Literary magazine. Questions about the report

note hunter turgenev landscape

“Notes of a Hunter” have a rather complex ideological and figurative content. In the work you can find a significant number of descriptions of Russian nature, which performs a complex function in the work. Nature here serves not only as a landscape background, it is, to some extent, a character who is also characterized by changeable moods, sociability, and mystery. She has her own character traits that manifest themselves depending on events. And if you pay attention, in “Notes of a Hunter” you will notice that the heroes and events are one with nature, they correspond to each other.

Landscape is a drawing, a description of nature, which in artistic creativity performs various functions depending on the ideological and artistic intent of the author, on the style and method of the writer; a means of artistic expression.

The abundance and brightness of the emotional epithets, comparisons, metaphors used by the narrator in “Notes of a Hunter” and exclamatory sentences convey his enthusiastic attitude towards nature. The author wants to show nature in motion, animates it, admires it. He wants to captivate the reader, as evidenced by constant appeals, appeals aimed at awakening the reader’s imagination and feelings, making him feel the author’s experiences.

In this story, Turgenev’s deep and tender love for nature and his penetrating observation are clearly visible. Nature is the natural living environment for the peasant, but nowhere in Turgenev does it remain just the background of the narrative, and this is its specificity and peculiarity. Images of Russian nature serve the purpose of poeticizing characters and creating the right mood. Through the depiction of nature, love for the homeland and its people is expressed. At the same time, nature in “Notes of a Hunter” is a powerful elemental force, unsolved, full of its mysterious life, independent of man, and its continuous movement. In the works of the cycle, landscape became one of the main components, an integral part of the entire ideological and compositional whole. The skill and originality of Turgenev as a landscape painter constitutes the most important feature of his innovation. He was one of the first who “discovered” the landscape of central Russia and depicted it with such unsurpassed skill, managing to include a great depth of philosophical issues in landscape sketches.

“Notes of a Hunter” opens with the story “Khor and Kalinich,” which is very sparse in landscape descriptions. These are only the first steps of Turgenev, leading to the further development of his plan. This story is like a preface that lightly touches on descriptions of nature. Perhaps the author himself did not expect that he would have to include another hero in his cycle, who would take an equally active part in many of the stories in “Notes of a Hunter.” This important hero was not the author himself, who could easily reveal the essence of the story in the course of events, but nature, which still remains a mystery to us. We are trying to understand what is behind these beautiful pictures of nature: sadness or joy, smile or tears. Nature empathizes with people, it surrounds them everywhere, giving them a kind of support and shelter.

At the beginning of the story we see a description of two villages, which gives us the opportunity to imagine what kind of inhabitants inhabit them. Here's an example: “The Oryol village is usually located among plowed fields, near a ravine, somehow turned into a dirty pond. Apart from a few willow trees, always ready to serve, and two or three skinny birches, you won’t see a tree for a mile around; hut is stuck to hut, the roofs are covered with rotten straw...". . This description tells us that the inhabitants of this village are mainly elderly people who no longer have the strength to change anything. This is evident from the fact that, despite the poverty of this village and its abandonment, the fields that are located next to it are still plowed. Everyone knows very well that old people are used to working, and even age will not stop them from working. And if the majority of young people lived here, they probably would not have left the village in such a desolate state. The description of the second village is completely opposite to the description of the first: “The Kaluga village, on the contrary, is mostly surrounded by forest; the huts stand freer and straighter, covered with planks; the gates are tightly locked, the fence in the backyard is not scattered and does not fall out, and every passing pig will not beckon to visit...”. Apparently, people who live here are distrustful, stingy, not every guest is welcome, and not everyone is received equally. Also, probably, the residents of the Kaluga village are richer than the Oryol village, but less hospitable.

Next we encounter the following lines: “We washed down the clear warm honey with spring water and fell asleep to the monotonous buzz of bees and the chatty babble of leaves. “A light gust of wind woke me up...” Not a single detail goes unnoticed by the author. We see very well how closely connected nature and man are. We know that people are able to influence nature, and nature is also capable of influencing humans: it calms, immerses in dreams, puts to sleep and at the same time awakens, but very gently. Also, the weather is predictable: “...the dawn was just flaring up. “The weather will be nice tomorrow,” I remarked, looking at the bright sky. “No, it’s going to rain,” Kalinich objected to me, “the ducks are splashing over there, and the grass smells very strongly...” People have learned to predict the weather. Throughout its existence, humanity has been studying nature, trying to understand it, and this is the result: they know what it will bring tomorrow.

What follows is the story “Ermolai and the Miller’s Woman,” more rich in landscape descriptions. Before us is an evening picture: “The sun has set, but it’s still light in the forest; the air is clean and transparent; the birds babble chatteringly; the young grass sparkles with the cheerful sparkle of emerald... The interior of the forest gradually darkens; the scarlet light of the evening dawn slowly slides along the roots and trunks of trees, rises higher and higher, passes from the lower, almost still bare, branches to the motionless, falling asleep tops... So the very tops have dimmed; The ruddy sky turns blue. The forest smell intensifies, there is a slight whiff of warm dampness; the wind that has flown in near you freezes. The birds fall asleep - not all of them suddenly - according to breeds: one minute the finches fell silent, a few moments later the robins, followed by the buntings. The forest is getting darker and darker. The trees merge into large blackening masses; The first stars appear timidly in the blue sky...” Turgenev describes every little thing that happens in nature in the evening, like an artist skillfully using his brush, under which nature comes to life. The author uses a large number of metaphors, which he cannot do without, because nature in his work lives its own life, just as fickle and unpredictable. Everything inanimate acquires properties inherent to humans: the sun sets, birds babble, the wind freezes, “ The first stars appear timidly.”

