Analysis of the work of Turgenev Asya. "Asya" I.S

Very touching, lyrical and beautiful from the point of view of literary art, the story "Asya" was written in 1857 by Ivan Turgenev. Millions of readers were literally captivated by this work - people read, re-read and read "Asya", it was translated into many foreign languages, and critics did not hide their delight. Turgenev wrote an attractive and unpretentious love story, but how beautiful and unforgettable it turned out! Now we will make a short analysis of the story "Asya" by Ivan Turgenev, and in addition, you can read the summary on our website. In the same article, the plot of "Ashi" will be presented very briefly.

Writing history and prototypes

The story was published when Turgenev was almost forty years old. It is known that the author was not only well educated, but also had a rare talent. Once Ivan Turgenev went on a trip to Germany, and fleetingly saw the following picture: two women looked out of the windows from a two-story house - one was an elderly and orderly lady, and she looked from the first floor, and the second was a young girl, and looked out she is on top. The writer thought - who are these women, why do they live in the same house, what brought them together? Reflections on this glimpsed picture prompted Turgenev to write the lyrical story "Asya", the analysis of which we are now conducting.

Let's discuss who could become the prototype of the main character. Turgenev, as you know, had a daughter, Pauline Brewer, who was born illegitimate. She is very reminiscent of the timid and sensual main character Asya. At the same time, the writer had a sister, so it is quite possible that Turgenev could also consider Varvara Zhitova as Asya's prototype. Both that and the other girl could not come to terms with their dubious position in society, which worried Asya herself.

The plot of the story "Asya" is very short

A short retelling of the plot will help to better understand the analysis of the story "Asya" by Turgenev. The story is told by the main character. We see the anonymous Mr. N.N., who traveled abroad and met his compatriots there. Young people made acquaintances and even became friends. So, N. N. meets the Gagins. This is a brother and his half-sister Asya, who also went on a trip to Europe.

Gagin and N.N. like each other, they have a lot in common, so they communicate, relax together and have fun. In the end, N.N. falls in love with Asya, and the main character experiences reciprocal feelings. They declare their love, but misunderstandings in the relationship lead to mixed feelings and awkward conversation. Asya and Gagin abruptly leave, leaving a note, at the very moment when N.N. decided to ask for her hand. He rushes about in search of the Gagins, looking for them everywhere, but does not find them. And the feelings that he had for Asya will never be repeated again in his life.

Be sure to read Gagin's characterization, and it is important that we reviewed the plot of the story "Asya" very briefly, because this makes it easier to analyze further.

Image of Asya

Asya seems to us a special and unusual girl. She reads a lot, draws beautifully and takes what is happening close to her heart. She has a heightened sense of justice, but as far as character is concerned, she is changeable and even somewhat extravagant. At times, she is drawn to reckless and desperate acts, as can be seen from her decision to leave her relationship with N.N., with whom she fell deeply in love.

However, an analysis of the story "Asya" shows that the girl's soul is easy to hurt, she is very impressionable, kind and affectionate. Of course, such a nature attracted Mr. N.N., who began to spend a lot of time with his new friends. He is looking for the reasons for her actions and sometimes is perplexed: to condemn him Asya or to admire her.

Important details of the analysis of the story "Asya"

When Asya begins to communicate with the main character N.N., unintelligible and previously unknown feelings awaken in her soul. The girl is still very young and inexperienced, and does not know how to cope with her emotions. She is afraid of this state, this explains her strange and changeable actions, which can hardly be called ordinary whims. She wants to evoke sympathy from N.N., to be attractive and charming in his eyes, and in the end she opens up to both him and Gagin.

Yes, this is a childish and naive act, but here she is - a sweet, kind girl Asya. Unfortunately, neither Gagin nor N.N. appreciate Asya's frank and temperamental behavior. She seems reckless to her brother, and the protagonist reflects on her temper, thinking that it is crazy to marry a girl of seventeen years of age with such a character. In addition, he found out that Asya was illegitimate, and yet such a wedding would cause misunderstanding in secular circles! Even a short analysis of the story "Asya" showed that this ruined their relationship, and when N.N. changed his mind, it was already too late.

Of course, we have something to think about: could Gagin reason with his sister, whom he loved so much, and whose whims he always fulfilled, and convince her not to rush things? Or maybe Gagin should have talked more frankly with N.N.? Was it worth Asya to make such a hasty decision and leave the relationship? Was it cruel to the main character? And Mr. N.N. himself - was he ready to fight for his love, to go against secular rules, to put feelings higher? Well, there are a lot of questions, but can anyone give definitive answers to them? Hardly. Let everyone find the answer for himself...

You have read the analysis of the story "Asya" by Turgenev, also in this article the plot of the story was presented very briefly, a description of the image of Asya and a description of all the characters.

By genre, this work can be attributed to the story. It is based on a beautiful love story, which, unfortunately, ended in separation.

The plot is an acquaintance with the Gagins. Action development - relationships between young people. The climax is the explanation of N. N. with Gagin. The denouement is an explanation with Asya. Conclusion - N.N.'s reflections on the past and present.

Journey N.N.
Acquaintance of N. N. with Gagin and his sister.
N.N. draws attention to the unusual behavior of the girl and comes to the conclusion that Gagin is not her brother.
Explanation of Gagin and Asya. N.N. is an involuntary witness.
Asya's secret is revealed.
Date of N. N. and Asya.
Gagin and Asya are leaving. N.N. tries to find them, but fails.

The story of I.S. Turgenev "Asya" is rather a drama, a drama of this very girl Asya. She meets in her life N.N., a young man who not only attracts her, but also likes her brother, a very well-read and intelligent young man. Maybe...

The story "Asya" is about love and only about love, which, according to Turgenev, is "stronger than death and the fear of death" and which "holds and moves life." This narrative has an extraordinary poetic charm, beauty and purity. The story is on...

At the time of the creation of the story "Asya" (1859), I. S. Turgenev was already considered an author who had a significant impact on public life in Russia. The social significance of Turgenev's work is explained by the fact that the author endowed him with the gift of seeing in ordinary ...

