retelling of the plot will help you better understand the analysis of the story “Asya” by Turgenev. The story is narrated by the main character on his own behalf. We see the anonymous Mr. N.N., who traveled abroad and met his compatriots there. The young people made acquaintances and even became friends. So, N.N. meets the Gagins. This is a brother and his half-sister Asya, who also went on a trip to Europe.

Gagin and N.N. like each other, they have a lot in common, so they communicate, relax together and have fun. In the end, N.N. falls in love with Asya, and the main character experiences reciprocal feelings. They declare their love, but misunderstandings in the relationship lead to mixed feelings and awkward conversation. Asya and Gagin abruptly leave, leaving a note, at the very moment when N.N. decided to ask for her hand. He rushes about in search of the Gagins, looks for them everywhere, but does not find them. And the feelings that he had for Asa will never be repeated in his life.

Be sure to read Gagin’s characterization, and it is important that we examined the plot of the story “Asya” very briefly, because this makes it easier to carry out further analysis.

Asya's image

Asya seems to us to be a special and unusual girl. She reads a lot, draws beautifully and takes what is happening to heart. She has a keen sense of justice, but as for her character, she is changeable and even somewhat extravagant. Sometimes she is drawn to reckless and desperate actions, as can be seen from her decision to leave her relationship with N.N., with whom she fell deeply in love.

However, an analysis of the story “Asya” shows that the girl’s soul is easy to hurt; she is very impressionable, kind and affectionate. Of course, this nature attracted Mr. N.N., who began to spend a lot of time with his new friends. He looks for the reasons for her actions and is sometimes perplexed: should he condemn Asya or admire her.

Important details of the analysis of the story "Asya"

When Asya begins to communicate with the main character N.N., incomprehensible and previously unknown feelings awaken in her soul. The girl is still very young and inexperienced, and does not know how to cope with her emotions. She is afraid of this state, this explains her strange and changeable actions, which can hardly be called ordinary whims. She wants to arouse sympathy from N.N., to be attractive and charming in his eyes, and in the end she opens up to both him and Gagin.

Yes, this is a childish and naive act, but here she is - sweet, kind girl Asya. Unfortunately, neither Gagin nor N.N. appreciate Asya’s frank and temperamental behavior. Her brother thinks she is reckless, and the main character reflects on her character, thinking that it is madness to marry a seventeen-year-old girl with such a character. In addition, he found out that Asya was illegitimate, and such a wedding would have caused misunderstanding in secular circles! Even a short analysis of the story “Asya” showed that this ruined their relationship, and when N.N. came to his senses, it was already too late.

Of course, we have something to think about: could Gagin reason with his sister, whom he loved so much, and whose whims he always fulfilled, and convince her not to rush things? Or maybe Gagin should have talked more openly with N.N.? Should Asya have made such a hasty decision and left the relationship? Wasn't this cruel to the main character? And Mr. N.N. himself - was he ready to fight for his love, go against secular rules, put his feelings above? Well, there are a lot of questions, but can anyone give clear answers to them? Hardly. Let everyone find the answer for themselves...

You have read the analysis of the story “Asya” by Turgenev, also in this article the plot of the story was presented very briefly, a description of the image of Asya and characteristics of all the characters.

The story is one of the freest genres, in which each era and each writer sets its own laws. An average volume between a novel and a short story, just one plot line that is given in development, a small circle of characters - this exhausts its main features. Even in the relatively young Russian prose of the early 19th century. There were many genre varieties of it. A notable phenomenon were Karamzin's sentimental stories, Belkin's Pushkin stories, Gogol's St. Petersburg stories, and the genres of secular and mysterious romantic stories were widespread.

Turgenev throughout his career developed this genre, but the most famous were his love stories “Asya”, “First Love”, “Faust”, “Quiet”, “Correspondence”, “Spring Waters”. They are also often called “elegiac” not only for the poetry of feeling and the beauty of landscape sketches, but also for their characteristic motifs, which turn from lyrical to plot. Let us remember that the content of the elegy consists of love experiences and melancholic thoughts about life: regret about past youth, memories of deceived happiness, sadness about the future, as, for example, in Pushkin’s “Elegy” of 1830 (“The faded joy of crazy years...” ). This analogy is all the more appropriate since Pushkin was Turgenev’s most important reference point in Russian literature and Pushkin’s motifs permeate all of his prose. No less important for Turgenev was the German literary and philosophical tradition, primarily in the person of I.V. Goethe; It is no coincidence that the action of “Asia” takes place in Germany, and the next Turgenev story is called “Faust”.

The realistic method (detailed accurate depiction of reality, psychological accuracy of characters and situations) is organically combined in elegiac stories with the problems of romanticism. Behind the story of one love one can read a large-scale philosophical generalization, and therefore many details (realistic in themselves) begin to shine with a symbolic meaning.

The flowering and focus of life, love is understood by Turgenev as an elemental, natural force by which the universe moves. Therefore, its comprehension is inseparable from natural philosophy (philosophy of nature). Landscapes in “Ace” and other stories of the 50s. don't occupy large space in the text, but this is far from just an elegant screensaver for the plot or background decoration. The endless, mysterious beauty of nature serves for Turgenev as indisputable proof of its divinity. “Man is connected with nature by a thousand inextricable threads: he is her son.” Any human feeling has its source in nature; While the heroes admire her, she imperceptibly directs their fate.

Following the pantheistic understanding of nature, Turgenev views it as a single organism in which “all lives merge into one world life,” from which “a common, endless harmony emerges,” “one of those “open” secrets that we all see and do not we see." Although in it, “everything seems to live only for itself,” at the same time, everything “exists for another, in another it only achieves its reconciliation or resolution” - this is the formula of love as the essence and internal law of nature. “Her wend is love. Only through love can you get closer to it...” - Turgenev quotes Goethe’s “Fragment on Nature”.

Like all living things, man naively considers himself “the center of the universe,” especially since he is the only one of all natural beings who has reason and self-awareness. He is fascinated by the beauty of the world and the game natural forces, but trembles, realizing his doom of death. To be happy, the romantic consciousness needs to absorb the whole world, to enjoy the fullness of natural life. Thus, Faust from Goethe's drama famous monologue dreams of wings, looking from the hill at the setting sun:

Oh, give me wings to fly away from the earth
And rush after him, without getting tired along the way!
And I would see in the radiance of rays
The whole world is at my feet: even the sleeping valleys,
And the burning peaks with a golden shine,
And a river in gold, and a stream in silver.
<...>
Alas, only the spirit soars, having renounced the body, -
We cannot soar with bodily wings!
But sometimes you can’t suppress
There is an innate desire in the soul -
Striving upward... (translated by N. Kholodkovsky)

Asya and H.H., admiring the Rhine Valley from a hill, also long to soar from the ground. With purely romantic idealism, Turgenev’s heroes demand everything or nothing from life, they languish with “all-encompassing desires” (“If you and I were birds, how we would soar, how we would fly... So we would drown in this blue... “But we are not birds.” “But we can grow wings,” I objected. “How?” “Wait, you will know.” Subsequently, the motif of wings, repeated many times in the story, becomes a metaphor for love.

However, romanticism by its very logic presupposes the unattainability of the ideal, since the contradiction between dreams and reality is insoluble. For Turgenev, this contradiction permeates the very nature of man, who is at the same time a natural being, thirsting for earthly joys, “happiness to the point of satiety,” and a spiritual personality, striving for eternity and depth of knowledge, as Faust formulates in the same scene:

...two souls live in me
And both are at odds with each other.
One, like the passion of love, ardent
And greedily clings to the ground entirely,
The other one is all for the clouds
It would have rushed out of the body (translated by B. Pasternak).

