Rudin (1856, other sources - 1855)

Turgenev's first novel is named after the main character.

Rudin is one of the best representatives of the cultural nobility. He was educated in Germany, like Mikhail Bakunin, who served as his prototype, and like Ivan Turgenev himself. Rudin is endowed with eloquence. Appearing in the estate of the landowner Lasunskaya, he immediately captivates those present. But he speaks well only on abstract topics, being carried away by the “stream of his own feelings”, not noticing how his words affect the listeners. The raznochinets teacher of the Bassists is subdued by his speeches, but Rudin does not appreciate the young man's devotion: "It can be seen that he was only looking for pure and devoted souls in words." The hero also suffers defeat in the field of public service, although his plans are always pure and disinterested. His attempts to teach at the gymnasium, to manage the estates of one petty tyrant, the landowner, end in failure.

He wins the love of the daughter of the landowner, Natalya Lasunskaya, but recedes before the first obstacle - the opposition of his mother. Rudin does not stand the test of love - and this is how a person is tested in the art world Turgenev.

Noble Nest (1858)

A novel about the historical fate of the nobility in Russia.

The main character, Fyodor Ivanovich Lavretsky, falls into the love networks of the cold and prudent egoist Varvara Pavlovna. He lives with her in France until the case opens his eyes to his wife's infidelity. As if freeing himself from an obsession, Lavretsky returns home and seems to see his native places anew, where life flows inaudibly, “like water over swamp grasses.” In this silence, where even the clouds seem to "know where and why they are sailing", he meets his true love- Lisa Kalitina.

But even this love was not destined to become happy, although the amazing music composed by the old eccentric Lemm, Lisa's teacher, promised happiness to the heroes. Varvara Pavlovna, who was considered dead, turned out to be alive, which means that the marriage of Fyodor Ivanovich and Liza became impossible.

In the finale, Liza goes to the monastery to atone for the sins of her father, who obtained wealth dishonestly. Lavretsky is left alone to live out a bleak life.

The Eve (1859)

In the novel "On the Eve", Bulgarian Dmitry Insarov, who is fighting for the independence of his homeland, is in love with a Russian girl, Elena Strakhova. She's ready to share it difficult fate and follows him to the Balkans. But their love turns into cruelty towards Elena's parents and friends, leading her to break with Russia.

In addition, the personal happiness of Insarov and Elena turned out to be incompatible with the struggle to which the hero wanted to devote himself without a trace. His death looks like a retribution for happiness.

All of Turgenev's novels are about love, and all of them are about the problems that worried the Russian public at that time. In the novel "On the Eve" social issues are in the foreground.

Dobrolyubov in the article "When the real one will come Day? ”, published in the Sovremennik magazine, called on the “Russian Insarovs” to fight the “internal Turks”, which included not only supporters of serfdom, but also liberals, like Turgenev himself, who believed in the possibility of peaceful reforms. The writer persuaded Nekrasov, who published Sovremennik, not to publish this article. Nekrasov refused. Then Turgenev broke with the magazine with which he had collaborated for many years.

Fathers and Sons (1861)

In the next novel, Fathers and Sons, the dispute is between liberals, such as Turgenev and his closest friends, and revolutionary democrat like Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov (Dobrolyubov partly served as the prototype for the protagonist Bazarov).

Turgenev hoped that "Fathers and Sons" would serve to unite the social forces of Russia. However, the novel caused a real storm of controversy. Employees of Sovremennik saw in the image of Bazarov an evil caricature of the younger generation. The critic Pisarev, on the contrary, found in him the best and necessary traits of a future revolutionary who does not yet have room for activity. Friends and like-minded people accused Turgenev of flattering the "boys", the younger generation, of unjustifiably glorifying Bazarov and belittling the "fathers".

Insulted by the rude and tactless controversy, Turgenev goes abroad. Deep sorrow permeated two very unusual stories of these years, with which Turgenev then intended to complete his literary activity, - "Ghosts" (1864) and "Enough" (1865).

Smoke (1867)

The novel "Smoke" (1867) differs sharply from the novels of Turgenev that preceded it. The protagonist of "Smoke" Litvinov is unremarkable. At the center of the novel is not even him, but the meaningless life of a motley Russian society in the German resort of Baden-Baden. Everything seemed to be shrouded in smoke of petty, false significance. At the end of the novel, a detailed metaphor for this smoke is given. who is watching from the window of the car Litvinov returning home. “All of a sudden it seemed to him like smoke, everything own life, Russian life is everything human, especially everything Russian.

The novel showed Turgenev's extreme Westernist views. In the monologues of Potugin, one of the characters in the novel, there are many evil thoughts about the history and significance of Russia, whose only salvation is to tirelessly learn from the West. "Smoke" deepened the misunderstanding between Turgenev and the Russian public. Dostoevsky and his associates accused Turgenev of slandering Russia. The democrats were dissatisfied with the pamphlet on the revolutionary emigration. Liberals - a satirical image of the "top".

Nov (1876)

Turgenev's last novel, Nov, is about the fate of populism. In the center of the work is the fate of the whole social movement, and not its individual representatives. The characters' personalities are no longer revealed in love vicissitudes. The main thing in the novel is the clash of different parties and strata of Russian society, in the first place, revolutionary agitators and peasants. Accordingly increases public sound novel, its "topicality".

Poems in prose

The swan song of the aging writer was Poems in Prose (the first part appeared in 1882, the second was not published during his lifetime). In them, as if crystallized into lyrical miniatures, the thoughts and feelings that owned Turgenev throughout his entire career: these are thoughts about Russia, about love, about insignificance human existence, but at the same time about a feat, about a sacrifice, about the meaningfulness and fruitfulness of suffering.

last years of life

In the last years of his life, Turgenev more and more yearned for his homeland. “I am not only drawn, I am vomited to Russia…” he wrote a year before his death. Ivan Sergeevich died in Bougival in the south of France. The body of the writer was transported to St. Petersburg and buried at the Volkovo cemetery with a huge gathering of people. Fierce disputes fell silent over his coffin, which during his lifetime did not stop around his name and books. Friend of Turgenev famous critic P.V. Annenkov wrote: "A whole generation came together at his grave with words of tenderness and gratitude as a writer and a person."

Homework

Prepare for an exchange of impressions about the novel "Fathers and Sons" and its hero.

Formulate in writing the questions that arose during the reading.

