“On the Eve” - a novel by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev , published in 1860. [one]
| On the eve of | |
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| Genre | novel |
| Author | Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev |
| Original language | Russian |
| Date of writing | 1859 |
| Date of first publication | 1860 |
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History of writing a novel
In the second half of the 1850s, Turgenev, according to the views of the liberal democrat who rejected the ideas of revolutionary-minded heterodox, began to think about the possibility of creating a hero whose positions would not contradict his own, more moderate aspirations, but which at the same time would be revolutionary enough not to provoke ridicule from the more radical colleagues of Sovremennik [1] . Understanding of the inevitable generational change in progressive Russian circles, clearly visible in the epilogue of The Noble Nest , came to Turgenev in the days of work on Rudin :
I was going to write Rudin, but the task that I then tried to accomplish in The Eve occasionally arose in front of me. The figure of the main character, Elena, then a new type in Russian life, was quite clearly outlined in my imagination; but there was a lack of a hero, a person to whom Elena, with her still vague though strong desire for freedom, could surrender [2] .
- I. S. Turgenev
In 1855, Turgenev’s neighbor in Mtsensk uezd , landowner Vasily Karateev, who went to Crimea as an officer of the noble militia, left the manuscript of the autobiographical novel to the writer, allowing him to dispose of it at his own discretion. The story tells about the author’s love for a girl who preferred him to a Bulgarian student at Moscow University . Later, scientists from several countries established the identity of the prototype of this character. This person was Nikolai Katranov . He came to Russia in 1848 and entered Moscow University. After the Russo-Turkish War began in 1853 , and a revolutionary spirit revived among the Bulgarian youth, Katranov and his Russian wife Larisa returned to their hometown of Svishtov . However, his plans were hindered by a flash of transient consumption, and he died during treatment in Venice in May of that year [1] .
Karateev, foreboding his death when he handed over the manuscript to Turgenev, did not return from the war, having died of typhus in the Crimea [2] . Turgenev’s attempt to publish an artistically weak work of Karateev was unsuccessful, and until 1859 the manuscript was forgotten, although, according to the writer's own memoirs, when he first became acquainted with her, he was so impressed that he exclaimed: “Here is the hero I was looking for! "Before Turgenev returned to Karateev’s notebook, he managed to finish Rudin and work on the Noble Nest.
Returning home to Spasskoye-Lutovinovo in the winter of 1858-1859, Turgenev returned to the ideas that occupied him in the year he met Karateev and remembered the manuscript. Based on the plot prompted by the late neighbor, he took up his artistic rework. Only one scene from the original work, a description of the trip to Tsaritsyno , according to Turgenev himself, was preserved in general terms in the final text of the novel [2] . In work on the factual material, he was assisted by a friend, writer and traveler E.P. Kovalevsky , who was well acquainted with the details of the Bulgarian liberation movement and who himself published essays on his trip to the Balkans at the height of this movement in 1853. Work on the novel “On the Eve” continued both in Spassky-Lutovinov and abroad, in London and Vichy , until the fall of 1859, when the author took the manuscript to Moscow, to the office of the “ Russian Herald ” [1] .
Story
The novel begins with a debate about nature and the place of man in it between two young people - the scientist Andrei Bersenev and the sculptor Pavel Shubin. In the future, the reader gets acquainted with the family in which Shubin lives. The wife of his second cousin, Anna Vasilyevna Stakhova, Nikolay Artemievich, once married her because of money, does not love her and leads an acquaintance with the German widow, Augustina Khristianovna, who robbed him. Shubin has been living in this family for five years, since the death of his mother, and has been engaged in his art, but is prone to attacks of laziness, works in fits and starts and does not intend to learn mastery. He is in love with the Stakhovs daughter Elena, although he does not lose sight of her seventeen-year-old companion Zoya.
Elena Nikolaevna, a twenty-year-old beauty, from childhood she was distinguished by a kind and dreamy soul. She is attracted by the opportunity to help the sick and the hungry - both people and animals. Moreover, she has long shown independence and lives on her mind, but has not yet found a companion. Shubin is not attracted to her because of his variability and inconstancy, and Bersenev is interesting to her for his intelligence and modesty. But then Bersenev introduces her to his friend, Bulgarian Dmitry Nikanorovich Insarov. Insarov lives on the idea of liberating his homeland from Turkish rule and attracts Elena's lively interest.
After the first meeting, Insarov was not able to please Elena, but everything turns upside down after the incident in Tsaritsyn, when Insarov protects Elena from the harassment of a drunkard of enormous growth by throwing him into a pond. After that, Elena admits to herself in a diary that the Bulgarian fell in love, but it soon turns out that he intends to leave. At one time, Insarov told Bersenev that he would leave if he fell in love, since he did not intend to give up debt for the sake of personal feelings, which later Elena Nikolaevna learned from Andrei. Elena goes to Dmitry and declares his love to him. When asked whether she would follow him everywhere, a positive answer sounds.
After that, Elena and Dmitry for some time contacted through Bersenev, but in the meantime, more and more disturbing letters came from Insarov’s homeland, and he was already seriously preparing for his departure. One day, Elena goes to him herself. After a long and heated conversation, they decide to get married. This news becomes a blow for parents and friends of Elena, but she still leaves with her husband.
Having reached Venice, Dmitry and Elena are waiting for the arrival of the old sailor Rendic, who is supposed to transfer them to Serbia, from where their way lies to Bulgaria. However, Insarov is sick, he begins to have a fever. Exhausted Elena has a nightmare, and, having regained consciousness, she realizes that Dmitry is dying. Randych no longer catches him alive, but at the request of Elena helps her deliver her husband’s body to his homeland.
