Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev read stories. Short story-parable I.S.

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev is known in Russian and world literature as the founder of plots that reflect reality. Not a large number of novels written by the writer, brought him great fame. Big role also played novels, short stories, essays, plays, poems in prose.

Tergenev was actively published during his lifetime. And although not every work of his caused delight among critics, it did not leave anyone indifferent. Disputes broke out constantly not only because of literary disagreements. Everyone knows that at the time when Ivan Sergeevich lived and worked, censorship was especially strict, and the writer could not openly talk about many things that would affect politics, criticize the authorities or serfdom.

Selected works and complete works of Tergenev are published with enviable regularity. The most voluminous and full assembly works is considered to be the release of the Nauka publishing house in thirty volumes, which combined all the works of the classic in twelve volumes, and published his letters in eighteen volumes.

Artistic features of the work of I.S. Turgenev

Most of the writer's novels have the same artistic features. Often the focus is on a girl who is beautiful, but not beautiful, developed, but this does not mean at all that she is very smart or educated. According to the plot, this girl is always courted by several applicants, but she chooses one, the one whom the author wants to single out from the crowd, to show him inner world, desires and aspirations.

According to the plot of each writer's novel, these people fall in love with each other, but something is always present in their love and does not make it possible to be together right away. It is probably worth listing all the novels of Ivan Turgenev:

★ Rudin.
★ « Noble Nest».
★ "Fathers and Sons".
★ "The day before".
★ "Smoke".
★ New.

To better understand the works of Turgenev, his features writer's work, several of his novels should be considered in more detail. After all, most of the novels were written even before the peasant reform was carried out in Russia, and all this was reflected in the works.

Roman "Rudin"

This is the first novel by Turgenev, which was first defined by the author himself as a story. And although the main work on the work was completed in 1855, the author made several adjustments and improvements to his text. This was due to the criticism of the comrades, to whom the manuscript fell into the hands. And in 1860, after the first publications, the author added an epilogue.

The following characters act in Turgenev's novel:

⇒ Lasunskaya.
⇒ Pigasov.
⇒ Pandnlevsky.
⇒ Lipina.
⇒ Volintsev.
⇒ Bass players.

Lasunskaya is the widow of a privy councillor, who was very rich. The writer rewards Daria Mikhailovna not only with beauty, but also with freedom in communication. She participated in all conversations, trying to show her importance, which in reality she did not have at all. She considers Pigasov funny, who shows some kind of malice towards all people, but especially does not like women. Afrikan Semenovich lives alone because he is very ambitious.

The Turgenev hero from the novel, Konstantin Pandelevsky, is interesting, since it was impossible to determine his nationality. But the most remarkable thing about his image is his unusual ability to take care of the ladies in such a way that they then constantly patronized him. But he had nothing to do with Lipina Alexandra, since the woman, despite her young age, was already a widow, although without children. She inherited a large inheritance from her husband, but so that she would not let him down, she lived with her brother. Sergei Volintsev was a staff captain, but already retired. He is decent, and many knew that he was in love with Natalia. The young teacher of Bassists hates Pandelevsky, but respects the main character, Dmitry Rudin.

Main character a poor man, although by origin he is a nobleman. He received a good education in the University. And although he grew up in the village, he is smart enough. He knew how to speak beautifully and for a long time, which surprised others. Unfortunately, his words and deeds differ. His philosophical views were liked by Natalya Lasunskaya, who falls in love with him. He constantly said that he was also in love with a girl, but this turned out to be a lie. And when she denounces him, Dmitry Nikolayevich immediately leaves, and soon dies in France on the barricades.

By composition, the entire Turgenev novel is divided into four parts. The first part tells how Rudin arrives at Natalya's house, sees her for the first time. In the second part, the author shows how much the girl is in love with Nikolai. The third part is the departure of the protagonist. The fourth part is an epilogue.

Novel "The Nest of Nobles"

This is the second novel by Ivan Sergeevich, the work on which lasted two years. Like the first novel, The Nest of Nobles was published in the Sovremennik magazine. This work caused a storm in literary circles, from disagreement in the interpretation of the plot, to outright accusations of plagiarism. But the work had big success from the readership, and the name "Noble Nest" became a real catchphrase and firmly entered into use in the flesh to this day.

