The story “Death” is remarkable, where the author depicted how a Russian man dies. He meets death calmly and simply, without internal struggle, anxiety and hesitation, without despair and fear. This reflects the healthy integrity, simplicity and truthfulness of the Russian soul.

Contractor Maxim dies, hit by a tree. “Father,” he spoke barely intelligibly (addressing the landowner leaning towards him): “send for the priest... order... The Lord punished me... legs, arms, everything is broken.” He was silent. His breathing was heaving.

- Yes, give my money to my wife... minus... here, Onesimus knows... to whom I... what I owe. - Forgive me, guys, if there’s anything... - God will forgive you, Maxim Andreich, the men spoke dully: forgive us too.

The same amount of self-control, if not more, is shown by a miller who comes terminally ill to a paramedic for treatment. When he learns that his situation is hopeless, he does not want to stay in the hospital, but goes home to make orders and arrange things. “Well, goodbye, Kapiton Timofeich (he says to the paramedic, not listening to his convictions

stay): “don’t remember the bad things, and don’t forget the orphans, if anything.” On the fourth day he died." This is how ordinary Russian people, men, die. But it is remarkable that in the story “Death” the author talks about a similar calm attitude towards the death of people from the lordly and intelligent environment - the old landowner, the dropout student Avenir Sorokoumov.

The old woman wanted to pay the priest for her funeral money herself and, venerating the cross he handed him, she put her hand under the pillow to take out the ruble prepared there, but did not have time “and breathed her last.” The poor teacher Sorokoumov, sick with consumption and aware of his imminent death, “did not sigh, did not lament, and never even hinted at his situation”...

Turgenev says that when he visited him, the poor man, “gathering his strength, started talking about Moscow, about his comrades, about Pushkin, about the theater, about Russian literature; I remembered our feasts, the heated debates of our circle, and with regret pronounced the names of two or three deceased friends.”

He even joked before his death, even expressed satisfaction with his fate, forgetting, out of the kindness of his heart, how unsightly his life was in the house of the heavy joker landowner Gur Krupyannikov, whose children Fora and Zezu he taught Russian literacy. “Everything would be all right (he told his interlocutor after a painful coughing attack) ... if they were allowed to smoke a pipe,” he added, winking his eye slyly.

Thank God, I lived well; With good people knew ... "The same attitude towards death of both a simple peasant and educated person testifies, at the direction of Turgenev, that in Russian society the principles of the people are alive, that in Rus' there is no terrible internal discord between the common people and their cultural strata, at least those of them who stand closer to the people, live in the village, or sympathize people's life, people's needs.

“Notes of a Hunter” is a cycle consisting of twenty-five small prose works. In their form these are essays, stories and short stories. The essays (“Khor and Kalinich”, “Ovsyannikov’s Palace”, “Raspberry Water”, “Swan”, “Forest and Steppe”), as a rule, do not have a developed plot, contain a portrait, parallel characteristics of several characters, pictures of everyday life, landscape, sketches of Russian nature. The stories (“My Neighbor Radilov”, “The Office”, “Hamlet of Shchigrovsky District”, etc.) are built on a specific, sometimes very complex plot. The entire cycle is narrated by a hunter who narrates his observations, encounters, and adventures.

In the 40-50s of the 19th century, I. S. Turgenev created a number of small prose works, combined into one collection called “Notes of a Hunter.” Unlike most writers of that time, who portrayed peasants as a faceless gray mass, the author in each essay notes some special feature of peasant life, therefore all the works combined in the collection gave a bright and multifaceted picture of the peasant world. This cycle immediately brought fame to the author. All stories contain the same main character- Pyotr Petrovich. This is a nobleman from the village of Spassky, an avid hunter. It is he who talks about the incidents that happened to him during his campaigns. Moreover, Turgenev endowed him with observation and attention, which helps the narrator more accurately understand various situations and more fully convey them to the reader.

A passionate lover of nature, Turgenev made extensive use of descriptions of nature in “Notes of a Hunter,” which constitute the brightest pages in the history of the Russian literary landscape. Turgenev treated nature as an elemental force living an independent life. Turgenev's landscapes are concrete and inspired by the experiences of the narrator and the characters; they are dynamic and closely related to the action.

To determine what role each episode with a description of nature plays for the entire collection, let us first understand what nature is in the broad, generally accepted sense.

The Free Encyclopedia gives this definition of nature. Nature is the material world of the Universe; in essence, it is the main object of study of science. In everyday life, the word “nature” is often used to mean natural habitat (everything that is not created by man).

V.I. Dal understands this concept as “nature, everything material, the universe, the entire universe, everything visible, subject to the five senses; but more our world, the earth, with everything created on it; opposed to the Creator... All natural or natural works on earth, three kingdoms (or, with man, four), in in its original form its own, opposed to art, the work of human hands.”

The philosophical dictionary has the following definition of nature. Nature - in a broad sense - everything that exists, the whole world in the diversity of its forms; used in conjunction with the concepts: matter, universe, Universe. 2) Object of natural science. 3) The totality of natural conditions for the existence of human society; "second nature" - the material conditions of his existence created by man. The implementation of metabolism between man and nature is the law regulating social production, the condition of the human life. The cumulative activities of society have an increasingly noticeable impact on nature, which requires the establishment of their harmonious interaction.

As we see, all definitions clarify that nature is everything that is not created by man. For Turgenev, nature is the main element; it subjugates a person and shapes his inner world. The Russian forest, in which “stately aspens babble,” “a mighty oak tree stands like a fighter next to a beautiful linden tree,” and the vast steppe are the main elements that define the national traits of the Russian people in “Notes of a Hunter.” This is completely consistent with the overall tone of the cycle. Nature turns out to be a true salvation for people. If in the first prologue essay the narrator asked to pay attention to the men, then the final story is the author’s lyrical declaration of love for nature, “fur sich,” as he himself jokingly says, saying goodbye to the reader. For Turgenev, nature is the container of everything and everyone. At the same time, all descriptions of nature are divided into two groups: external manifestations of nature (landscape objects, animals, weather and natural elements) and hidden or implicit (human activities related to nature, the influence of nature on the life and livelihoods of the peasant).

It was quite fashionable to call this book a book about nature and about man in nature. Even if the characters are not related to nature, the story about them still cannot be complete without landscapes at least mentioned in passing. It is no coincidence that the collection ends with a poetic hymn to nature, “Forest and Steppe.” Undoubtedly, the main aesthetic link of all short stories is the narrator, “ strange man" And the main thing in it is that the image is given outside of social civilization, as a man of nature, inextricably linked with it. His soul, his spiritual world filled with nature. And through this natural-aesthetic prism, all the stories he tells are refracted. Turgenev “came to recognize the inclusion of the human personality in the general flow of world life, to recognize the unity of man and nature.”

