Controversy of Ivan Turgenev’s works: “…I want truth, but not the salvation…”

November 9, 2019 marks the 201st anniversary of the birth of Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883) - the leading figure in Russian literature, who created six novels, many stories and plays, a large number of tales and unparalleled lyric poems in prose. A year ago, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the writer, the Presidential Library presented on its portal a comprehensive collection Ivan Turgenev. It includes not only electronic copies of the author’s works, but also completely exclusive materials: Critical Review about Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy by N. Strakhov (1885), Turgenev in his works by A. Nezelenova (1885), Ivan Turgenev in the memoirs of the seventies’ revolutionaries (1930), Letters of Ivan Turgenev to Pauline Viardot (1900) and others published in the magazines: “Russian Herald” , “Observer”, “Russian Antiquity”, “Herald Of Europe”.  

The biographical essay of N. Plissky Ivan Turgenev (1883) says that the future writer was born in Orel. The historian of Russian literature A. Smirnov in the rare book Ivan Turgenev  1908) writes: “ ... Turgenev’s mother, who was always the sovereign ruler of the house, personified the intoxication with power that was created by serfdom. “They punished me”, - Turgenev recalled, “for all sorts of trifles almost every day”. This, according to Smirnov, is one of the reasons for "that deeply sad motive that sounds in all Turgenev’s works, from the first to the last". The nature of Spassky saved an impressionable, out-of-years-old lad”, - it is noted in the Collected Works of Apollon Grigoryev, available on the Presidential Library’s portal (1915).

When a student at Moscow and then Petersburg universities, Turgenev is already gaining a name in literature. The story in the verses of Parasha by a novice author was published in 1843. The publication provoked an enthusiastic response from Belinsky, who hastened to meet Turgenev. Authoritative critic in the 1908 edition Ivan Turgenev ”wrote: “Conversations and disputes with him gave me soul. It is gratifying to meet a man whose original and characteristic opinion, knocking over with yours, extracts sparks ... <...> He understands Russia".

Orest Miller in the study “Russian Writers after Gogol” (1886), available in the electronic reading room of the Presidential Library, noted that initially many were perplexed as censorship skipped A Sportsman's Sketches general meaning of which was to deny serfdom. “This fatal general meaning”, - Miller emphasizes, Turgenev discovered back in the forties of the XIX century, because before that, our literature in the face of its large representatives was able to somehow remain indifferent to all this. It is known that Pushkin almost did not approach the people from this side. Even with Gogol, the ulcer of serfdom was indicated only indirectly”.

A Sportsman's Sketches finally strengthened the literary fame of Turgenev, and not only in his homeland. The famous Maupassant, Zola, Flaubert, the Goncourt brothers have largely developed their aesthetic views under the influence of Turgenev's works and personal meetings with him. Since 1847, Ivan Sergeyevich lived mostly abroad, mainly in Paris, where he became friends with the artistic couple Viardot.

The publication of Turgenev's fourth novel, Fathers and Sons, in 1861 was a significant event. It is available at the Complete Works of Ivan Turgenev. Vol. 2. Almost immediately, a fierce literary debate ensued around the novel. An irritated article by M. Antonovich, accused Turgenev of mediocrity and slander of the younger generation appeared in the March issue of Russky Vestnik. In response to the pages of the same magazine appeared an article by D. Pisarev “Bazarov”, where the novel was highly appreciated.

Pisarev’s opinion and the article by critic N. Strakhov, published in the collection Critic Review about Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy (1885), is as follows: “Bazarov represents a living embodiment of one of the sides of the Russian spirit. We are generally not very elegant. We are too sober for this, too practical. Enthusiasm and arrogance are not to our liking; we love simplicity, caustic humor, ridicule more. And on this account, as can be seen from the novel, Bazarov himself is a great artist”. 

Living in Baden-Baden, Turgenev wrote his largest novel Virgin Soil which was published in 1877 in the journal Herald of Europe. In addition, Ivan Sergeyevich was an excellent translator of both prose and poetry: he translated Byron, Shakespeare, Goethe, Whitman into Russian.

Ivan Turgenev died on August 22 (September 3), 1883 in Buzhival, a suburb of Paris, tormented by a serious illness that was never diagnosed by doctors. According to the critic and literature historian P. Annenkov, this was a confrontation between "an unimaginably painful illness and an unimaginably strong organism". About 500 people gathered for Turgenev's funeral in the Russian church in Paris, including famous writers and artists of that time. By the will of the deceased, his body was delivered to St. Petersburg. The writer was buried on the Literary bridges of the Volkovsky cemetery.