There are a large number of characters in the novel who will always be interesting in their character and Turgenev's description to readers. The female images of the work are represented by Kalitina, who is already fifty years old. Marya Dmitrievna was not only a rich, but also a very capricious noblewoman. She was so spoiled that at any moment she could cry because her desires were not fulfilled. Her aunt, Marya Timofeevnea, brought her special trouble. Pestova was already seventy years old, but she easily and always told the truth to everyone. Marya Dmitrievna had children. Lisa eldest daughter already turned 19 years old. She is friendly and very kind. This was the influence of the nanny. Second in a feminine way in Turgenev's novel is Lavretskaya, who is not only beautiful, but also married. Although after her betrayal, her husband left her abroad, but this alone did not stop Varvara Pavlovna.

There are many characters in the novel. There are those who play important role in the plot, but there are episodic. For example, a certain Sergei Petrovich appears several times in Turgenev's novel, who is a gossip from secular society. A handsome Pashin, who is very young and has a position in society, comes to the city on his work. He is obsequious, but easily liked by the people around him. It is worth noting that he is very talented: he composes music and poetry himself, and then performs them. But only his soul is cold. He likes Lisa.

A music teacher comes to the Kalitins' house, who was a hereditary musician, but fate was against him. He is poor, although he is German. He does not like to communicate with people, but he perfectly understands everything that happens around him. The main characters include Lavretsky, who is thirty-five years old. He is a relative of the Kalitins. But he could not boast of his education, although in himself he was a kind person. Fedor Ivanovich has a noble dream - to plow the land, because he did not succeed in anything else. He is counting on a friend, the poet Mikhalevich, who will help him realize all his plans.

According to the plot, Fedor Ivanovich comes to the province to realize his dream, where he meets Lisa and falls in love with her. The girl loves him back. But here comes unfaithful spouse Lavretsky. He is forced to leave, and Liza goes to the monastery.

The composition of Turgenev's novel is divided into six parts. In the first part there is a story about how Fyodor Ivanovich arrives in the province. And so in the second part tells about the main character. In the third part, Lavretsky, and Kalitins, and other heroes go to Vasilyevskoye. Here begins the rapprochement between Liza and Fedor Ivanovich, but this is already discussed in the fourth part. But the fifth part is very sad, as Lavretsky's wife arrives. The sixth part is an epilogue.

Novel "On the Eve"

This novel was created by Ivan Turgenev in anticipation of a coup in Russia. The main character of his work becomes a Bulgarian. It is known that the novel was written by a famous writer in 1859, and the very next year it was published in one of the magazines.

The plot is based on the Stakhov family. Stakhov Nikolay Artemyevich, who not only spoke good French, but was also a great debater. In addition, he was also known as a philosopher who was bored at home all the time. He met a German widow and now spent all his time with her. This state of affairs greatly upset his wife, Anna Vasilievna, a calm and sad woman who complained to everyone in the house about her husband's infidelity. She loved her daughter, but in her own way. By the way, Elena at that time was already twenty years old, although from the age of 16 she left her parental care, and then she lived like herself. She had a need to constantly take care of the poor, the unfortunate, and it doesn’t matter whether they are people or animals. But for the environment, she seemed a little strange.

Elena was simply created to share her life with Dmitry Insarov. This young man, who was barely 30 years old, an amazing and unusual fate. His mission was to free his land. Therefore, Elena follows him, begins to believe in his ideas. After the death of her husband, she decides to devote herself to a noble mission - she becomes a sister of mercy.

The meaning of Turgenev's novels

In all novels famous writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev reflects the history of Russian society. He doesn't just portray his characters and tell them life stories. The writer walks the path together with his characters and guides the reader along this path, forcing them to philosophize together about what the meaning of life is, what kindness and love are. A huge role in Turgenev's novels is played by landscapes that reflect the mood acting characters.

M. Katkov wrote about Turgenev's novels:

"Clarity of ideas, skill in delineation of types, simplicity in conception and course of action."

Turgenev's novels are not only educational, but also historical meaning, as the writer reveals moral issues the whole society. In the fates of his heroes, the fates of thousands of Russians who lived more than one hundred and fifty years ago are guessed. This is a real digression into the history of both high society and the common people.