Such a unity of the “strange hunter” with nature, such an aesthetic unity of “Notes of a Hunter” through numerous landscapes is reminiscent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s teaching about “natural man.” Turgenev, following Rousseau, argues that nature created all people equal and only public institutions create the problem of social inequality. Social unfreedom distorts the natural essence of man and cripples him morally. The drama of man is, according to Turgenev, that he has fallen out of natural unity. Turgenev considers the problem of “natural man” in a philosophical, universal moral aspect. Falling out of the natural unity of a person makes him either morally ugly or completely unhappy. And Turgenev in “Notes of a Hunter” tries to show how morally beautiful “ natural man"connected with nature.

As the “material” for linguistic analysis in our work, we chose the collection of stories “Notes of a Hunter” by I. Turgenev. We explore this collection from the perspective of composition. literary text.

Almost all of Turgenev's stories contain direct speech and dialogue. A special exception is the story “Forest and Steppe”, in which the author conducts an invisible dialogue with the reader, there is no direct address to any person, there is no formal emphasis on direct speech (quotes), the dialogue does not carry any special semantic load.

Turgenev's entire collection is a subjective narrative, since there is a direct author's assessment of events and characters, the narrating author judges only what is known to him; widespread use of words with a basic emotional-evaluative meaning such as “love”, “ good man“: “As a hunter, visiting the Zhizdra district, I came across a field and met one Kaluga small landowner, Polutykin, a passionate hunter and, therefore, an excellent person” (“Khor and Kalinich”).

A subjective narrative expresses directly the author's point of view, which is often polemical in relation to the reader's point of view. In this sense, Turgenev does not force the reader to think the same way as he does; his unobtrusive narration allows the reader to make his own assessment of the person or events described.

In the collection of stories by I. Turgenev, a synthesis of all three types of speech is observed: “Rich landowners lived in these mansions, and everything was going in its own order, when suddenly, one fine morning, all this grace burned to the ground. The gentlemen moved to another nest; the estate was deserted. The vast ashes turned into a vegetable garden, in some places cluttered with piles of bricks, the remains of the previous foundations. They quickly put together a hut from the surviving logs, covered it with baroque planks, bought ten years ago to build a pavilion in the Gothic style, and settled the gardener Mitrofan with his wife Aksinya and seven children in it. Mitrofan was ordered to deliver greens and vegetables to the master’s table, one and a half hundred miles away; Aksinya was entrusted with the supervision of a Tyrolean cow, bought in Moscow for a lot of money, but, unfortunately, deprived of any ability to reproduce and therefore has not given milk since the time of purchase; They gave her a crested smoky drake, the only “master’s” bird, into her arms; the children, due to their young age, were not assigned any positions, which, however, did not in the least prevent them from becoming completely lazy” (“Raspberry Water”); “I looked around. We rode across a wide, plowed plain; Low hills, also plowed, ran down into it with extremely gentle, wave-like rolls; the gaze embraced only some five miles of deserted space; small in the distance birch groves with their rounded-toothed tops, some violated the almost straight line of the sky. Narrow paths stretched across fields, disappeared into hollows, and wound along hillocks” (“Kasyan from the Beautiful Sword”); “Hunting with a gun and a dog is beautiful in itself, für sich, as they used to say in the old days; But suppose you were not born a hunter: you still love nature; you, therefore, cannot help but envy our brother...” (“Forest and Steppe”).

3 stories in the collection (“My neighbor Radilov”, “Bezhin Meadow”, “Date”) begin with a description of nature. Here the stylistic dominant of the literary text is formed, the time and place of action is presented.

All stories in Turgenev's collection are titled. They can be divided into two groups. The first group includes stories that have a name (or proper names) in their title. These can be names, surnames, nicknames of people, geographical objects (names of villages and cities). This group includes 15 stories: “Khor and Kalinich”, “Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife”, “Raspberry Water”, “My Neighbor Radilov”, “Ovsyannikov’s Homestead”, “Lgov”, “Bezhin Meadow”, “Kasyan from the Beautiful Sword” , "Biryuk", "Swan". “Tatyana Borisovna and her nephew”, “Petr Petrovich Karataev”, “Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky district”, “Tchertopkhanov and Nedopyuskin”, “The End of Tchertopkhanov”. From the title it becomes clear where the event will take place or who the story will be about. The second group consists of stories that have common nouns in their titles: “District Doctor”, “The Burmaster”, “The Office”, “Two Landowners”, “Death”, “Singers”, “Date”, “Living Relics”, “Knocking” , "Forest and steppe". Despite the fact that these titles do not directly relate to the person or place of action, it is still not difficult to guess what the story will be about. Appearing in linguistic aspect in a word, phrase or sentence, the title answers one of the pressing questions of the literary text. Who? What? “Petr Petrovich Karataev”, “Death”; Where? “Lebedyan”, “Bezhin Meadow”, “Office”; What's happening? “Date”, “Knocks”, etc.

Turgenev practically does not use epigraphs in his collection. Can the stories “Living Relics” and “Forest and Steppe” be considered an exception? From the epigraphs you can immediately understand who or what we are talking about:

The native land of long-suffering -

You are the edge of the Russian people!

F. Tyutchev. (“Living Relics”).

And little by little it started back

To pull him: to the village, to the dark garden,

Where the linden trees are so huge and so shady,

And the lilies of the valley are so virginally fragrant,

Where are the round willows above the water?

A line of people leaned down from the dam,

Where a fat oak tree grows over a fat cornfield,

Where it smells like hemp and nettles...

There, there, into the wild fields,

Where the earth turns black like velvet,

Where is the rye, wherever you cast your eyes,

Flows quietly in soft waves.

And a heavy yellow ray falls

Because of the transparent, white, round clouds;

It's good there

(From a poem committed to burning) (“Forest and Steppe”).

The entire collection of stories by I. Turgenev can be presented in a table, where you can clearly see how many words are in a single story and in each episode. For convenience, we divided each story into episodes with and without descriptions of nature. The table shows how many episodes there are and what their size is.

linguistic analysis Turgenev's story

Table 1 - Number of words in episodes

TOTAL WORDS	WITH A NATURE DESCRIPTION	WITHOUT NATURE DESCRIPTION
KHOR AND KALINYCH			1. 73 WORDS
YERMOLAI AND THE MILLER
RASPBERRY WATER
COUNTY DOCTOR
MY NEIGHBOR RADILOV
ONE PALACE OF THE OSYANNIKOV
BEZHIN LUG
KASSIAN WITH A BEAUTIFUL SWORD
BURMISTER
TWO LANDLORDS
SWAN
T.B. AND HER NEPHEW
P.P.KARATAEV
DATE
HAMLET OF SHIGROV.UYEZD
CHERTOPAKHANOV AND NEDOPYUSKIN
THE END OF CHERTOKHANOV
LIVING POWERS
FOREST AND STEPPE

But from this table it is impossible to determine where the episodes describing nature are located. For this purpose, a linear model of a literary text is used - a straight line segment divided into proportions with designated strong positions. For each story of the text there is its own linear model [Korbut - 33; 76] (Appendix 1.).