I. S. Turgenev belongs to those few writers who are endowed with a wonderful gift to penetrate into the depths of the human soul, in two or three strokes, to easily and clearly describe the characters of the heroes of their works. And now, as if alive, Turgenev's characters...

I. S. Turgenev calls his story by the name of the heroine. However, the real name of the girl is Anna. Let's think about the meanings of the names: Anna - "grace, good looks", and Anastasia (Asya) - "born again". Why does the author stubbornly call the pretty, graceful Anna ...

1. New!

"Asya" I.S. Turgenev. Systematic analysis of the story and analysis of some of its connections with German literature.

Turgenev developed this genre throughout his work, but his love stories became the most famous: "Asya", "First Love", "Faust", "Calm", "Correspondence", "Spring Waters". They are also often called "elegiac" - not only for the poetry of feeling and the beauty of landscape sketches, but also for their characteristic motifs, from lyrical to plot. Recall that the content of the elegy is made up of love experiences and melancholy reflections on life: regret about the past youth, memories of deceived happiness, sadness about the future, as, for example, in Pushkin's "Elegy" of 1830 ("Mad years faded fun ..."). This analogy is all the more appropriate because Pushkin was for Turgenev the most important reference point in Russian literature, and Pushkin's motifs permeate all of his prose. No less important for Turgenev was the German literary and philosophical tradition, primarily in the person of I.V. Goethe; it is no coincidence that the action of "Asia" takes place in Germany, and the next Turgenev's story is called "Faust".

The realistic method (detailed accurate depiction of reality, psychological alignment of characters and situations) is organically combined in elegiac stories with the problems of romanticism. Behind the story of one love, a large-scale philosophical generalization is read, therefore, many details (realistic in themselves) begin to shine with symbolic meaning.

Flowering and the focus of life, love is understood by Turgenev as an elemental, natural force that moves the universe. Therefore, its understanding is inseparable from natural philosophy (philosophy of nature). Landscapes in Asa and other stories of the 1950s do not take up much space in the text, but they are far from being just an elegant intro to the plot or background decoration. The infinite, mysterious beauty of nature serves for Turgenev as indisputable proof of its divinity. "Man is connected with nature" by a thousand inextricable threads: he is her son ". Every human feeling has its source in nature; while the heroes admire her, she imperceptibly directs their fate.

Following the pantheistic understanding of nature, Turgenev considers it as a single organism in which “all lives merge into one world life”, from which “comes a common, endless harmony”, “one of those“ open ”mysteries that we all see and do not we see." Although in it, “everything seems to live only for itself,” at the same time, everything “exists for the other, in the other it only reaches its reconciliation or resolution” - this is the formula of love as an essence and an internal law of nature. “Her crown is love. It is only through love that one can approach it…” – Turgenev quotes Goethe’s Fragment on Nature.

Like all living things, man naively considers himself "the center of the universe", especially since he is the only one of all natural beings who has reason and self-consciousness. He is fascinated by the beauty of the world and the play of natural forces, but trembles, realizing his doom to death. To be happy, the romantic consciousness needs to absorb the whole world, to enjoy the fullness of natural life. So Faust from the drama of Goethe in his famous monologue dreams of wings, looking down from the hill at the setting sun:

Oh give me wings to fly away from the earth

And rush after him, not getting tired on the way!

And I would see in the glow of rays

The whole world is at my feet: and sleeping valleys,

And burning peaks with golden brilliance,

And a river in gold, and a stream in silver.<...>

Alas, only the spirit soars, having renounced the body, -

We cannot soar with bodily wings!

But sometimes you can't suppress

Innate desire in the soul -

Striving up… (translated by N. Kholodkovsky)

Asya and N.N., admiring the Rhine valley from the hill, are also eager to soar from the earth. With purely romantic idealism, Turgenev's heroes demand everything or nothing from life, languish with "all-embracing desires" ("- If we were birds, how we would soar, how we would fly ... So we would drown in this blue .. But we are not birds." But we can grow wings," I objected. "How- - Live - you will know. There are feelings that lift us from the ground") In the future, the motif of the wings, repeated many times in the story, becomes a metaphor for love.

However, romanticism, by its very logic, assumes the unattainability of the ideal, since the contradiction between dream and reality is insoluble. For Turgenev, this contradiction permeates the very nature of man, who is both a natural being, longing for earthly joys, "happiness to the point of satiety", and a spiritual person, striving for eternity and depth of knowledge, as Faust formulates in the same scene:

… two souls live in me

And both are not at odds with each other.

One, like the passion of love, ardent

And greedily clings to the earth entirely,

The other is all for the clouds

So it would have rushed out of the body. (translated by B. Pasternak)

This is where the pernicious internal division comes from. Earthly passions suppress the spiritual nature of a person, and having soared on the wings of the spirit, a person quickly realizes his weakness. “‒ Remember, you were talking about wings yesterday?.. My wings have grown, but there is nowhere to fly,” Asya will say to the hero.

The late German romantics represented passions as external, often deceitful and hostile forces to a person, whose plaything he becomes. Then love was likened to fate and itself became the embodiment of a tragic discord between dream and reality. According to Turgenev, a thinking, spiritually developed personality is doomed to defeat and suffering (which he also shows in the novel "Fathers and Sons").

"Asya" Turgenev began in the summer of 1857 in Sinzig on the Rhine, where the story takes place, and finished in November in Rome. It is interesting to note that "Notes of a Hunter", famous for depicting Russian nature and types of national character, Turgenev wrote in Bougival, in the estate of Pauline Viardot near Paris. "Fathers and Sons" was composed by him in London. If we lie further on this “European voyage” of Russian literature, it will turn out that “Dead Souls” were born in Rome, “Oblomov” was written in Marienbad; Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" - in Geneva and Milan, "Demons" - in Dresden. It is these works that are considered the most profound word about Russia in the literature of the 19th century, and Europeans traditionally judge the “mysterious Russian soul” by them. Is this a game of chance or a pattern?

In all these creations, one way or another, the question of Russia's place in the European world is raised. But rarely in Russian literature you will find a story about modernity, where the action itself takes place in Europe, as in "Ace" or in "Spring Waters". How does this affect their problem?