A very beautiful picture appears before us when the author describes the spring in the story “Raspberry Water”: “This spring flows from a cleft in the bank, which little by little turned into a small but deep ravine, and twenty steps from there it flows into the river with a cheerful and chatty noise. Oak bushes grew along the slopes of the ravine; short, velvety grass grows green near the spring; the sun's rays almost never touch its cold, silvery moisture...” Perhaps the author introduced this picture because he wanted to introduce us to his, in my opinion, rather unusual hero. A free and independent spring lives its own life just like Stepushka. This hero has no position in society, no connections, no relatives (at least nothing is known about them). He is as free and free as a spring. This is how Turgenev relates his heroes to nature, he connects their destinies with each other, compares them.

Many images of nature are found in the story “Kasyan from the Beautiful Sword”. While the heroes were hunting, they encountered unusually beautiful paintings along the way: “High and sparse clouds barely rushed across the clear sky, yellow-white, like late spring snow, flat and oblong, like lowered sails. Their patterned edges, fluffy and light, like cotton paper, slowly but visibly changed with every moment: they melted, these clouds, and no shadows fell from them... everywhere the sharp metallic sparkle of young, reddish leaves on the trees rippled in the eyes; Everywhere there were blue clusters of crane peas, golden cups of night blindness, half purple, half yellow Ivana da Marya flowers; here and there, near abandoned paths, on which wheel tracks were marked by stripes of small red grass, there were piles of firewood, darkened by wind and rain, stacked in fathoms; a faint shadow fell from them in oblique quadrangles - there was no other shadow anywhere. A light breeze would wake up and then subside: it would suddenly blow in your face and seem to play out - everything would make a cheerful noise, nod and move around, the flexible ends of the ferns sway gracefully - you would be glad to see it... but then it froze again and everything became quiet again. Some grasshoppers chatter together, as if angry, and this incessant sour and dry sound is tiresome. He walks toward the relentless heat of midday; it’s as if he was born by him, as if he was summoned from the hot earth.” The described picture at first evokes a romantic mood: the warm color of the clouds warms, which the author compares with belated snow and sails. The sails are reminiscent of Assol, who was waiting for her prince on the seashore. A feeling of lightness and calm comes. Turgenev immerses us in the unusual atmosphere that surrounds the hunters. Warm tones are followed by cold ones, but no less soothing and airy, they intersect with warm ones. The metallic sparkle of the reddish leaves and the blue of the pea clusters are also unusual for us. Apparently, in these small drawings the author simultaneously reflects the hot sun, the indifferent gray-blue sky, and the sultry weather. And here comes the breeze again, just as light and gentle, but already more cheerful and playful, only it no longer awakens, but falls asleep and then wakes up.

The story “Date” is very impressive, which opens with a wonderful landscape picture that is very romantic. Not surprising, because even the name itself should give rise to the creation of such a landscape. Only it is opposite to the plot of the story and the events taking place. He talked about what a date should be like, but doesn’t warn us what it will be like; our expectations are not met. “I was sitting in a birch grove in the fall, about half of September... The leaves rustled slightly above my head... It was not the cheerful, laughing trembling of spring, not the soft whispering, not the long chatter of summer, not the timid and cold babbling of late autumn, but a barely audible, drowsy chatter... The interior of the grove, wet from the rain, was constantly changing, depending on whether the sun was shining or covered by a cloud; She then lit up all over, as if suddenly everything in her smiled: the thin trunks of the not too common birches suddenly took on a gentle sheen of white silk, the small leaves lying on the ground suddenly dazzled and lit up with red gold, and the beautiful stems of tall curly ferns, already painted in their autumn color like the color of overripe grapes..." Yes, the date should be romantic, full of love and tenderness, affection and warmth. But, alas, here we see a different picture. Love must be mutual, and its presence is felt only in the girl Akulina. Victor, her lover, is indifferent and cold, he does not experience any pure feelings for this girl, he considers himself superior to her and, perhaps, better, which is not characteristic of love. Careless, empty, proud, rude, he neglects Akulina’s feelings. For her, the date ends in tears, this is also noticed by nature, which was sympathetic to the girl’s feelings: “The sun stood low in the pale, clear sky, its rays also seemed to have faded and turned cold: they did not shine, they developed with an even, almost watery light... A gusty wind quickly rushed towards me through the yellow, dried stubble; hastily rising in front of him, small, warped leaves rushed past, across the road, along the edge of the forest; The side of the grove facing the field trembled all over and sparkled with a small sparkle, clearly, but not brightly... Through the sad, although fresh, smile of fading nature, it seemed that the sad fear of the near winter was creeping in... " .

“Forest and Steppe” is the last compositional point of the cycle, the finale of a powerful symphony, despite all the lyricism, apparent pastel and sad sound of the collection. But this essay is not only a hymn to nature, it is also a story about the journey of a “strange hunter” through nature and his feelings evoked by nature. .

“Forest and Steppe,” together with the epigraph, is a sad melody, like everything that makes up the collection “Notes of a Hunter.” And like all the stories in the collection, “Forest and Steppe” remains with an open ending: the “strange hunter” continues to travel “through nature,” which means that new encounters, new images, new paintings are possible that will not age and will acquire even greater mystery over time , which we will never understand, even if we try very hard, because nature is incomprehensible.

Due to the fact that “Bezhin Meadow” is a very vivid story in which the landscape plays an important role, we will touch on it separately.

