N. G. Chernyshevsky
Russian man on rendez-vous. Reflections on reading the story of Mr. Turgenev "Asya"
“Stories in a businesslike, incriminating manner leave a very difficult impression on the reader, therefore, recognizing their usefulness and nobility, I am not entirely satisfied that our literature has taken such an exclusively gloomy direction.”
Quite a few people, apparently not stupid, say so, or, to put it better, they said so until the peasant question became the real subject of all thoughts, of all conversations. Whether their words are fair or unfair, I do not know; but I happened to be under the influence of such thoughts when I began to read almost the only good new story, from which, from the first pages, one could already expect a completely different content, a different pathos than from business stories. There is no chicanery with violence and bribery, no dirty rogues, no official villains explaining in elegant language that they are the benefactors of society, no philistines, peasants and little officials tormented by all these terrible and nasty people. Action - abroad, away from all the bad atmosphere of our home life. All the characters in the story are among the best among us, very educated, extremely humane, imbued with the noblest way of thinking. The story has a purely poetic, ideal direction, not touching on any of the so-called black sides of life. Here, I thought, the soul will rest and refresh. And indeed, she was refreshed by these poetic ideals, while the story reached the decisive moment. But the last pages of the story are unlike the first, and after reading the story, the impression left from it is even more bleak than from the stories about nasty bribe-takers with their cynical robbery. They do bad things, but they are recognized by each of us as bad people; we do not expect them to improve our lives. There are, we think, forces in society that will put up a barrier to their harmful influence, that will change the character of our life with their nobility. This illusion is rejected in the most bitter way in the story, which awakens the brightest expectations with its first half.
Here is a man whose heart is open to all lofty feelings, whose honesty is unshakable, whose thought has taken into itself everything for which our age is called the age of noble aspirations. And what does this person do? He makes a scene that the last bribe-taker would be ashamed of. He feels the strongest and purest sympathy for the girl who loves him; he cannot live an hour without seeing this girl; his thought all day, all night draws her beautiful image to him, it has come for him, you think, that time of love, when the heart is drowning in bliss. We see Romeo, we see Juliet, whose happiness is not hindered by anything, and the moment is approaching when their fate will be forever decided - for this, Romeo has only to say: “I love you, do you love me?” - and Juliet will whisper: “Yes ...” And what does our Romeo do (as we will call the hero of the story, whose last name is not given to us by the author of the story), appearing on a date with Juliet? With a thrill of love, Juliet awaits her Romeo; she must learn from him that he loves her - this word was not uttered between them, it will now be uttered by him, they will be united forever; bliss awaits them, such a high and pure bliss, the enthusiasm of which makes the solemn moment of decision hardly bearable for the earthly organism. People died of less joy. She sits like a frightened bird, hiding her face from the radiance of the sun of love that appears before her; she breathes quickly, she trembles all over; she lowers her eyes even more tremulously when he enters, calls her name; she wants to look at him and cannot; he takes her hand - this hand is cold, lies as if dead in his hand; she wants to smile; but her pale lips cannot smile. She wants to speak to him, and her voice breaks. Both of them are silent for a long time - and, as he himself says, his heart melted, and now Romeo speaks to his Juliet ... and what does he say to her? “You are guilty before me,” he says to her: “you have entangled me in trouble, I am dissatisfied with you, you are compromising me, and I must stop my relationship with you; it is very unpleasant for me to part with you, but if you please, go away from here. What it is? How she guilty? Is it what I thought his decent person? compromised his reputation by going on a date with him? It's amazing! Every line in her pale face says that she is waiting for the decision of her fate from his word, that she has irrevocably given her whole soul to him and now only expects him to say that he accepts her soul, her life, and he reprimands her for that she compromises him! What kind of ridiculous cruelty is this? what is low rudeness? And this man, acting so vilely, has been shown to be noble up to now! He deceived us, deceived the author. Yes, the poet made a very gross mistake in imagining that he was telling us about a decent man. This man is worse than a notorious scoundrel.
Such was the impression produced on many by the completely unexpected turn of our Romeo's relationship with Juliet. We have heard from many that the whole story is spoiled by this outrageous scene, that the character of the main person is not consistent, that if this person is what he appears in the first half of the story, then he could not act with such vulgar rudeness, and if he could do so, then from the very beginning he should have presented himself to us as a completely trashy person.