Germany is depicted in "Ace" as a peaceful, lovingly accepting environment. Friendly, hardworking people, affectionate, picturesque landscapes seem to be deliberately opposed to the "uncomfortable" paintings of "Dead Souls". “Greetings to you, a modest corner of the German land, with your unpretentious contentment, with ubiquitous traces of diligent hands, patient, although unhurried work ... Hello to you and the world!” - the hero exclaims, and we guess the author's position behind his direct, declarative intonation. On the other hand, Germany is an important cultural context for the story. In the atmosphere of an old town, "the word" Gretchen "- not an exclamation, not a question - just begged to be on the lips" (meaning Margarita from Goethe's Faust). In the course of the story, N.N. He also reads Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea to Gagina and Asya. Without this “Goethe’s immortal idyll” about life in the German provinces, it is impossible to “recreate Germany” and understand its “secret ideal,” wrote A.A. Fet (himself half German) in his essays "From Abroad". So the story is built on comparisons with both Russian and German literary traditions.

The hero of the story is designated simply as Mr. N.N., and we know nothing about his life before and after the story told. By this, Turgenev deliberately deprives him of bright individual features, so that the narration sounds as objective as possible and so that the author himself can quietly stand behind the hero, sometimes speaking on his behalf. N.N. - one of the Russian educated nobles, and every Turgenev reader could easily apply what happened to him to himself, and more broadly - to the fate of each of the people. Almost always he is sympathetic to readers. The hero talks about the events of twenty years ago, evaluating them from the standpoint of newly acquired experience. Now touching, now ironically, now lamenting, he makes subtle psychological observations on himself and on others, behind which a perceptive and omniscient author is guessed.

For the hero, a journey through Germany is the beginning of a life journey. Since he wanted to join the student business, it means that he himself recently graduated from one of the German universities, and for Turgenev this is an autobiographical detail. That N.N. meets compatriots in the German provinces, it seems both strange and fateful, because he usually avoided them abroad and in a big city he would certainly have avoided making acquaintance. So the motive of fate is for the first time outlined in the story.

N.N. and his new acquaintance Gagin are surprisingly similar. These are soft, noble, European-educated people, subtle connoisseurs of art. You can sincerely become attached to them, but since life turned towards them only with its sunny side, their “half-delicateness” threatens to turn into lack of will. A developed intellect gives rise to enhanced reflection and, as a result, indecision.

I soon understood it. It was just a Russian soul, truthful, honest, simple, but, unfortunately, a little sluggish, without tenacity and inner heat. Youth did not seethe in him; she glowed with a soft light. He was very nice and smart, but I could not imagine what would become of him as soon as he matured. To be an artist... Without bitter, constant work there are no artists... but to work, I thought, looking at his soft features, listening to his unhurried speech - no! you will not work, you will not be able to surrender.

This is how Oblomov's features appear in Gagina. A characteristic episode is when Gagin went to study, and N.N., having joined him, wanted to read, then two friends, instead of doing business, “rather cleverly and subtly talked about exactly how it should work.” Here, the author's irony over the "diligence" of the Russian nobles is obvious, which in "Fathers and Sons" will grow to a sad conclusion about their inability to transform Russian reality. That is how N.G. understood the story. Chernyshevsky in his critical article "Russian man on rendez-vous" ("Atenaeus" 1858). Drawing an analogy between Mr. N. N., whom he calls Romeo, on the one hand, and Pechorin (“A Hero of Our Time”), Beltov (“Who is to blame?” Herzen), Agarin (“Sasha” Nekrasov), Rudin - on the other hand, Chernyshevsky establishes the social typicality of the behavior of the hero "Asia" and sharply condemns him, seeing in him almost a scoundrel. Chernyshevsky admits that Mr. N. N. belongs to the best people of noble society, but he considers that the historical role of figures of this type, that is, Russian liberal nobles, has been played, that they have lost their progressive significance. Such a sharp assessment of the hero was alien to Turgenev. His task was to translate the conflict into a universal, philosophical plane and show the unattainability of the ideal.

If the author makes the image of Gagin completely understandable to readers, then his sister appears as a riddle, the solution of which N.N. gets carried away at first with curiosity, and then selflessly, but still cannot comprehend to the end. Her unusual liveliness is bizarrely combined with a timid shyness caused by her illegitimate birth and long life in the village. This is also the source of her unsociableness and thoughtful daydreaming (remember how she loves to be alone, constantly runs away from her brother and N.N., and on the first evening of meeting she goes to her place and “without lighting a candle, she stands behind an unopened window for a long time”). The last features bring Asya closer to her favorite heroine - Tatyana Larina.

But it is very difficult to form a complete picture of Asya's character: it is the embodiment of uncertainty and variability. (“What a chameleon this girl is!” - N.N. involuntarily exclaims) Either she is shy of a stranger, then she suddenly laughs, (“Asia, as if on purpose, as soon as she saw me, burst out laughing for no reason and, out of her habit, immediately ran away Gagin was embarrassed, muttered after her that she was crazy, asked me to excuse her”); sometimes he climbs the ruins and sings songs loudly, which is completely indecent for a secular young lady. But now she meets the dear English and begins to portray a well-bred person, prim in respect for decorum. After listening to the reading of Goethe's poem "Hermann and Dorothea," she wants to appear homely and sedate, like Dorothea. Then he “imposes fasting and repentance on himself” and turns into a Russian provincial girl. It is impossible to tell at what point she is more herself. Her image shimmers, shimmering with different colors, strokes, intonations.