This is where destructive internal duality comes from. Earthly passions suppress the spiritual nature of a person, and having soared on the wings of the spirit, a person quickly realizes his weakness. “Remember, yesterday you talked about wings?.. My wings have grown, but there is nowhere to fly,” Asya will say to the hero.

Late German romantics presented passions as external, often deceptive and hostile forces to man, of which he becomes a plaything. Then love was likened to fate and itself became the embodiment of the tragic discord between dream and reality. According to Turgenev, a thinking, spiritually developed person is doomed to defeat and suffering (which he also shows in the novel “Fathers and Sons”).

Turgenev began “Asya” in the summer of 1857 in Sinzig on the Rhine, where the story takes place, and finished it in November in Rome. It is interesting to note that “Notes of a Hunter,” which became famous for its depiction of Russian nature and types of national character, Turgenev wrote in Bougival, on the estate of Pauline Viardot near Paris. “Fathers and Sons” was composed by him in London. If we further trace this “European voyage” of Russian literature, it turns out that “Dead Souls” were born in Rome, “Oblomov” was written in Marienbad; Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” - in Geneva and Milan, “Demons” - in Dresden. It is these works that are considered the most profound word about Russia in XIX literature century, and by them Europeans traditionally judge the “mysterious Russian soul.” Is this a game of chance or a pattern?

In all of these works, the question of Russia’s place in the European world is raised in one way or another. But rarely in Russian literature do you come across a story about modernity, where the action itself takes place in Europe, as in “Ace” or “Spring Waters”. How does this affect their problems?

Germany is depicted in “Ace” as a peaceful, lovingly accepting environment. Friendly, hardworking people, gentle, picturesque landscapes seem to be deliberately contrasted with “unwelcoming” pictures. Dead souls" “Hello to you, modest corner of the German soil, with your unpretentious contentment, with the ubiquitous traces of diligent hands, patient, although unhurried work... Hello and peace!” - the hero exclaims, and we guess behind his direct, declarative intonation the author’s position. Germany is also an important cultural context for the story. In the atmosphere of the ancient town, “the word “Gretchen” - either an exclamation or a question - just begged to be spoken” (referring to Margarita from Goethe’s “Faust”). In the course of the story H.H. Gagina and Asya read Goethe’s “Herman and Dorothea”. Without this “immortal Goethe idyll” about life in the German province, it is impossible to “recreate Germany” and understand its “secret ideal,” wrote A.A. Fet (himself half-German) in his essays “From Abroad”. Thus, the story is built on comparisons with both Russian and German literary traditions.

The hero of the story is identified simply as Mr. H.H., and we know nothing about his life before and after the story told. By this, Turgenev deliberately deprives him of bright individual features so that the narrative sounds as objective as possible and so that the author himself can quietly stand behind the hero, sometimes speaking on his behalf. H.H. - one of the Russian educated nobles, and every Turgenev reader could easily apply what happened to him to himself, and more broadly, to the fate of each of the people. He is almost always liked by the readers. The hero talks about the events of twenty years ago, assessing them from the perspective of newly acquired experience. Now touching, now ironic, now lamenting, he makes subtle psychological observations on himself and others, behind which one can discern an insightful and omniscient author.

For the hero, a trip to Germany is the beginning of his life's journey. Since he wanted to join the student trade, it means he himself had recently graduated from one of the German universities, and for Turgenev this is an autobiographical detail. What H.H. meets compatriots in the German province, it seems both strange and fateful, because he usually avoided them abroad and in a big city would certainly have avoided making acquaintance. This is how the motive of fate is first outlined in the story.

H.H. and his new acquaintance Gagin are surprisingly similar. These are soft, noble, European educated people, subtle connoisseurs of art. You can sincerely become attached to them, but since life turned towards them only on its sunny side, their “semi-effeminacy” threatens to turn into lack of will. Developed intelligence gives rise to increased reflection and, as a result, indecision.

This is how Oblomov’s features appear in Gagina. A typical episode is when Gagin went to sketch, and N.N., joining him, wanted to read, then two friends, instead of doing business, “argued quite intelligently and subtly about how exactly it should work.” Here the author’s irony over the “diligence” of the Russian nobles is obvious, which in “Fathers and Sons” will grow to the sad conclusion about their inability to transform Russian reality. This is exactly how N.G. understood the story. Chernyshevsky in his critical article“Russian man at rendez-vous” (“Athénée” 1858). Drawing an analogy between Mr. N.N., whom he calls Romeo, on the one hand, and Pechorin (“Hero of our time”), Beltov (“Who is to blame?” Herzen), Agarin (“Sasha” Nekrasova), Rudin - on the other hand, Chernyshevsky establishes the social typicality of the behavior of the hero “Asia” and sharply condemns him, seeing in him almost a scoundrel. Chernyshevsky admits that Mr. N.N. belongs to the best people noble society, but believes that historical role figures of this type, i.e. Russian liberal nobles, played out that they have lost their progressive meaning. Such a harsh assessment of the hero was alien to Turgenev. His task was to translate the conflict into a universal, philosophical plane and show the unattainability of the ideal.

If the author makes the image of Gagin completely understandable to readers, then his sister appears as a riddle, the solution to which N.N. gets carried away first with curiosity, and then selflessly, but still cannot comprehend it to the end. Her extraordinary liveliness is intricately combined with timid shyness caused by her illegitimacy and long life in the village. This is also where her unsociability and pensive dreaminess come from (remember how she loves to be alone, constantly runs away from her brother and H.N., and on the first evening of their acquaintance she goes to her room and, “without lighting a candle, stands for a long time behind the unopened window”). Last features bring Asya closer to her favorite heroine - Tatyana Larina.

But it is very difficult to get a complete picture of Asya’s character: she is the embodiment of uncertainty and variability. (“What a chameleon this girl is!” N.N. involuntarily exclaims.) Either she is shy of the stranger, then she suddenly bursts out laughing (“Asya, as if on purpose, as soon as she saw me, burst out laughing for no reason and, as was her habit, immediately ran away.” Gagin was embarrassed, muttered after her that she was crazy, asked me to excuse her”); sometimes he climbs the ruins and sings songs loudly, which is completely indecent for a secular young lady. But then she meets the dear English and begins to portray a well-bred person, prim in maintaining decorum. After listening to the reading of Goethe’s poem “Herman and Dorothea,” she wants to seem homely and sedate, like Dorothea. Then she “imposes fasting and repentance on herself” and turns into a Russian provincial girl. It is impossible to say at what point she is no longer herself. Her image shimmers, shimmering with different colors, strokes, and intonations.

The rapid changes in her moods are aggravated by the fact that Asya often acts inconsistently with her own feelings and desires: “Sometimes I want to cry, but I laugh. You shouldn't judge me... by what I do”; “Sometimes I don’t know what’s in my head.<...>I’m sometimes afraid of myself, by God.” Last phrase brings her closer to the mysterious beloved of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov from “Fathers and Sons” (“What nested in this soul - God knows! It seemed that she was in the power of some secret, unknown to her forces; they played with her as they wanted; her a small mind could not cope with their whim”). The image of Asya expands endlessly, because the elemental, natural principle reveals itself in her. Women, by philosophical views Turgenev, is closer to nature, because their nature has an emotional (spiritual) dominant, while the male nature has an intellectual (spiritual) dominant. If a man is captured by the natural element of love from the outside (that is, he resists it), then through a woman she directly expresses herself. The “unknown forces” inherent in every woman find their fullest expression in some. Asya's amazing diversity and liveliness, irresistible charm, freshness and passion stem precisely from here. Her timid “wildness” also characterizes her as “ natural man”, far from society. When Asya is sad, shadows “run across her face,” like clouds across the sky, and her love is compared to a thunderstorm (“I assure you, you and I, prudent people, cannot imagine how deeply she feels and with what incredible strength these feelings express themselves in her; it comes upon her as unexpectedly and as irresistibly as a thunderstorm.”