Literature

Vladimir Korovin. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. // Encyclopedia for children "Avanta +". Volume 9. Russian literature. Part one. M., 1999

N.I. Yakushin. I.S. Turgenev in life and work. M.: Russian Word, 1998

L.M. Lotman. I.S. Turgenev. History of Russian literature. Volume three. Leningrad: Science, 1982. S. 120 - 160

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Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818-1883) wrote six novels: Rudin (1855), Noble Nest (1858), On the Eve (1859), Fathers and Sons (1862), Smoke, New (1876). The main ones are the first four. First two: main character- a nobleman, intellectual, philosopher, etc. of the 30-40s. It was the time of the formation of the personality of the writer himself, so the appeal to the heroes of that era was explained not only by the desire to objectively evaluate the past, but also to understand oneself. The writer wonders what a nobleman can do in modern conditions, when specific issues need to be resolved. Turgenev believed that the main genre features his novels had already taken shape in Rudin. In the preface to the publication of his novels (1879), he emphasized: “The author of Rudin, written in 1855, and the author of Novi, written in 1876, are one and the same person. Among his tasks, when writing novels, Turgenev singled out the two most important. The first is to create "the image of time", "the body and pressure of time", as Shakespeare wrote. The image of not only the "heroes of the time", but also the everyday environment and minor characters. The second task is attention to new trends in the life of the "cultural layer" of the country. Turgenev was interested not only in single heroes, the most typical of the era, but also in the mass layer of people. The prototype of Dmitry Rudin was Bakunin, a radical Westerner and anarchist. Therefore, the hero turned out to be a controversial personality, since Turgenev himself had a contradictory attitude towards Bakunin, with whom he was friends in his youth, and could not evaluate him absolutely impartially. Second novel - "Noble Nest"(1858) - the most perfect of all Turgenev's novels, had the greatest success with his contemporaries, even Dostoevsky, who did not like Turgenev, spoke very well of him. The last attempt to find a hero among the nobles. This novel differs from "Rudin" in its pronounced lyrical beginning - the love of Lavretsky and Lisa Kalitina and the creation of an image-symbol of the "noble nest". According to the writer, it was in such estates that the main cultural values Russia. If in "Rudin" there is only one main character, then here there are two of them and the love between them is shown as a love-argument between two life positions and ideals. In the final, Turgenev concludes that the nobility is not able to do anything, he welcomes the generation of raznochintsy coming to replace him. Third novel - the day before» (1859). A love story between Bulgarian revolutionary Dmitry Insarov and Elena Stakhova. Many lay claim to Elena's heart, but she chooses Insarov, a foreigner, a revolutionary. She personifies Russia on the eve of change. Dobrolyubov took the novel as a call for the appearance of the Russian Insarovs. Turgenev, however, considered such an interpretation unacceptable. novel features. There is no clash of major political forces. Actions are concentrated in the estate, the manor house. lifelike, realistic events. An ideological conflict against the background of a love one, or vice versa. Refuses to depict the details of the subject-domestic environment (natural school) in favor of a broad ideological interpretation of the characters. The most important principle of characters' characterization is dialogue and background details (landscape, interior). Unlike Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Turgenev's heroes are not abstract, abstract, but concrete, behind them there is always a living image from real life. Rudin - Bakunin, Insarov - Bulgarian Katranov, Bazarov - Dobrolyubov, but these are not exact portrait copies, but images created by Turgenev, based on real people. In his novels there are no “crimes”, no “punishments”, no moral resurrection of heroes, no murders, no conflicts with laws and morals - Turgenev does not go beyond recreating the real course of life, the action is local and the meaning is limited by the actions of the characters. There is no author's commentary on the actions of the characters and their inner world. "Fathers and Sons" ( 1862). The protagonist is not a nobleman, brought up in the era of "thought and reason", but a commoner, not inclined to abstract thoughts, trusting only his experience and his feelings. The test of love becomes an insurmountable obstacle for Bazarov. Bazarov is completely different from the heroes of previous novels. If earlier, showing the inconsistency of his heroes-nobles, deprived of the ability to act, Turgenev did not completely reject their ideas about life, then in "Fathers and Sons" his attitude to Bazarov's convictions from the very beginning is sharply negative. All things rejected by Bazarov - love, nature, art Turgenev considers unshakable human values. The structure of the novel is similar to "Rudin" - all storylines come down to one center, to one hero. Turgenev depicted all the costs of the nihilistic theory. Turgenev highlights democracy in Bazarov - a noble habit of work. This favorably distinguishes him from the Kirsanovs, the best of the nobles, but who can do nothing, get down to business. Bazarov's humanism is manifested in his desire to benefit the people, Russia. Bazarov is a man with great feeling dignity, in this he is not inferior to the aristocrats. In the story of the duel, he shows both common sense, and intelligence, and nobility, and fearlessness and the ability to make fun of himself in a deadly situation. He considers the entire political system of Russia to be rotten, therefore he denies "everything": autocracy, serfdom, religion - and what is generated by the "ugly state of society": people's poverty, lack of rights, darkness, ignorance, patriarchal antiquity, the family. However, Bazarov does not put forward a positive program. The events that I. S. Turgenev describes in the novel take place in the middle of the 19th century. This is the time when Russia was going through another era of reforms. The idea contained in the title of the novel is revealed very widely, since it is not only about the originality of different generations, but also about the opposition of the nobility, descending from the historical stage, and the democratic intelligentsia, moving forward into the center of social and spiritual life of Russia, representing its future . Turgenev's novels: 1) reflect new trends and new intellectual movements in Russia; 2) the hero of the first novels (from "Rudin" to "O. and D.") - an ideologist who finds himself in an environment unknown to him, is tested by this environment and emerges victorious from these trials; 3) the clash of the universal and the ideological, then - the ideological and the general cultural; 4) the emergence of the phenomenon of Turgenev's heroine (the beginning - in "Ace"): cultured, intelligent, capable of self-giving, sacrifice; 5) the hero of later novels is an ordinary person; 6) in the center of Turgenev's thoughts is the relationship between the present and the past; 7) the deepest drama and lyricism ( landscape sketches and pictures; especially at night, for example, the explanation of Bazarov and Odintsova in midsummer night); 8) synthesis of epic and lyrical; 9) special motives: a Russian person for a rendezvous, a test of love, a duel situation (verbal - ideological and ordinary - ironic);

Typological and individual in genre system and characterology of Turgenev's novel.

The new, great ideological and artistic task that arose in the 1859s for Turgenev - to show the "moments of a turning point" in Russian life - could not be solved by means of "small" literary genres. Realizing this, I. S. Turgenev turned to a new genre for himself, having accumulated individual elements that he needed for the artistic construction of his novels, in the process of previous creative work in the field of a poem, short story, essay, story, dramaturgy.

Turgenev's novel is inconceivable without a major social type. This is one of the essential differences between Turgenev's novel and his story. A characteristic feature of the structure of Turgenev's novel is the emphasized continuity of the narrative. Researchers note that novels written at the peak of the writer's talent are replete with scenes that seem to be incomplete in their development, full of meaning that is not revealed to the end. The main goal of I. S. Turgenev is to draw only in the main features the spiritual appearance of the hero, to talk about his ideas.

The demands of social life and the logic of their own artistic development Turgenev was led to the need to overcome the "old manner" of the essayist. Having published in 1852 a separate edition of "Notes of a Hunter", Turgenev decided to "get rid ... of this old manner", as he said in letters to K.S. Aksakov and P.V. Annenkov.

Overcoming the "old manner", Turgenev sets the task of comprehending the hero in his social role, in the aspect of correlation with the whole era. So, Rudin acts as a representative of the era of the 30-40s, the era of philosophical enthusiasm, abstract contemplation and, at the same time, a passionate desire for the public; service, "cause", with a clear understanding of their responsibility to their homeland and people. Lavretsky is the spokesman for the next stage in the social history of Russia - the 50s, when the "deed" on the eve of the reform acquires features of greater social concreteness. Lavretsky is no longer Rudin, a noble educator, estranged from all soil, he sets himself the task of "learning to plow the land" and morally influence people's life through its deep Europeanization.