The rapid change in her moods is aggravated by the fact that Asya often acts inconsistently with her own feelings and desires: “Sometimes I want to cry, but I laugh. You shouldn't judge me...by what I do”; “Sometimes I don’t know what’s in my head.<...>Sometimes I'm afraid of myself, by God. The last phrase brings her closer to the mysterious beloved of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov from “Fathers and Sons” (“What was nesting in this soul - God knows! It seemed that she was in the power of some secret, unknown to her forces; they played with her as they wanted ; her small mind could not cope with their whim"). The image of Asya expands endlessly, because in her the elemental, natural principle manifests itself. Women, according to the philosophical views of Turgenev, are closer to nature, because their nature has an emotional (spiritual) dominant, while the male has an intellectual (spiritual) one. If the natural element of love captures a man from outside (that is, he opposes it), then through a woman she directly expresses herself. The "unknown forces" inherent in every woman find their fullest expression in some. The amazing diversity and liveliness of Asya, the irresistible charm, freshness and passion stem precisely from here. Her fearful "wildness" also characterizes her as a "natural person", far from society. When Asya is sad, shadows “run across her face” like clouds across the sky, and her love is compared to a thunderstorm (“I assure you, we are prudent people, and we cannot imagine how deeply she feels and with what incredible strength these feelings are expressed in her; it comes upon her as unexpectedly and as irresistibly as a thunderstorm.

Nature is also depicted in a constant change of states and moods (an example is the sunset over the Rhine from Chapter II). She is truly alive. She languishes, imperiously invades the soul, as if touching its secret strings, quietly but authoritatively whispers to her about happiness: “The air caressed her face, and the lindens smelled so sweet that the chest involuntarily breathed deeper and deeper.” The moon "gazes intently" from a clear sky, and illuminates the city with "a serene and at the same time quietly soul-exciting light." Light, air, smells are depicted as perceptible to visibility. "a scarlet, thin light lay on the vines"; the air "swayed and rolled in waves"; “The evening quietly melted and shimmered into the night”; the “strong” smell of cannabis “amazes” N.N.; the nightingale "infected" him with the sweet poison of his sounds.

A separate, shortest chapter X is devoted to nature - the only descriptive one (which already completely contradicts the form of an oral story, for which a presentation of the general outline of events is typical). This isolation indicates the philosophical significance of the passage:

<...>Having entered the middle of the Rhine, I asked the carrier to let the boat go downstream. The old man lifted the oars - and the royal river carried us. Looking around, listening, remembering, I suddenly felt a secret uneasiness in my heart ... I raised my eyes to the sky - but there was no peace in the sky either: dotted with stars, it kept stirring, moving, shuddering; I leaned towards the river... but even there, and in that dark, cold depth, the stars also swayed and trembled; an alarming animation seemed to me everywhere - and anxiety grew in me. I leaned on the edge of the boat ... The whisper of the wind in my ears, the quiet murmur of the water behind the stern irritated me, and the fresh breath of the wave did not cool me; the nightingale sang on the shore and infected me with the sweet poison of its sounds. Tears welled up in my eyes, but they were not tears of pointless delight. What I felt was not that vague, until recently experienced feeling of all-encompassing desires, when the soul expands, sounds, when it seems to it that it understands and loves everything .. No! I have a thirst for happiness. I didn’t dare to call him by his name yet, but happiness, happiness to the point of satiety - that’s what I wanted, that’s what I yearned for ... And the boat kept on rushing, and the old ferryman sat and dozed, bending over the oars.

It seems to the hero that he voluntarily trusts the flow, but in fact he is drawn by an endless stream of life, which he is unable to resist. The landscape is mystically beautiful, but secretly menacing. The intoxication of life and the insane thirst for happiness are accompanied by the growth of a vague and persistent anxiety. The hero floats over the "dark, cold depths", where the abyss of "moving stars" is reflected (Turgenev almost repeats Tyutchev's metaphors: "chaos stirs", "And we float, surrounded on all sides by a flaming abyss").

The “majestic” and “royal” Rhine is likened to the river of life and becomes a symbol of nature as a whole (water is one of its primary elements). At the same time, it is covered with many legends and deeply integrated into German culture: at the stone bench on the shore, from where N.N. for hours he admired the “majestic river”, from the branches of a huge ash tree peeps out “a small statue of the Madonna”; not far from the house of the Gagins, the rock of Lorelei rises; Finally, by the river itself, “over the grave of a man who drowned about seventy years ago, stood a stone cross with an old inscription half-buried into the ground.” These images develop the themes of love and death, and at the same time correlate with the image of Asya: it is from the bench by the statue of the Madonna that the hero will want to go to the city of L., where he will meet Asya, and later in the same place he will learn from Gagin the secret of Asya’s birth, after which he will become possible convergence; Asya is the first to mention the cliff of Lorelei. Then when brother and N.N. looking for Asya in the ruins of a knight's castle, they find her sitting "on a ledge of a wall, right above the abyss" - in knightly times she sat on the top of a cliff above the fatal whirlpool of Lorelei, charming and ruining those floating along the river, hence the involuntary "hostile feeling" of N. N. at the sight of her. The legend of Lorelei depicts love as captivating a person and then destroying him, which corresponds to Turgenev's concept. Finally, Asya's white dress will flash in the dark at the stone cross on the shore, when the hero is looking for her in vain after an awkward date, and this emphasis on the motive of death will emphasize the tragic end of the love story - and the earthly path of N.N.

It is symbolically important that the Rhine separates the hero and the heroine: going to Asya, the hero must always come into contact with the elements. The Rhine turns out to be both a connecting link between the heroes, and at the same time an obstacle. Finally, it is along the Rhine that Asya sails away from him forever, and when the hero hurries after her on another flight of the steamer, he sees a young couple on one side of the Rhine (the maid Ganhen is already cheating on her fiancé who has gone into the soldiers; by the way, Ganhen is a diminutive of Anna, as and Asya), “and on the other side of the Rhine, my little Madonna still looked out sadly from the dark green of the old ash tree.”