Nature is also depicted in a constant change of states and moods (as an example, the sunset over the Rhine from Chapter II). She is depicted as truly alive. She languishes, imperiously invades the soul, as if touching her secret strings, quietly but powerfully whispers to her about happiness: “The air was caressing her face, and the linden trees smelled so sweet that her chest involuntarily breathed deeper and deeper.” The moon “looks intently” from the clear sky, and illuminates the city with a “serene and at the same time quietly soul-stirring light.” Light, air, smells are depicted as tangible to the point of visibility. “A scarlet, thin light lay on the vines”; the air “swayed and rolled in waves”; “the evening quietly melted and poured into the night”; the “strong” smell of hemp “amazes” H.H.;

A separate, most short chapter X is the only descriptive one (which completely contradicts the form of an oral story, for which the presentation of the general outline of events is typical). Such isolation indicates the philosophical significance of the passage:

<...>Having entered the middle of the Rhine, I asked the ferryman to launch the boat downstream. The old man raised his oars - and the royal river carried us along. Looking around, listening, remembering, I suddenly felt a secret uneasiness in my heart... I raised my eyes to the sky - but there was no peace in the sky either: speckled with stars, it kept moving, moving, shuddering; I leaned towards the river... but there, and in this dark, cold depth, the stars also swayed and trembled; An alarming revival seemed to me everywhere - and anxiety grew within me. I leaned my elbows on the edge of the boat... The whisper of the wind in my ears, the quiet murmur of water behind the stern irritated me, and fresh breath the waves did not cool me; the nightingale sang on the shore and infected me with the sweet poison of its sounds. Tears began to boil in my eyes, but they were not tears of pointless delight. What I felt was not that vague, recently experienced feeling of all-encompassing desires, when the soul expands, sounds, when it seems to it that it understands and loves everything... No! A thirst for happiness was ignited in me. I still didn’t dare call him by name, but happiness, happiness to the point of satiety - that’s what I wanted, that’s what I was yearning for... And the boat kept rushing along, and the old ferryman sat and dozed, bending over the oars.

It seems to the hero that he is trusting the flow of his own free will, but in fact he is being drawn by the endless flow of life, which he is unable to resist. The landscape is mystically beautiful, but secretly menacing. Intoxication with life and an insane thirst for happiness are accompanied by an increase in vague and persistent anxiety. The hero floats over the “dark, cold depth”, where the abyss of “moving stars” is reflected (Turgenev almost repeats Tyutchev’s metaphors: “chaos is stirring”, “And we are sailing, surrounded by a flaming abyss on all sides”).

The “majestic” and “royal” Rhine is likened to the river of life and becomes a symbol of nature as a whole (water is one of its primary elements). At the same time, it is surrounded by many legends and is deeply integrated into German culture: at the stone bench on the shore, from where H.H. I spent hours admiring the “majestic river”; a “small statue of the Madonna” peeks out from the branches of a huge ash tree; Not far from the Gagins' house rises the Lorelei rock. Near the river “over the grave of a man who drowned seventy years ago, there stood a stone cross half-grown into the ground with an ancient inscription.” These images develop the themes of love and death and at the same time correlate with the image of Asya: it is from the bench near the statue of the Madonna that the hero will want to go to the city of L., where he will meet Asya, and later in the same place he will learn from Gagin the secret of Asya’s birth, after which it will become possible their rapprochement; Asya is the first to mention Lorelei's cliff. Then when brother and H.H. They are looking for Asya in the ruins of the knight’s castle, they find her sitting “on the ledge of the wall, right above the abyss” - in knightly times she sat on the top of a rock above the disastrous whirlpool of Lorelei, charming and destroying those floating along the river, hence the involuntary “hostile feeling” of H.H. at the sight of her. The legend of Lorelei depicts love as capturing a person and then destroying him, which corresponds to Turgenev’s concept. Finally, Asya’s white dress flashes in the darkness near the stone cross on the shore, when the hero is looking for her in vain after an awkward date, and this emphasis on the motive of death will emphasize tragic ending love story and earthly path H.H.

It is symbolically important that the Rhine separates the hero and heroine: when going to Asya, the hero must come into contact with the elements every time. Rain turns out to be both a connecting link between the heroes and at the same time an obstacle. It is along the Rhine that Asya sails away from him forever, and when the hero hurries after her on another flight of the ship, then on one bank of the Rhine he sees a young couple (the maid Gankhen is already cheating on her groom, who has become a soldier; by the way, Gankhen is a diminutive of Anna, like Asya ), “and on the other side of the Rhine, my little Madonna still looked sadly out of the dark green of the old ash tree.”

The famous vineyards of the Rhine Valley, which in figurative system the stories symbolize the blossoming of youth, the juice of life and its sweetness. It is precisely this phase of zenith, fullness and fermentation of forces that the hero experiences. This motif acquires plot development in the episode of a student feast - “the joyful effervescence of young, fresh life, this impulse forward - anywhere, as long as forward” (remember the Anacreontic image of a happy “life feast” in Pushkin’s poetry). Thus, when the hero goes across the Rhine for a “celebration of life” and youth, he meets Asya and her brother, gaining both friendship and love. Soon he is feasting with Gagin on a hill overlooking the Rhine, enjoying the distant sounds of music from the commercial market, and when the two friends drink a bottle of Rhine wine, “the moon rose and played along the Rhine; everything lit up, darkened, changed, even the wine in our cut glasses sparkled with a mysterious shine.” Thus, Rhine wine, in its combination of motifs and allusions, is likened to a certain mysterious elixir of youth (akin to the wine that was given to Faust by Mephistopheles before he fell in love with Gretchen). It is significant that Asya is also compared to wine and grapes: “There was something restless in all her movements: this wild one had recently been grafted, this wine was still fermenting.” It remains to note that in the context of Pushkin’s poetry, the feast of youth also has a reverse side: “The faded joy of crazy years is heavy on me, like a vague hangover, and, like wine, sadness days gone by in my soul, the older, the stronger.” This elegiac context will be updated in the epilogue of the story.

That same evening, the separation of the heroes is accompanied by the following significant detail:

“You drove into the moon pillar, you broke it,” Asya shouted to me.

I lowered my eyes; the waves swayed around the boat, turning black.

See you tomorrow,” Gagin said after her.

The boat has moored. I went out and looked around. No one was visible on the opposite bank. The moon pillar again stretched like a golden bridge across the entire river.

The lunar pillar sets the vertical axis of the universe - it connects heaven and earth and can be interpreted as a symbol of cosmic harmony. At the same time, like a “golden bridge,” it connects both banks of the river. This is a sign of the resolution of all contradictions, eternal unity natural world, where, however, a person can never penetrate, unless he walks along the lunar road. With his movement, the hero involuntarily destroys a beautiful picture, which foreshadows his destruction of love (Asya finally unexpectedly shouts to him: “Farewell!”). At that moment, when the hero breaks the moon pillar, he does not see it, and when he looks back from the shore, the “golden bridge” has already been restored to its former inviolability. Also, looking back into the past, the hero will understand what kind of feeling he destroyed when Asya and her brother disappear from his life long ago (as they disappear from the banks of the Rhine). And natural harmony turned out to be indignant for no more than a moment and, as before, indifferent to the fate of the hero, shines with its eternal beauty.