Turgenev draws representatives of his time, so his characters are always confined to a certain era, to a certain ideological or political movement. A characteristic feature of his novels, Turgenev considered the presence in them of historical certainty, associated with his desire to convey "the very image and pressure of the time." He managed to create a novel about the historical process in its ideological expression, about the change of historical eras, about the struggle of ideological and political trends. Turgenev's novels became historical not in terms of theme, but in terms of the way they were portrayed.

A special type of novel, created by Turgenev, is connected with this ability to notice the emerging life, to correctly guess the uniqueness of the turning points of Russian social history. Not an entertaining intrigue, not a stormy development of events, but "internal action" is characteristic of Turgenev's novels - the process of discovering the spiritual content of a person and his conflict with the environment

Despite the novelistic nature, Turgenev's novels are distinguished by the necessary epicness.. It is created precisely by the fact that the leading characters go beyond intimate and personal experiences in wide world spiritual interests. Rudin, Lavretsky, Insarov and others reflect on the issue of the "common good"", about the need for radical transformations in people's life. The inner world of the heroes incorporates the aspirations and thoughts of an entire era - the era of noble education, like Rudin and Lavretsky, or the era of democratic upsurge, like Bazarov. The image of the hero acquires a certain epic character, because it becomes an expression of national identity, some fundamental tendencies of folk life, although Turgenev reveals the character of the hero not in wide scenes of social practice, but in scenes of an ideological dispute and in intimate experiences

The way to achieve epic scale in Turgenev's novel is a special refraction of the principle of historicism: in the novel there is a complex interpenetration of chronological aspects. The present time, in which the action unfolds, is permeated through and through with the past, which explains the origins of the roots of the depicted phenomena, events, characters. For the Russian novel in general, and especially for Turgenev's, x the underlined connection of times and the close interweaving of chronological plans are typical . The characters of the heroes in their integrity and development are loomed by Turgenev through retrospections (biographies and projections into the future (epilogues)), therefore those "extensions" that were perceived in criticism as "miscalculations" and "shortcomings" of the author have an epic meaningful meaning, contribute to the germination lead into a novel.

Turgenev - strove for the utmost dynamism of the first introductory episodes, for the characters to express themselves directly, in dialogic scenes.

So, the important difference between the Turgenev novel and the story is rooted in the nature of its construction.. When compared with Turgenev's story, his novel looks like a complex and at the same time very harmonious plot and compositional system with a well-established internal relationship between all of its sometimes contradictory elements.

Turgenev's novel of the 50s. The originality of the plot, composition and image of a person ("Rudin", "Noble Nest", "On the Eve"). In the fifties, Turgenev turned to novels. It is the novels that occupy a special place in his work - in them the writer most fully presented a vivid picture of the complex, intense social and spiritual life of Russia. The writer's first experience in this genre was his work on Two Generations, which he began in 1852. In one of the articles of that time, Turgenev says that novels of the “Sand” and “Dickensian” types are acceptable in Russia, although “we still hear separate sounds in Russian life, to which poetry responds with the same quick echoes.” Turgenev, in a letter to I.F. Minitsky, is somewhat skeptical about the "Notes of a Hunter", because that he “already went ahead” and hopes that he will do “something more impressive". And this is "more impressive" - ​​a novel that, according to the writer, was supposed to consist of three parts. Thus, we see that the prevailing idea of ​​​​the novel, as a great work with a broad epic narrative, Turgenev intended to embody in "Two Generations". But, as you know, this plan was not fully realized. Meanwhile, the novels created by T. are distinguished by a small volume, a concentrated form of narration. Also, the writer himself points to the unity and connection of his novels, to the "permanence" and "straightforwardness" of his novel work. These words of Turgenev confirm the idea that the artist, keenly feeling the movement of the historical process and fixing its individual stages in his novels, at the same time consciously strives for holistic coverage of reality. The image of time, its pressure and the Russian person in relation to this time - this is the task, the solution of which was important for Turgenev in his work from novel to novel.

In the first two novels, the writer addresses the problem of the "extra" person. In the summer of 1855, the novel " Rudin."Rudin" opens a series of Turgenev's novels, compact in volume, unfolding around the hero-ideologist, heroes who accurately capture the current socio-political issues and, ultimately, posing "modernity" in the face of the unchanging and mysterious forces of love, art, nature. In "Rudin" T. explores a variety of this type, which was thinking noble intelligentsia of the 40s when the word was "deed". At the same time, the artist recreates the spiritual atmosphere characteristic of that time. In the second novel, "The Nest of Nobles" (1859), Turgenev continues to worry about fate noble intelligentsia, which, in the person of Lavretsky, is aware of the aimlessness and worthlessness of its existence. Realizing the position of the noble intellectual, T. understands that this is already, although not far, but still the past of Russia, and therefore trying to define a new hero of time. And such a new hero of the writer's novels becomes at first Bulgarian Insarov, enticing the Russian girl Elena Stakhova to the path of struggle for freedom and justice ("On the Eve", 1860), and then, already in the sixties, the commoner Bazarov (“Fathers and Sons”, 1862). If in "Rudin" and " noble nest » Turgenev portrayed the past, painted images of people of the 40s, then in "On the eve" he gave an artistic reproduction of modernity, responded to those cherished thoughts that, during the period of social upsurge in the second half of the 50s, worried all thinking and progressive people. Not idealist dreamers, but new people, positive heroes, ascetics of the cause were brought out in the novel "On the Eve". According to Turgenev himself, the novel was "based on the idea of ​​the need for consciously heroic natures ... in order for things to move forward." In the center, in the foreground, was a female image. The whole meaning of the novel was fraught with a call to "active good" - to social struggle, to the renunciation of the personal and selfish in the name of the common.The choice made by Elena, as it were, indicated what kind of people Russian life was waiting for and calling. Among "their own" there were none - and Elena went to the "alien". She, a Russian girl from a wealthy noble family, became the wife of a poor Bulgarian Insarov, left her home, family, homeland, and after the death of her husband remained in Bulgaria, faithful to the memory and “lifelong cause” of Insarov. She decided not to return to Russia, asking: “Why? What to do in Russia? . Igniting the audience, but incapable of an act "an extra person" Rudin; in vain dreaming of happiness and coming to humble selflessness and hope for happiness for the people of modern times, Lavretsky (“The Nest of Nobles”, 1859; events take place in an atmosphere of the approaching “great reform”); the “iron” Bulgarian revolutionary Insarov, who becomes the chosen one of the heroine (that is, Russia), but is “alien” and doomed to death (“On the Eve”, 1860) - all of them, along with secondary characters (with individual dissimilarity, differences in moral and political orientations and spiritual experience, varying degrees of closeness to the author), are closely related, combining in different proportions the features of two eternal psychological types - the heroic enthusiast and the self-absorbed reflector.

The main episodes of the plot, dedicated to the depiction of the emotional experiences of the main characters, their love relationships and meetings, cannot be either especially numerous or large in volume due to the concentrated and contemplative emotionality of the content and the lyrical tone of the narration. Secondary episodes, containing everyday characteristics of the environment and motivating the main course of events, do not occupy a significant place in Turgenev, as already noted, and do not receive development. Therefore, for all their content, Turgenev's novels and stories are relatively small in volume.