The famous vineyards of the Rhine valley are also associated with the Rhine, which in the figurative system of the story symbolize the flowering of youth, the juice of life and its sweetness. It is this phase of the zenith, fullness and fermentation of forces that the hero experiences. This motif acquires plot development in an episode of a student feast - "the joyful boiling of young, fresh life, this impulse forward - wherever it is, if only forward" (recall the Anacreontic image of a happy "life feast" in Pushkin's poetry). Thus, when the hero sets off across the Rhine for the "celebration of life" and youth, he meets Asya and her brother, gaining both friendship and love. Soon he is feasting with Gagin on a hill overlooking the Rhine, enjoying the distant sounds of music from the commercial, and when two friends drink a bottle of Rhine wine, “the moon has risen and played along the Rhine; everything lit up, darkened, changed, even the wine in our faceted glasses shone with a mysterious brilliance. So the Rhine wine in the interlocking of motives and allusions is likened to a certain mysterious elixir of youth (akin to the wine that was given by Mephistopheles to Faust before he falls in love with Gretchen). It is significant that Asya is also compared with wine and grapes: “There was something restless in all her movements: this wild animal had recently been grafted, this wine was still fermenting.” It remains to be noted that in the context of Pushkin's poetry, the feast of youth also has a downside: “The fading joy of the mad years is hard for me, like a vague hangover, and, like wine, the sadness of past days in my soul gets older, the stronger.” This elegiac context will be updated in the epilogue of the story.

On the same evening, the parting of the heroes is accompanied by the following significant detail:

– You drove into the moon pillar, you broke it, - Asya shouted to me. I lowered my eyes; around the boat, blackening, waves swayed. - Farewell! came her voice again. "Until tomorrow," Gagin said after her.

The boat has landed. I went out and looked around. There was no one to be seen on the opposite bank. The moon pillar again stretched like a golden bridge across the entire river.

The lunar pillar sets the vertical axis of the universe - it connects heaven and earth and can be interpreted as a symbol of cosmic harmony. At the same time, it, like a "golden bridge", connects both banks of the river. This is a sign of the resolution of all contradictions, the eternal unity of the natural world, where, however, a person will never penetrate, how not to go along the lunar road. With his movement, the hero involuntarily destroys a beautiful picture, which portends the destruction of his love (Asia finally suddenly shouts to him: “Farewell!”). At the moment when the hero breaks the moon pillar, he does not see it, and when he looks back from the shore, the golden bridge has already been restored to its former inviolability. Also, looking back into the past, the hero will understand what kind of feeling he destroyed when Asya and her brother have long disappeared from his life (as they disappear from the banks of the Rhine). And the natural harmony turned out to be perturbed for no more than a moment and, as before, indifferent to the fate of the hero, shines with its eternal beauty.

Finally, the river of life, "the river of times in its striving", in the endless alternation of births and deaths, turns out, as Derzhavin's quoted aphorism confirms, to be the river of "oblivion" - Lethe. And then the “peppy old man” carrier, tirelessly plunging oars into the gloomy “dark waters”, cannot but evoke associations with old Charon, transporting all new souls to the kingdom of the dead.

Especially difficult to interpret is the image of a small Catholic Madonna "with an almost childish face and a red heart on her chest, pierced by swords." Since Turgenev opens and ends the whole love story with this symbol, it means that he is one of the key ones for him. There is a similar image in Goethe's Faust: Gretchen, suffering from love, puts flowers to the statue of mater dolorosa with a sword in his heart. In addition, the Madonna's childish facial expression is similar to Asya (which gives the image of the heroine a timeless dimension). A red heart forever pierced by arrows is a sign that love is inseparable from suffering. I would like to pay special attention to the fact that the face of the Madonna always “peeps out sadly” “from the branches” or “from the dark green of the old ash tree”. Thus, this image can be understood as one of the faces of nature. In Gothic temples, on portals and capitals, the faces and figures of saints were surrounded by floral ornaments - leaves and flowers carved from stone, and the columns of High German Gothic were likened to tree trunks in shape. This was due to the pagan echo of the early Christian worldview and, most importantly, the understanding of the temple as a model of the universe - with heaven and earth, plants and animals, people and spirits, saints and deities of the elements - a world transformed, brought to harmony by God's grace. Nature also has a spiritual, mysterious face, especially when it is enlightened by sorrow. Another pantheist, Tyutchev, also felt similar states in nature: “... Damage, exhaustion, and on everything / That meek smile of withering, / What in a rational being we call / The divine bashfulness of suffering.”

But nature is changeable not only in terms of lighting and weather, but also in terms of the general spirit, the structure of being, which it sets. In Germany, in June, she rejoices, inspiring the hero with a sense of freedom and the boundlessness of his forces. A different mood seizes him when he remembers the Russian landscape:

“... suddenly I was struck by a strong, familiar, but rare smell in Germany. I stopped and saw a small hemp bed near the road. Her steppe smell instantly reminded me of my homeland and aroused in my soul a passionate longing for her. I wanted to breathe Russian air, to walk on Russian soil. “What am I doing here, why am I dragging myself in a foreign country, between strangers—” I exclaimed, and the deathly heaviness that I felt in my heart suddenly resolved into a bitter and burning excitement.

For the first time, motives of longing and bitterness appear on the pages of the story. The next day, as if guessing his thoughts, N.N., and the heroine shows her “Russianness”:

Is it because I thought a lot about Russia at night and in the morning - Asya seemed to me a completely Russian girl, a simple girl, almost a maid. She was wearing an old dress, she combed her hair behind her ears, and sat, not moving, by the window, sewing in the embroidery frame, modestly, quietly, as if she had done nothing else in her life. She said almost nothing, calmly looked at her work, and her features took on such an insignificant, everyday expression that I involuntarily remembered our home-grown Katya and Masha. To complete the resemblance, she began to hum "Mother, dove" in an undertone. I looked at her yellowish, faded face, remembered yesterday's dreams, and I felt sorry for something.