Finally, the river of life, “the river of times in its aspiration,” in the endless alternation of births and deaths, turns out, as Derzhavin’s quoted aphorism confirms, and the river of “oblivion” - Leta. And then the “cheerful old man” the ferryman, tirelessly plunging his oars into the gloomy “ dark waters”, cannot but evoke associations with the old Charon, transporting more and more new souls to the kingdom of the dead.

The image of a small Catholic Madonna “with an almost childlike face and a red heart on her chest, pierced with swords” is especially difficult to interpret. Since Turgenev opens and ends the entire love story with this symbol, it means that it is one of the key ones for him. Similar image there is in Goethe's Faust: Gretchen, suffering from love, puts flowers to the statue of mater dolorosa with a sword in her heart12. In addition, Madonna’s childish facial expression is similar to Asya’s (which gives the heroine’s image a timeless dimension). A red heart, forever pierced by arrows, is a sign that love is inseparable from suffering. I would like to draw special attention to the fact that the face of the Madonna always “sadly looks out” “from the branches” or “from the dark green of an old ash tree.” This image can be understood as one of the faces of nature. In Gothic churches, on the portals and capitals, the faces and figures of saints were surrounded by floral ornaments - leaves and flowers carved from stone, and the columns of High German Gothic were shaped like tree trunks. This was due to the pagan echo of the early Christian worldview and, most importantly, the understanding of the temple as a model of the universe - with heaven and earth, plants and animals, people and spirits, saints and elemental deities - a transformed world, brought to harmony by God's grace. Nature also has a spiritual, mysterious face, especially when it is illuminated by grief. Another pantheist, Tyutchev, also felt similar states in nature: “...Damage, exhaustion, and on everything / That gentle smile of withering, / What in a rational being we call / The Divine modesty of suffering.”

But nature is changeable not only in light and weather, but also in the general spirit and order of existence that it sets. In Germany, in June, she rejoices, instilling in the hero a feeling of freedom and the limitlessness of her powers. A different mood takes over him when he remembers the Russian landscape:

...suddenly I was struck by a strong, familiar, but rare smell in Germany. I stopped and saw a small patch of hemp near the road. Its steppe smell instantly reminded me of my homeland and aroused in my soul a passionate longing for it. I wanted to breathe Russian air, to walk on Russian soil. “What am I doing here, why am I wandering around in a strange place, among strangers!” - I exclaimed, and the deathly heaviness that I felt in my heart suddenly resolved into bitter and burning emotion.

For the first time, motifs of melancholy and bitterness appear on the pages of the story. The next day, as if guessing N.N.’s thoughts, the heroine shows her “Russianness”:

Is it because I thought a lot about Russia at night and in the morning - Asya seemed to me like a completely Russian girl, a simple girl, almost a maid. She was wearing an old dress, she combed her hair behind her ears and sat, motionless, by the window and sewed in a hoop, modestly, quietly, as if she had never done anything else in her entire life. She said almost nothing, calmly looked at her work, and her features took on such an insignificant, everyday expression that I involuntarily remembered our home-grown Katya and Masha. To complete the similarity, she began to hum “Mother, darling” in a low voice. I looked at her yellowish, faded face, remembered yesterday’s dreams, and I felt sorry for something.

So, the idea of ​​everyday life, aging, and the decline of life is associated with Russia. Russian nature is breathtaking in its elemental power, but strict and joyless. And the Russian woman in Turgenev’s artistic system of the 50s is called by fate to humility and fulfillment of duty, like Tatyana Larina, who marries an unloved man and remains faithful to him, like Liza Kapitana from “The Noble Nest”, with her deep religiosity, renunciation of life and happiness (cf. Tyutchev’s poem “To a Russian Woman”). IN " Noble nest“The description of the steppe unfolds into a whole philosophy of Russian life:

...and suddenly there is a dead silence; nothing will knock or move; the wind does not move the leaf; swallows rush without a cry, one after another, across the earth, and their silent raid makes one’s soul sad. “That’s when I’m at the bottom of the river,” Lavretsky thinks again. “And always, at all times, life here is quiet and unhurried,” he thinks, “whoever enters its circle, submit: there is no need to worry here, there is nothing to stir up trouble; here only the one who succeeds is the one who plows his path slowly, like a plowman plows a furrow with a plow. And what strength is all around, what health is in this inactive silence!<...>Every leaf on every tree, every grass on its stem, expands to its full width. “My best years were spent on a woman’s love,” Lavretsky continues to think, “let boredom sober me up here, let it calm me down, prepare me so that I too can do things slowly.”<...>At that very time, in other places on earth life was in full swing, in a hurry, and roaring; here the same life flowed silently, like water through marsh grass; and until the very evening Lavretsky could not tear himself away from the contemplation of this passing, flowing life; grief over the past melted in his soul like spring snow - and a strange thing! - never had the feeling of homeland been so deep and strong in him.

In the face of the ancient forest of Polesie, which is “sullenly silent or howls dully,” the “consciousness of our insignificance” penetrates into the human heart (“A Trip to Polesie”). There, it seems, nature says to man: “I don’t care about you - I reign, and you worry about how not to die.” In fact, nature is one, unchangeable and multifaceted, it just turns to man with new sides, embodying different phases of existence.

Asya’s mother, the late lady’s maid, is called Tatyana (in Greek “martyr”), and her appearance emphasizes severity, humility, prudence, and religiosity. After Asya was born, she herself refused to marry her father, considering herself unworthy to be a lady. Natural passion and rejection of it - these are the constants of the Russian feminine character. Asya, remembering her mother, directly quotes “Onegin” and says that she “would like to be Tatyana.” Contemplating religious procession pilgrims, Asya dreams: “If only I could go with them<...>Go somewhere far away, to pray, to perform a difficult feat,” which already outlines the image of Liza Kalitina.

Onegin’s motives are directly reflected in the plot: Asya is the first to write to H.H. a note with an unexpected confession after a short acquaintance, and the hero, following Onegin, responds to a declaration of love with a “reprimand,” emphasizing that not everyone would act with her as honestly as he (“You are dealing with an honest man, - yes, with an honest person").

Like Tatyana, Asya reads a lot indiscriminately (H.H. catches her reading bad French novel) and, according to literary stereotypes, creates a hero for himself (“No, Asa needs a hero, an extraordinary person - or a picturesque shepherd in a mountain gorge”). But if Tatyana “loves in earnest,” then Asya “doesn’t have a single feeling halfway.” Her feeling is much deeper than that of the hero. H.H. first of all, an esthete: he selfishly dreams of endless “happiness”, enjoys the poetry of his relationship with Asya, is touched by her childish spontaneity and admires, being an artist at heart, how “her slender appearance was clearly and beautifully drawn” on the ledge of the medieval wall, how she sits in garden, “all bathed in a clear ray of sunshine.” For Asya, love is the first responsible test of life, an almost desperate attempt to know herself and the world. It is no coincidence that she is the one who pronounces Faust’s daring dream of wings. If the thirst for endless happiness by Mr. H.H. for all her loftiness and selfishness in its orientation, Asya’s desire for a “difficult feat”, the ambitious desire to “leave a mark” presupposes life with others and for others (a feat is always accomplished for the sake of someone). “In Asya’s imagination there are sublime human aspirations, lofty moral ideals do not contradict the hope of achieving personal happiness; on the contrary, they presuppose each other. The emerging, although not yet realized, love helps her in defining her ideals.<...>She is demanding of herself and needs help to achieve her aspirations. “Tell me what should I read? Tell me what should I do?” - she asks H.H. However, Mr. H.H. not the hero that Asya considers him, he is not capable of playing the role that is assigned to him.” Therefore, the hero misunderstands a lot of Asya’s feelings: “... I’m not only talking about the future - I didn’t think about tomorrow; I felt very good. Asya blushed when I entered the room; I noticed that she had dressed up again, but the expression on her face did not go with her outfit: it was sad. And I came so cheerful!”