In addition, they are simple and discreet in compositional principles storytelling. The writer never resorts to the external difficulty and confusion of the plot, does not complicate his story with any rearrangements of episodes, deliberate silence about what happened and its unexpected discovery. Affirming in the very depicted life the meaning of sincerity, simplicity and the vanity of all speculation, he also conducts the narration in a concentrated, restrained and simple way. To motivate the "psychologism" of the image, Turgenev often resorts to narration on behalf of the protagonist and uses the form of correspondence, memoirs or a diary. From all this follow in the stories and novels of Turgenev and features of poetic speech. In the image of the everyday environment and its representatives, often ironic, Turgenev did not show himself great master. Here, like Herzen, he often claimed more for wit than for the character of the image (for example: “Daria Mikhailovna lived openly, that is, she received men, especially single ones”; or: “Panshin ... walks somewhat bent over; must be the Vladimir Cross, bestowed around his neck, pulling him forward, etc.).

On the basis of romantic “psychologism”, which reveals the main focus of his stories and novels of the 1850s, Turgenev created very significant and refined principles of speech depiction and expressiveness.

Depicting inner world his main characters, their impressions of the surrounding life, especially nature, the writer usually does not talk about their mental considerations or practical intentions. He speaks of their "soul" and "heart", using the last word as a synonym for the first. For example: “wonderful tenderness filled his soul”; “He began to think about her, and his heart calmed down” (“The Noble Nest”); “I suddenly felt a secret anxiety in my heart” (“Asya”); “and a secret chill will seize the heart of a person when it happens to him for the first time”, (“Correspondence”), etc.

The verbal methods of depiction emphasize the emotional involuntariness of the characters' emotional experiences, which are almost devoid of the influence of the mind and will. The heroes of Turgenev do not own their experiences, but surrender and even obey them. And the writer uses very simple, but in his own way refined verbal metaphors to depict them. For example: “Lavretsky gave himself over to the wave that carried him away and rejoiced”; "some kind of cold, solemn enthusiasm came over her"; “sorrow for the past melted in his soul” (“The Noble Nest”); “childhood memories first flooded over me” (“Faust”); “impatiently changing, they (impressions) flowed to the soul” (“Asya”), etc. Lavretsky even “thoughts” “wandered slowly” (“Noble Nest”).

The self-sufficient emotionality of such experiences leads to the fact that the characters and the author himself are able to evaluate them mainly from the point of view of how pleasant they are or, on the contrary, painful for the human soul. And, depicting them, the writer emphasizes this joyful or sad nature of the feelings and moods of the characters. For example: "he was fine"; "It becomes sad in the soul"; “He felt sad at heart”; “Lavretsky enjoyed and rejoiced at his pleasure” (“The Noble Nest”); “I ... came ... all softened with sweet languor ...” (“Asya”); “a feeling of bliss at times ran through the heart like a wave” (“Faust”); “The anguish of vague forebodings began to torment Rudin” (“Rudin”), etc.

But it is very difficult to clearly distinguish joy and suffering in such fluid and changeable emotions. The author sometimes even emphasizes their complexity and uses a combination of epithets that contradict each other in meaning, the so-called "oxymoron". For example: “this whole ... Russian picture evoked sweet and at the same time almost mournful feelings on his soul ...” (“Noble Nest”); “through the insane joy that filled my whole being; a dreary feeling crept in…” (“Faust”), etc.

At the same time, the increased and uncontrolled emotionality of experiences makes them somewhat indistinct and indefinite. The writer emphasizes this with appropriate epithets and introductory words that give the depicted a kind of emotional significance. For example: "Lavretsky ... plunged into some kind of peaceful stupor"; "some secret voice spoke to him"; “it seemed that all his happiness spoke and sang in them”; “and a strange thing - he never had such a deep and strong sense of the homeland” (“The Noble Nest”); “I began to feel some kind of secret, gnawing melancholy, some kind of deep, inner unrest” (“Faust”); “I went home ... with a strange heaviness in my heart” (“Asya”); “Everywhere, it seemed, blew fiery and fresh breath youth "(" Correspondence "), etc.

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Krasovsky V. E Artistic principles of Turgenev the novelist. Novel "Fathers and Sons"

Krasovsky V. E

Artistic principles of Turgenev the novelist. Novel "Fathers and Sons"

Turgenev's six novels, created over a period of more than twenty years ("Rudin" - 1855, "Nov" - 1876), are a whole era in the history of the Russian socio-psychological novel.

The first novel "Rudin" was written for a record short term- 49 days (from June 5 to July 24, 1855). The speed of work is explained by the fact that the idea of ​​the novel was hatched for quite a long time. Back in early 1853, the writer enthusiastically worked on the first part of the novel "Two Generations", but after critical reviews friends who read the manuscript, the novel was abandoned and apparently destroyed. For the first time, Turgenev tried his hand at a new genre of the novel, and already in this work that did not come down to us, general contours the problem of "fathers and sons", vividly posed in the novel "Fathers and Sons".

The “romantic” aspect was already felt in the “Notes of a Hunter”: it was in the stories of this cycle that Turgenev’s interest in worldview and psychology was manifested. modern man, thinking, suffering, passionate seeker of truth. The short stories "Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District" and "The Diary of a Superfluous Man", together with the unfinished novel "Two Generations", became a kind of prologue to a series of novels of the second half of the 1850s - early 1860s.

Turgenev was interested in the "Russian Hamlets" - a type of nobleman-intellectual, captured by the cult of philosophical knowledge of the 1830s - early 1840s, who passed the stage of ideological self-determination in philosophical circles. It was the time of the formation of the personality of the writer himself, so the appeal to the heroes of the "philosophical" era was dictated by the desire not only to objectively assess the past, but also to understand oneself, rethinking the facts of one's own life. ideological biography. An important creative impulse of Turgenev the novelist, for all the "objectivity" of his narrative style, restraint, even some asceticism of the author's assessments, was an autobiographical impulse. This must be taken into account when analyzing each of his novels of the 1850s, including the novel Fathers and Sons, which completed the first period of his novelistic work.

Turgenev believed that the main genre features of his novels had already developed in Rudin. In the preface to the publication of his novels (1879), he emphasized: “The author of Rudin, written in 1855, and the author of Novi, written in 1876, are one and the same person. During all this time, I strove, to the best of my strength and skill, to conscientiously and impartially translate into appropriate types both what Shakespeare calls "the body and pressure of time" (the very image and pressure of time), and that rapidly changing physiognomy of the Russian people cultural layer, which mainly served as the subject of my observations.

Among his tasks, the novelist singled out two of the most important. The first was to create an "image of the time", which was achieved not only by a careful analysis of the beliefs and psychology of the central characters, who embodied Turgenev's understanding of the "heroes of the time", but also by a historically accurate depiction of the everyday environment and minor characters. The second is attention to new trends in the life of the “cultural layer” of Russia, that is, the intellectual environment to which the writer himself belonged. This task required careful observations, a special "seismographic" sensitivity to the new and, of course, artistic tact in depicting the mobile, "semi-formed" phenomena of social and ideological life. The novelist was interested not only in single heroes, who especially fully embodied the most important trends of the era, but also in the “mass” layer of like-minded people, followers, and students. These people were not as bright individuals as the true "heroes of the time."

The prototype of the title character of the novel "Rudin" was a member of the philosophical circle of N. V. Stankevich, a radical Westerner, and later one of the leaders of European anarchism M. A. Bakunin. Knowing perfectly well the people of the "Rudin" type, Turgenev hesitated in assessing historical role"Russian Hamlets" and therefore revised the novel twice, achieving a more objective coverage of the figure of the protagonist. Rudin ultimately turned out to be a controversial personality, and this was largely the result of the author's contradictory attitude towards him. The historical distance between him and the prototype of Rudin, a friend of his youth Bakunin, was not so great as to achieve an absolutely impartial portrayal of the hero.