In 1847, the essay “Khor and Kalinich” was published in Sovremennik, which formed the basis of the Notes. He was successful and therefore Turg. began to write similar essays, which were published in 1852 by the department. a book. In "Glee and K." Turg. acted as an innovator: he portrayed the Russian people as a great force suffering from serfdom. Nicholas I was furious when he saw the book - when the essays were published separately, it was normal, but when the author arranged them in the book in a strict order, they became anti-serfdom. character -> the composition of the “Notes” is very important, this book is yavl. not a collection, but a complete work. Heroes of Turg. united with nature, and otd. the images merge with each other. Anti-serfdom pathos is the conclusion. in the depiction of strong folk characters, which spoke of the illegality of serfdom; The author added living ones to Gogol's gallery of dead souls. Although peasants are slaves, they are internally free. From "Khorya and K." from the beginning to “Forest and Steppe” at the end this motif grows. One image of a peasant clings to another. This creates a complete picture of the life of the people, the lawlessness of the landowners. At Turg. There is such a technique: he depicts peasants whom the landowners force to do unnecessary things: in the essay “Lgov” a certain Kuzma Suchok is depicted, whose master for 7 years forces him to catch fish in a pond where there are no fish. The French are portrayed (Lezhen in Ovsyannikov's Odnodvorets, Count Blanzhia in Lgov), whom the Russian government made nobles, although they were entirely fools. Dr. example: in “Two Landowners” it is told how one landowner ordered to sow poppies everywhere, because it is more expensive - it undermines the foundations of the cross society. Turg. indicates that noble tyranny leads to the fact that many peasants began to lose their opinion and completely submit to the opinion of the master. The image of nature is important in the book. Turg. showed 2 Russias – “living” (peasant) and “dead” (official). All heroes belong to one or the other pole. All “peasant” images are given in Ch. The production of the collection is “Horem and K.”. Khor is businesslike and practical, Kalinich is poetic. Burmister Sofron adopts from Khor his worst qualities (selfishness), and fellow palace owner Ovsyannikov takes on his best (practicality, tolerance for reasonable novelty). This shows the change in character, its development in different people. Kalinich’s successors are Ermolai (but he is closer to nature than Kalinich) and Kasyan (in him “naturalness” is absolute). Ch. the connecting image is the hunter-storyteller. Although he is a nobleman, he is first and foremost a hunter, which brings him closer to the people. It is important that certain “+” nobles are also among the author of the phenomenon. "by the power of Russia." In “Notes of a Hunter,” Turgenev spoke out against serfdom and its defenders. However, the significance of “Notes of a Hunter,” like the significance of “Dead Souls,” is not only in a direct protest against serfdom, but also in the general picture of Russian life that developed under the conditions of serfdom. The fundamental difference between “Notes of a Hunter” and Gogol’s poem was that to Gogol’s gallery of dead souls Turgenev added a gallery of living souls, taken primarily from the peasant environment. Those people about whom Gogol reflected in his famous lyrical digression stood up to their full height in “Notes of a Hunter.” Real people appeared next to the Stegunovs and Zverkovs - Kalinich, Ermolai, Yakov Turok, peasant children. Next to the “statesman” Penochkin was a true statesman - Khor. The deceitful “humanity” of the landowner was contrasted with the harsh humanity of Biryuk and the poetic humanity of Kasyan. Enthusiastic art lovers, landowners-patrons of the arts, these, in the words of Turgenev, “clubs smeared with tar,” discovered their true value next to such a genuine connoisseur of art as the Wild Master, and the stupid Andrei Belovzorov, Tatyana Borisovna’s nephew, artist and conqueror of hearts, caricatured in itself, became even more caricatured when compared with the great artist from the people, Jacob the Turk.

It is also important that many peasant characters in Notes of a Hunter turned out to be not only bearers of positive spiritual qualities: they are depicted as bearers of the best features of the Russian national character. This, first of all, was Turgenev’s protest against serfdom. Turgenev, in connection with “Notes of a Hunter,” was more than once reproached for idealizing the peasantry and deviating from realism. In fact, by showing the high spiritual qualities of people from the people, emphasizing and sharpening the best features of Russian peasants, Turgenev developed the traditions of realistic art and created typical images filled with great political content; While defending the serf peasantry, Turgenev simultaneously defended the national dignity of the Russian people. “The Choir and Kalinich” embodies the combination of practicality and poetry in the Russian soul; The presence of people like Khor among the Russian people serves the author as proof of the national character of the activities of Peter I. Kasyan’s folk humanistic philosophy was inspired in him by the contemplation of his native land and native nature: “After all, you never know where I went! And I went to Romyon, and to Sinbirsk, the glorious city, and to Moscow itself, the golden domes; I went to Oka the Nurse, and Tsnu the Dove, and Mother Volga, and saw many people, good peasants, and visited honest cities ...

And I'm not the only sinner ... many other peasants walk around in bast shoes, wander around the world, looking for the truth ... "(I, 116). Russian nature and folk poetry shape the worldview of peasant children; “the Russian, truthful, ardent soul sounded and breathed” in the singing of Yakov Turk, and the very spirit and content of his song were again inspired by Russian nature: “something familiar and immensely wide, as if the familiar steppe was opening up before you, going into endless distance" (I, 214). That is why such close attention of the author in “Notes of a Hunter” is attracted by the forces and elements of Russian nature.

Nature in “Notes of a Hunter” is not a background, not a decorative painting, not a lyrical landscape, but an elemental force, which the author studies in detail and with unusual attention. Nature lives its own special life, which the author strives to study and describe with all the completeness accessible to the human eye and ear. In “Bezhin Meadow,” before starting a story about people, Turgenev draws the life of nature during one July day: he shows its history for this day, tells what it is like in the early morning, at noon, in the evening; what type, shape and color the clouds have at different periods of the day, what is the color of the sky and its appearance during this day, how the weather changes during the day, etc. Turgenev includes the exact names of plants and animals in his landscapes. In the story “Death”, over the course of one half-page paragraph we encounter a list of birds: hawks, falcons, woodpeckers, blackbirds, orioles, robins, siskins, warblers, finches; plants: violets, lilies of the valley, strawberries, russula, capsicum, milk mushrooms, oak mushrooms, fly agarics.

Animals are depicted with the same close attention, only their “portraits” are given with greater intimacy, with a good-natured approach to humans. “The cow came to the door and breathed noisily twice; the dog growled at her with dignity; a pig passed by, grunting thoughtfully ... "("Khor and Kalinich"; I, 12). In describing the individual properties of a dog, Turgenev is especially inventive and masterly. Suffice it to recall Yermolai’s dog, Valetka, whose remarkable property “was his incomprehensible indifference to everything in the world.” ... If we weren’t talking about a dog, I would use the word: disappointment” (I, 20).