At the highest moment of meeting in Asa, the natural principle manifests itself with irresistible force:

I raised my head and saw her face. How it suddenly changed! The expression of fear disappeared from him, his gaze went somewhere far away and carried me along with him, his lips parted slightly, his forehead turned pale like marble, and his curls moved back, as if the wind had thrown them back. I forgot everything, I pulled her towards me - her hand obediently obeyed, her whole body was drawn after her hand, the shawl rolled from her shoulders, and her head quietly lay on my chest, lay under my burning lips.

It was also described how the river pulled the shuttle along with it. The gaze went into the distance, as if the distance of the sky had opened when the clouds parted, and the curls thrown back by the wind convey the sensations of winged flight. But happiness, according to Turgenev, is possible only for a moment. When the hero thinks that it is nearby, the author’s voice clearly intrudes into his speech: “Happiness has no tomorrow; he doesn’t even have yesterday; it does not remember the past, does not think about the future; he has a present - and that is not a day, but a moment. I don’t remember how I got to Z. It wasn’t my legs that carried me, it wasn’t the boat that carried me: some wide, strong wings lifted me.” At this moment, Asya is already lost to him (just as Onegin passionately and seriously fell in love with Tatyana, who was already lost to him).

Unpreparedness of H.H. taking the decisive step can be attributed to the Russian national character, although, of course, not as directly and vulgarly sociologically as Chernyshevsky did. But if we have reason to compare Gagin and H.H. with Oblomov (the excerpt “Oblomov’s Dream” was published already in 1848), then the antithesis in the person of the German Stolz inevitably arises in the mind and seeks embodiment, especially since the action of “Asia” takes place on German soil. This antithesis is not directly expressed in the system of characters, but appears when considering Goethe's motives in the story. This is, firstly, Faust himself, who decided to challenge fate and sacrifice immortality for the sake of the highest moment of happiness, and, secondly, Hermann from Goethe’s poem “Herman and Dorothea”, not by chance read by Mr. H.H. new acquaintances. This is not only an idyll of German life, but also a story about happy love, which was not hindered by the social inequality of the lovers (the refugee Dorothea is at first ready to be hired as a servant in Herman’s house). The most significant thing is that in Goethe, Hermann falls in love with Dorothea at first sight and proposes to her on the same day, while it is the need to make a decision in one evening that plunges Mr. N.N. into embarrassment and confusion.

But it is a mistake to think that the outcome of the meeting depended only on two lovers. He was predetermined by fate. Let us remember that a third character also takes part in the meeting scene - the old widow Frau Louise. She good-naturedly patronizes young people, but some features of her appearance should make us very wary. We see her for the first time in Chapter IV, when friends come to the German woman to pick up Asya so that she can say goodbye to the departing N.N. But instead, Asya gives him a branch of geranium through Gagin (which will later remain the only memory of Asya), and refuses to go down:

The illuminated window on the third floor knocked and opened, and we saw Asya’s dark head. The toothless and blind face of an old German woman peeked out from behind her.

“I’m here,” Asya said, coquettishly leaning her elbows on the window, “I feel good here.” For you, take it,” she added, throwing Gagina a branch of geranium, “imagine that I am the lady of your heart.”

Frau Louise laughed.

When Gagin conveys to N.N. branch, he returns home “with a strange heaviness on his heart,” which gives way to melancholy when remembering Russia.

This whole scene is filled with dark symbolism. Asya’s lovely head and the “toothless” old woman’s face behind form together an allegorical picture of the unity of love and death - a common subject in church painting of the Baroque era. At the same time, the image of the old woman is associated with the ancient goddess of fate - Parka.

In Chapter IX, Asya admits that it was Frau Louise who told her the legend of Lorelei, and adds, as if by chance: “I like this fairy tale. Frau Louise tells me all sorts of fairy tales. Frau Louise has a black cat with yellow eyes...” It turns out that the German sorceress Frau Louise tells Asya about the beautiful sorceress Lorelei. This casts an ominous and magical glow on Asya and her love (the Old Witch is, again, a character from “Faust”). It is noteworthy that Asya is sincerely attached to the old German woman, and she, in turn, is very sympathetic to Mr. N.N. It turns out that love and death are inseparable and act “together.”

On a date with Asya, the hero does not go to the stone chapel, as was originally planned, but to Frau Louise’s house, which looks like a “huge, hunched bird.” A change of meeting place is an ominous sign, for a stone chapel can symbolize the longevity and sanctification of a relationship, while Frau Louise’s house has an almost demonic flavor.

I knocked weakly on the door; it immediately opened. I crossed the threshold and found myself in complete darkness.

I groped a couple of steps, and someone’s bony hand took my hand.

“Is that you, Frau Louise,” I asked.

<...>In the faint light falling from the tiny window, I saw the wrinkled face of the burgomaster's widow. A sickly sly smile stretched her sunken lips and twinkled her dull eyes.

Clearer allusions to the mystical meaning of the image are hardly possible within the framework of realism. Finally, the burgomaster’s widow, “smiling her nasty smile,” calls the hero to give him last note Asya with the words “goodbye forever!”

The motive of death also concerns Asya in the epilogue:

...I keep, like a shrine, her notes and a dried geranium flower, the same flower that she once threw to me from the window. It still gives off a faint smell, and the hand that gave it to me, that hand that I only once had to press to my lips, perhaps has long been smoldering in the grave... And I myself - what happened to me? What remains of me, from those blissful and anxious days, from those winged hopes and aspirations? So the slight evaporation of insignificant grass experiences all the joys and all the sorrows of a person - it experiences the person himself.

The mention of Asya’s “perhaps decayed” hand brings to mind the “bony hand” of Frau Louise. Thus, love, death (and nature, indicated by a branch of geranium) are finally intertwined with a common motif and “share hands with each other”... And the words that end the story about the evaporation of insignificant grass that survives a person (a sign of the eternity of nature) directly echo the ending of “Fathers and children” with their philosophical picture of flowers on Bazarov’s grave.

However, the circle of associations with which Turgenev surrounds his heroine can be continued. In her endless variability and playful playfulness in behavior, Asya resembles another romantic, fantastic heroine - Ondine from poem of the same name Zhukovsky (a poetic translation of a poem by the German romanticist de la Motte Fouquet, so this parallel fits organically into the German background of Turgenev’s story). Ondine is a river deity, living among people in the form of a beautiful girl, with whom a noble knight falls in love, marries her, but then leaves her.

Asya's rapprochement with Lorelei and the Rhine with a number of common motives confirms this parallel (Ondine leaves her husband, plunging into the streams of the Danube). This analogy also confirms Asya’s organic connection with nature, because Ondine is a fantastic creature who personifies the natural element - water, hence her endless capriciousness and variability, transitions from stormy jokes to gentle meekness. And here is how Asya is described:

I have never seen a more agile creature. Not a single moment did she sit still; she got up, ran into the house and came running again, hummed in a low voice, often laughed, and in a strange way: it seemed that she was laughing not at what she heard, but at various thoughts that came into her head. Her big eyes she looked straight, bright, boldly, but sometimes her eyelids squinted slightly, and then her gaze suddenly became deep and tender.