Rudin is a richly gifted nature. He is characterized not only by a thirst for truth, a passion for philosophical self-knowledge, but also spiritual nobility, depth and sincerity of feelings, a subtle perception of poetry. It was with these qualities that he attracted the heroine of the novel, Natalya Lasunskaya. Rudin is a brilliant polemicist, a worthy pupil of the Pekarsky circle (the prototype is Stankevich's circle). Breaking into the inert society of provincial nobles, he brought with him the breath of world life, the spirit of the era and became the brightest personality among the heroes of the novel. In the interpretation of Turgenev, Rudin is the spokesman for the historical task of his generation. And yet it bears the stamp of historical doom. He turned out to be completely unprepared for practical activities, there are Manilovian features in his character: liberal complacency and inability to complete what he started. Rudin's impracticality is criticized by Lezhnev, a hero close to the author. Lezhnev is also a pupil of Pekarsky's circle, but, unlike Rudin, he is not a polemicist, not a religious teacher, but rather a moderate "progressive", alien to the verbal radicalism of the protagonist.

For the first time, Turgenev "tests" his hero with love. The contradictory, feminine nature of Rudin is opposed by the integrity and masculinity of Natalia Lasunskaya. The inability of the hero to take a decisive step in relations with her was interpreted by contemporary criticism of Turgenev as a sign of not only spiritual, but also his social failure. At the moment of the explanation with Natalya, Rudin seemed to have been replaced: in his passionate monologues, one could feel the element of youth, idealism, readiness for risk, but here he suddenly becomes weak and weak-willed. The final scene of the novel is the death of Rudin on revolutionary barricade- emphasized the tragedy and historical doom of the hero, representing the "Russian Hamlets" of a bygone romantic era.

The second novel, The Nest of Nobles, written in 1858 (published in the first book of Sovremennik in 1860), strengthened Turgenev's reputation as a social writer, an expert on the spiritual life of his contemporaries, a psychologist, and a subtle lyricist in prose. Subsequently, he admitted that the "Noble Nest" "had the most big success that ever fell to my lot." Even Dostoevsky, who did not like Turgenev, highly appreciated the novel, calling it in his "Diary of a Writer" a work "eternal", "belonging to world literature". "The Nest of Nobles" is the most perfect of Turgenev's novels.

The second novel differs from "Rudin" in its clearly expressed lyrical beginning. Turgenev's lyricism manifested itself both in the depiction of the love of Lavretsky and Liza Kalitina, and in the creation of a lyrical image-symbol of the "noble nest". According to the writer, it was in the estates, similar to the estates of the Lavretskys and Kalitins, that the main cultural values ​​of Russia were accumulated. Turgenev, as it were, predicted the emergence of a whole literature that poetized or satirically depicted the decline of the old Russian nobility, the extinction of the “noble nests”. However, in Turgenev's novel there is no unambiguous attitude to this topic. The lyrical theme was born as a result of understanding the historical decline of the "noble nests" and the assertion of the "eternal" values ​​of the culture of the nobility.

If in the novel "Rudin" there was one main character who occupied a central place in the system of characters, then in "The Nest of Nobles" there are two such heroes: Lavretsky and Liza Kalitina. The novel struck contemporaries by the fact that for the first time the ideological dispute took center stage and for the first time lovers became its participants. Love itself is shown in an unusual way: it is love-argument in which life positions and ideals.

In The Nest of Nobles there are all three situations that determine the problems and plot of Turgenev's novels: the struggle of ideas, the desire to convert an interlocutor or opponent to one's faith, and a love affair. Lisa Kalitina seeks to prove to Lavretsky the correctness of her convictions, since, according to her, he only wants to "plow the land ... and try to plow it as best as possible." The heroine criticizes Lavretsky for not being a fanatic of his work and indifferent to religion. Lisa herself is a deeply religious person, religion for her is the source of the only correct answers to any “damned” questions, a means of resolving the most painful contradictions of life. She considers Lavretsky a kindred spirit, feeling his love for Russia, for the people's "soil", but does not accept his skepticism. The character of Lisa herself is determined by a fatalistic attitude to life, humility and humility - she seems to take on the burden of the historical guilt of a long series of previous generations.

Lavretsky does not accept the morality of humility and self-denial. This is what gives rise to disputes between him and Lisa. Their love also becomes a sign of the tragic disunity of modern noble intellectuals, although, renouncing his happiness, obeying the will of circumstances (their connection with Liza is impossible), Lavretsky approaches the attitude to life he rejected. His welcome words at the end of the novel, addressed to the younger generation, mean not only the rejection of personal happiness. Farewell to the joys of life of the last of the Lavretsky family sounds like a blessing to young forces unknown to him.

Turgenev does not hide his sympathy for Lavretsky, emphasizing his superiority in disputes with Mikhalevich, who represents a different human type - a quixotic apologist for the "cause", and the young bureaucrat Panshin, who is ready to crush everything old, if this corresponds to the latest government orders. Lavretsky is more serious and sincere than these people even in his delusions, the writer claims.

Turgenev's third novel, "On the Eve", written during 1859 (published in the journal "Russian Messenger" in February 1860), immediately caused a stream of articles and reviews in which the images of the protagonist, the Bulgarian revolutionary Insarov, were assessed differently, and Elena Stakhova, who fell in love with him. N. A. Dobrolyubov, reading the novel as a call for the appearance of "Russian Insarovs", noted that Elena "brightly reflected the best aspirations of our modern life." Turgenev himself reacted with indignation to the Dobrolyubov interpretation, considering it unacceptable to interpret the novel as a kind of revolutionary proclamation. The “response” of Turgenev the artist to the expectations of Dobrolyubov and his like-minded people was a novel about a modern nihilist hero.

In the works written by 1860, the main genre features of Turgenev's novels were formed. They also determined the artistic originality of the novel "Fathers and Sons" (begun in September 1860, published in February 1862 in the journal "Russian Messenger", in the same year it was published as a separate edition).

Turgenev never showed the clash of major political forces, the socio-political struggle was not a direct object of depiction in his novels. The action is concentrated, as a rule, in the estate, in the manor house or in the country, so there are no large movements of the characters. Complicated intrigue is completely alien to Turgenev the novelist. The plots consist of events that are quite “life-like”: this is, as a rule, an ideological conflict against the background of a love conflict or, conversely, love conflict against the backdrop of a struggle of ideas.

The novelist was little interested in everyday details. He avoided excessive detail depicted. Details are necessary for Turgenev just as much as they are able to recreate the socially typical appearance of the characters, as well as the background, the setting of the action. According to him, in the mid-1850s. "Gogol's boot" became too small for him. Turgenev, a prose writer, who began as one of the active participants in " natural school”, gradually abandoned the Gogol principles of depicting the subject-domestic environment in favor of a broader ideological interpretation of the characters. Generous Gogol's figurativeness in his novels was supplanted by Pushkin's "naked" simplicity of narration, soft impressionism of descriptions. The most important principle of characterizing the characters and the relationship between them was the dialogue, accompanied by the author's stingy comments on their characters. state of mind, gestures, facial expressions. It is extremely important to indicate the background, the setting of the action (landscape, interior, the nature of everyday communication). Background details in Turgenev's novels are as significant as the events, actions and statements of the characters.