So, the idea of ​​everyday life, aging, the decline of life is associated with Russia. Russian nature is exciting in its elemental power, but strict and joyless. And a Russian woman In the artistic system of Turgenev of the 50s, called by fate to humility and fulfillment of duty - like Tatyana Larina, who marries an unloved man and remains faithful to him, like Liza Kalitina, the heroine of Turgenev's next novel. Such will be Lisa Kalitina from "The Noble Nest" with her deep religiosity, renunciation of life and happiness (cf. Tyutchev's poem "Russian Woman"). In The Nest of Nobles, the description of the steppe unfolds into a whole philosophy of Russian life:

“... and suddenly finds a dead silence; nothing will knock, nothing will move; the wind does not move the leaf; the swallows rush without a cry one after another over the earth, and the soul becomes sad from their silent raid. “When I am at the bottom of the river,” Lavretsky thinks again. “And always, at all times, life is quiet and unhurried here,” he thinks, “whoever enters its circle, submit: there is nothing to worry about, nothing to stir up; here only he is lucky who paves his path slowly, like a plowman furrows with a plow. And what strength is all around, what health in this inactive stillness!<...>each leaf on each tree, each grass on its stem, expands in its entire width. My best years have gone into womanly love, - Lavretsky continues to think, - let boredom sober me up here, let it calm me down, prepare me so that I too can do things slowly.<...>At the same time, in other places on earth, life was seething, hurrying, rumbling; here the same life flowed inaudibly, like water over swamp grasses; and until the very evening Lavretsky could not tear himself away from the contemplation of this departing, flowing life; sorrow for the past melted in his soul like spring snow—and a strange thing! “There has never been such a deep and strong feeling of homeland in him.”

In the face of the ancient forest of Polesie, which “is sullenly silent or howls deafly,” “the consciousness of our insignificance” penetrates into the human heart (“A trip to Polesie”). There, it seems, nature says to a person: “I don’t care about you - I reign, and you are fussing about how not to die.” In fact, nature is one, unchanging and multifaceted at the same time, it just turns in a person with new sides, embodying different phases of being.

Asya's mother, the maid of the late lady, is called Tatyana (Greek for "martyr"), and strictness, humility, prudence, and religiosity are emphasized in her appearance. After the birth of Asya, she herself refused to marry her father, considering herself unworthy of being a lady. Natural passion and the rejection of it - these are the constants of the Russian female character. Asya, remembering her mother, directly quotes "Onegin" and says that she "would like to be Tatyana." Contemplating the procession of the pilgrims, Asya dreams: I wish I could go with them,<...>“Go somewhere far away, to prayer, to a difficult feat,” which already outlines the image of Lisa Kalitina.

Onegin's motives are directly reflected in the plot: Asya is the first to write to N.N. a note with an unexpected confession after a short acquaintance, and the hero, following Onegin, responds to a declaration of love with a “reprimand”, emphasizing that not everyone would treat her as honestly as he did. ("You are dealing with an honest man - yes, an honest man")

Like Tatyana, Asya reads a lot indiscriminately (N.N. finds her reading a bad French novel) and, according to literary stereotypes, composes a hero for herself (“No, Asya needs a hero, an extraordinary person - or a picturesque shepherd in a mountain gorge”). But if Tatyana "loves without joking", then Asya also "does not have a single feeling in half." Her feeling is much deeper than that of the hero. N.N. first of all, an esthete: he egoistically dreams of endless “happiness”, enjoys the poetry of relations with Asya, is touched by her childish spontaneity and admires, being an artist in his soul, how “her slender appearance was clearly and beautifully drawn” on the ledge of a medieval wall, as she sits in garden, "all doused with a clear sunbeam." For Asya, love is the first responsible life test, an almost desperate attempt to know oneself and the world. It is no coincidence that it is she who pronounces Faust's daring dream of wings. If the thirst for infinite happiness Mr. N.N. for all its loftiness is selfish in its orientation, then Asya’s desire for a “difficult feat”, an ambitious desire to “leave a trace behind oneself” implies life with others and for others (a feat is always done for someone). “In Asya's imagination, lofty human aspirations, high moral ideals do not contradict the hope for the realization of personal happiness, on the contrary, they presuppose each other. The love that has arisen, although not yet realized, helps her in determining her ideals.<...>She is demanding of herself and needs help to fulfill her aspirations. “Tell me what should I read? Tell me what should I do? - she asks N. However, Mr. N. is not a hero, as Asya considers him, he is not able to play the role that is assigned to him. Therefore, the hero misunderstands a lot in Asya’s feelings: “... I’m not only about the future - I didn’t think about tomorrow; I felt very good. Asya blushed when I entered the room; I noticed that she was dressed up again, but the expression of her face did not go with her outfit: it was sad. And I came so cheerful!”

At the highest moment of meeting in Asa, the natural principle manifests itself with irresistible force:

I raised my head and saw her face. How it suddenly changed! The expression of fear vanished from him, his gaze went somewhere far away and carried me along with it, his lips parted slightly, his forehead turned pale as marble, and the curls moved back, as if the wind had thrown them away. I forgot everything, I pulled her towards me - her hand obediently obeyed, her whole body followed her hand, the shawl rolled from her shoulders, and her head quietly lay on my chest, lay under my burning lips.

– It was also described how a canoe was drawn by the river. The gaze went into the distance, as if the distance of the sky opened up, when the clouds parted, and the curls thrown back by the wind convey the sensations of a winged flight. But happiness, according to Turgenev, is possible only for a moment. When the hero thinks that it is near, the author's voice clearly intrudes into his speech: “Happiness has no tomorrow; he does not have yesterday either; it does not remember the past, does not think about the future; he has a present - and that is not a day, but an instant. I don’t remember how I got to Z. It wasn’t my legs that carried me, it wasn’t the boat that carried me: some kind of wide, strong wings lifted me. At this moment, Asya is already lost to him (just as Onegin passionately and seriously fell in love with Tatyana, already lost to him).

Unpreparedness N.N. taking a decisive step can be attributed to the Russian national character, although, of course, not so directly and vulgarly sociologically as Chernyshevsky did. But, if we have reason to compare Gagin and N.N. with Oblomov (the excerpt "Oblomov's Dream" was published already in 1848), then the antithesis in the person of the German Stolz inevitably arises in the mind and seeks embodiment, especially since the action of "Asia" takes place on German soil. This antithesis is not directly expressed in the system of characters, but comes through when considering the Goethe motives of the story. This is, firstly, Faust himself, who decided to defy fate and sacrifice immortality for the sake of the highest moment of happiness, and, secondly, Hermann from Goethe's poem "Hermann and Dorothea", read by Mr. N.N. new acquaintances: This is not only an idyll of German life, but also a story of happy love, which was not prevented by the social inequality of her beloved (the refugee Dorothea is at first ready to be hired as a servant in Herman's house). The most significant thing is that in Goethe Hermann falls in love with Dorothea at first sight and proposes to her on the same day, while it is precisely the need to make a decision in one evening that plunges Mr. N.N. into confusion and confusion.