Asya’s “wildness” is especially evident when she climbs alone through the ruins of a knight’s castle overgrown with bushes. When she jumps over them, laughing, “like a goat,” she fully reveals her closeness to the natural world, and at that moment H.H. feels something alien, hostile in her. Even her appearance at this moment speaks of the wild unbridledness of a natural being: “As if she had guessed my thoughts, she suddenly cast a quick and piercing glance at me, laughed again, and jumped off the wall in two leaps.<...>A strange smile twitched her eyebrows, nostrils and lips slightly; The dark eyes squinted half insolently, half cheerfully.” Gagin constantly repeats that he should be lenient towards Asya, and the fisherman and his wife say the same about Ondine (“She will do mischief, and she will be eighteen years old; but she has the kindest heart.<...>Even though you groan at times, you still love Undine all the time. Isn't that right? - “What is true is true; It’s impossible to stop loving her at all.”

But then, when Asya gets used to H.H. and begins to talk to him frankly, she becomes childishly meek and trusting. Likewise, Ondine, alone with the knight, shows loving submission and devotion.

The motive of escape is also characteristic of both heroines: just as Ondine often runs away from old people, and one day a knight and a fisherman go together to look for her at night, so Asya often runs away from her brother, and then from H.N., and then he and Gagin set off on her searching in the dark.

Both heroines are given the motif of the mystery of birth. In the case of Ondine, when the stream carries her out to the fishermen, this is her only opportunity to enter the human world. Perhaps the motivational commonality with Ondine also determines Asya’s illegitimacy, which, on the one hand, looks like a kind of inferiority and leads to the inability to bear Mr. H.H.’s refusal, and on the other, gives her genuine originality and mystery. Ondine is 18 years old at the time of the poem, Asya is eighteen years old (it is interesting that at baptism the fishermen wanted to call Ondine Dorothea - ‘the gift of God’, and Asya imitates, in particular, Dorothea from Goethe’s idyll).

It is characteristic that if the knight approaches Ondine in the middle of the natural world (on a cape, cut off from the rest of the world by a forest, and then by a flooded stream), then H.H. meets Asya in the German province, outside the usual urban environment, and their romance takes place outside the city walls, on the banks of the Rhine. Both love stories (in the phase of rapprochement between lovers) are oriented towards the idyll genre. It is Asya who chooses an apartment outside the city, with a magnificent view of the Rhine and vineyards.

H.H. She always feels that Asya is not behaving like noble girls (“She appeared to me as a semi-mysterious creature”). And the knight, despite falling in love with Ondine, is constantly embarrassed by her otherness, feels something alien in her, involuntarily fears her, which ultimately kills his affection. H.H. experiences something similar: “Asya herself, with her fiery head, with her past, with her upbringing, this attractive but strange creature - I admit, she scared me.” This way the duality of his feelings and behavior becomes clearer.

In the poem by de la Motte Fouquet - Zhukovsky, the plot is based on original idea Christian sanctification of pantheistic nature. Ondine, being essentially a pagan deity, is constantly called a cherub, an angel, everything demonic in her gradually disappears. True, she is baptized as a child, but she is not baptized Christian name, and Uvdina - her natural name. Having fallen in love with a knight, she marries him in a Christian manner, after which she has an immortal human soul, for which she humbly asks the priest to pray.

Both Ondine and Lorelei, like mermaids, destroy their lovers. However, both of them at the same time belong to the world of people and they themselves suffer and die. Lorelei, enchanted by the god of the Rhine, throws herself into the waves out of love for the knight who once abandoned her. When Gulbrand leaves Ondine, she grieves doubly, because, continuing to love him, she is now obliged to kill him for treason according to the law of the kingdom of spirits, no matter how hard she tries to save him.

Philosophically, the plot of “Ondine” tells about the possibility of the unity of nature and man, in which man acquires the fullness of elemental existence, and nature acquires reason and an immortal soul.

When projecting the ideas of the poem onto the plot of Turgenev's story, it is confirmed that a union with Asya would be tantamount to a union with nature itself, which tenderly loves and kills. This is the fate of anyone who wants to connect with nature. But “everything that threatens death, for the mortal heart, conceals inexplicable pleasures, immortality, perhaps a guarantee.” But Turgenev’s hero, the hero of modern times, refuses such a fatal union, and then the omnipotent laws of life and fate block his way back. The hero remains unscathed to slowly decline.

Let us remember that in Asa two sides of existence are united - the omnipotent and mysterious, elemental power of love (Gretchen’s passion) and Tatyana’s Christian spirituality, the “gentle smile of withering” of Russian nature. The text of “Ondine” also helps to clarify the image of the Madonna looking out from the foliage of an ash tree. This is the face of spiritualized nature, which has acquired an immortal soul and therefore eternally suffers.

Ivan Turgenev not only made a significant contribution to the development of Russian literature within the framework of existing directions, but also discovered new original features of national culture. In particular, he created the image of Turgenev’s young lady - he revealed the unique character of the Russian girl on the pages of his books. To get to know this person, just read the story “Asya”, where the portrait of a woman acquired unique features.

The writer was busy writing this work for several months (from July to November 1857). He wrote hard and slowly, because illness and fatigue were already making themselves felt. It is not known exactly who Asya’s prototype is. Among the versions, the prevailing point of view is that the author described his illegitimate daughter. The image could also reflect the fate of his paternal sister (her mother was a peasant woman). Turgenev, from these examples, knew well how a teenager felt when he found himself in such a situation, and reflected his observations in the story, showing a very sensitive social conflict, for which he himself was to blame.

The work “Asya” was completed in 1857 and published in Sovremennik. The story of the story, told by the author himself, is as follows: one day Turgenev in a German town saw an elderly woman, which looked out of the window on the first floor, and the head of a young girl on the floor above. Then he decided to imagine what their fate could be, and he embodied these fantasies in the form of a book.

Why is the story called this?

The work received its name in honor of the main character, whose love story is the focus of the author’s attention. His main priority was to discover the ideal female image, called the “Turgenev young lady”. According to the writer, a woman can be seen and appreciated only through the prism of the feeling she experiences. Only in it its mysterious and incomprehensible nature is fully revealed. Therefore, his Asya experiences the shock of first love and experiences it with the dignity inherent in an adult and mature lady, and not the naive child she was before meeting N.N.

This transformation is what Turgenev shows. At the end of the book, we say goodbye to Asya the child and meet Anna Gagina, a sincere, strong and self-aware woman who does not agree to compromise: when N.N. afraid to surrender to the feeling completely and immediately acknowledge it, she, overcoming the pain, left him forever. But in memory of the bright time of childhood, when Anna was still Asya, the writer calls his work with this diminutive name.

Genre: story or short story?

Of course, “Asya” is a story. The story is never divided into chapters, and its volume is much smaller. The segment from the lives of the characters depicted in the book is shorter than in the novel, but longer than in the book itself. small form prose. Turgenev also held the same opinion about the genre nature of his creation.

Traditionally, there are more characters and events in a story than in a short story. In addition, the subject of the image in it is precisely the sequence of episodes in which cause-and-effect relationships are revealed, which lead the reader to understand the meaning of the ending of the work. This is what happens in the book “Asya”: the characters get to know each other, their communication leads to mutual interest, N.N. finds out about Anna's origins, she confesses her love to him, he is afraid to take her feelings seriously, and in the end all this leads to a breakup. The writer first intrigues us, for example, shows the strange behavior of the heroine, and then explains it through the story of her birth.

What is the work about?

The main character is a young man, on whose behalf the story is told. These are the memories of an already mature man about the events of his youth. In "Ace" a middle-aged man socialite N.N. recalls a story that happened to him when he was about 25. The beginning of his story, where he meets his brother and sister Gagin, is the exposition of the story. The place and time of action is “a small German town of W. near the Rhine (river).” The writer is referring to the city of Sinzig in a province of Germany. Turgenev himself traveled there in 1857, and then finished the book. The narrator writes in the past tense, stipulating that the events described took place 20 years ago. Accordingly, they occurred in June 1837 (N.N. himself reports about the month in the first chapter).