Through mathematical calculations we can find the coordinate for any episode. We present the result of these calculations in a table (in electronic form), where each episode is separately numbered and has two values ​​- the beginning and the end, indicated by units. The remaining coordinates that are not related to this episode with a description of nature are indicated by zeros.

On November 11, 1870, I. A. Goncharov wrote to S. A. Tolstoy: “You, of course, have read “King Lear of the Steppes.” How vividly told - lovely! I attribute this story to the “Notes of a Hunter”, in which Turgenev is a true artist, a creator, because he knows this life, saw it himself, lived it - and writes from life... These two heads, daughters of Lear, aren’t they alive, having escaped from the framework of dreams! And they are outlined so easily, almost without color, as if with a pencil: meanwhile, they are before your eyes.

Yes, Turgenev is a troubadour (perhaps the first), wandering with a gun and a lyre through villages and fields, singing rural nature, love - in songs, and reflecting the life he sees - in legends, ballads...” (I. A. Goncharov Collected works, vol. 8. M., 1955, p. This was written by a contemporary of the author, a subtle and demanding artist, at a time when “Notes of a Hunter” was already perceived as the youth of their creator, when the world recognized Turgenev’s novels - the artistic chronicle of Russian public life mid-century: “Rudin”, “Noble Nest”, “Fathers and Sons”, “On the Eve”.

This review by Goncharov is very symptomatic, for “Notes of a Hunter” is not only the source and prologue of Turgenev’s entire work, but also in its very “own artistic nature an innovative phenomenon that developed in line with Pushkin and Gogol’s prose, which another contemporary of the writer - Leo Tolstoy - put on a par with Gogol’s “Dead Souls”, “Notes from House of the Dead"Dostoevsky, "The Past and Thoughts" by Herzen (see: G. A. R u-sanov, A. G. Rusanov. Memoirs of L. N. Tolstoy. Voronezh, 1972, p. 102).

The biography of “Notes of a Hunter” began with the first issue of Nekrasov’s Sovremennik for 1847, where it was published in the “Mixture” section short story Turgenev "Khor and Kalinich". The circumstances (at first glance, quite prosaic) of the appearance of this story, which played such an important role in the creative fate of Turgenev, are described by him in his “Literary and Everyday Memoirs”: “Only as a result of the requests of I. I. Panaev, who did not have anything to fill the “Mixtures” department “In the 1st issue of Sovremennik, I left him an essay entitled “Khor and Kalinich.” (The words: “From the notes of a hunter” were invented and added by the same I. I. Panaev in order to incline the reader to leniency.)” (I. S. Turgenev. Complete collection works and letters in 28 volumes. Works, vol. XIV. M.-L., “Science”, 1968, p. 521). There is an interesting assumption by researcher of Turgenev’s work V. A. Gromov that the initiative for the appearance of “Khor and Kalinich” | Sovremennik came from Belinsky and Nekrasov.

It is possible that the subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter” was deliberately given by Panaev in order to attract the reader to the unique genre of hunting stories, which was very popular in the 30s and 40s of the last century, especially! which received development in England and “bypassed ... other European literatures,” including Russian (see: M. P. Alekseev. Title “The Hunter's Mines.” - “Turgenev Collection,” issue V. L., “ Science”, 1969, 217), It is likely that there is a different, hidden, deeper and more generalized meaning of this “external” name. The fact is that other stories and stories that are not included in the cycle are sometimes also told on behalf of a certain “hunter” wandering through his native forests, fields and villages (for example, the story “Three Meetings”). Thus, the hunter can be perceived as an interested observer, endowed with the gift of “comprehensive contemplation”, a “witness”, a “chronicler”, striving for a deep understanding of life, the laws by which it moves...

Judging by this seemingly innocent title, Panaev could hardly imagine what the story from “Mixture” would later become for Turgenev and all Russian literature.

But, as always, Belinsky’s impression turned out to be prophetic. “You yourself don’t know what Khor and Kalinich is,” the critic wrote to Turgenev. “Judging by Khor, you will go far. This is your real family...” (V. G. Bolineky. Pol. collected works, vol. XII. M., Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1956, p. 336). And although Turgenev himself claimed that the success of Khor and Kalinich “encouraged... to write others,” the creation of the entire cycle was not an accident, but, on the contrary, was a pattern, a creative and moral necessity. The entire previous path of young Turgenev, a graduate of Moscow, and then St. Petersburg and Berlin universities, close in the 40s to the most advanced and talented people Russia, the rulers of thought - Belinsky, Granovsky, Stankevich, Herzen and Ogarev, the Decembrist N.I. Turgenev - inevitably led the writer to the creation of a large anti-serfdom work, an epic canvas, a kind of “Russian Iliad”.

In 1846, even before the appearance of the first story about the Russian peasant, Turgenev acted as an unofficial contributor to the French magazine Revue Independant, the organ of utopian socialists. As it has now become known, the main part of the article “On the emancipation of the serfs in Russia,” published in the magazine signed by Louis Viardot, one of the progressive figures of France, belonged to Turgenev and was a revised version of his early political and economic study of 1842, “A few remarks about the Russian economy and the Russian peasant." In the 1846 edition, Turgenev speaks in the most categorical form about the need for the speedy liberation of peasants from serfdom. Turgenev, according to Viardot, “became, contrary to the interests of his class, contrary to his own interests, such a bold and open supporter of the liberation of the serfs, as if he himself had been born in this disastrous state and demanded freedom for himself in the name of suffering humanity and trampled justice” (“Turg. Sat., issue IV, p. 108).

The success of Khor and Kalipych inspired the young writer, who had long been captivated by the idea of ​​fighting serfdom.