But it would be a mistake to think that the outcome of the meeting depended only on two lovers. He was predetermined and fate. Recall that a third character also takes part in the meeting scene - the old widow Frau Louise. She good-naturedly patronizes young people, but some features of her appearance should alert us very much. For the first time we see her in Chapter IV, when friends come to the German woman for Asya, so that she says goodbye to the departing N.N. But instead, Asya gives him a branch of geranium through Gagin (which will later remain the only memory of Asya), but refuses to go down:

A lighted window on the third floor banged and opened, and we saw Asya's dark head. The toothless and blind-sighted face of an old German woman peeped out from behind her.

– I'm here, - Asya said, coquettishly leaning her elbows on the window, - I feel good here. On you, take it, - she added, throwing a geranium branch to Gagin, - imagine that I am the lady of your heart.

Frau Louise laughed.

When Gagin passes N.N. a branch, he returns home "with a strange heaviness in his heart", which then gives way to longing at the memory of Russia.

The whole scene is filled with dark symbolism. Asya's lovely head and the "toothless" old woman's face behind form together an allegorical picture of the unity of love and death - a common plot of church painting of the Baroque era. At the same time, the image of the old woman is associated with the ancient goddess of fate - Parka.

In chapter IX, Asya admits that it was Frau Louise who told her the legend of Lorelei, and adds, as if by chance: “I like this tale. Frau Louise tells me all sorts of fairy tales. Frau Luise has a black cat with yellow eyes...” It turns out that the German sorceress Frau Luise tells Asya about the beautiful sorceress Lorelei. This casts an ominous and magical glow on Asya and her love (the Old Witch is again a character from Faust). It is noteworthy that Asya is sincerely attached to the old German woman, and she, in turn, is very sympathetic to Mr. N.N. It turns out that love and death are inseparable and act “together”.

On a date with Asya, the hero does not go to the stone chapel, as was originally planned, but to Frau Louise's house, which looks like a "huge, hunched bird." Changing the place of rendezvous is an ominous sign, for a stone chapel can symbolize the longevity and sanctification of a relationship, while Frau Louise's house has an almost demonic flavor.

I knocked weakly on the door; she opened at once. I crossed the threshold and found myself in complete darkness. - Here! I heard an old woman's voice. - Offers. I took a step or two gropingly, someone's bony hand took my hand. “You, Frau Louise,” I asked. “I,” the same voice answered me, “I, my fine young man.<...>In the faint light that fell from the tiny window, I saw the wrinkled face of the burgomaster's widow. A cloyingly sly smile stretched her sunken lips, her dull eyes shrank.

Clearer allusions to the mystical meaning of the image are hardly possible within the framework of realism. Finally, the widow of the burgomaster, “smiling with her nasty smile,” calls the hero to give him Asya’s last note with the words “goodbye forever!”

The motive of death concerns Asya in the epilogue:

…I keep, as a shrine, her notes and a dried geranium flower, the same flower that she once threw to me from the window. It still emits a faint smell, and the hand that gave it to me, that hand that I only once had to press to my lips, may have been smoldering in the grave for a long time ... And I myself - what happened to me? What is left of me, of those blissful and anxious days, of those winged hopes and aspirations? Thus, the light evaporation of an insignificant grass survives all the joys and all the sorrows of a person - it survives the person himself.

The mention of Asya's "perhaps decayed" hand evokes the "bony hand" of Frau Louise. So love, death (and nature, indicated by a geranium branch) are finally intertwined with a common motif and “shake hands with each other” ... And the words that end the story about the evaporation of an insignificant grass that outlives a person (a sign of the eternity of nature) directly echo the finale of “Fathers and Sons” with their philosophical picture of flowers on Bazarov's grave.

However, the circle of associations with which Turgenev surrounds his heroine can be continued. In her endless variability and playful playfulness in her behavior, Asya resembles another romantic, fantastic heroine - Ondine from the poem of the same name by Zhukovsky (a poetic translation of the poem by the German romanticist De La Motte Fouquet, so this parallel organically fits into the German background of Turgenev's story). Undine - a river deity in the form of a beautiful girl living among people, with whom a noble knight falls in love, marries her, but then leaves,

The rapprochement of Asya with Lorelei and with the Rhine by a number of common motives confirms this parallel (Ondine leaves her husband, plunging into the jets of the Danube). This analogy also confirms Asya's organic connection with nature, because Ondine is a fantastic creature personifying the natural element - water, hence her endless waywardness and variability, transitions from stormy jokes to affectionate meekness. And here is how Asya is described:

I have not seen a creature more mobile. Not for a moment did she sit still; she got up, ran into the house and ran again, sang in an undertone, often laughed, and in a strange way: it seemed that she laughed not at what she heard, but at various thoughts that came into her head. Her large eyes looked straight, bright, bold, but sometimes her eyelids squinted slightly, and then her gaze suddenly became deep and tender.

Asya's "wildness" is especially pronounced when she climbs alone over the ruins of a knight's castle overgrown with bushes. When she, laughing, jumps over them, “like a goat, she fully reveals her closeness to the natural world, and at that moment N.N. feels in it something alien, hostile. Even her appearance at this moment speaks of the wild wildness of a natural being: “As if she had guessed my thoughts, she suddenly threw a quick and piercing look at me, laughed again, jumped off the wall in two jumps.<...>A strange smile slightly twitched her eyebrows, nostrils and lips; dark eyes squinted half-arrogantly, half-jovially. Gagin constantly repeats that he should be condescending to Asa, and the fisherman and his wife say the same about Ondine (“Everything will mischief, but she will be eighteen years old; but her heart is the kindest in her”<...>even though at times you gasp, you still love Undine. Isn't it?" - "What's true is true; You can't stop loving her at all."

But then, when Asya gets used to N.N. and begins to speak frankly with him, then becomes childishly meek and trusting. In the same way, Undine, alone with a knight, shows loving humility and devotion.