What Turgenev wrote about in “Ace” is familiar to the reader from the time of reading “Eugene Onegin”. Asya Gagina is the same young Tatyana who fell in love for the first time, but did not find reciprocity. It was the poem “Eugene Onegin” that N.N. once read. for the Gagins. Only the heroine in the story does not look like Tatyana. She is very changeable and fickle: she either laughs all day long, or walks around darker than a cloud. The reason for this state of mind lies in the girl’s difficult history: she is Gagin’s illegitimate sister. In high society she feels like a stranger, as if unworthy of the honor bestowed on her. Thoughts about her future situation constantly weigh on her, which is why Anna has a difficult character. But, in the end, she, like Tatyana from Eugene Onegin, decides to confess her love to N.N. The hero promises the girl’s brother to explain everything to her, but instead accuses her of confessing to her brother and actually exposing him to a laughing stock. Asya, hearing a reproach instead of a confession, runs away. A N.N. understands how dear she is to him, and decides to ask for her hand the next day. But it’s too late, because the next morning he finds out that the Gagins have left, leaving him a note:

Farewell, we won't see each other again. I’m not leaving out of pride - no, I can’t do otherwise. Yesterday, when I cried in front of you, if you had said one word to me, just one word, I would have stayed. You didn't say it. Apparently, it’s better this way... Goodbye forever!

The main characters and their characteristics

The reader's attention is drawn, first of all, to the main characters of the work. They are the ones who embody the author’s intention and are reference images, on which the narrative is based.

1. Asya (Anna Gagina)- a typical “Turgenev young lady”: she is a wild, but sensitive girl who is capable of true love, but does not accept cowardice and weakness of character. This is how her brother described her: “Pride developed in her strongly, and mistrust too; bad habits took root, simplicity disappeared. She wanted (she herself admitted this to me once) to make the whole world forget her origins; she was both ashamed of her mother, and ashamed of her shame, and proud of her.” She grew up in nature on an estate and studied at a boarding school. At first she was raised by her mother, a maid in her father's house. After her death, the master took the girl to him. Then the upbringing was continued by his legitimate son, the brother of the main character. Anna is a modest, naive, well-educated person. She has not yet matured, so she fools around and plays pranks, not taking life seriously. However, her character changed when she fell in love with N.N.: he became fickle and strange, the girl was either too lively or sad. By changing her images, she unconsciously sought to attract the attention of her gentleman, but her intentions were absolutely sincere. She even fell ill with a fever from the feeling that filled her heart. From her further actions and words we can conclude that she is a strong and strong-willed woman, capable of sacrifice for the sake of honor. Turgenev himself described her description: “The girl, whom he called his sister, at first glance seemed very pretty to me. There was something special about her dark, round face, with a small thin nose, almost childish cheeks and black, light eyes. She was gracefully built, but seemed not yet fully developed.” The somewhat idealized image of Asya was repeated in the faces of other famous heroines of the writer.
2. N.N.- a narrator who, 20 years after the event described, takes up his pen to ease his soul. He can't forget about his lost love. He appears before us as a selfish and idle rich young man who travels because he has nothing to do. He is lonely and afraid of his loneliness, because, by his own admission, he loves to be in a crowd and look at people. At the same time, he does not want to meet Russians, apparently, he is afraid of disturbing his peace. He ironically notes that “he considered it his duty to indulge in sadness and loneliness for a while.” This desire to show off even in front of oneself opens in him weaknesses nature: he is insincere, false, superficial, seeks justification for his idleness in fictitious and contrived suffering. It is impossible not to note his impressionability: thoughts about his homeland made him angry, meeting Anna made him feel happy. Main character educated and noble, he lives “as he wants,” and he is characterized by inconstancy. He understands art, loves nature, but cannot find an application for his knowledge and feelings. He loves to analyze people with his mind, but does not feel them with his heart, which is why he could not understand Asya’s behavior for so long. Love for her revealed not the best qualities in him: cowardice, indecisiveness, selfishness.
3. Gagin- Anna's older brother who takes care of her. This is how the author writes about him: “It was a straight Russian soul, truthful, honest, simple, but, unfortunately, a little lethargic, without tenacity and inner heat. Youth was not in full swing in him; she glowed with a quiet light. He was very sweet and smart, but I couldn’t imagine what would happen to him once he matured.” The hero is very kind and sympathetic. He honored and respected his family, because he fulfilled his father’s last wishes honestly, and he loved his sister like his own. Anna is very dear to him, so he sacrifices friendship for the sake of her peace of mind and leaves N.N., taking the heroine away. He generally willingly sacrifices his interests for the sake of others, because in order to raise his sister, he resigns and leaves his homeland. Other characters in his description they always look positive, he finds an excuse for all of them: the secretive father, the compliant maid, the headstrong Asya.

Minor characters are only mentioned in passing by the narrator. This is a young widow on the waters, who rejected the narrator, Gagin’s father (a kind, gentle, but unhappy man), his brother, who got his nephew a job in St. Petersburg, Asya’s mother (Tatyana Vasilievna - a proud and unapproachable woman), Yakov (Gagin the elder’s butler) . The description of the characters given by the author allows us to understand even more deeply the story “Asya” and the realities of the era that became its basis.

Subject

1. Theme of love. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev wrote many stories about this. For him, feeling is a test of the heroes’ souls: “No, love is one of those passions that breaks our “I”, makes us, as it were, forget about ourselves and our interests,” said the writer. Only real person can truly love. However, the tragedy is that many people fail this test, and it takes two to love. When one fails to truly love, the other is undeservedly left alone. This is what happened in this book: N.N. I couldn’t pass the test of love, but Anna, although she coped with it, still couldn’t stand the insult of neglect and left forever.
2. The theme of the extra person in the story “Asya” also occupies an important place. The main character cannot find a place for himself in the world. His idle and aimless life abroad is proof of this. He wanders around in search of who knows what, because he cannot apply his skills and knowledge in the real business. His failure also manifests itself in love, because he is afraid of the girl’s direct recognition, afraid of the strength of her feelings, and therefore cannot realize in time how dear she is to him.
3. The theme of family is also raised by the author. Gagin raised Asya as his sister, although he understood the complexity of her situation. Perhaps it was precisely this circumstance that pushed him to travel, where the girl could distract herself and hide from sidelong glances. Turgenev emphasizes superiority family values over class prejudices, calling on his compatriots to care more about family ties than about the purity of blood.
4. Theme of nostalgia. The whole story is imbued with the nostalgic mood of the main character, who lives with memories of the time when he was young and in love.

Issues

• The problem of moral choice. The hero does not know what to do correctly: is it worth taking responsibility for such a young creature, offended by fate? Is he ready to say goodbye to his single life and tie himself to one single woman? Besides, she had already deprived him of his choice by telling his brother everything. He was annoyed that the girl took all the initiative upon herself, and therefore accused her of being too frank with Gagin. N.N. was confused, and also not experienced enough to unravel the subtle nature of his beloved, so it is not surprising that his choice turned out to be wrong.
• Problems of feeling and duty. Often these principles oppose each other. Asya loves N.N., but after his hesitation and reproaches she understands that he is not sure of his feelings. A duty of honor commands her to leave and not meet with him again, although her heart rebels and asks her to give her lover another chance. However, her brother is also adamant in matters of honor, so the Gagins leave N.N.
• The problem of extramarital affairs. During Turgenev's time, almost all nobles had illegitimate children, and this was not considered abnormal. But the writer, although he himself became the father of such a child, draws attention to how bad life is for children whose origins are illegal. They suffer without guilt for the sins of their parents, suffer from gossip and cannot arrange their future. For example, the author depicts Asya's studies in a boarding school, where all the girls treated her with disdain because of her history.
• The problem of adolescence. Asya at the time of the events described is only 17 years old, she has not yet formed as a person, which is why her behavior is so unpredictable and eccentric. It is very difficult for my brother to deal with her, because he does not yet have experience in the parenting field. Yes, and N.N. could not understand her contradictory and sentimental nature. This is the reason for the tragedy of their relationship.
• The problem of cowardice. N.N. she is afraid of serious feelings, so she does not say that very cherished word that Asya was waiting for.