“The literary activity of Turgenev was of leading importance for our society, along with the activities of Nekrasov, Belinsky and Dobrolyubov. And no matter how remarkable his artistic talent is in itself, the secret of that deep sympathy and cordial attachments that he managed to awaken to himself in all thinking Russian people lies not in him, but in the fact that the life images he reproduced were full of deep teachings.

Saltykov-Shchedrin

It is customary to say that art is tested by time. This is true. But after all, time itself is not only an “unusually long” thing, but also a complex one. The prose writer, poet, playwright, critic, publicist, memoirist, translator Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was most likely convinced of this more than once. Born October 28, 1818 in the family of Sergei Nikolaevich and Varvara Petrovna Turgenev. Father, a retired cavalry officer, came from an old noble family, mother - from a low-born, but wealthy landowner family of the Lutovinovs. Turgenev's childhood passed in the parental estate of Spassky-Lutovinovo, near the city of Mtsensk, Oryol province; his first teacher was his mother's serf secretary Fyodor Lobanov. In 1827, Turgenev moved with his family to Moscow, where he continued his education in private boarding schools, then under the guidance of Moscow teachers Pogorelsky, Dubensky and Klyushnikov, later famous poet. By the age of 14, Turgenev was fluent in three languages. foreign languages and managed to get acquainted with the best works of European and Russian literature. In 1833 he entered Moscow University, and in 1834 he transferred to St. Petersburg University, where he graduated in 1837 from the verbal department of the Faculty of Philosophy.

Turgenev did not like to think about his student literary experiments; he pushed back the very beginning of his writing by almost ten years - already in the forties. Obviously, mainly, therefore, most of what he wrote in university years and did not reach us. From the point of view of a mature, demanding artist, Turgenev was right: the surviving examples of his writings do not rise above the level of literary apprenticeship. But for the historian of literature and for anyone who wants to understand how the first sprouts of Turgenev's talent made their way, they are of inestimable significance.

He started his writing activity in transition for Russian literature: time. These were the years of the post-December reaction. That part of the nobility, from whose midst the Decembrists emerged, was demoralized. “People were seized with deep despair and general despondency. high society with vile and low zeal hastened to renounce all human feelings, from all humane thoughts. There was “almost not a single aristocratic family that did not have close relatives among those exiled, and almost none dared to wear mourning or show their grief” However, Turgenev’s interests were not yet focused on literary creativity. He considered the university education he had received inadequate. In the spring of 1838, Turgenev went abroad, he was attracted by the University of Berlin. Having mastered the latest findings of modern philosophical science, Turgenev in 1841 returns to Russia.

The first 2 years at home are devoted to the search for a future field. First, Turgenev dreams of teaching philosophy and takes the master's exams, which gave him the right to defend his dissertation and receive a department. But the path to teaching activities turns out to be closed at the very beginning; there is no hope for the restoration of the department of philosophy at Moscow University, where Turgenev intended to serve. At the end of 1842, Turgenev was busy about entering the service of the Ministry of the Interior, which was then studying the question of the possibility of freeing the peasants. Preparing for a future position, he draws up a note “A few remarks on the Russian economy and the Russian peasant”, in which he writes about the need for serious changes in the economic and legal situation of the peasant class. In 1843, Turgenev was enrolled in the minister's office, but soon lost faith in his hopes, lost all interest in the service, and two years later he retired.

In the same year, Turgenev's poem "Parasha" was published, and a little later - Belinsky's sympathetic review of it. These events decided the fate of Turgenev: from now on, literature becomes for him the main business of life.

The influence of Belinsky largely determined the formation of Turgenev's social and creative position, Belinsky helped him embark on the path of realism. But this path is difficult at first. Young Turgenev tries himself in the most different genres: lyric poems alternate with critical articles, after "Parash" appear verse poems"Conversation" (1844), "Andrey" (1845), "Landlord" (1845), but after them, with almost the same regularity, prose novels and stories are written - "Andrey Kolosov" (1844), "Three Portraits" (1847). In addition, Turgenev also wrote plays - the dramatic essay "Indiscretion" (1843) and the comedy lack of money "(1846). The aspiring writer is looking for his way. He is seen as a student of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, but a student close to creative maturity.

In 1843, Turgenev met the famous French singer Pauline Viardot and fell in love with her. In 1845 he followed her to France for a while, and at the beginning of 1847 he went abroad for a long time. Departure tore Turgenev out of his usual literary and secular environment, new living conditions prompted him to delve into himself and overestimate a lot in himself. He achieves real professionalism in his writing work, his views on art become simpler and more rigorous.