Nature in “Notes of a Hunter” actively influences the heroes of the work - ordinary people and the narrator-author. Sometimes it takes on a mysterious appearance, inspiring a person with a feeling of fear and despondency, but most often in “Notes of a Hunter” nature subjugates a person not with its mystery and hostility, not with its indifference, but with its powerful vitality. This is nature in the story “Forest and Steppe,” which closes the cycle. The story about the forest and the steppe with various, important and solemn events in their lives, with the change of seasons, day and night, heat and thunderstorms - is at the same time a story about a person whose spiritual world is determined by this natural life. Nature inspires a person in this story with either an inexplicable spiritual silence, or a strange anxiety, or a longing for the distance, or, most often, cheerfulness, strength and joy.

Not only peasants are endowed with national-Russian features in “Notes of a Hunter”; In Turgenev, some landowners who escaped the corrupting influence of serfdom are Russian people by nature. Pyotr Petrovich Karataev is no less a Russian person than the peasants; It’s not for nothing that the story about him was originally called “Rusak.” And he is also a victim of serfdom: he was ruined by his love for someone else’s serf girl, whom he cannot marry because of the wild tyranny of her owner. National character traits are also emphasized in Tchertopkhanov’s moral character. He is magnificent in his natural pride, independence and instinctive sense of justice. He is a landowner, but he is not a serf owner. Such is Tatyana Borisovna, a patriarchal landowner, but at the same time a simple creature with a straightforward Russian heart. According to Turgenev, serfdom itself is anti-national. Landowners, who are not typical serf owners, appear to him as the living force of Russian society. He directs his blows not against the nobility as a whole, but only against the feudal landowners. Unlike the revolutionary democrats, Turgenev relied on the Russian nobility, trying to discover healthy elements in it.

In “Notes of a Hunter” there is a noticeable effort to rise above the physiological basis to an all-Russian, universal content. Comparisons and associations with which the narrative is equipped - comparisons with famous historical people, with famous literary characters, with events and phenomena of other times and other geographical latitudes - are intended to neutralize the impression of local limitation and isolation. Turgenev compares Khor, this typical Russian peasant, with Socrates (“the same high, knobby forehead, the same small eyes, the same snub nose”); The practicality of Khor’s mind, his administrative acumen remind the author of no less than a crowned reformer of Russia: “From our conversations I took away one conviction... that Peter the Great was primarily a Russian man, Russian precisely in his transformations.” This is already a direct link to the current fierce debate between Westerners and Slavophiles, that is, to the level of socio-political concepts and generalizations. The text of Sovremennik, where the story was first published (1847, No. 1), also contained a comparison with Goethe and Schiller (“in a word, Khor was more like Goethe, Kalinich more like Schiller”), a comparison that for its time had increased philosophical load, since both German writers appeared as unique signs not only of different types of psyche, but also of opposing methods of artistic thought and creativity. In a word, Turgenev destroys the impression of isolation and local limitation in both the social-hierarchical direction (from Khor to Peter I) and interethnic (from Khor to Socrates; from Khor and Kalinich to Goethe and Schiller).

At the same time, in the unfolding of the action and the arrangement of parts of each of the stories, Turgenev retained much from the “physiological outline.” The latter is built freely, “not constrained by the fences of the story,” as Kokorev said. The sequence of episodes and descriptions is not regulated by strict novelistic intrigue. The narrator's arrival at some place; meeting with some notable person; conversation with him, impressions of his appearance, various information that was obtained about him from others; sometimes a new meeting with the character or with persons who knew him; brief information about his subsequent fate - this is the typical scheme of Turgenev’s stories. There is, of course, internal action (as in any work); but the external is extremely free, implicit, blurred, disappearing. To start a story, it is enough to simply introduce the hero to the reader (“Imagine, dear readers, a person

plump, tall, about seventy years old..."); for the end, a simple figure of silence is enough: “But maybe the reader is already bored of sitting with me at Ovsyanikov’s one-household, and therefore I eloquently fall silent” (“Ovsyanikov’s One-Manor”).

With this construction, a special role falls to the narrator, in other words, to the author’s presence. This question was also important for “physiology,” and important in a fundamental sense that goes beyond the boundaries of “physiology.” For the European novel, understood rather not as a genre, but as a special kind of literature, focused on revealing the “private person”, “private life”, there was a need for a motivation for entering this life, “eavesdropping” and “spying” on it. And the novel found a similar motivation in the choice of a special character who performed the function of an “observer of private life”: a rogue, an adventurer, a prostitute, a courtesan; in the selection of special genre varieties, special storytelling techniques that facilitate entry into the behind-the-scenes spheres - a picaresque novel, a novel of letters, a criminal novel, etc. (M. M. Bakhtin). In “physiology”, a sufficient motivation for revealing the reserve was already the author’s interest in nature, the focus on the steady expansion of the material, on the discovery of hidden secrets. Hence the spread in the “physiological essay” of the symbolism of looking out and prying out secrets (“You must reveal secrets, spied through a keyhole, noticed from around a corner, taken by surprise...” - wrote Nekrasov in a review of “Physiology of St. Petersburg”), which in will later become the subject of reflection and controversy in Dostoevsky’s “Poor People.” In a word, “physiologism” is already motivation. “Physiologism” is a non-novel way of enhancing novelistic moments in modern literature, and this was its great (and not yet identified) historical and theoretical significance.

Returning to Turgenev’s book, we should note the special position of the narrator in it. Although the title of the book itself did not arise without the prompting of chance (editor I. I. Panaev accompanied the magazine publication of “Khor and Kalinich” with the words “From the Notes of a Hunter” in order to incline the reader to indulgence), but the “zest” is already contained in the title, i.e. ... in the uniqueness of the author’s position as a “hunter”. For, as a “hunter,” the narrator enters into a unique relationship with peasant life, outside the direct property-hierarchical ties of the landowner and the peasant. These relationships are freer, more natural: the absence of the usual dependence of the peasant on the master, and sometimes even the emergence of common aspirations and a common cause (hunting!) contribute to the fact that the world of people's life (including from its social side, i.e. serfdom) reveals its veils to the author. But he doesn’t reveal it completely, only to a certain extent, because as a hunter (the other side of his position!) the author still remains an outsider to peasant life, a witness, and much of it seems to flee from his gaze. This secrecy is especially evident, perhaps, in “Bezhin Meadow,” where in relation to the characters - a group of peasant children - the author acts doubly aloof: as a “master” (although not a landowner, but an idle man, a hunter) and as an adult (observation by L M. Lotman).