Main idea

The story of the main character is a tragedy of naive first feelings, when a young dreamy person first encounters the cruel realities of life. The conclusions from this collision are the main idea of ​​the story “Asya”. The girl went through the test of love, but many of her illusions were shattered. Indecisive N.N. She read a sentence to herself, which her brother had mentioned earlier in a conversation with a friend: in this situation, she cannot count on a good match. Few will agree to marry her, no matter how beautiful or cheerful she is. She had seen before that people despised her for her unequal origins, but now the man she loved was hesitant and did not dare to commit himself to a word. Anna interpreted this as cowardice, and her dreams crumbled to dust. She learned to be more selective in her suitors and not to trust them with her heartfelt secrets.

Love in this case opens up the adult world for the heroine, literally pulling her out of her blissful childhood. Happiness would not be a lesson for her, but a continuation of a girl’s dream; it would not reveal this controversial nature, and the portrait of Asya in the gallery of female types of Russian literature was greatly impoverished by the happy ending. In the tragedy, she gained the necessary experience and became richer spiritually. As you can see, the meaning of Turgenev’s story is also to show how the test of love is reflected in people: some show dignity and fortitude, others show cowardice, tactlessness and indecisiveness.

This story from the lips of a mature man is so instructive that it leaves no doubt that the hero recalls this episode of his life for the edification of himself and the listener. Now, after so many years, he understands that he himself missed the love of his life, he himself destroyed these sublime and sincere relationship. The narrator calls on the reader to be more attentive and decisive than himself, not to let his guiding star go away. Thus, the main idea of ​​the work “Asya” is to show how fragile and fleeting happiness is if it is not recognized in time, and how merciless love is, which does not give a second try.

What does the story teach?

Turgenev, showing the idle and empty lifestyle of his hero, says that carelessness and aimlessness of existence will make a person unhappy. N.N. in old age he bitterly complains about himself in his youth, regretting the loss of Asya and the very opportunity to change his fate: “It never occurred to me then that man is not a plant and he cannot flourish for a long time.” He realizes with bitterness that this “blooming” did not bear fruit. Thus, the morality in the story “Asya” reveals to us the true meaning of existence - we need to live for the sake of a goal, for the sake of loved ones, for the sake of creativity and creation, no matter what it is expressed in, and not just for the sake of ourselves. After all, it was selfishness and the fear of losing the opportunity to “bloom” that prevented N.N. utter the very cherished word that Anna was waiting for.

Another conclusion that Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev makes in “Ace” is the statement that there is no need to be afraid of your feelings. The heroine gave herself completely to them, was burned by her first love, but learned a lot about life and about the person to whom she wanted to dedicate her. Now she will be more attentive to people and will learn to understand them. Without this cruel experience, she would not have revealed herself as a person, she would not have understood herself and her desires. After breaking up with N.N. she realized what the man of her dreams should be like. So you shouldn’t be afraid of the sincere impulses of your soul, you need to give them free rein, and come what may.

Criticism

The reviewers called N.N. a typical literary embodiment of the “superfluous man”, and later identified new type heroines - "Tugenev's young lady". The image of the main character was studied especially carefully by Turgenev’s ideological opponent, Chernyshevsky. He dedicated an ironic article to him entitled “Russian man at rendez-vous. Reflections on reading the story “Asya”. In it, he condemns not only the moral imperfection of the character, but also the squalor of the entire social group to which he belongs. The idleness and selfishness of noble offspring destroys the real people in them. This is precisely what the critic sees as the cause of the tragedy. His friend and colleague Dobrolyubov enthusiastically appreciated the story and the author’s work on it:

Turgenev... talks about his heroes as about people close to him, snatches their warm feeling from his chest and watches them with tender sympathy, with painful trepidation, he himself suffers and rejoices along with the faces he created, he himself is carried away by the poetic setting that he loves always surround them...

The writer himself speaks very warmly about his creation: “I wrote it very passionately, almost in tears...”.

Many critics responded positively to Turgenev’s work “Asya” even at the stage of reading the manuscript. I. I. Panaev, for example, wrote to the author about the impression of the editors of Sovremennik in the following expressions:

I read the proofs, the proofreader and, moreover, Chernyshevsky. If there are still mistakes, it means we did everything we could, and we can’t do better. Annenkov has read the story, and you probably already know his opinion about it. He's delighted

Annenkov was Turgenev's close friend and his most important critic. In a letter to the author, he rates him highly new job, calling it "a frank step towards nature and poetry."

In a personal letter dated January 16, 1858, E. Ya. Kolbasin (a critic who positively assessed Turgenev’s work) informed the writer: “Now I have come from the Tyutchevs, where there was a dispute about “Asia”. They don't like it. They find that Asya’s face is tense and not alive. I said the opposite, and Annenkov, who arrived in time for the argument, completely supported me and brilliantly refuted them.”

However, it was not without controversy. Editor-in-Chief magazine Sovremennik, Nekrasov proposed changing the scene of the explanation of the main characters, believing that it too belittled the image of N.N.:

There is only one remark, mine personally, and it is unimportant: in the scene of the meeting at the knees, the hero unexpectedly showed an unnecessary rudeness of nature, which you did not expect from him, bursting out with reproaches: they should have been softened and reduced, I wanted to, but did not dare, especially since Annenkov is against this

As a result, the book was left unchanged, because even Chernyshevsky stood up for it, who, although he did not deny the rudeness of the scene, noted that it best reflects the real appearance of the class to which the narrator belongs.

S. S. Dudyshkin, who in the article “Tales and Stories of I. S. Turgenev”, published in “Notes of the Fatherland,” contrasted the “sick personality of the Russian man of the 19th century” with an honest worker - a bourgeois businessman. He was also extremely concerned about the question of historical destinies." extra people", staged by the author of "Asi".

Obviously not everyone liked the story. After its publication, reproaches rained down on the writer. For example, reviewer V.P. Botkin told Fet: “Not everyone likes Asya. It seems to me that Asya’s face failed - and in general the thing has a prosaically invented appearance. There is nothing to say about other persons. As a lyricist, Turgenev can only express well what he has experienced...” Famous poet, the addressee of the letter, agreed with his friend and recognized the image of the main character as far-fetched and lifeless.

But the most indignant of all the critics was Tolstoy, who assessed the work as follows: “Turgenev’s Asya, in my opinion, is the weakest thing of all that he wrote” - this remark was contained in a letter to Nekrasov. Lev Nikolaevich connected the book with the personal life of a friend. He was dissatisfied that he arranged for his illegitimate daughter Polina in France, forever separating her from her natural mother. This “hypocritical position” was sharply condemned by the count; he openly accused his colleague of cruelty and improper upbringing daughter, also described in the story. This conflict led to the fact that the authors did not communicate for 17 years.

Later, the story was not forgotten and often appeared in the statements of famous public figures of the era. For example, Lenin compared Russian liberals to an indecisive character:

...Just like the ardent Turgenev hero who escaped from Asya, about whom Chernyshevsky wrote: “A Russian man on a rendez-vous”