In separation, love for the Motherland grew stronger. In seclusion abroad, old impressions were awakened, preserved from childhood or accumulated during hunting trips to Spasskoye (in the summer and autumn of 1846, Turgenev went with a gun to the Oryol, Kursk and Tula provinces). Pictures of village and estate life, Russian landscapes, conversations, meetings, everyday scenes arose in my memory. This is how the "Notes of a Hunter" was born, which brought Turgenev wide popularity.

Even before leaving, the writer handed over to the Sovremennik magazine the essay “Khor and Kalinich”. unexpected success essay, published in early 1847, led Turgenev to the idea of ​​writing a number of others of the same kind. For five years they appeared one after another on the pages of Sovremennik, and in 1852 the author published them as a separate edition.

Turgenev writes a number of stories about people who "broke out" from the social environment to which they belong by origin and upbringing. The Diary of a Superfluous Man (1850), Two Friends (1853), Calm (1854), Correspondence (1854), Yakov Pasynkov (1856) are devoted to this topic. The heroes of these stories fail in their attempts to engage in useful activities or find personal happiness. Cause of the drama Extra person» Turgenev considered the clash of his spiritual interests and aspirations with the backward Russian social order. Turgenev for a long time does not find any reason for hope.

A turning point is outlined in Turgenev's first novel Rudin (1855), written in the midst of a lost Crimean War. Turgenev is trying to comprehend the ended era, highlighting the most important in it. He sees the problem of the "Superfluous Man" in a new way. Rudin, the hero of the novel is endowed with a halo of prophetic exclusivity. The character of Rudin appears as a kind of mystery of Russian social life.

In 1857 the government announced its intention to free the peasants from serfdom. Turgenev returned to Russia from Europe in the summer of 1858 and immediately plunged into the atmosphere of public revival. He became an employee of Herzen, the Kolokol and Sovremennik magazines. In 1858 he wrote the story "Asya". The range of philosophical problems was reflected in his stories "Faust" (1856), "Trip to Polissya" (1853 - 1857). One of the main signs of the times for Turgenev is the process of internal liberation of the individual. Turgenev increasingly turns to thoughts about the uniqueness of human individuality and the search for moral support. In the lyrical-philosophical stories of the 50s, the thought of the salvation of the "chains of duty", of self-denial, matures. This idea receives a broad socio-historical justification in the novel The Nest of Nobles (1858).

In 1860, Turgenev wrote the novel "On the Eve", which caused a violent and contradictory reaction. Turgenev clearly wanted unification social forces Russia.

In the summer of 1860, Turgenev drafted the program "The Society for the Propagation of Literacy of Primary Education, which did not receive a response from the public." In February 1862, Turgenev published the novel "Fathers and Sons", where he tries to show the Russian society the tragic nature of the growing conflicts. The stupidity and helplessness of all classes in the face of a social crisis threatens to develop into confusion and chaos. Against this background, a dispute is unfolding about the ways to save Russia, which is being waged by heroes representing the two main parties of the Russian intelligentsia. The program of the liberals, which Kirsanov advocates, is based on lofty and noble ideals. Everything is overshadowed by the idea of ​​progress, because we are talking about the transformation of Russia into a truly civilized country. The ideals of these people are hopelessly far from reality, they cannot save the country from disaster.

The liberals are opposed to The Nihilist Bazarov, in which the reader can easily recognize the spokesman for the ideas and sentiments of the revolutionary youth. Bazarov expresses these ideas in the most extreme form, proclaims the idea of ​​"Complete and merciless denial". In his opinion, the world should be destroyed to the ground. He categorically denies love, poetry, music, family ties, duty, right, obligation. The philosophy of Bazarov is the rigid logic of life - struggle. Bazarov is a man of a truly new formation, impudent, strong, organically incapable of illusions and compromises, who has achieved complete inner freedom, ready to go towards his goal regardless of anything. Turgenev recognizes that the role of the "Advanced Class" is moving from the noble intelligentsia to the raznochintsy. Turgenev in the novel shows a violation of the normal continuity of generations: children refuse the heritage of their fathers, losing touch with the past, with the roots of their being, fathers lose their natural love for those who are going to change, old age and youth cease to balance each other in general course life. The theme of the disunity of generations acquires unprecedented depth in "Fathers and Sons", gives rise to the idea of ​​a possible break in the "connection of times", of the destructive penetration of social contradictions into the foundation of life itself. The ideal of national unity remained central to Turgenev while working on the novel. Criticism did not accept the novel. Offended and disappointed, Turgenev went abroad and did not write for a long time. In the 1960s he published a short ghost story (1864) and an etude Enough (1865), where sad thoughts sounded about the ephemeral nature of all human values. For almost 20 years he lived in Paris and Baden-Baden, being interested in everything that happened in Russia.