It follows that mystery and understatement are the most important poetic aspect of “Notes of a Hunter.” Much is shown, but behind this many guess more. In the spiritual life of the people, enormous potentialities that are to unfold in the future have been sensed and indicated (but not fully described or illuminated). How and in what way - the book does not say, but the very openness of the perspective turned out to be extremely in tune with the public mood of the 40-50s and contributed to the enormous success of the book.

And success not only in Russia. Of the works of the natural school, and indeed of all previous Russian literature, “Notes of Hunting” won the earliest and lasting success in the West. The revelation of the strength of a historically young people, genre originality (for Western literature knew well the novelistic and novelistic treatment of folk life, but a work in which prominent folk types, the breadth of generalization grew out of the unpretentiousness of “physiologism”, was new) - all this caused countless enthusiastic reviews , belonging to the most prominent writers and critics: T. Storm and F. Bodenstedt, Lamartine and George Sand, Daudet and Flaubert, A. France and Maupassant, Rolland and Galsworthy... Let us only quote the words of Prosper Merimee dating back to 1868: “. .. the work “Notes of a Hunter” ... was for us, as it were, a revelation of Russian morals and immediately made us feel the power of the author’s talent... The author does not defend the peasants as ardently as Mrs. Beecher Stowe did in relation to the blacks, but he is also Russian The peasant of Mr. Turgenev is not a fictional figure like Uncle Tom. The author did not flatter the peasant and showed him with all his bad instincts and great virtues.” Comparison

with Beecher Stowe’s book was suggested not only by chronology (“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published in the same year as the first separate edition of “Notes of a Hunter” - in 1852), but also by the similarity of the topic, with it - as the French writer felt - different solutions. The oppressed people - American blacks, Russian serfs - cried out for compassion and sympathy; Meanwhile, if one writer paid tribute to sentimentality, then the other retained a stern, objective flavor. Was Turgenev's manner of treating folk themes the only one in the natural school? Not at all. The polarization of pictorial aspects noted above was also evident here, if we recall the style of Grigorovich’s stories (primarily the nature of the depiction of the central character). We know that in “sentimentality” Turgenev saw the common point of two writers - Grigorovich and Auerbach. But, probably, we are faced with a typologically broader phenomenon, since sentimental and utopian moments in general, as a rule, accompanied the treatment of folk themes in European realism of the 40-50s of the 19th century.

"The fields are spacious, silent
They shine, drenched in dew...
The tall forest is silent and dim,
The green, dark forest is silent"

The mystery of majestic nature

The famous Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev became famous as a master of landscape. In his work, the description of the picture of nature is inseparable from the life of the characters, their mood and inner experiences. The author’s landscapes are not only filled with colorful, realistic and detailed descriptions, but also carry a psychological and emotional load. With the help of a description of nature, the author reveals the inner essence of his hero. Thus, in the novel “Fathers and Sons,” Turgenev, using the natural landscape, shows how the mood of the hero Arkady himself changes, the author very accurately conveys his inner world. Nature in Turgenev’s description is very colorful, the author presents it in such detail that the picture literally comes to life. The words that the writer chooses very accurately convey the landscape presented: “golden and green, ... shiny under the quiet breath of a warm breeze.”

The nature presented in Turgenev's works is very diverse. In the story “Bezhin Meadow”, the July landscape is vividly presented: “the color of the sky, light, pale lilac”, “in the dry and clean air there is the smell of wormwood, compressed rye, buckwheat”, at night “the steel reflections of water, occasionally and vaguely flickering, denoted it current." The writer is imbued with the description of nature so much that his landscapes become so real, as if they come to life. The colorfulness of his paintings can be compared to the work of an artist’s brush. But with only one difference - Turgenev’s landscapes are dynamic, they are in constant motion. The author very colorfully conveys the beginning of the rain in the story “Biryuk” from the series “Notes of a Hunter”: “A strong wind suddenly began to roar in the heights, the trees began to storm, large drops of rain sharply knocked, splashed on the leaves, lightning flashed, and a thunderstorm broke out. The rain poured down in streams."

Turgenev understood nature, admired its majesty and the rigor of the laws it established. He noted man's powerlessness before the power of nature and admired, even with some fear, its power. Nature appears as something eternal, unshakable, in contrast to human mortal existence. The writer tries to see the common connection between nature and man, but stumbles over its serene silence. The author has repeatedly noted the independence of the laws of nature from human aspirations, plans, ambitions and human life in general. Nature in Turgenev's works is simple and open in its reality, but complex and mysterious in the manifestations of forces often hostile to man.

He was even frightened by the indifference of nature, embodied in the inviolability of laws over which man had no influence. Everything is in her power, regardless of human desire or consent. The author demonstrates this manifestation especially clearly in the poetic prose “Nature”. Here Turgenev turns to Mother Nature with the question: “What are you thinking about? Isn’t it about the future destinies of humanity ... ”However, the answer surprised him very much; it turns out that at this time she is caring about improving the life of the flea. “Reason is not my law,” she answered in an iron, cold voice.

The endless mysteries of nature and the universe bother the author and disturb his imagination. The image of nature in Turgenev's works is shown very colorfully and professionally, using rich Russian speech, giving the landscape an indescribable beauty, filled with colors and smells.

“Notes of a Hunter” was an event in the literary life of the early 50s of the 19th century. Turgenev showed the deep content and spirituality of the Russian peasant, the variety of characters that are most fully manifested against the backdrop of the landscape.

Nature in “Notes...” appears in several functions. First of all, Turgenev depicts nature to show the beauty of Russia, its greatness and mystery. The writer creates lyrical pictures of morning, sunrise, and a beautiful July day. With love, Turgenev describes the thunderstorm, the endless expanses of fields, meadows and forests of places close to him. Such descriptions are especially vivid in the stories “Raspberry Water”, “Ermolai and Melnichikha”. In the essay “Forest and Steppe” the writer unfolds a wide canvas of landscape. The steppe breathes freedom and freshness; Spring brings renewal to everything, a person feels more cheerful and joyful. But even in autumn the forest is devoid of gloom and despondency. Its smell is intoxicating and makes your heart beat faster. Turgenev reveals the life-affirming power of nature, its immortal beauty. He writes with love about those who live in harmony with nature, know how to feel and understand it. The images of Kasyan, who knows how to “talk” with birds, Lukerya, who hears “a mole rummaging under the ground,” and the amazing Kalinich, endowed with a subtle sense of beauty, are covered in poetry.

The second function of nature is psychological. Describing the actions, characters of people, the internal state of a person, Tur-genev shows their reflection in nature. In the story “Biryuk,” the narrator’s state before meeting the hero is conveyed through a picture of pre-storm nature, which is as gloomy and gloomy as the author traveling to the village. The state of joy, intoxication with one’s own talent, and the hero’s creative rise are reflected in the summer landscape in the story “The Singers.”

The third function of the landscape is to prepare the reader for the perception of events and characters. This function is especially clearly manifested in the story “Bezhin Meadow”. The boys sitting by the fire seem to be dissolved in nature. For them, nature is both a sphere of life and something mysterious, imperishable, incomprehensible. A child’s mind is not yet able to explain much in nature, so boys come up with their own explanations for the incomprehensible, making up various scary stories, “tales” about mermaids, brownies, and goblins.

Those natural phenomena that children can explain become close to them, but they treat the inexplicable with caution and superstition. They master the unknown in fantastic forms. Each “strange” story of the boys is preceded by an image of something alarming, unclear, secret in nature. Material from the site

Turgenev psychologically correctly shows how the perception of nature changes in children. What was mysterious at night, fraught with danger, aroused fear, in the morning seems alive and cheerful. The sequence of descriptions of nature and its perception by children in the morning, afternoon, and night prepares them for understanding the reasons for the emergence of tales and beliefs. In “Bezhin Meadow,” Turgenev shows how a peasant boy, subordinate to the forces of nature, strives to understand and explain everything around him, using his mind and imagination. What is close to peasant children is alien to the narrator. He feels his “disconnection” with nature, alienation from it and the folk world. But “my chest felt sweetly ashamed, inhaling that special, languid and fresh smell - the smell of a Russian summer night.” And Turgenev writes about the thirst for connection with the outside world, about love for all living things.

In 1847, the essay “Khor and Kalinich” was published in Sovremennik, which formed the basis of the Notes. He was successful and therefore Turg. began to write similar essays, which were published in 1852 by the department. a book. In "Glee and K." Turg. acted as an innovator: he portrayed the Russian people as a great force suffering from serfdom. Nicholas I was furious when he saw the book - when the essays were published separately, it was normal, but when the author arranged them in the book in a strict order, they became anti-serfdom. character -> the composition of the “Notes” is very important, this book is yavl. not a collection, but a complete work. Heroes of Turg. united with nature, and otd. the images merge with each other. Anti-serfdom pathos is the conclusion. in the depiction of strong folk characters, which spoke of the illegality of serfdom; The author added living ones to Gogol's gallery of dead souls. Although peasants are slaves, they are internally free. From "Khorya and K." from the beginning to “Forest and Steppe” at the end this motif grows. One image of a peasant clings to another. This creates a complete picture of the life of the people, the lawlessness of the landowners. At Turg. There is such a technique: he depicts peasants whom the landowners force to do unnecessary things: in the essay “Lgov” a certain Kuzma Suchok is depicted, whose master for 7 years forces him to catch fish in a pond where there are no fish. The French are portrayed (Lezhen in Ovsyannikov's Odnodvorets, Count Blanzhia in Lgov), whom the Russian government made nobles, although they were entirely fools. Dr. example: in “Two Landowners” it is told how one landowner ordered to sow poppies everywhere, because it is more expensive - it undermines the foundations of the cross society. Turg. indicates that noble tyranny leads to the fact that many peasants began to lose their opinion and completely submit to the opinion of the master. The image of nature is important in the book. Turg. showed 2 Russias – “living” (peasant) and “dead” (official). All heroes belong to one or the other pole. All “peasant” images are given in Ch. The production of the collection is “Horem and K.”. Khor is businesslike and practical, Kalinich is poetic. Burmister Sofron adopts from Khor his worst qualities (selfishness), and fellow palace owner Ovsyannikov takes on his best (practicality, tolerance for reasonable novelty). This shows the change in character, its development in different people. Kalinich’s successors are Ermolai (but he is closer to nature than Kalinich) and Kasyan (in him “naturalness” is absolute). Ch. the connecting image is the hunter-storyteller. Although he is a nobleman, he is first and foremost a hunter, which brings him closer to the people. It is important that certain “+” nobles are also among the author of the phenomenon. "by the power of Russia." In “Notes of a Hunter,” Turgenev spoke out against serfdom and its defenders. However, the significance of “Notes of a Hunter,” like the significance of “Dead Souls,” is not only in a direct protest against serfdom, but also in the general picture of Russian life that developed under the conditions of serfdom. The fundamental difference between “Notes of a Hunter” and Gogol’s poem was that to Gogol’s gallery of dead souls Turgenev added a gallery of living souls, taken primarily from the peasant environment. Those people about whom Gogol reflected in his famous lyrical digression stood up to their full height in “Notes of a Hunter.” Real people appeared next to the Stegunovs and Zverkovs - Kalinich, Ermolai, Yakov Turok, peasant children. Next to the “statesman” Penochkin was a true statesman - Khor. The deceitful “humanity” of the landowner was contrasted with the harsh humanity of Biryuk and the poetic humanity of Kasyan. Enthusiastic art lovers, landowners-patrons of the arts, these, in the words of Turgenev, “clubs smeared with tar,” discovered their true value next to such a genuine connoisseur of art as the Wild Master, and the stupid Andrei Belovzorov, Tatyana Borisovna’s nephew, artist and conqueror of hearts, caricatured in itself, became even more caricatured when compared with the great artist from the people, Jacob the Turk.