Turgenev's stories are published one after another in Sovremennik. During 1847 alone, eight stories appeared: “Khor and Kalinich” (No. 1), “Petr Petrovich Karataev” (No. 2), “Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife,” “My Neighbor Radilov,” “Ovsyanikov’s Homestead,” “Lgov” ( No. 5), “Buyer”, “Office” (No. 10); in 1848 the following were published: “Raspberry Water”, “District Doctor”, “Biryuk”, “Lebedyan”, “Tatyana Borisovna and Her Nephew”, “Death” (No. 2); in 1849 the following were published: “Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District”, “Tchertop-hanov and Nedopyuskin”, “Forest and Steppe” (No. 2); in 1850 - “Singers” and “Date” (F 11); in 1851 - “Bezhin Meadow” (No. 2) and “Kasyan with the Beautiful Sword” (No. 3) - the last story from “Notes of a Hunter”, published on the pages of Sovremennik. It is interesting that the second story of the cycle, “Petr Petrovich Karataev,” was published without the subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter,” and only starting with the third, “Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife,” was this subtitle, which later became the title of the entire book, finally strengthened.

Almost all the stories were written by Turgenev at a distance from Russia, abroad, where he went in the second half of January 1847, that is, immediately after the appearance of “Khor and Kalinich” in Sovremennik. Departure for such a long time (the writer returned to his homeland only in 1850) was caused not only by the circumstances of Turgenev’s personal life - his love for the great singer and actress Pauline Viardot, but above all by considerations of a civil and creative nature. “I needed to move away from my enemy so that from my very distance I could attack him more powerfully... this enemy was - serfdom“, Turgenev wrote in his “Literary and Everyday Memoirs.”

The history of the creation of “Notes of a Hunter” is inextricably linked with the name of Belinsky. The most socially acute anti-serfdom stories from “Notes of a Hunter” - “The Burmaster”, “The Office”, “Two Landowners” - were created in the summer of 1847 in the small resort town of Salzbrunn, where Turgenev lived with the seriously ill Belinsky. It is symbolic that the story “The Burmist” is marked: “Salzbrunn in Silesia, July 1847.” The same month marks the famous “Letter” of Belinsky to Gogol, about which Turgenev, according to contemporaries, said: “Belinsky and his letter, this is my whole religion” (“Diary of V. S. Aksakova.” St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 42).

Already in June 1847, Turgenev decided to combine the stories from “Notes of a Hunter” into a separate book. And later, in October 1847, Nekrasov informed the writer about his idea of ​​publishing the series “Library of Russian Novels, Stories, Notes and Travels.” Nekrasov’s thoughts, the series was supposed to open with Herzen’s novel “Who is to Blame?”, in the second volume it was supposed to publish “ An ordinary story"Goncharov, and the third volume would consist of Turgenev's stories. This plan did not come true. After the revolutionary events of 1848 in Western Europe, and above all in France, Russian censorship became extremely cautious, and this immediately affected Turgenev’s stories from “Notes of a Hunter.” The censorship especially “pinched” “Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District” (1849), removing entire pages from the text.

It is possible that the censorship ordeals forced Turgenev at that time to abandon not only the publication of a separate book, but also to warn the reader in the words addressed to him from the essay “Forest and Steppe” about his intention to complete the publication of “Notes of a Hunter” in Sovremennik. But with greater confidence we can assume something else: the warning about the completion of “Notes of a Hunter” is due to the fact that the essay itself was conceived as a kind of epilogue to the cycle and in all the “programs” compiled by Turgenev over the course of three years (1847-1850), it was designated at the end . This assumption is all the more likely since the publication of stories from “Notes of a Hunter” in Sovremennik continued even after the essay “Forest and Steppe,” until 1851.

The thought of a separate edition of “Notes of a Hunter” did not leave Turgenev. The writer worked hard on his “prospectus”, which is eloquently stated numerous programs. The last, tenth, program was sketched in August - September 1850 in the margins of a rough autograph of the story “Pritynny Zucchini” (“Singers”). After the publication of the stories “Date” and “Singers” in Sovremennik, Turgenev wrote to Pauline Viardot in November

1850: “I haven’t given up the idea of ​​collecting all these stories and publishing them in Moscow.” In the same letter, he spoke about his desire to dedicate his future book to her (Turgenev. Letters, vol. I, p. 409). But then Turgenev, for tactical reasons, abandoned this intention: “On reflection, there will be no dedication...” - he wrote to Pauline Viardot on March 21, 1852. Preserved in a censored manuscript front page with an encrypted dedication (three stars).

By the beginning of the 50s, Turgenev’s political dossier increasingly convinced the government of the dubious trustworthiness of the writer and author of anti-serfdom stories. In addition, Turgenev, who met abroad with Herzen, Ogarev, Bakunin, N.I. Turgenev, who was an eyewitness to the revolutionary events in Paris, aroused obvious suspicion from the authorities. “When Turgenev returned to St. Petersburg in 1850, he was warned, but he did not want to pay attention to it,” recalled one of the writer’s contemporaries, the German critic Karl Glumer (Turg. Collection, issue V, p. 362) .

But Turgenev, realizing that he had been “looked at askance for a long time,” nevertheless continued his efforts about a separate publication of “Notes of a Hunter” - and this expressed the writer’s civic position. The fact is that already in the fall

In 1851, Turgenev was placed under special secret police surveillance and all his letters were illustrated. Researchers associate the fact of establishing supervision with the French edition of A. I. Herzen’s book “On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia” (in the translation of which Turgenev apparently also took part in the translation into French). In it, “Notes of a Hunter” were called “Turgenev’s masterpiece”: “Who can read without shuddering with indignation and shame... I. Turgenev’s masterpiece “Notes of a Hunter”?” - wrote Herzen (A.I. Herze p. Collected works in 30 volumes, vol. VII. M., Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, p. 228). It is symptomatic that Europe first learned about Turgenev’s Notes from the publisher of Kolokol. Nicholas I especially familiarized himself with Herzen’s book, helpfully sent to Russia by the prefect of the Parisian police, and perhaps he paid attention to both Herzen’s review of “Notes of a Hunter” and the entire “seditious” context in which they were mentioned (see. : 10. G. O sman. From “ The captain's daughter"A. S. Pushkin to “Notes of a Hunter” by I. S. Turgenev. Saratov, 1959, p. 247-249).

On the initiative of Turgenev’s friend Vasily Petrovich Botkin, the manuscript of “Notes of a Hunter” underwent a private preview of the censor of the book. V.V. Lvov, a close friend of P. Chaadaev, a professional writer who wrote for youth. According to V.P. Botkin, he was an “honest and noble censor.” Lvov, who read the manuscript with great interest, approved it, and soon it was officially submitted to the Moscow censorship and allowed for publication. In this edition, Turgenev restored numerous censorship exceptions from journal publications. Prince's intervention Lvov's input into the text was minimal (for which the censor subsequently paid dearly - he was dismissed from service). “From both parts,” Botkin wrote to Turgenev on March 10, 1852, “Lvov threw out ten lines, and then those that could not be left” (“V.P. Botkin and I.S. Turgenev. Unpublished correspondence,” M.- L., 1930, p. 29).

For the first time, the story “Two Landowners” appeared in a separate publication, conceived, in all likelihood, simultaneously with “The Burmist” in 1847. All previous attempts by Turgenev to publish it in Sovremennik, and then in collections (Illustrated Almanac and Comet Almanac) failed. In August 1852, “Notes of a Hunter” came out of print and sold out very quickly at that time.

A dramatic period in Turgenev’s life is associated with “Notes of a Hunter” - his arrest in April 1852, and then exile to the village. The external reason for the persecution was an article about Gogol, which Turgenev wrote, shocked by the death of the brilliant creator “ Dead souls" But the real reason was “Notes of a Hunter.” “In 1852, for publishing an article about Gogol (essentially for “Notes of a Hunter”), he was sent to live in the village...” Turgenev wrote to K.K. Sluchevsky in March 1869 (Turgenev. Letters, vol. II, p. .635).

“The arrest of Turgenev for publishing an article about Gogol in Moscow,” wrote Tsarevich Alexander on April 28, 1852 to his father Nicholas I, “caused a lot of noise here - I, as you know, am also not a big fan of so-called writers and therefore I find that the lesson , given to him, is very healthy for others...” (Turgenev. Collected works in 12 volumes, vol. 1. M., “Fiction”, 1975, p. 306).

Turgenev was arrested before parts of “Notes of a Hunter” were published. For some time there was even a danger of confiscation and destruction of part of the finished circulation. But the authorities did not dare to take this risky step - the “Note of a Hunter” gained too much fame when it first appeared in the Sovremennik - a curial that was read by all of enlightened Russia. However, other repressive measures were taken - perhaps the only one of its kind, a detailed censorship investigation began on the already printed book. In essence, after this investigation, headed by the Minister of Public Education, Prince. P. L. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov (the Main Directorate of Censorship was subordinate to him) “Notes of a Hunter” was banned in Russia for more than six years. The results of the censorship investigation were reported to Nikolai G. himself.

The censorship findings contained serious accusations of a political nature. A well-known role in this was played by the combination of “Notes of a Hunter” into a separate book. When publishing his stories in the magazine, Turgenev diplomatically ensured that the sharpest ones alternated with calmer ones, and censorship “helped” by removing “dangerous” phrases, or even entire pages. In a separate edition, the anti-serfdom concept of the cycle seemed to be highlighted, liberation sentiments grew from story to story, reaching its culmination approximately in the middle of the cycle, where one after another came “Kasyan with the Beautiful Sword”, “The Burmaster”, “The Office”, “Biryuk”, "Two landowners." Like Nekrasov’s poems, Turgenev’s stories, “collected into one focus,” gave rise to feelings of anger and compassion.

In his report, censor E.E. Volkov especially emphasized the dangerous political meaning the entire book, written, in his opinion, with a certain tendency. “When publishing “Notes of a Hunter,” Mr. Turgenev, a man known to be rich, of course, did not have in mind profit from the sale of his work,” the censor asserted, “but probably had a completely different goal, to achieve which he published his book." The censor immediately grasped this “other goal”: “Is it useful, for example,” the official reasoned, “to show our literate people... that the same-lords and peasants are ours, whom the author has so poeticized that he sees in them administrators, rationalists, romantics, idealists , enthusiastic and dreamy people (God knows where he found such people!), that these peasants are oppressed, that the landowners, whom the author mocks so much, exposing them as vulgar savages and madmen, behave indecently and illegally... or, finally “It is better for the peasant to live in freedom more freely” (Turgenev. Works, vol. IV, p. 505). According to Volkov, such a book “will do more evil than good,” because it undermines the very foundations of the serfdom state.

The censor's bewilderment, caused by the supposedly implausibly high and angry system of Turgenev's peasants (“where did he find such people!”), was rather simply a rhetorical exclamation of a loyal official. It was the amazing, absolute authenticity of the book, the authenticity of the depicted situations, characters, the very way of Russian life that confused the censors and led to the admiration of Turgenev’s great contemporaries - Belinsky and Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Leo Tolstoy.

Numerous memoirs have been preserved about the existence of real prototypes Turgenev's heroes from "Notes of a Hunter". So, real person there was the famous Khor, a man “endowed with a statesman’s mind” and “the forehead of Socrates.” A. A. Fet, poet, friend and neighbor of Turgenev on the estate, wrote down his impressions of meeting this Russian peasant, whom the writer immortalized. “Last year, during the grouse hunting season,” recalls Fet, “I had the opportunity to visit one of the heroes of Turgenev’s story “Khor and Kalinich.” I spent the night with Khor himself. Interested in the poet's masterful essay, I peered with great attention into the personality and home life of my master. Khor is now over eighty years old, but his colossal figure and Herculean build are nothing to compare with” (“Russkiy Vestnik”, 1862, book V, p. 246). Turgenev’s former serf, Ardalion Ivanovich Zamyatin (later a zemstvo school teacher), said in his memoirs: “My grandmother and mother told me that almost all the persons mentioned in the Notes were not fictitious... even their names were real... was Biryuk, who was killed by his own peasants in the forest, was Yashka-Turchonok - the son of a captive Turkish woman. Even I personally knew one of Turgenev’s heroes, namely Bitch Apgop, renamed Lady Varvara Petrovna from Kozma. Bezhyan meadow, Parakhnn bushes, Varnavitsy, Mare’s top... - all these places had the same names in 1882” (“Turg. collection”, issue II., pp. 298-299). By the way, these names have survived to this day, as well as the Krasivaya Mecha river and the village of Kolotovka. Chernsky, Belevsky, Zhndrpsky districts, “scenes of action” in “Notes of a Hunter,” were explored by Turgenev together with his constant companion Afanasy Timofeevich Alnfanov, listed in the book under the name Ermolai. He was a serf of neighboring landowners, bought free by Turgenev, “a hunter from head to toe, devoted to hunting with all his soul and thoughts” (I. F. Rynda. Traits from the life of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. St. Petersburg, 1903, p. 43). According to the testimony of one of Turgenev’s friends, E. Ya. Kolbasin, the story “Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife” “is taken entirely from an actual incident” (“The First Collection of Letters of I. S. Turgenev.” St. Petersburg, 1885, p. 92)..

On the pages of the book, Turgenev resurrected dark stories from the life of his ancestors, dashing serf owners, noblemen of the old style. Echoes of the adventures of Varvara Petrovna’s father, Pyotr Ivanovich Lutovnov, are heard in Ovsyanikov’s Odnodvorets. There is a legend about the cruel reprisal of the landowner against the same-lords who dared to plow the “no man’s” land. “Among the possessions of P.I. Lutovinov was the village of Topki... There, probably, a massacre took place with the peasants... After the massacre, in which up to 15 people were killed,” Lutovinnov “collected all the dead bodies and took them to the city Livny, driving there through the enemy’s village, lit it at both ends and shouted: “I am your scourge!” (B.V. Bogdanov. Ancestors of Turgenev. - “Turg. Collection”, issue V, p. 348). In the story “Death”, Turgenev cited an actual fact from the biography of his grandmother (from the side of V. P. Lutovinova): “In the story “Death” ... - recalls V. N. Zhitova, - her last minutes are described: the lady who paid herself the priest for his waste, was Ivan Sergeich’s grandmother” (V. II. Zh i t o v a. Memoirs of the family of I. S. Turgenev. Tula, 1961, p. 23). Turgenev himself calls the “true incident” the events that served as the basis for the plot of “Living Relics,” a story that gained worldwide fame. In a letter to Ludwig Pichu, Turgenev names the name of the paralyzed woman who became the prototype of Lukerya: ((Claudia (that was her real name)... I visited her in the summer) (T u r gene v. Letters, vol. X, p. 229, 435). But it is possible that two real ones merged in Lukerya. female images. We are talking about the serf beauty Eunraxia, the first singer and dancer, with whom seventeen-year-old Turgenev was close (ibid., vol. VII, p. 138).

In 1856, after the death of Nicholas I, Turgenev conceived the second separate edition of “Notes of a Hunter”, which, according to Dobrolyubov, “has been so impatiently awaited by the patient Russian public for several years now” (“Sovremennik”, 1859, No. 2, dept. “ New books", p. 289). However, it appeared only on the very eve of the abolition of serfdom. As it became known, Alexander II also considered “Notes of a Hunter” a “reprehensible book,” which was the main obstacle to its republication (see note by V. A. Gromov in the book: I. S. Turgenev. Collected works, volume 1. Y., 1975, pp. 368-369). The publication became possible when what was accused of Turgenev’s “Notes” could be officially declared their merit. This is what I. A. Goncharov (who acted as censor in 1859) did in his memorandum, in which he deliberately emphasized that Turgenev’s book “can rather confirm the need for measures taken by the government” to abolish serfdom. In February 1858, “Notes of a Hunter” was allowed to be republished and was published in 1859.

Beginning in 1859, “Notes of a Hunter” received “citizenship rights” in Russia and became one of Turgenev’s most published works, both as part of the writer’s collected works and as a separate book. They were first included in the Collected Works in 1860 and supplemented by two new stories: “About Nightingales” and “A Trip to Polesie.” However, the next edition - 1865 (also as part of the Collected Works) - was published without these two stories. Obviously, the writer, who treated his book with extraordinary care, was afraid of violating its genre and stylistic integrity. To some extent, it is precisely this special artistic scrupulousness that explains the fact that not all of the ideas related to “Notes of a Hunter” found their final embodiment. In total, according to Turgenev, “about thirty of them were prepared.” “Other essays remained unfinished for fear that the censor would not let them through; others - because they seemed...

Not quite interesting or not getting to the point” (letter to Ya. P. Polonsky dated January 25/February 6, 1874 - Letters, vol. X, p. 191). In all likelihood, we were talking about such unrealized plans as “Signs”, “Mad Woman”, “Man of Catherine’s Time”. The idea of ​​the story, conventionally called “Signs” - about bad premonitions and omens - really was not in tune with the clear and strict tone of “Notes”. “The Man of Catherine’s Time” - this idea, relating to the “scorch of the past”, found its partial embodiment in one of the images (a nobleman) in the story “Raspberry Water”, and most fully in the story “Brigadier”. A reminiscence of another unrealized idea, “Mad” (which arose after the writer’s meeting in the forest with a mad woman), in all likelihood, is the story of one of the boys in “Bezhipiy Meadow” about Akulina who lost her mind and the memory of Turgenev himself associated with this story.

The composition of “Notes of a Hunter” was finally formed in 1874, when Turgenev introduced three “new” stories into the book - “Living Relics”, “Knocks!”, “The End of Chertopkhanov”. But, in essence, they were not new stories in the full sense of the word. The first two of them were based on old unfinished sketches dating back to the 40s and not completed for censorship reasons. “The End of Tchertop-hanov” was a natural continuation of the short story “Tchertop-hanov and Nedoshoskin.” Turgenev, having learned about tragic fate the man who was the prototype of Tchertop-hanov, wrote a story that seemed to complete the story begun back in 1848. “The End of Tchertopkhanov” was originally published in 1872 in the “Bulletin of Europe” with the subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter.” The appearance of a new story in the 70s excited Turgenev’s friend, P.V. Annenkov: “What addition, what additions, decorations and explanations can be allowed to a monument that captured an entire era and expressed an entire people at a certain moment,” Annenkov wrote to Turgenev 23 October/November 4, 1872.- It must stand - nothing more. This is extravagance to start the Notes all over again (Turgenev, Works, vol. IV, p. 508). Meanwhile, Turgenev introduced nothing discordant into his book - a “memorial” of the era of serfdom.

Updated: 2011-03-13

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Analysis of the cycle of stories by I.S. Turgenev "Notes of a Hunter"

In the history of literature there are books that express entire eras not only in the development of literature and art, but also of the entire social consciousness. Such books include “Notes of a Hunter” by I.S. Turgenev.

In this collection of stories, the unifying figure is the “hunter”, the narrator-writer, a nobleman by social status. “The Hunter” does not so much reveal the theme of the book as disguise it: he simply talks about what happened to him, what he saw and remembered - and that’s all; he doesn’t seem to think at all about the fact that what is being discussed now, in this essay, is somehow connected with what he told before. But Turgenev does not forget this: by comparing, juxtaposing, systematizing, he develops a theme of such magnitude that only Gogol before him dared to speak out loud. This is precisely the main difference between a hunter-storyteller and an author.

In his Notes, Turgenev often resorts to the technique of comparing times - old and new. The author's assessment of the old is clear - it was the age of noble revelry, extravagance,debauchery and brazen arbitrariness. And the author reflects on the nobility of the new century on the pages of this book.

The picture of noble morals created by Turgenev inevitably poses the question to readers: how can people who have received some kind of education exercise their inhuman rights and live in this poisoned atmosphere of tyranny and slavery? A convinced realist, Turgenev knew well the power of commitment to convenience and comfort, what power the most ordinary habits have over a person, and how closely each person is connected with his environment. But he knew that different people relate to life differently and that a person’s position in life also depends on the properties of his nature.

If you look closely at all these prosperous representatives of the nobility - the Polutykins, Penochkins, Korolevs, Stegunovs, Khvalynskys, Shtoppels, Zverkovs, dignitaries, princes and counts, then you cannot help but notice one common feature: they are all mediocrities, people with pitiful minds and frail feelings. Insignificant people, they are able to value in others only brute force, no matter what it manifests itself - in bureaucratic arbitrariness or in the whims of wealth, in whims, arrogance or in the intricacies of meanness. They pursue everything that went beyond the boundaries of their creeping understanding.

Arkady Pavlovich Penochkin uses noble society respect: “The ladies are crazy about him and especially praise his manners.” And Pyotr Petrovich Karataev, while he was “showing off” and squandering his estate, if he was not considered a respected member of the local nobility, he did not attract his condemning attention. But as soon as he fell in love with the serf girl Matryona, everything immediately changed. “The sleepy and angry boredom of the idle nobility” showed itself! Madame Marya Ilyinichna, having learned that Karataev wanted to buy Matryona from her because he loved her, did not miss the opportunity to amuse her tyrant soul: “I don’t want it; you don’t want to, and that’s all.” A sincere feeling, and even for a servant - she could not forgive this. Society approved of her, but Karataev was condemned and eventually thrown out of its ranks.

But pictures of intra-noble relations, for all their expressiveness, still played a subordinate role in “Notes of a Hunter”: they were needed insofar as they helped to explore the main guilt of the nobility - guilt before the people.

Belinsky explained the success of “Khor and Kalinich” (the first of the published stories) by the fact that in this essay Turgenev “came to the people from the side from which no one had approached them before. Khor, with his practical sense and practical nature, with his rough, but strong and clear mind... is a type of Russian peasant who knew how to create a significant position for himself under very unfavorable circumstances.”

It was worth taking a more or less careful look at Khor for it to immediately become clear how much this illiterate peasant surpasses his master Polutykin precisely in the intellectual sense, and therefore, the talk about noble guardianship over the peasant is so meaningless and false. Khor treats Polutykin with barely hidden contempt because he “saw right through” him, that is, he understood how worthless he was, and not because he wore a European dress and ran a “French” kitchen. Khor did not experience any fear of foreign things.

The result of Turgenev’s observations on Khor’s personality is expressive: “From our conversations I took away one conviction that readers probably do not expect - the conviction that Peter the Great was primarily a Russian man, Russian precisely in his transformations. The Russian man is so confident in his strength and strength that he does not mind breaking himself: he pays little attention to his past and boldly looks forward. What is good is what he likes, what is reasonable, give him that, but where it comes from is all the same to him.”

The conclusion suggests itself: the only help the smart and practical Khori really needed was liberation from the Polutykins, that is, liberation from serfdom. That is why Belinsky paid special attention to this essay.

Turgenev explored the corrupting influence of landowner power on all aspects of life. He paid special attention to the fact that serfdom literally disfigured the peasant’s attitude towards work.

Life next to the landowner generated in the serfs not only a feeling of dull humility. From generation to generation, the master was accustomed to seeing a man of a special destiny and even breed; his life was considered something like an embodied ideal. This invariably aroused a feeling of admiration for masters. It made itself felt more strongly among the courtyard people; it was in it that lackeys were most often found - not only by position. Such, for example, as the valet Victor from the story “Date”. The very soul of lackey was embodied in him.

How tense the atmosphere in the village is is clearly shown in the story “Biryuk”. Driven to extremes, the peasant chopper switched from plaintive requests to open frantic indignation somehow suddenly; neither the hunter nor Biryuk expected anything like this. And yet the most unexpected thing was that Biryuk let the chopper go and, most importantly, How he let him go. He did this not at all because he was afraid of the man’s threats. Foma Biryuk changed his mind a lot, listening to the complaints and reproaches of the man he caught; didn’t his loyalty to his master, who eats men, seem shameful to him; Didn’t he now think that his wife also ran away with a tradesman, abandoning their children, because she was sick of the “master’s bread” given to him for privet loyalty? Most likely, Biryuk will again begin to diligently track down the choppers; but it may also happen that these guesses of his will not be forgotten, and then it will no longer be possible to vouch not only for the safety of the landowner’s forest lands, but also for his life.

“Notes of a Hunter” convinced the reader of the need to abolish serfdom as the basis of the entire social system of Russia. Turgenev all his life firmly held the conviction that issues of social existence, even the most complex ones, can be resolved only according to the laws of reason, which is the crown of modern civilization.

The inexhaustible treasures of the national spirit were revealed in the poetic talent of the Russian people. And in order to get an idea of ​​this dignity of national character, there was no need to look for particularly outstanding people: to one degree or another it was inherent in the overwhelming majority of peasants - from young to old.

The consciousness of the enslaved peasantry and its morality were full of contradictions and contrasts. Dreams of freedom and admiration for the master's authority, protest and obedience, rebellion and lackeyness, worldly sharpness and complete lack of initiative, spiritual talent and indifference to one's own fate - all these properties existed side by side, often turning into one another. According to Turgenev himself, it was a “great social drama,” and without understanding that this drama There is, it was impossible to understand Russia itself. He didn't just start developing this topic. For many decades to come, he gave a measure of its complexity and identified its constituent contradictions. For this great book one could take as an epigraph the famous lines of Nekrasov:

You're miserable too

You are also abundant

You are mighty

You are also powerless

Mother Rus'! -

if they had not been written a quarter of a century after the publication of “Notes of a Hunter.”

And Kalinich. Singers. Bezhin meadow.

1. Anti-serfdom theme in “Notes of a Hunter.”
2. Traits of a Russian national character in the characters of the cycle.
3. Genre originality of stories.
4. Landscape and its role in stories.

The story "and Kalinich"- the first of the future cycle - appeared in the first issue of the Sovremennik magazine for 1847. This was the first issue prepared by the new owners of the magazine, Nekrasov and Panaev. Then the editors failed to appreciate Turgenev’s story: it was printed in small print in the “Mixture” section with the subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter” (thus the title of the cycle was suggested to Turgenev by the magazine). The great success of the story among readers inspired the author, and during 1847, while abroad, he wrote 13 more stories. Turgenev worked on the cycle from 1847 to 1851, and by 1852 he prepared a separate edition of “Notes of a Hunter.”

“Notes of a Hunter” give a picture of village and estate life, revealing the relationship between landowners and the serf peasantry. But the close attention of contemporaries was primarily ensured by their anti-serfdom orientation. The authorities also reacted to their appearance, seeing in the stories a dangerous social trend. Nicholas I ordered the dismissal of the censor, Prince, who missed the Notes of a Hunter. Lvov “for careless performance of his position.” Turgenev was placed under police supervision. The social significance of the stories and essays in the series lay not only in the exposure of the serf-owner landowners (one of the high-ranking officials said that the landowners were “generally presented in a funny and caricatured form, or, more often, in a form reprehensible to their honor”), but also in the depiction of peasant types . The author feels sympathy for people from the people; the plight of the Russian people evokes his sympathy.

“Notes of a Hunter” – anti-serfdom work. Turgenev exposes serfdom as an ugly system that gives rise to cruel or worthless landowners, corrupts the soul, inhibits economic and spiritual development Russia. The author himself defined it this way main idea“Notes of a Hunter”: “I could not breathe the same air, stay close to what I hated... In my eyes, this enemy had a certain image, wore famous name: this enemy was serfdom. Under this name I collected and concentrated everything that I decided to fight against to the end, with which I vowed never to reconcile...” The stories are linked into a cycle by the unity of ideological content and compositional technique– the image of a narrator who goes through all the stories. The narrator is a hunter, a local landowner who knows his region well, and most importantly, is deeply interested in the lives of the people he meets on his hunting journeys.

“And Kalinich” is a programmatic work of the cycle, in which its main ideas are outlined, the form of Turgenev’s “hunting” story is tested. The plot in it is sketchy in nature: the location of the action is precisely indicated and described - the Volkhov and Zhizdrinsky districts of the Oryol and Kaluga provinces. The discussions at the beginning of the story about the types of Oryol and Kaluga men, built on the principle of antithesis, as if not connected with the plot of the story, have not only ethnographic, purely sketchy significance. They set the current social theme- the difference between the corvée and quitrent peasantry. In “The Choir and Kalinich” there is no eventful development of the action. The story shows the meetings of the hero-narrator with the landowner Polutykin and his serfs Khorem and Kalinich. The image of the narrator plays an active role in the story: the narrator comments on the behavior of the characters and expresses his attitude towards them. It is in dialogue with him that socially significant typical characters. Sometimes minimal artistic means are enough for an author to create a character. So the character of Polutykin is most definitely clarified by his last name - he is, indeed, a useless, stupid owner, a bankrupt landowner.

The main interest for the narrator is the peasants and Kalinich, whose comparative characteristics allow the author to reveal two types of Russian peasants and show different facets of the Russian national character. The images of the landowner and his serfs are contrasted: there is no direct conflict between them, but a deep difference in the moral world is obvious, life position. And not in favor of the landowner. Peasants are extraordinary people. One is an excellent practitioner, the other is a poetic nature. The journalistic beginning of the story - discussions about corvée and quitrent peasants - is developed in the images central characters.

- “a positive, practical person, an administrative head, a rationalist.” He sought permission to switch to quitrent and is essentially economically independent. - a type of intelligent, active, enterprising Russian person, capable of boldly meeting new things, although his capabilities are limited by the ugly serf system. In revealing the image of Khor, the main role is played by the author’s descriptions of his estate and hut. Subject details and the material world are expressive. They show the strength of his economy, reliability, stability of life, and allow us to see in the Choir the creative principles of the Russian national character. The portrait of Khor significantly complements our understanding of him. In his figure, the author emphasizes solidity. This “broad-shouldered and dense” man stands firmly on his feet. And the comparison of his face with the face of Socrates (“the same high, knobby forehead, the same small eyes, the same snub nose”) expresses the author’s respect and sympathy and at the same time strengthens the anti-serfdom pathos of the story. But this one is smart strong man is in the position of a slave. This is the reality of Russian reality.

Kalinich– the complete opposite of Khoryu externally and internally. He is “a man of the most cheerful, meek disposition,” an exalted nature. Being completely dependent on the landowner, he must accompany him hunting every day. He completely abandoned his own farming. Kalinich is close to nature, touching in his affection for Khor: he brought him a bouquet of strawberries. Contrasting the heroes, the author sees remarkable features in each of them folk character.

Story "Singers", written in the early 50s, combines essay and novelistic features. And although the narration is told on behalf of the narrator and contains sketch elements, the plot of the story is based on an event. The singing competition is a central part of the story. In the story, in addition to the main characters - Yakov the Turk and the soldier from Zhizdra - there are many other heroes who make up a picturesque multi-figure composition. The artistic means of revealing character are enriched. In addition to expressive portrait details and author's characteristics, Turgenev gives a story about the past of the heroes (this is the life story of Mogarych, Obolduy). The idea of ​​the characters deepens as the plot moves forward. The epic background of the main event carries an important ideological load.

Turgenev showed in the story an extraordinary Russian talent. The creative spirituality in the “best singer of the row”, Yakov-Turk, defeats the vocal skill of the self-confident rower. Showing the listeners frozen in excitement, the narrator seems to merge with them and conveys in his words the experiences and feelings that gripped everyone: “He sang, completely forgetting both his rival and all of us... The Russian, truthful, ardent soul grabbed you by the heart , grabbed right by his Russian strings.” The choice of song is significant. The song “There was more than one path in the field...” is truly in tune with the fate of the Russian people. It contains “youth, and strength, and sweetness, and some kind of fascinating, carefree, sad sorrow.”

Turgenev is a realist, he does not idealize the hero: in the final part of the story, the author sees ugly general drunkenness. And Yakov, who had recently soared in spirit, shocked everyone with his wondrous singing, like everyone else, plunged into the darkness of heavy revelry. The writer does not shy away from details that diminish the image of the hero: “He sat bare-chested on a bench and, singing in a hoarse voice some kind of dance, street song, lazily fingered and plucked the strings of his guitar. Wet hair hung in clumps over his strangely pale face.” Nothing remained of his spiritual excitement. The ugly reality has a destructive effect on the fate of talent in Russia, and this is another verdict on serfdom.

"Bezhin Meadow"– a poetic story about Russian nature and a child’s soul. In this story, the sketchy beginning gives way to a lyrical narrative. Turgenev is interested in the moral world of people from the people. With great sympathy, the author recreates the images of five peasant boys gathered around a fire on a July night and telling each other scary stories. Nature in “Bezhin Meadow” ceases to be the background of the action, it becomes a means of indirectly characterizing the heroes. The pictures of summer nature that frame the story are full of lyrical expressiveness and seem to spiritualize the characters of the boys. And their fantastic stories, legends, and beliefs are full of vivid imagery and poetry. The mysterious world of their fantasies, the world of nature and the real world merge into a single whole in the souls of the boys. The soul of the people, akin to nature, is poetic and mysterious.

In “Notes of a Hunter” I.S. Turgenev acted as an artist of acute social anti-serfdom issues and revealed the peculiarities of national character in living peasant types. The role of descriptions of nature in stories is great. Nature is a means of revealing the character, inner world and mental state of the characters.