Philologist Ivan Esaulov spoke about the main myths associated with Ivan Turgenev

From “Fathers and Sons,” schoolchildren only remember the death of Bazarov, and from it again grew the meme image of Russian literature, where writers always kill the characters you have come to love. An even more depressing picture emerges if you look at how Turgenev was interpreted in the USSR: it turns out that in a series of essays where the hero wanders through fields and forests with a gun, every now and then communicating with peasants and peasant children, the writer “fights against serfdom, which he hates.” . Why, over more than two centuries, have we never learned to adequately perceive and understand Turgenev’s texts? The MK correspondent addressed this question to Doctor of Sciences, Professor of the Literary Institute Ivan Esaulov, one of the largest living researchers of the writer. The publication’s interlocutor spoke about the myths that went hand in hand with Turgenev all this time, and which turned out to be as tenacious as the works of the classic became immortal.

– Ivan Andreevich, to what extent was the literary heritage of Ivan Turgenev distorted by the “lens” of Soviet literary criticism? And do his works remain understandable to the current generation of readers?

– Turgenev’s novels, unlike the major prose of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, are to a much greater extent the property of what is called the history of literature. They are more closely connected with the “short time” of their author’s life and the social battles of those years. Each of his novels is, in Lenin’s words, “an extremely timely book,” but precisely for the Russian educated society of that time. It is difficult for Turgenev’s prose to break through into the “big time” and, in particular, into our modern times.

In addition, all of Ivan Sergeevich’s works are created according to a similar algorithm: the hero is possessed by a certain progressive, but utopian idea, and in the end the hero encounters Russian life – and is defeated. In all of Turgenev’s novels, a downward movement is found – from spring to autumn, from hope to disappointment, and often from life to death. Therefore, more interesting, in my opinion, are works of a different genre – the cycle “Notes of a Hunter” (from his early work), from his later work – Turgenev’s own favorite story “First Love”. It is there that you need to see what not only Soviet literary criticism, but also pre-revolutionary radical journalism did not want to see.

– Where are the origins of the “blindness” of the first and second?

– They were hostages of their own mythology, which I call “revolutionary-democratic.” According to the dogmas of this mythology, Turgenev is still “taught” in our schools. Throughout all the decades of the existence of the USSR, they remained unchanged: Turgenev was a very good writer because he fought against the reactionary Slavophiles and Pochvenniks. And in this struggle, he – a liberal Westerner – showed himself to be a progressive figure. But since, although he is a Westerner, although he is a liberal, he is still a Russian gentleman, he did not want a radical reorganization (read destruction) of historical Russia. In the Soviet hierarchy, he occupies an intermediate position – between completely “hopeless” reactionaries and more radical revolutionary democrats like Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. This is the place they assigned him.

In this interpretation, curious things are revealed. We are opening an academic publication published under Brezhnev – “The History of Russian Literature” in four volumes. It would seem that that time is already running out. We open the chapter about Turgenev, authored by Lydia Mikhailovna Lotman. And we see essentially the same cliches that were in the first Soviet Literary Encyclopedia of the early 30s. For example, what is “Notes of a Hunter”? This is a protest against serfdom… And it has become so familiar that we notice no contradiction. But the first story of the cycle is “Khor and Kalinich”, there is a poetic image of the Russian world, united, but multi-colored, and not at all a “gallery of serfs” through the eyes of a gentleman with a gun. Thus, it is said that Khor is like Socrates, that he feels his dignity. He doesn’t want to be discharged as a serf; it’s more convenient for him – he doesn’t have to pay taxes, even though he’s rich! Our “interpreters” do not know that some serfs were richer than the master.

– Plus Turgenev was the “atheist” desired by the Soviet picture of the world.

– Yes, for them he is also good because, unlike the “obscurantist religious”, he is a non-believer. But Ivan Sergeevich perceived the lack of faith in himself as a personal misfortune, and not as valor. And in the texts, on the contrary, he shows people of faith, such as Lukerya from the story “Living Relics”. In general, this is a rich, complex, diverse and, most importantly, living Russian world with its Christian guidelines, humility, sins, violence, self-will and poetry. In Gogol’s words, what is shown both here and in First Love? Not a protest against serfdom, but “our Russian Russia.”

I believe that the artificial focus of attention on the antipodes of that time – Turgenev and Dostoevsky, “Conversation of lovers of the Russian word” (an association of authors of conservative views – I.V.) and “Arzamas” (a society of supporters of the Karamzin direction in literature) should finally be understood as different facets of the Russian world. They had productive debates, did not hate their country and wanted its destruction, but loved Russia with different loves. And if Dostoevsky believed, and another did not believe, the essence does not change.

– On the one hand, in our law enforcement there is the concept of protecting children “from information harmful to their health and development” and a number of protective measures for topics with a grade of 18 plus. The emphasis in education is on promoting traditional family values. On the other hand, the students open the classics, where Karamzin’s Liza drowns herself in a pond. The heroine of “Easy Breathing” becomes a woman during her high school years (it is clear that the author condemns), and in Turgenev’s story a 16-year-old boy finds himself in love with a girl five years older than him.

– I believe that we should not become Pharisees, such lawyers, striving to be holier than the Pope and Russian literature, which is not afraid to reflect a diverse and multi-colored life. It is precisely this that Turgenev’s main characters cannot stand – and he shows exactly how they cannot stand it.

But our fearful methodologists and leaders with utopian ideas about education, which seem wild in the era of the Internet and free access to any information, hold on to sanctimonious ideas with both hands.

In this regard, Russian literature should be completely amnestied. It should become a bridge to a real, complex life, and we should not erase something from it, as is done in the West.

Because if you start censoring something from the classics, it will mean that in the 19th or 18th centuries people were freer than in the 21st. Think about this paradox!

And, most importantly, by calling for censorship intervention in literature, we will only widen the gap between education and reality outside the school windows. Instead of good upbringing, we will put children in an incubator.

– It seems that none of the young readers understood why Bazarov died, that he was killed by an everyday mistake, and not by secret forces operating in the space of a literary text.

– Bazarov was killed by the collision of utopian ideas about what should be and love, which frightened him so much. Evgeny Bazarov did not know what to do with the feeling he was experiencing – and this was not only his problem, but a number of Turgenev’s characters: they did not become infected with anything during a medical operation, but encountered “Turgenev’s girls” and were successfully defeated.

By and large, Turgenev himself did not pass this test. “First Love” is exactly about this – it is autobiographical. And if we admit and talk about it – that love is a difficult test, we will find a response among young people, because it is close to them. And a “Western liberal”, in a time that is incomprehensible to them, defending something in disputes with someone is something completely alien and superfluous to them.