In 1867 he completed work on the novel "Smoke". The novel is filled with satirical and journalistic motives. The symbolic image of "Smoke" becomes the main unifying principle. Before reader life, lost intercom and purpose.

In the spring of 1882, the first signs of a serious illness appeared, which turned out to be fatal for Turgenev. But at moments of temporary relief of suffering, the writer continued to work and, a few months before his death, published the first part of Poems in Prose. This cycle of lyrical miniatures was a kind of farewell to Turgenev's life, homeland and art. The last book Turgenev collected the main themes and motives of his work. The book was opened by the poem in prose "Village", and completed by "Russian language", a lyrical hymn filled with Turgenev's faith in the great destiny of his country: "In days of doubt, in days of painful reflections about the fate of my homeland - you are my only support and support, O great, mighty, truthful and free Russian language! Without you - how not to fall into despair at the sight of everything that happens at home? But it is impossible to believe that such a language was not given to a great people!”

In criticism, both modern and later, the question of Turgenev's positive program, as expressed in this novel, raises much controversy. It seemed to contemporaries that Potugin was the spokesman for the opinions of Turgenev himself. At first glance, this seems to be the case. The idea that Russia needs civilization, that it needs to be treated with “homeopathic remedies”, that is, to improve social life gradually, patiently introducing elements European culture, is an old favorite thought of Turgenev.

Turgenev was a highly developed, convinced man who never left the soil of universal ideals. He carried these ideals into Russian life with that conscious constancy that constitutes his main and inestimable service to Russian society. Turgenev died on August 22, 1883.

Russia as it was for more than a hundred years ago, as Turgenev knew her, changed in a way that she had not changed, perhaps a whole thousand years before him. In essence, everything that we meet in the foreground of his works is irrevocably a thing of the past. Time has long since destroyed the last remnants of the vast majority of those manor estates, which so often met on the roads of this writer; the very bad memory of the landlords and of the nobility as a whole has in our time very noticeably lost in its social acuteness. And the Russian village is no longer the same. But it turns out that the fate of his heroes, so far from our life, excites the most immediate interest in us; it turns out that everything that Turgenev hated, in the end, is also hated by us; what he considered good is most often so from our point of view. Of course, in many ways we cannot agree with him, but only the most self-satisfied (they are, according to Turgenev, the most limited) people may develop a sense of superiority: we argue with him, as with our contemporary, wise and kind. . The artist has conquered time.

Turgenev is known for his instructive stories about love, family and friendship, but few people know that the writer also wrote fairy tales. The author got along well with the children, they, in turn, responded in kind, constantly sitting on his lap, tugging at his hair, but most of all they loved to listen to his stories. Usually the writer told them while lying on a large sofa. Ivan Sergeevich also planned to publish his collection of children's fairy tales, but, unfortunately, he did not succeed in realizing his plan.

1. "A drop of life". This fairy tale quite small in size, but quite interesting and pleasant. In it, Ivan Sergeevich talks about little boy, whose parents were seriously ill, but he was lucky to learn about a drop of life that will allow him not only to treat everyone around, but also reveal to him the secrets of life. The hero was not afraid of terrible monsters and still managed to drink this drop to help the family. The courage of a child is amazing, not everyone will dare to do this. And in the end, his courage will pay off for him. In the future, he will become rich and famous. Moral: for the sake of helping relatives, it's worth the risk. Read the piece itself...
2. "Silver Bird and Yellow Frog". This tale cannot but touch your heart with its sincerity. In this story the story goes about one particular frog, which differed from the others in its color. She was yellow. The green frogs refused to be friends with her because she was different, but in the end she made a friend in the heron. The moral of the tale is that the difference between people is not bad, but in the order of things, and one should not despise a person because he is not like the others. That there will always be someone who will accept you for who you are, someone who will love your features will appear. Read the piece itself...
3. "Self-Knower". This story is about a boy who lied a lot and always told everyone that he was the smartest in the world. He knows everything. Once he was told that the river is very deep - do not go there, to which the self-aware person said that he already knew this, fell into the water and drowned. At the end of the story, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev brings us to the conclusion that it is better to say that you do not know something than to boast without reason. Read the piece itself...
4. "Stepovik". The work is written in French, not finished. It is very sad that this story is not over, because it is very interesting to know what happened next. The fairy tale tells about a man who once met in the steppe little man, which was all made of twigs and grass. The story ends at the moment the traveler and this creature meet. Read the piece itself...