It would be very comforting to think that the author was in fact mistaken; but that is the melancholy merit of his story, that the character of the hero is true to our society. Perhaps if this character were such as people would like to see him, dissatisfied with his rudeness on a date, if he were not afraid to give himself to the love that took possession of him, the story would win in an ideally poetic sense. The enthusiasm of the first meeting scene would be followed by several other highly poetic minutes, the quiet charm of the first half of the story would rise to pathetic charm in the second half, and instead of the first act from Romeo and Juliet with an ending in the style of Pechorin, we would have something really like Romeo and Juliet, or at least one of George Sand's novels. Whoever seeks a poetically integral impression in the story must really condemn the author, who, luring him with sublimely sweet expectations, suddenly showed him some vulgarly absurd vanity of petty-timid egoism in a man who began like Max Piccolomini and ended like some Zakhar Sidorych, playing a penny preference.
But is the author definitely mistaken in his hero? If he made a mistake, then this is not the first time he makes this mistake. No matter how many stories he had that led to a similar situation, each time his heroes got out of these situations only by being completely embarrassed in front of us. In Faust, the hero tries to encourage himself by the fact that neither he nor Vera have a serious feeling for each other; sitting with her, dreaming about her is his business, but in terms of determination, even in words, he behaves in such a way that Vera herself must tell him that she loves him; For several minutes the conversation had already gone on in such a way that he should certainly have said this, but, you see, he did not guess and did not dare to tell her this; and when a woman, who must accept an explanation, is finally forced to make an explanation herself, he, you see, "froze", but felt that "bliss like a wave runs through his heart", only, however, "at times", but in fact, he “completely lost his head” - it’s only a pity that he didn’t faint, and even that would have been if he hadn’t come across a tree that he could lean against. As soon as the man has recovered, the woman whom he loves, who has expressed her love to him, comes up to him, and asks what he intends to do now? He... he was "embarrassed." It is not surprising that after such a behavior of a loved one (otherwise, as "behavior", one cannot call the image of the actions of this gentleman), the poor woman became nervous fever; it is even more natural that he then began to weep at his own fate. It's in Faust; almost the same in Rudin. Rudin at first behaves somewhat more decently for a man than the former heroes: he is so determined that he himself tells Natalya about his love (although he does not speak out of good will, but because he is forced to this conversation); he himself asks her a date. But when Natalya tells him on this date that she will marry him, with or without the consent of her mother, it doesn’t matter if he only loves her when he says the words: “Know, I will be yours,” Rudin only finds in response exclamation: "Oh my God!" - the exclamation is more embarrassing than enthusiastic, - and then he acts so well, that is, he is so cowardly and lethargic that Natalya herself is forced to invite him on a date to decide what to do. Having received the note, "he saw that the denouement was approaching, and was secretly embarrassed in spirit." Natalya says that her mother announced to her that she would rather agree to see her daughter dead than Rudin's wife, and again asks Rudin what he intends to do now? Rudin answers as before: “My God, my God,” and adds even more naively: “So soon! what do i intend to do? My head is spinning, I can't think of anything." But then he realizes that he should "submit." Called a coward, he begins to reproach Natalya, then lectures her about his honesty, and to the remark that this is not what she should hear from him now, he replies that he did not expect such decisiveness. The case ends with the offended girl turning away from him, almost ashamed of her love for a coward.
N. G. Chernyshevsky
Russian man on rendez-vous. Reflections on reading the story of Mr. Turgenev "Asya"
“Stories in a businesslike, incriminating manner leave a very difficult impression on the reader, therefore, recognizing their usefulness and nobility, I am not entirely satisfied that our literature has taken such an exclusively gloomy direction.”
Quite a few people, apparently not stupid, say so, or, to put it better, they said so until the peasant question became the real subject of all thoughts, of all conversations. Whether their words are fair or unfair, I do not know; but I happened to be under the influence of such thoughts when I began to read almost the only good new story, from which, from the first pages, one could already expect a completely different content, a different pathos than from business stories. There is no chicanery with violence and bribery, no dirty rogues, no official villains explaining in elegant language that they are the benefactors of society, no philistines, peasants and little officials tormented by all these terrible and nasty people. Action - abroad, away from all the bad atmosphere of our home life. All the characters in the story are among the best among us, very educated, extremely humane, imbued with the noblest way of thinking. The story has a purely poetic, ideal direction, not touching on any of the so-called black sides of life. Here, I thought, the soul will rest and refresh. And indeed, she was refreshed by these poetic ideals, while the story reached the decisive moment. But the last pages of the story are unlike the first, and after reading the story, the impression left from it is even more bleak than from the stories about nasty bribe-takers with their cynical robbery. They do bad things, but they are recognized by each of us as bad people; we do not expect them to improve our lives. There are, we think, forces in society that will put up a barrier to their harmful influence, that will change the character of our life with their nobility. This illusion is rejected in the most bitter way in the story, which awakens the brightest expectations with its first half.
Here is a man whose heart is open to all lofty feelings, whose honesty is unshakable, whose thought has taken into itself everything for which our age is called the age of noble aspirations. And what does this person do? He makes a scene that the last bribe-taker would be ashamed of. He feels the strongest and purest sympathy for the girl who loves him; he cannot live an hour without seeing this girl; his thought all day, all night draws her beautiful image to him, it has come for him, you think, that time of love, when the heart is drowning in bliss. We see Romeo, we see Juliet, whose happiness is not hindered by anything, and the moment is approaching when their fate will be forever decided - for this, Romeo has only to say: “I love you, do you love me?” - and Juliet will whisper: “Yes ...” And what does our Romeo do (as we will call the hero of the story, whose last name is not given to us by the author of the story), appearing on a date with Juliet? With a thrill of love, Juliet awaits her Romeo; she must learn from him that he loves her - this word was not uttered between them, it will now be uttered by him, they will be united forever; bliss awaits them, such a high and pure bliss, the enthusiasm of which makes the solemn moment of decision hardly bearable for the earthly organism. People died of less joy. She sits like a frightened bird, hiding her face from the radiance of the sun of love that appears before her; she breathes quickly, she trembles all over; she lowers her eyes even more tremulously when he enters, calls her name; she wants to look at him and cannot; he takes her hand - this hand is cold, lies as if dead in his hand; she wants to smile; but her pale lips cannot smile. She wants to speak to him, and her voice breaks. Both of them are silent for a long time - and, as he himself says, his heart melted, and now Romeo speaks to his Juliet ... and what does he say to her? “You are guilty before me,” he says to her: “you have entangled me in trouble, I am dissatisfied with you, you are compromising me, and I must stop my relationship with you; it is very unpleasant for me to part with you, but if you please, go away from here. What it is? How she guilty? Is it what I thought his decent person? compromised his reputation by going on a date with him? It's amazing! Every line in her pale face says that she is waiting for the decision of her fate from his word, that she has irrevocably given her whole soul to him and now only expects him to say that he accepts her soul, her life, and he reprimands her for that she compromises him! What kind of ridiculous cruelty is this? what is low rudeness? And this man, acting so vilely, has been shown to be noble up to now! He deceived us, deceived the author. Yes, the poet made a very gross mistake in imagining that he was telling us about a decent man. This man is worse than a notorious scoundrel.
In "Pyotr Fomenko's Workshop" - a brilliant example of how to play sentimental classics so that the audience does not fall asleep in the fifth minute.
The trainees of the best Moscow theater with obvious ease outplay the trendsetters of theatrical trends. For two and a half hours they practice stage wit, and “at the same time” they sing brilliantly, speak 5 languages, do somersaults and openly fool around. A better Turgenev is hard to imagine.
Many people remember the plot of "Spring Waters" from school, once upon a time there was a nobleman Dmitry Sanin, went to live abroad, unwind, fell in love with an Italian black-eyed Gemma, upset her wedding with a rich fiancé, and then take it and fall in love with a Russian lady and drive away with her to Paris. The final with a claim to a human tragedy - no family, no friends, no home.
It is not boring to play a sentimental melodrama, it was necessary to try. However, apparently, the potential "new fomens" did not have to try. Although they are far from the performance excellence of their older colleagues, they are obviously talented. With the help of such a team, Yevgeny Kamenkovich staged this light and at the same time must-see performance. “In the process”, the viewer chuckles knowingly or cackles out loud, but leaves the hall puzzled. “Love is love, but is a Russian person capable of an act. And if so, which one? The textbook text in such a “reading” is a witty answer to the topical question of Russian self-identification. By the way, despite the fact that Turgenev reigns on the stage, the problematic of the performance is clearly borrowed from Chernyshevsky's article ("The Russian Man on Rendez-Vous"), in which he exposes the Russian man, who is a priori weak and inert.
"Russian man. Source: “Russian man.
The viewer is free to argue with the classics himself - the actors give him food for thought. They ignore all patterns with joyful passion - no Turgenev girls and noble gentlemen for you, they all famously change their “masks”, intonations, facial expressions and gestures. Actors feel the imperfection of their characters, reveal the touching truth of the characters, while depriving them of old-fashionedness. Vibrations of cheerful eroticism are evident in the performance, which is completely innocent at first glance. But the most important thing is that Sanin, and Gemma, and her mother, and Pantaleone, and the German military, and the Polozov couple are all played with love. If you are not accustomed to believing praises, it is worth coming to the performance if only to hear how the Fomenko youth sings opera arias and Russian romances, plays the piano, speaks charming Italian and even more hilariously German.
"Russian man on rendez-vous" refers to journalism and has the subtitle "Reflections after reading Mr. Turgenev's story" Asya "". At the same time, in the article, Chernyshevsky gives a broader picture associated with contemporary Russian society, namely, with the image of the “positive hero” of stories and novels, which in a number of situations shows unexpected negative character traits (indecision, cowardice). First of all, these traits are manifested in love and personal relationships.
The title of the article is directly related to the reason for writing it. The ambiguous situation in the story "Asya" served as food for thought, when the girl showed determination and herself made an appointment with the hero ("rendez-vous").
In the very first lines - the impressions of the date scene in the story "Asya", when the main character (perceived by the reader of the story as "positive" and even "ideal") says to the girl who came on a date with him: "You are to blame for me, you confused me in trouble and I must end my relationship with you." "What it is?" Chernyshevsky exclaims. “What is her fault? Is it that she considered him a decent person? Compromised his reputation by going on a date with him? This man is worse than a notorious scoundrel.
Further, the author analyzes the love line of a number of Turgenev's works ("Faust", "Rudin") in order to understand whether the author made a mistake in his hero or not (the story "Asya"), and comes to the conclusion that in Turgenev's works the main character, personifying the "ideal side", in love affairs behaves like a "pathetic scoundrel." “In Faust, the hero tries to encourage himself by the fact that neither he nor Vera have a serious feeling for each other. He behaves in such a way that Vera herself must tell him that she loves him. In Rudin, the matter ends with the offended girl turning away from him (Rudin), almost ashamed of her love for a coward.
Chernyshevsky asks the question: “Maybe this pathetic trait in the character of the heroes is a feature of Mr. Turgenev’s stories?” - And he himself answers: “But remember any good, true to life story of any of our current poets. If there is an ideal side in the story, be sure that the representative of this ideal side acts in exactly the same way as the faces of Mr. Turgenev. In order to argue his point of view, the author, for example, analyzes the behavior of the protagonist of Nekrasov's poem "Sasha": "I told Sasha that "we should not weaken in soul", because "the sun of truth will rise above the earth" and that we must act to fulfill our aspirations, and then, when Sasha gets down to business, he says that all this is in vain and will not lead to anything, that he “talked empty”. He likewise prefers retreat to every decisive step. Returning to the analysis of the story "Asya", Chernyshevsky concludes: "These are our best people."
Then the author unexpectedly declares that the hero should not be condemned, and begins to talk about himself and his worldview: “I became pleased with everything that I see around me, I’m not angry at anything, I’m not upset by anything (except for failures in business, personally beneficial to me), I condemn nothing and no one in the world (except for people who violate my personal interests), I do not want anything (except for my own benefit), - in a word, I will tell you how I became a bilious melancholic person before that practical and well-intentioned that I wouldn’t even be surprised if I received a reward for my good intentions.” Further, Chernyshevsky resorts to a detailed opposition of “trouble” and “guilt”: “The robber stabbed a man to rob him, and finds benefit in that - this is guilt. A careless hunter accidentally wounded a man and the first one himself is tormented by the misfortune that he did - this is no longer a fault, but simply a misfortune. What happens to the hero of the story "Asya" is a disaster. He does not benefit and enjoy the situation when a girl in love with him seeks to be with him, and he backs down: “The poor young man does not understand at all the business in which he takes part. The point is clear, but he is possessed by such stupidity that the most obvious facts are unable to reason with. Further, the author gives a number of examples from the text, when Asya allegorically, but very clearly, let “our Romeo” understand what she was really experiencing - but he did not understand. “Why do we analyze our hero so severely? Why is he worse than others? Why is he worse than all of us?
Chernyshevsky reflects on happiness and the ability not to miss the opportunity to be happy (which the hero of the story “Asya” fails): “Happiness in ancient mythology was presented as a woman with a long braid, blown in front of her by the wind carrying this woman; it is easy to catch her while she flies up to you, but miss one moment - she will fly by, and you would have rushed to catch her in vain: you cannot grab her, left behind. A happy moment is irretrievable. Do not miss a favorable moment - this is the highest condition of worldly prudence. Happy circumstances exist for each of us, but not everyone knows how to use them.
At the end of the article, Chernyshevsky gives a detailed allegory, when, in a situation of a long and exhausting litigation, the hearing is postponed for a day. “What should I do now, let each of you say: will it be wise for me to rush to my opponent to conclude a peace? Or will it be smart to lie on my couch the only day left for me? Or would it be wise to lash out with rude abuse at the judge favoring me, whose friendly advance notice gave me the opportunity to end my litigation with honor and profit?
The article ends with a quotation from the gospel: “Try to reconcile with your opponent until you reach the court with him, otherwise your opponent will give you to the judge, and the judge will give you to the executor of sentences, and you will be thrown into prison and will not come out of it until you you will pay for everything to the last detail” (Matt., chapter V, verses 25 and 26).
The poster of the "Fomenko Workshop" grows with performances in which there are no "fomenoks" themselves. For many years in a row, trainees are being recruited into the "Workshop", and they are introduced into the repertoire and do independent works that have a chance to become performances - the staging of Turgenev's "Spring Waters" is just one of these. It was made by the last generation of trainees, some of them came to the "Workshop" after the completion of the Gitisov course of Oleg Kudryashov, some - from the course of Dmitry Krymov and Yevgeny Kamenkovich, who put together this performance. It was made in the already familiar, already born in Fomenko's Gitisov workshop, which has spread everywhere, but has not yet become boring etude manner. Actors read prose, naturally moving from direct speech to narration, and turn each episode into a finished scene, composed with great imagination. It has long been noticed that the studio students, once in the "Workshop", rather quickly turn into "fomenok", that is, as if they are reborn into people of a different breed that no longer exists. And this is very beneficial for Turgenev's history. On the last day of his journey, a young man meets great love, he is ready to sacrifice his future and his estate to her - he urgently needs to be sold in order to improve the affairs of his future wife. As soon as possible, he meets a classmate with his wife, a rich loafer - she is ready to buy an estate, but asks to wait a couple of days. This time is enough for her to turn the hero's head - and his life, instead of getting better, will go downhill. The headline of Chernyshevsky's article went into the name of the performance, but don't let this formidable name scare you. Because the performance is only secondarily about the fact that the best of the Russians (they used to be called “superfluous people”, now they are called Global Russians) behave cowardly, cowardly and invariably fail at the rendezvous with life. First of all, this is an exciting story full of ups and downs about the properties of passion and those beautiful Russians who have gone into oblivion, with whom the public is so pleased to associate themselves. “There is no chicanery with violence and bribery, no dirty rogues, no official villains explaining in elegant language that they are the benefactors of society, no petty bourgeois, peasants and little officials tormented by all these terrible and nasty people,” writes Chernyshevsky. - Action - abroad, away from all the bad atmosphere of our home life. All the characters in the story are among the best among us, very educated, extremely humane: imbued with the noblest way of thinking. The story has a purely poetic, ideal direction, not touching on any of the so-called black sides of life. Here, I thought, the soul will rest and refresh ... "
This is exactly how it is in the Fomenko Workshop: the soul rests, the soul is refreshed.