Turgenev never used the so-called "deductive" method of creating images. The starting point of the novelist was not an abstract philosophical or religious-moral idea, as in the prose of F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy, but a “living face”. If, for example, for Dostoevsky it was not of decisive importance who in real life stands behind the images of Raskolnikov, Stavrogin or Ivan Karamazov created by him, then for Turgenev this was one of the first questions that arose in the course of working on the novel. Turgenev's favorite principle of creating the image of a person is from a prototype or a group of prototypes to an artistic generalization. The problem of prototypes is one of the most important for understanding the problems of Turgenev's novels, their connection with the topical problems of the 1850s-1860s. Bakunin became the prototype of Rudin, the Bulgarian Katranov was Insarova, and Dobrolyubov was one of the prototypes of Bazarov. However, this does not mean at all that the heroes of "Rudin", "On the Eve" or "Fathers and Sons" are exact portrait copies of real people. The individuality of a real person, as it were, was dissolved in the image created by Turgenev.

Turgenev's novels are not, unlike the novels of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy ("Anna Karenina", "Resurrection"), novels-parables: they do not contain the supporting ideological constructions that are important for other Russian novelists. They are free from direct authorial moralizing and moral and philosophical generalizations that go beyond what directly happens to the characters. In Turgenev's novels, we will not find either "crimes", or "punishments", or the moral "resurrection" of the characters. There are no murders, sharp conflicts with laws and morality. The novelist prefers to recreate the flow of life without violating its "natural" measure and harmony.

The action in Turgenev's works is always local, the meaning of what is happening is limited by the actions of the characters. Their worldview, ideals and psychology are revealed primarily in their speech behavior, in ideological disputes and exchange of opinions. The most important artistic principle of Turgenev is the re-creation of the self-movement of life. The solution to this problem was achieved by the fact that the novelist carefully avoided any form of direct authorial "intervention" in the narrative, imposing his own opinions and assessments on readers. Even if the characters are directly assessed by the author, these assessments are based on their objectively existing qualities, emphasized tactfully, without pressure.

Turgenev, unlike, for example, Tolstoy, rarely uses the author's commentary on the actions and inner world of the characters. Most often, their spiritual appearance is, as it were, half-hidden. Refusing the novelist's right to "omniscience" about the characters, Turgenev carefully captures subtle, at first glance, nuances in their appearance and behavior, indicating changes in their inner world. He does not show his characters as mysterious, enigmatic, incomprehensible to others. His restraint in depicting their psychology, the rejection of direct psychologism is explained by the fact that, according to Turgenev, the writer "must be a psychologist, but secret." Never trying to recreate the whole process inner life of a person, he stopped readers' attention only on the external forms of his manifestation, widely used significant pauses, psychological landscape, psychological parallels - all the main methods of indirectly depicting the psychology of characters.

There are few characters in Turgenev's novels: as a rule, there are no more than ten of them, not counting a few. episodic persons. The system of characters is distinguished by logical harmony, a clear distribution of plot and problematic "roles". The author's attention is focused on the central characters, in which he discovers features of the most important socio-ideological phenomena or psychological types. The number of such characters ranges from two to five. For example, in the “lyrical” novel “The Nest of Nobles” there are two central characters: Lavretsky and Liza Kalitina, and in the broader novel “Fathers and Sons” there are five: Bazarov, Arkady Kirsanov, his father Nikolai Petrovich, uncle Pavel Petrovich and Anna Sergeevna Odintsova. Of course, in this comparatively "multi-figured" novel, the meaning of each of the characters is not the same. It is Bazarov who is the main figure who united all the participants in the plot action. The role of other central characters is determined by their attitude towards Bazarov. Minor and episodic characters novels always perform some particular task: they either create a background against which the action takes place, or become a “highlight”, often ironic, of the central characters (such, for example, are the images of Mikhalevich and Panshin in The Noble Nest, servants and provincial “nihilists” in "Fathers and Sons").

The basis of conflicts and plots are the three most common plot situations. Two of them were practically not used in Russian novels before Turgenev - these are situations of ideological dispute and ideological influence, apprenticeship. The third situation is quite common for a novel: love or falling in love, but its significance in the plots goes beyond the traditional love affair(such intrigue exists, for example, in the novels "Eugene Onegin" by Pushkin or "A Hero of Our Time" by Lermontov). Relationships between lovers reveal the complexity of interpersonal relationships that arise "at a turning point", during a change in worldview orientations. Women in Turgenev's novels are truly emancipated beings: they are independent in their opinions, do not look at their beloved "from the bottom up", often surpass them in the strength of conviction, contrasting their softness and pliability with an unbending will and self-righteousness.

In a situation of ideological dispute, the points of view and ideals of the characters are opposed. In disputes, discrepancies between contemporaries are clarified (for example, between Rudin and Pandalevsky (“Rudin”); Lavretsky, on the one hand, and Mikhalevich and Panshin, on the other (“Noble Nest”); Bersenev and Shubin, heroes of the novel “On the Eve”), incompatibility of people living, as it were, in different historical eras(Bazarov - Pavel Petrovich, Arkady - Nikolai Petrovich).

The situation of ideological influence, apprenticeship determines the relationship of the protagonist with his young followers and those whom he seeks to influence. This situation can be found in the relationship between Rudin and Natalia Lasunskaya ("Rudin"), Insarov and Elena Stakhova ("On the Eve"). To some extent, it also manifests itself in The Nest of Nobles, but here it is not Lavretsky, but Liza, who is more active in her “teaching” aspirations. In "Fathers and Sons", the author is silent about how Bazarov managed to influence Arkady Kirsanov and Sitnikov: before the reader of the novel, his students and followers are already "convinced". Bazarov himself is outwardly completely indifferent to those who frankly imitate him, only occasionally does “Pechorinsky” irony appear in him in relation to them.

In the first novels (“Rudin”, “The Noble Nest”, “On the Eve”) the situation of love or falling in love was necessary in order to “test” the strength of the convictions of the main noble character, testing him in the plot climax: the hero had to make a choice, to show will and ability to act. The same role was played love relationship in stories - "companions" of Turgenev's novels. It was in the article “A Russian Man on Rendesvous” (1858), devoted to the analysis of the story “Asya”, that N. G. Chernyshevsky first drew attention to the ideological meaning of Turgenev’s depiction of love. “... As long as there is no talk of business, but you just need to take idle time, fill an idle head or an idle heart with conversations and dreams, the hero is very lively,” the critic wrote with irony, “it comes to directly and accurately expressing one’s feelings and desires , – most of the heroes are already beginning to hesitate and feel slowness in the language. This, in his opinion, is "a symptom of an epidemic disease that has taken root in our society."

But even in "Fathers and Sons", where the hero was not a reflective nobleman, brought up in the era of "thought and reason", but an empiricist commoner, a person not inclined to abstract thoughts, trusting only experience and his feelings, love intrigue plays a significant role . Bazarov is going through the “test of love”: for him, love for Odintsova turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle, in contrast to the disputes imposed on him with Pavel Petrovich. All the central characters of the novel are drawn into a love relationship. Love, as in other novels, is a natural background for the socio-ideological and psychological characteristics heroes. Nikolai Petrovich is romantically in love with the young Fenechka, who lives with him as an "unmarried wife", and Pavel Petrovich is clearly not indifferent to her. Arkady secretly dreams of love, admires Anna Sergeevna, but finds his happiness with Katenka Odintsova, anticipating the coming harmony of family life and getting rid of " sharp corners» Bazarovsky world outlook. The smart, reasonable and practical widow Anna Sergeevna Odintsova, like Bazarov, goes through the “test of love”, although she quickly ends her “romance” with the nihilist, without experiencing the same strong emotional shock that Bazarov experienced.

Love relationships do not cancel either ideological disputes or the desire of heroes to influence people, to find like-minded people. Unlike many minor novelists of the second half of XIX V. (for example, P. D. Boborykin, I. N. Potapenko), who were guided by the experience of Turgenev as a novelist, he achieved in his works the organic unity of a love affair and a socio-ideological plot. In fact, the appearance of the nihilist Bazarov would have been completely different if it were not for the love for Odintsova that suddenly flared up in him. Role love feeling Bazarov’s fate is further enhanced by the fact that this is his first love: it not only destroys the strength of his nihilistic convictions, but also does what first love can do with every person. Turgenev wrote about this in a pathetic tone in the story “First Love”: “First love is the same revolution: the monotonously correct structure of the existing life is broken and destroyed in an instant, youth stands on the barricade, its bright banner flies high, and what would be ahead neither awaited her - death or new life She sends her enthusiastic greetings to everyone. Bazarov's first love, of course, is far from the inspired picture painted by Turgenev. This is love-tragedy, which has become the strongest argument in the Bazarov dispute, but not with the "old romantics", but with the very nature of man.

The backstories of the characters are of exceptional importance in each of Turgenev's novels. This is the epic basis of the story of modern times. The prehistory reveals the writer's interest in historical development Russian society, to the change of various generations of Russian intellectual elite. The events that take place in the novels are, as a rule, accurately dated (for example, the action in "Fathers and Sons" begins on May 20, 1859, less than two years before the peasant reform). Starting from the present, Turgenev likes to go deep into the 19th century, showing not only the "fathers", but also the "grandfathers" of his young heroes.

In The Nest of Nobles, a lengthy backstory of Lavretsky is given: the writer tells not only about the life of the hero himself, but also about his ancestors. In other novels, the prehistory is much shorter: in "Fathers and Sons" only the life story of Pavel Petrovich is told in sufficient detail, and about Bazarov's past, on the contrary, succinctly and fragmentarily. This can be explained by the fact that Pavel Petrovich is a man of the past, his life took place. Bazarov, on the other hand, is all in the present, his story is created and completed before the eyes of the reader.

The creation of each novel was preceded by painstaking preparatory work: compiling biographies of characters, pondering the main storylines. Turgenev prepared outlines of novels and individual chapters, trying to find the right tone of the narrative, to understand the "roots of phenomena", that is, to connect the actions of the characters with their inner world, to feel the psychological impulses of their behavior. Most a prime example such an immersion in the psychology of the character was the “diary of a nihilist”, which he kept while working on the novel “Fathers and Sons”. Only having developed a plan in detail and thought over the composition of the work, the writer proceeded to create the text. creative process Turgenev did not think without consultations with friends, "trial" readings of individual chapters and the entire text, alterations and additions, taking into account the opinions of friends. Journal publications of novels were also one of the stages of work on them: after the first publication, the final edition of the work was being prepared for a separate edition.

The nature of the work on the novel "Fathers and Sons" largely clarifies the author's concept of the work, primarily Turgenev's interpretation of the personality of Bazarov, who is completely different from the heroes of previous novels. If earlier, showing the inconsistency of his noble heroes, deprived of the ability to act, Turgenev did not completely reject their ideas about life, then in Fathers and Sons his attitude to Bazarov’s convictions from the very beginning was sharply negative. All programmatic principles of the nihilist (attitude towards love, nature, art, rejection of any principles whatsoever in the name of experience, experiment) are absolutely alien to Turgenev. He considered everything that Bazarov rejected as eternal, unshakable human values. The focus of Turgenev’s attention is not Bazarov’s views on private, albeit very important in the context of the era, social problems, but Bazarov’s “philosophy of life” and the “rules” he developed for relationships with people.

The first task set by Turgenev in the course of work on the novel was to create a portrait of a modern nihilist, completely different from the skeptics and "nihilists" of the previous, noble generation. The second, more important task significantly supplemented the first: Turgenev, the "Columbus" of the Russian nihilists, wanted to create not just a "passport" portrait, but a portrait-"forecast" of modern nihilism. The purpose of the writer is to consider it as a dangerous, painful craze that can lead a person to a dead end. The solution of these two tasks required maximum authorial objectivity: after all, according to Turgenev, nihilism is not only one of the many modern ideological movements popular among “children”, due to their rejection of the “fathers” worldview, but, above all, a radical change in the point of view of the world, on the meaning of human existence and traditional life values.

Turgenev as a novelist was always interested in the figures of skeptics, "true deniers", but he never equated the "deniers" of the 1830s - 1850s. and "nihilists". A nihilist is a person of a different era, a different worldview and psychology. This is a raznochinets-democrat by origin, a natural scientist, and not a philosopher by conviction and a cultural treger (educator) by understanding his role in society. "Reverence for natural science", the cult of natural science experiment, knowledge based on experience, not on faith - characteristic of the younger generation, separating him from his "fathers"-idealists.

In the article "About "Fathers and Sons"" Turgenev noted that the personality of one of the "naturalists", a young provincial doctor "Doctor D." and lay "at the base" of Bazarov's figure. According to the writer, "this wonderful person embodied - before my eyes - that barely born, still wandering beginning, which later received the name of nihilism. But in preparatory materials to the novel no "Dr. D." Turgenev does not name. Describing Bazarov, he made the following entry: “Nihilist. Self-confident, speaks abruptly and is a little hard-working. - (Mixture of Dobrolyubov, Pavlov and Preobrazhensky). Thus, it was the critic and publicist Dobrolyubov who was named the first among the prototypes: contemporaries, in particular Antonovich, were not deceived, believing that Bazarov was his “mirror” reflection. Another prototype, I. V. Pavlov, whom Turgenev met in 1853, is a provincial doctor who became a writer. S. N. Preobrazhensky was an institute comrade of Dobrolyubov and one of the authors of Sovremennik. The “mixture” of the individual psychological qualities of these people allowed the writer to create the image of Bazarov, which reflected a new social and ideological phenomenon. In the personality of the hero, Turgenev emphasized, first of all, the conflict with the "fathers", their beliefs, lifestyle, and spiritual values.

Already at the first stage of work on the main text of "Fathers and Sons" (August 1860 - July 1861), Turgenev's attitude towards the nihilist hero was extremely complex. Commenting on the novel, he refused direct assessments of Bazarov, although he frankly expressed his attitude towards the heroes of previous novels to his friends. At the second stage of work (September 1861 - January 1862), making amendments and additions, taking into account the advice of P.V. Annenkov and V.P. negative traits: self-conceit and arrogance. The writer decided that in the original version of the novel, the figure of Bazarov turned out to be too bright and therefore completely unsuitable for the conservative Russkiy Vestnik, which was supposed to publish Fathers and Sons. The appearance of the ideological opponent of Pavel Petrovich Bazarov, on the contrary, was somewhat “ennobled” at the request of the vigilant Katkov. At the third stage of the creation of the novel (February - September 1862), after its journal publication, significant amendments were made to the text, mainly concerning Bazarov. Turgenev considered it important to draw a clearer line between Bazarov and his antagonists (primarily Pavel Petrovich), between Bazarov and his "disciples" (Arkady and especially Sitnikov and Kukshina).