Turgenev wrote only four fairy tales, but he also translated the fairy tales of Charles Perrault. Ivan Sergeevich also created several operettas, which were staged at the writer's private villa. Each of them has a fairy motif.

1. "The Last Sorcerer" The premiere took place in early August 1867. Unfortunately, very few copies of this operetta have survived. But those who had the opportunity to hear it said that it was beautifully written, and the desire to see it on big stage increased as the number of invitations decreased. It is quite difficult to find something concrete about the plot of the operetta. The only thing known for sure is that it was written about elves and fairy creatures.
2. "Cannibal". Released in May 1968. The plot is similar to The Last Sorcerer. A certain wizard with the help of magic holds a young girl captive. But later, the prince takes away his magic staff and saves the lady and other captives, taking the ogre hostage. The plot evolved from performance to performance.

Doesn't it sound a little unusual: Turgenev - and fairy tales? We know Ivan Sergeevich as the author of wonderful novels, many novels and stories, including his famous hunting stories, included in the collection with the subtitle "Notes of a Hunter". Turgenev is a poet, dramaturge, author of 83 works of the rarest genre in Russian literature - poems in prose. Turgenev is known as a talented contributor to many Russian and foreign newspapers and magazines in the mid-nineteenth century. And many of the admirers of his great talent, trying to understand Turgenev deeper, carefully study the multi-volume, almost six thousandth collection of the writer's letters to relatives, friends, like-minded people; business letters - and small notes, to friends - and to people in which he was mistaken. It is almost impossible to enumerate all aspects of the activity of I. S. Turgenev - a writer, a citizen, a person. And because the title of this article sounds really a little unusual.

But in No. 157 of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper dated September 6/18, 1881, a message appeared with the following content: “They say that Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev is preparing a new essay and fairy tales for children for publication.”

On what basis did the author of this message build his assumptions? After all, he was an official, that is, a representative of a large and undoubtedly talented team, as follows from acquaintance with the content of this newspaper of that time, and it is unlikely that the editor of Orlovsky Vestnik would have taken such courage as to place on the page of the newspaper there is a message about which they are “talking”. Of course, under it there should have been quite good reasons.

Turgenev - and fairy tales? Even those of us who know the work of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev well enough do not recall that the fairy tales of this author were published anywhere.

However, the documents show that Ivan Sergeevich had such intentions.

In the summer of 1881, on the last visit of the writer to his homeland, Spassky was crowded. His guests that summer, as, indeed, always when he was here, were many of the writer's friends, whose names were already universally known. That summer Ivan Sergeevich was visited by his friends Polonsky, in whose family there were three children.

In his memoirs, Yakov Petrovich Polonsky said very interestingly that “children generally loved Turgenev and treated him sometimes without any ceremony, they were ready to pull on his nose and beard, and he always gave them something told”, often lying on a large comfortable sofa, nicknamed “Samoson”. The children did not let him rest, but he was so patient, treated them with such great understanding that he never reprimanded them, did not drive them away, but courageously endured all these inconveniences. When he saw that he would not be able to rest, he began to tell them stories he had just invented. The children stopped playing pranks and listened attentively to Ivan Sergeevich, since all his tales were really very good.

Ya. P. Polonsky, in the text of his memoirs, abbreviates two fairy tales he heard personally from I. S. Turgenev: “A Drop of Life” and “Self-Knowing”. Last Turgenev composed and told in several stages to both children and adults. Even Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy listened to this tale and crumpled heartily along with everyone else.

Why are Turgenev's fairy tales interesting? What was the writer thinking about when presenting his fairy tale characters to the audience?