Three weeks later, Anna Stakhova receives a letter from her daughter: she goes to Bulgaria, which will become her new homeland, and will never return home. Further traces of Elena are lost; according to rumors, she was seen with the troops as a sister of mercy [3] .
Motives of the novel
The ideas and motives of the novel were analyzed in detail from the progressive positions of N. A. Dobrolyubov in the journal Sovremennik in January 1860 (the article “When is the present day?”). Dobrolyubov notes Turgenev's sensitivity as a writer to pressing social issues and dwells on how the author reveals some of these topics in his new novel.
Dobrolyubov paid special attention to the choice of the main character. Dobrolyubov sees in Elena Stakhova an allegory of young Russia on the eve of social changes - an interpretation with which Turgenev himself did not agree (see Criticism ):
| It was reflected in that vague longing for something, that almost unconscious, but irresistible need for a new life, new people, which now embraces the whole of Russian society, and not only the so-called educated one. In Elena, the best aspirations of our modern life were so vividly reflected, and in those around it all the inconsistency of the usual order of the same life appears so clearly in relief that it unwittingly takes the desire to draw an allegorical parallel ... This longing of expectation has long languished Russian society, and how many times have it been wrong we, like Elena, thinking that the long-awaited appeared, and then cooled.N. A. Dobrolyubov |
Elena took from the Russian people the dream of truth, which must be sought in distant lands, and her willingness to sacrifice herself for the sake of others. The artist, scientist, successful official and revolutionary claim for Elena’s love, and as a result she chooses not pure reason, not art and not public service, but civil feat. Dobrolyubov emphasizes that of all the candidates, the only worthy is Insarov, who cannot imagine his happiness without the happiness of his homeland, who is all subordinate to a higher goal and whose word does not diverge from deed [1] .
Another theme that goes through the novel is the theme of the conflict of egoistic and altruistic aspirations in the human soul. For the first time, this question is raised in the scene of the Bersenev and Shubin dispute about happiness: is the desire for happiness not an egoistic feeling, which is higher - disconnecting people “love-pleasure” or unifying “love-sacrifice”. At first it seems to Elena and Insarov that this contradiction does not exist, but then they are convinced that this is not so, and Elena is torn between Insarov and her family and homeland, and later Insarov himself asks her if his illness was sent as punishment for their love. Turgenev emphasizes this inevitable tragedy of human existence on Earth, when at the end of the book Insarov dies, and Elena disappears and her trace is lost. But this ending shades even more the beauty of the liberation impulse, giving the idea of the search for social perfection a timeless, universal character [1] .
Criticism
Turgenev, who dreamed of an alliance of anti-serfdom and reconciliation of liberals with radical democrats for the sake of fighting for a common national idea, did not accept the position of Dobrolubov, who denied the viability of noble liberalism and opposed the Russian Insar “internal Turks,” which included not only obscurantists-reactionaries, but also dear to the heart of the author of the liberals. He tried to persuade Nekrasov to refuse to publish Dobrolyubov’s article in Sovremennik, and when he did not heed his arguments, he broke with the editorial board of the magazine completely. For their part, the contemporaries of Sovremennik also headed for confrontation, and soon a devastating review of Rudin, already written by Chernyshevsky, appeared in the magazine.
Turgenev was also disappointed with criticism of the novel by more conservative circles. So, Countess Lambert denied Elena Stakhova in such qualities as femininity or charm, calling her immoral and shameless. The same position was taken by the critic M. I. Daragan , who called the main character “an empty, vulgar, cold girl who violates the decency of the world, the law of female bashfulness” and even “Don Quixote in a skirt”, and Insarov - dry and sketchy. In secular circles, they joked about the novel: "This is" On the Eve ", which will never have tomorrow." Caught in the crossfire of progressive and conservative critics who ignored Insarov’s appeal for national reconciliation, Turgenev, in his own words, began to feel like "resigning from literature." The grave condition of the writer was aggravated by hints from the part of I. A. Goncharov that in his latest works, including The Eve, Turgenev borrowed images and motifs from The Cliff , which had not yet been completed by that time [1] .
Films
- 1915 - The day before (Russia). Dir. Vladimir Gardin , Nikolai Malikov (the film was preserved fragmentary)
- 1959 - The day before - the Soviet-Bulgarian feature film.
Stage
- 1984 - The day before - a staging of the novel in 2 parts of the State Order of Lenin and the Order of the October Revolution of the Academic Maly Theater of the USSR , staged by V. Sedov .
- 1986 - On the eve - radio composition of the play "On the Eve" of the State Maly Theater of the USSR, staged by V. Sedov.
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lebedev Yu. Turgenev. The life of wonderful people. - M .: Young Guard, 1990 .-- 608 p. - ISBN 5-235-00789-1 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 Preface to the collection of novels in the 1880 edition
- ↑ Novikov V.I. All masterpieces of world literature in brief. Plots and characters. Russian literature of the XIX century. - M .: Olympus "ACT", 1996. - 832 p. - ISBN 5-7390-0293-1 .
Literature
- Lebedev Yu. Turgenev. The life of wonderful people. - M .: Young Guard, 1990 .-- 608 p. - ISBN 5-235-00789-1 .
- Novikov V.I. All masterpieces of world literature in brief. Plots and characters. Russian literature of the XIX century. - M .: Olympus "ACT", 1996. - 832 p. - ISBN 5-7390-0293-1 .
- N.A. Dobrolyubov . When is the present day coming? // Works of N. A. Dobrolyubov. - 1862. - T. 3. - S. 275-331.