It is also important that many peasant characters in Notes of a Hunter turned out to be not only bearers of positive spiritual qualities: they are depicted as bearers of the best features of the Russian national character. This, first of all, was Turgenev’s protest against serfdom. Turgenev, in connection with “Notes of a Hunter,” was more than once reproached for idealizing the peasantry and deviating from realism. In fact, by showing the high spiritual qualities of people from the people, emphasizing and sharpening the best features of Russian peasants, Turgenev developed the traditions of realistic art and created typical images filled with great political content; While defending the serf peasantry, Turgenev simultaneously defended the national dignity of the Russian people. “The Choir and Kalinich” embodies the combination of practicality and poetry in the Russian soul; The presence of people like Khor among the Russian people serves the author as proof of the national character of the activities of Peter I. Kasyan’s folk humanistic philosophy was inspired in him by the contemplation of his native land and native nature: “After all, you never know where I went! And I went to Romyon, and to Sinbirsk, the glorious city, and to Moscow itself, the golden domes; I went to Oka the Nurse, and Tsnu the Dove, and Mother Volga, and saw many people, good peasants, and visited honest cities ...

And I'm not the only sinner ... many other peasants walk around in bast shoes, wander around the world, looking for the truth ... "(I, 116). Russian nature and folk poetry shape the worldview of peasant children; “the Russian, truthful, ardent soul sounded and breathed” in the singing of Yakov Turk, and the very spirit and content of his song were again inspired by Russian nature: “something familiar and immensely wide, as if the familiar steppe was opening up before you, going into endless distance" (I, 214). That is why such close attention of the author in “Notes of a Hunter” is attracted by the forces and elements of Russian nature.

Nature in “Notes of a Hunter” is not a background, not a decorative painting, not a lyrical landscape, but an elemental force, which the author studies in detail and with unusual attention. Nature lives its own special life, which the author strives to study and describe with all the completeness accessible to the human eye and ear. In “Bezhin Meadow,” before starting a story about people, Turgenev draws the life of nature during one July day: he shows its history for this day, tells what it is like in the early morning, at noon, in the evening; what type, shape and color the clouds have at different periods of the day, what is the color of the sky and its appearance during this day, how the weather changes during the day, etc. Turgenev includes the exact names of plants and animals in his landscapes. In the story “Death”, over the course of one half-page paragraph we encounter a list of birds: hawks, falcons, woodpeckers, blackbirds, orioles, robins, siskins, warblers, finches; plants: violets, lilies of the valley, strawberries, russula, capsicum, milk mushrooms, oak mushrooms, fly agarics.

Animals are depicted with the same close attention, only their “portraits” are given with greater intimacy, with a good-natured approach to humans. “The cow came to the door and breathed noisily twice; the dog growled at her with dignity; a pig passed by, grunting thoughtfully ... "("Khor and Kalinich"; I, 12). In describing the individual properties of a dog, Turgenev is especially inventive and masterly. Suffice it to recall Yermolai’s dog, Valetka, whose remarkable property “was his incomprehensible indifference to everything in the world.” ... If we weren’t talking about a dog, I would use the word: disappointment” (I, 20).

Nature in “Notes of a Hunter” actively influences the heroes of the work - ordinary people and the narrator-author. Sometimes it takes on a mysterious appearance, inspiring a person with a feeling of fear and despondency, but most often in “Notes of a Hunter” nature subjugates a person not with its mystery and hostility, not with its indifference, but with its powerful vitality. This is nature in the story “Forest and Steppe,” which closes the cycle. The story about the forest and the steppe with various, important and solemn events in their lives, with the change of seasons, day and night, heat and thunderstorms - is at the same time a story about a person whose spiritual world is determined by this natural life. Nature inspires a person in this story with either an inexplicable spiritual silence, or a strange anxiety, or a longing for the distance, or, most often, cheerfulness, strength and joy.

Not only peasants are endowed with national-Russian features in “Notes of a Hunter”; In Turgenev, some landowners who escaped the corrupting influence of serfdom are Russian people by nature. Pyotr Petrovich Karataev is no less a Russian person than the peasants; It’s not for nothing that the story about him was originally called “Rusak.” And he is also a victim of serfdom: he was ruined by his love for someone else’s serf girl, whom he cannot marry because of the wild tyranny of her owner. National character traits are also emphasized in Tchertopkhanov’s moral character. He is magnificent in his natural pride, independence and instinctive sense of justice. He is a landowner, but he is not a serf owner. Such is Tatyana Borisovna, a patriarchal landowner, but at the same time a simple creature with a straightforward Russian heart. According to Turgenev, serfdom itself is anti-national. Landowners, who are not typical serf owners, appear to him as the living force of Russian society. He directs his blows not against the nobility as a whole, but only against the feudal landowners. Unlike the revolutionary democrats, Turgenev relied on the Russian nobility, trying to discover healthy elements in it.

In “Notes of a Hunter” there is a noticeable effort to rise above the physiological basis to an all-Russian, universal content. Comparisons and associations with which the narrative is equipped - comparisons with famous historical people, with famous literary characters, with events and phenomena of other times and other geographical latitudes - are intended to neutralize the impression of local limitation and isolation. Turgenev compares Khor, this typical Russian peasant, with Socrates (“the same high, knobby forehead, the same small eyes, the same snub nose”); The practicality of Khor’s mind, his administrative acumen remind the author of no less than a crowned reformer of Russia: “From our conversations I took away one conviction... that Peter the Great was primarily a Russian man, Russian precisely in his transformations.” This is already a direct link to the current fierce debate between Westerners and Slavophiles, that is, to the level of socio-political concepts and generalizations. The text of Sovremennik, where the story was first published (1847, No. 1), also contained a comparison with Goethe and Schiller (“in a word, Khor was more like Goethe, Kalinich more like Schiller”), a comparison that for its time had increased philosophical load, since both German writers appeared as unique signs not only of different types of psyche, but also of opposing methods of artistic thought and creativity. In a word, Turgenev destroys the impression of isolation and local limitation in both the social-hierarchical direction (from Khor to Peter I) and interethnic (from Khor to Socrates; from Khor and Kalinich to Goethe and Schiller).