To answer these questions, it seems to us that it is necessary to briefly reproduce their content.

The tale "A Drop of Life", along with being interesting, is also very instructive. She introduces us to a boy who, trying to save her sick mother, goes to a terrible cave, where she must find a drop of miraculous living water that can heal the sick. But the cave is inhabited by many reptiles of the various kinds, with evil eyes, terrible and disgusting. A brave baby who selflessly loves his mother, overcomes mortal fear, passes reptiles, finds and swallows a miraculous drop, becoming the owner of everything that is available human understanding. Thanks to the feeling of philanthropy and courage, he penetrated the secrets of the human body and became powerful, rich, and his fame went far around the world.

Two or three days later, as Polonsky testifies, “a new fairy tale began. which once again proved to what extent Turgenev's fantasy was still fresh and inexhaustible.

This is the second tale, told in several steps. "Once upon a time there were two boys - two brothers," one of whom, named Self-Knower, was self-confident, boastful, and therefore often deceitful. The second, named Reasonable, was thoughtful, reasonable, sometimes suspicious. Self-awareness didn’t think about anything. As soon as a new difficult situation, he shouted out: “Oh, I know, I can, I will find,” etc. And naturally, nothing worked out for him, since he never thought about anything, and all his actions received the character frivolous boasting. They made fun of him out loud, they shamed him, tried to reason with him, but in vain: Self-knowing was incorrigible. It got to the point that, not wanting to be convicted of not knowing the answer to the question, what is this sixth part of the world that he is talking about, the boy, without hesitation, answered: "Geography."

It was over this ending that Ivan Sergeevich's listeners laughed, among whom was Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

And with the Self-Knowing brother, the Reasonable, everything went well, he succeeded in everything, because he was honest and thoughtful.

Isn't it true, and in the fairy tales composed by him, Turgenev remained true to his principles: his heroes - honest, principled - are always much higher than those who oppose them.

In January 1881, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya turned to Turgenev with a request to write something for the magazine " Children's rest”, Published by her brother P. A. Bers. Soon, that is, in October of the following year, Turgenev sent Tolstoy a story for children called “The Quail” with an accompanying letter: “Here you are, dear Lev Nikolaevich, that little story that I promised the Countess for children's magazine published by her brother.

A little earlier, Ivan Sergeevich informed Lev Nikolaevich that he had once been a witness heroic deed mother, a little quail bird who sacrificed her life for the life of her chicks.

And even earlier, in 1849, Turgenev described a similar episode in a letter from France to Pauline Viardot: “Do you know,” he wrote to her, “that partridges perfectly play performances? They are very good at pretending to be injured, as if they are being forced to fly, they scream, they squeak, all to lure the dog and distract him from the place where the chicks are. Mother's love On the third day, one of them almost cost a lot: she played her part so excellently that the Sultan grabbed her. I restored the freedom of this brave mother and too good actress.

"The Quail" was published together with the stories of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy "The Prisoner of the Caucasus", "What People Live for", etc., with illustrations by Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, Vladimir Yegorovich Makovsky, I. E. Repin, V. I. Surikov in December 1882, when Turgenev was already mortally ill.

Thus, the Orlovsky Vestnik had sufficient grounds for its report of September 1881. It was preceded by a written request by S. A. Tolstoy, probably born not without stories about the plot of L. N. Tolstoy himself, and the written consent of Ivan Sergeevich to write a story for children. And besides, news from Spassky-Lutovinovo itself, where in the summer of 1881 Turgenev really composed impromptu and told his fairy tales to both children and adults, could contribute to the newspaper’s message.

In support of all that has been said, it makes sense to cite one more interesting piece of evidence. Let us turn to the collection of memoirs of contemporaries about Turgenev, where in the comments to the memoirs of Ya. P. Polonsky we read: title page children's book, compiled by Turgenev himself, with the following content: “Stories and fairy tales for children by Iv. Turgenev. 1 Quail. Bougival, 1882".

In all likelihood, I. S. Turgenev intended to publish a special collection for children's reading. However, this plan did not materialize.

The life of the great Russian writer I. S. Turgenev ended early, in the 65th year. Undoubtedly, if his years had lasted, he would certainly have written down his own, composed and told by him in different time fairy tales for children, would write new children's fairy tales, stories, novels - and the children of the whole world would have a new, interesting, unforgettable storyteller - Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev.