Why Turgenev was considered a coward and other little-known facts about the great Russian writer

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Recently the world celebrated the 200th anniversary of the great Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. More than one generation of people grew up on his works, which have become classics of world fiction. In this review, we have collected interesting facts from his biography, which allow us to see the writer as a person - on the one hand, high in his actions and thoughts, but also endowed with certain shortcomings on the other.

Mothers and Children

The writer had a difficult relationship with his own mother all his life. His father, Sergei Nikolayevich Turgenev, married the rich old maid Lutovinova (the bride, who had sat up in girls, was already 28 years old!). Varvara Petrovna was 6 years older than her husband and all her life she remained a real domestic tyrant. Ivan Sergeevich wrote in his memoirs:

Probably, his mother became the "muse" thanks to which Turgenev hated serfdom and fought against it in all ways available to himself. It was her that he described in the image of a lady in the story "Mu-mu". He completely ended his relationship with her after an imperious woman lined up all the serfs along the driveway for a solemn meeting of her son with instructions to greet Ivan Sergeevich with loud shouts. Immediately turning around and leaving back to Petersburg, Turgenev did not see his mother again until her death.

True masculine passion

It seems that in addition to literature, Turgenev's true passion was hunting. The writer indulged in this hobby constantly, a lot and willingly. For the sake of hunting expeditions, he traveled around the Oryol, Tula, Tambov, Kursk, Kaluga provinces, and also studied the best lands of England, France and Germany, trying to recreate the atmosphere and rituals of Russian hunting abroad. He kept a kennel for nearly 150 dogs (hounds and greyhounds). In addition to fiction that praised hunting, he was the author of three specialized books on this topic. Seducing his fellow writers with this occupation, he even created a kind of hunting circle, which included Nekrasov, Fet, Ostrovsky, Nikolai and Lev Tolstoy, the artist P. P. Sokolov (the first illustrator of the Hunter's Notes).

It is known that in 1843, at the time of his acquaintance with Pauline Viardot, a mutual acquaintance introduced him as follows: (Turgenev, at the beginning of his literary career, was going to become a poet and wrote poems that were published in Sovremennik).

Character traits

Turgenev was an excellent illustration of the idea that genius should be absent-minded. This feature of him reached the point of absurdity. However, contemporaries for his forgetfulness found other, less flattering terms, for example, "all-Russian negligence" and "Oblomovism". It was said that the writer could invite guests to dinner and forget about it, going about his business. Several times he, having taken an advance payment for the manuscript, simply did not submit it to print. And once, due to the non-binding nature of the famous writer, the Russian revolutionary Arthur Benny was seriously injured, since Turgenev did not bring a letter to London justifying his slander, forgetting the envelope at home.

At the age of 20, Turgenev showed society an example of obvious cowardice, the trace of this event for a long time then cast a shadow on his reputation. In 1838, while traveling in Germany, the young writer sailed on a ship. There was a fire, which, fortunately, was quickly extinguished, but during the panic, Turgenev, according to eyewitnesses, behaved not at all like a gentleman, pushing women and children away from the lifeboats. He bribed a sailor by promising him a reward from his rich mother if he saved him. Having reached the shore safely, he was immediately ashamed of his momentary weakness, but rumors about her and ridicule could no longer be stopped. As a true writer, Turgenev creatively reworked this lesson of his life and described it in the short story "Fire at Sea".

Features of physiology

After the death of the genius writer, his body was examined by Sergei Petrovich Botkin himself and it turned out that the French doctors made a mistake with the diagnosis. In recent years, Turgenev was treated for angina pectoris and intercostal neuralgia. Botkin wrote in the conclusion that it turned out to be a microarcoma of the spine.

At the same time, a study of the writer's brain was carried out. It turned out that its weight was 2012 grams, which is about 600 grams more than the average person. This fact has entered many textbooks on anatomy, although physiological scientists are wary of the idea of a direct link between intelligence and brain size.

Turgenev's love story became an example of a high and pure feeling. Read next: Pauline Viardot and Ivan Turgenev: four decades of love at a distance