At the same time, in the unfolding of the action and the arrangement of parts of each of the stories, Turgenev retained much from the “physiological outline.” The latter is built freely, “not constrained by the fences of the story,” as Kokorev said. The sequence of episodes and descriptions is not regulated by strict novelistic intrigue. The narrator's arrival at some place; meeting with some notable person; conversation with him, impressions of his appearance, various information that was obtained about him from others; sometimes a new meeting with the character or with persons who knew him; brief information about his subsequent fate - this is the typical scheme of Turgenev’s stories. There is, of course, internal action (as in any work); but the external is extremely free, implicit, blurred, disappearing. To start a story, it is enough to simply introduce the hero to the reader (“Imagine, dear readers, a person

plump, tall, about seventy years old..."); for the end, a simple figure of silence is enough: “But maybe the reader is already bored of sitting with me at Ovsyanikov’s one-household, and therefore I eloquently fall silent” (“Ovsyanikov’s One-Manor”).

With this construction, a special role falls to the narrator, in other words, to the author’s presence. This question was also important for “physiology,” and important in a fundamental sense that goes beyond the boundaries of “physiology.” For the European novel, understood rather not as a genre, but as a special kind of literature, focused on revealing the “private person”, “private life”, there was a need for a motivation for entering this life, “eavesdropping” and “spying” on it. And the novel found a similar motivation in the choice of a special character who performed the function of an “observer of private life”: a rogue, an adventurer, a prostitute, a courtesan; in the selection of special genre varieties, special storytelling techniques that facilitate entry into the behind-the-scenes spheres - a picaresque novel, a novel of letters, a criminal novel, etc. (M. M. Bakhtin). In “physiology”, a sufficient motivation for revealing the reserve was already the author’s interest in nature, the focus on the steady expansion of the material, on the discovery of hidden secrets. Hence the spread in the “physiological essay” of the symbolism of looking out and prying out secrets (“You must reveal secrets, spied through a keyhole, noticed from around a corner, taken by surprise...” - wrote Nekrasov in a review of “Physiology of St. Petersburg”), which in will later become the subject of reflection and controversy in Dostoevsky’s “Poor People.” In a word, “physiologism” is already motivation. “Physiologism” is a non-novel way of enhancing novelistic moments in modern literature, and this was its great (and not yet identified) historical and theoretical significance.

Returning to Turgenev’s book, we should note the special position of the narrator in it. Although the title of the book itself did not arise without the prompting of chance (editor I. I. Panaev accompanied the magazine publication of “Khor and Kalinich” with the words “From the Notes of a Hunter” in order to incline the reader to indulgence), but the “zest” is already contained in the title, i.e. ... in the uniqueness of the author’s position as a “hunter”. For, as a “hunter,” the narrator enters into a unique relationship with peasant life, outside the direct property-hierarchical ties of the landowner and the peasant. These relationships are freer, more natural: the absence of the usual dependence of the peasant on the master, and sometimes even the emergence of common aspirations and a common cause (hunting!) contribute to the fact that the world of people's life (including from its social side, i.e. serfdom) reveals its veils to the author. But he doesn’t reveal it completely, only to a certain extent, because as a hunter (the other side of his position!) the author still remains an outsider to peasant life, a witness, and much of it seems to flee from his gaze. This secrecy is especially evident, perhaps, in “Bezhin Meadow,” where in relation to the characters - a group of peasant children - the author acts doubly aloof: as a “master” (although not a landowner, but an idle man, a hunter) and as an adult (observation by L M. Lotman).

It follows that mystery and understatement are the most important poetic aspect of “Notes of a Hunter.” Much is shown, but behind this many guess more. In the spiritual life of the people, enormous potentialities that are to unfold in the future have been sensed and indicated (but not fully described or illuminated). How and in what way - the book does not say, but the very openness of the perspective turned out to be extremely in tune with the public mood of the 40-50s and contributed to the enormous success of the book.

And success not only in Russia. Of the works of the natural school, and indeed of all previous Russian literature, “Notes of Hunting” won the earliest and lasting success in the West. The revelation of the strength of a historically young people, genre originality (for Western literature knew well the novelistic and novelistic treatment of folk life, but a work in which prominent folk types, the breadth of generalization grew out of the unpretentiousness of “physiologism”, was new) - all this caused countless enthusiastic reviews , which belonged to the most prominent writers and critics: T. Storm and F. Bodenstedt, Lamartine and George Sand, Daudet and Flaubert, A. France and Maupassant, Rolland and Galsworthy... Let us only quote the words of Prosper Merimee dating back to 1868: “... the work “ Notes of a Hunter "... was for us, as it were, a revelation of Russian morals and immediately made us feel the power of the author's talent... The author does not defend the peasants as ardently as Mrs. Beecher Stowe did in relation to the blacks, but the Russian peasant of Turgenev is not a fictional figure like Uncle Tom. The author did not flatter the peasant and showed him with all his bad instincts and great virtues.” Comparison

with Beecher Stowe’s book was suggested not only by chronology (“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published in the same year as the first separate edition of “Notes of a Hunter” - in 1852), but also by the similarity of the topic, with it - as the French writer felt - different solutions. The oppressed people - American blacks, Russian serfs - cried out for compassion and sympathy; Meanwhile, if one writer paid tribute to sentimentality, then the other retained a stern, objective flavor. Was Turgenev's manner of treating folk themes the only one in the natural school? Not at all. The polarization of pictorial aspects noted above was also evident here, if we recall the style of Grigorovich’s stories (primarily the nature of the depiction of the central character). We know that in “sentimentality” Turgenev saw the common point of two writers - Grigorovich and Auerbach. But, probably, we are faced with a typologically broader phenomenon, since sentimental and utopian moments in general, as a rule, accompanied the treatment of folk themes in European realism of the 40-50s of the 19th century.