In Fathers and Sons, Turgenev returned to the structure of his first novel. Like Rudin, new novel became a work in which all the plot threads converged to one center - a new figure of the democrat Bazarov, who disturbed all readers and critics. He became not only the plot, but also the problematic center of the work. The assessment of all other aspects of Turgenev's novel depended on understanding the personality and fate of Bazarov: the system of characters, the author's position, private artistic techniques. All critics saw in "Fathers and Sons" a new turn in his work, although the understanding of the milestone meaning of the novel was, of course, completely different.

Among the many critical interpretations, the most notable were the articles by the critic of the Sovremennik magazine M. A. Antonovich “Asmodeus of our time” and a number of articles by D. I. Pisarev in another democratic journal - “Russian Word”: “Bazarov”, “Realists” and “ The thinking proletariat. Unlike Antonovich, who sharply negatively assessed Bazarov, Pisarev saw in him a true "hero of the time", comparing him with "new people" from the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky "What to do?". Contradictory opinions about the novel, expressed by democratic critics, were perceived as a fact of internal controversy in the democratic movement - "a split in the nihilists."

Both critics and readers of "Fathers and Sons" were not accidentally worried about two questions - about prototypes and the author's position. It is they who create two poles in the perception and interpretation of any work. Antonovich assured himself and his readers that Turgenev was malicious. In his interpretation, Bazarov is not at all a person written off “from nature”, but an “asmodeus”, an “evil spirit”, released by a writer angry at the younger generation. The article is written in a feuilleton manner. Instead of an objective analysis of the novel, the critic created a caricature of the protagonist, as if substituting his "disciple" Sitnikov in Bazarov's place. According to Antonovich, Bazarov is not an artistic generalization, a mirror of the younger generation. The author of the novel is interpreted as the creator of a biting feuilleton novel, which must be objected to in exactly the same manner. The goal of the critic - to "quarrel" the writer with the younger generation - was achieved.

In the subtext of Antonovich's rude and unfair article, there is a reproach that the figure of Bazarov turned out to be too recognizable, because one of his prototypes was Dobrolyubov. In addition, the journalists of Sovremennik could not forgive Turgenev for breaking up with the magazine. The publication of the novel in the conservative Russky Vestnik was for them a sign of Turgenev's final break with democracy.

A different point of view on Bazarov was expressed by Pisarev, who considered the protagonist of the novel not as a caricature of one or several persons, but as an "illustration" of the emerging socio-ideological type. Criticism was least interested author's attitude to the hero, features of the artistic embodiment of the image of Bazarov. Pisarev interpreted the hero in the spirit of "real criticism". Pointing out the author's bias in his depiction, he, however, highly appreciated the very type of "hero of the time", guessed by Turgenev. The article "Bazarov" expressed the idea that Bazarov, depicted in the novel as a "tragic face", is the new hero who was so lacking contemporary literature. In subsequent interpretations of Pisarev, Bazarov became increasingly detached from the novel. In the articles “Realists” and “The Thinking Proletariat”, the name “Bazarov” was used by the critic to name a type of era, a modern raznochintsy-kulturträger, close in outlook to Pisarev himself.

Accusations of tendentiousness contradicted the calm, objective tone of the author's portrayal of Bazarov. “Fathers and Sons” is Turgenev’s “duel” with nihilism and nihilists, but all the requirements of the dueling “code of honor” are met by the author: he treated the enemy with respect, “killing” him in a fair fight. Bazarov, a symbol of dangerous human delusions, according to Turgenev, is a worthy adversary. Caricature and mockery of him (some critics accused Turgenev of this) could give a completely different result - an underestimation of the destructive power of nihilism, confident in its right to destroy, striving to put its false idols in the place of the "eternal" idols of mankind. Recalling the work on the image of Bazarov, Turgenev wrote to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in 1876: “I will not be surprised, however, that Bazarov remained a mystery to many; I myself can't quite imagine how I wrote it. There was - don't laugh, please - some kind of fate, something stronger than the author himself, something independent of him. I know one thing: there was no prejudice of thought, no tendency in me at that time.

As in previous novels, Turgenev does not draw conclusions, avoids comments, deliberately hides the inner world of the hero so as not to put pressure on readers. The author's position, so straightforwardly interpreted by Antonovich and ignored by Pisarev, manifests itself primarily in the nature of the conflicts, in the composition of the plot. They implement the author's concept of Bazarov's fate.

Bazarov is unshakable in disputes with Pavel Petrovich in the first chapters of the novel, but is internally broken after the "test of love." Turgenev emphasizes the thoughtfulness, rigidity of the hero’s convictions, the interconnection of all components of his worldview, despite the outwardly fragmentary, fragmentary nature of his remarks, “aphorisms”: “a decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet”, “the art of making money, or there is no more hemorrhoids!” , “from a penny candle, you know, Moscow burned down”, “Rafael is not worth a penny of copper”, etc.

Bazarov is a maximalist: from his point of view, any belief has a price, if it does not contradict others. As soon as he lost one of the "links" in the "chain" of his worldview, all the others were questioned and re-evaluated. In the last chapters of the novel, Bazarov's thoughts are turned not to the momentary and topical, as in the first, "Maryinsky" chapters, but to the "eternal", universal. This becomes the cause of his inner restlessness, which manifests itself in appearance, in the manner of behavior, in "strange", from the point of view of Arkady, statements that cross out the meaning of his previous statements. Bazarov not only painfully experiences his love, but also thinks about death, about what kind of "monument" the living will put up for him. Bazarov’s remark in a conversation with Arkady has a special meaning: it clearly shows how the scale of his life values ​​​​has changed under the influence of thoughts about death: “... - Yes, for example, you said today, passing by the hut of our elder Philip, - she is so glorious , white, - now, you said, Russia will then reach perfection when the last peasant will have the same premises, and each of us should contribute to this ... And I hated this last peasant, Philip or Sidor, for whom I have to climb out of my skin and who won’t even say thank you to me ... why should I thank him? Well, he will live in a white hut, and burdock will grow out of me; so what next?" (Ch. XXI). Now Bazarov does not have a clear and precise answer to the question about the meaning of life, which previously did not cause difficulties. Most of all, the nihilist is afraid of the thought of the "grass of oblivion", of the "burdock", which will be the only "monument" to him.

At the end of the novel, we have before us not the self-confident and dogmatic Bazarov-empiricist, but the “new” Bazarov, who solves “damned”, “Hamletian” questions. Admirer of experience and natural scientific solutions to all riddles and mysteries human life, Bazarov faced what he previously unconditionally denied, becoming "Hamlet" among the nihilists. This is what caused his tragedy. According to Turgenev, "eternal" values ​​(love, nature, art) are not able to shake even the most consistent nihilism. On the contrary, a conflict with them can lead the nihilist to conflict with himself, to painful, fruitless reflection and loss of the meaning of life. This is what it consists main lesson tragic fate Bazarov.