The motive of flight is also characteristic of both heroines: just as Ondine often runs away from old people, and once a knight and a fisherman go together to look for her at night, so Asya often runs away from her brother, and then from N.N., and then he is together with Gagin starts looking for her in the dark.

Both heroines are given the motif of the mystery of birth. In the case of Ondine, when the current carries her to the fishermen, then for her this is the only opportunity to get into the world of people. It is possible that Asya’s illegitimacy is also due to her motivational commonality with Ondine, which, on the one hand, looks like a kind of inferiority and leads to the inability to endure the refusal of Mr. N.N., and on the other hand, her dual origin gives her genuine originality and mystery. Undine at the time of the poem is 18 years old, Asya is the eighteenth year. (It is interesting that the fishermen at baptism wanted to call Ondine Dorothea - ‘God’s gift’, and Asya imitates, in particular, Dorothea from Goethe’s idyll).

It is characteristic that if a knight approaches Ondine in the midst of the natural world (on a cape cut off from the rest of the world by a forest, and then also by a flooded stream), then N.N. meets Asya in the German province - outside the usual urban environment, and their romance takes place outside the city walls, on the banks of the Rhine. Both love stories (in the phase of rapprochement of lovers) are oriented towards the idyll genre. It is Asya who chooses an apartment outside the city, with a magnificent view of the Rhine and vineyards.

N.N. all the time she feels that Asya behaves differently from noble girls (“She appeared to me as a semi-mysterious creature”). And the knight, despite being in love with Ondine, is constantly embarrassed by her otherness, feels something alien in her, involuntarily fears her, which ultimately kills his affection. N.N. also experiences something similar: “Asya herself, with her fiery head, with her past, with her upbringing, this attractive, but strange creature - I confess, she scared me.” So the duality of his feelings and behavior becomes clearer.

In Fouquet-Zhukovsky's poem De La Motte, the plot is built on the original idea of ​​the Christian consecration of pantheistic nature. Ondine, being in fact a pagan deity, is constantly called a cherub, an angel, everything demonic in her gradually disappears. True, she is baptized as a child, but she is baptized not with a Christian name, but with Undine - her natural name. Having fallen in love with a knight, she marries him in a Christian way, after which she has an immortal human soul, for which she humbly asks the priest to pray.

Both Ondine and Lorelei, like mermaids, destroy their beloved. However, both of them - at the same time and belong to the world of people and themselves suffer and die. Lorelei, bewitched by the god of the Rhine, throws herself into the waves out of love for the knight who once abandoned her. When Gulbrand leaves Ondine, she grieves doubly, because, continuing to love him, she is now obliged to kill him for treason according to the law of the realm of spirits, no matter how she tries to save him.

In philosophical terms, the plot of "Ondine" tells about the possibility of the unity of nature and man, in which a person acquires the fullness of elemental being, and nature acquires reason and an immortal soul.

When projecting the ideas of the poem onto the plot of Turgenev's story, it is confirmed that the union with Asya would be tantamount to a union with nature itself, which dearly loves and kills. Such is the fate of anyone who wants to connect with nature. But "All that threatens death, for the mortal heart conceals inexplicable pleasures, immortality, perhaps a pledge." But Turgenev's hero, the hero of modern times, refuses such a fatal union, and then the all-powerful laws of life and fate block his way back. The hero remains unharmed... to slowly lean towards his own sunset.

Let us recall that two aspects of being are united in Asa: the all-powerful and mysterious, elemental power of love (Gretchen's passion) - and Tatyana's Christian spirituality, the "mild smile of withering" of Russian nature. The text of "Ondine" also helps to clarify the image of the Madonna, looking out from the leaves of an ash tree. This is the face of spiritualized nature, which has acquired an immortal soul and therefore suffers forever.

Alekseeva Evgenia

This work examines some of the "sameness" in the genre, composition, ideological content, characterization in the stories of I.S. Turgenev "Asya" and "First Love".

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Municipal educational institution

"Verkhneuslonskaya Gymnasium"

Verkhneuslonsky municipal district

Republic of Tatarstan

Comparative analysis

genre-thematic, compositional parallels

In the stories of I.S. Turgenev "Asya" and "First Love"

(Study)

Performed:

Alekseeva Evgenia, 9th grade student

Supervisor:

Tikhonova T.N., Russian teacher

Language and Literature

1 qualification category

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..2 p.

1. Comparative analysis of the stories of I.S. Turgenev

“Asya”, “First Love”……………………………………………………….3 p.

Genre, plot…………………………………………………………………………..3 p.

Mr. N.N. and Volodya…………………………………………………..3 pp.

Female images…………………………………………………………………..4 p.

The theme of death in the stories…………………………………………………..6 p.

The role of masterpieces of art……………………………………………….6 p.

Features of the composition………………………………………………..7 p.

3. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………9 p.

4. List of references……………………………………………………………………………………………………………10

I. Introduction.

Love... This is probably the most mysterious of all human feelings. How to deal with heart disease, how to overcome sadness? Unrequited love - what is it? How this sacrament of love is performed, how a miracle happens: the world magically changes for the one who loves! Colors are brighter, sounds are clearer! Having fallen in love, a person feels more subtle, sees more sharply, his heart opens to beauty and goodness.

Love, like a candle brought into a dark, abandoned room, illuminates life. But is she durable and happy? Yes, the candle of love is short-lived, but it symbolizes both the eternal sun and the inextinguishable spirit, warming a person from the outside and from the inside.

I. S. Turgenev, perhaps, one of the few writers with poetic awe tells about the birth of an eternally young feeling - love. Tragically indifferent and at the same time seductively beautiful, his love has its other side. The joy and delight of first love softens her harsh tragedy. In the stories "Asya" and "First Love", the author considers the feeling of love as an inevitable submission and voluntary dependence, fate that dominates a person.

In "Ace" and in "First Love" the main themes are similar. This lost happiness, which was so close and so possible, this bitter and fruitless remorse. The protagonist in these stories is not the organizer of his own destiny. More like a destroyer. Love in the view of Turgenev is an element, it is not subject to a person, a person cannot force it to serve his happiness.

Despite the past century since the writing of the stories, despite the significantly changed relations between people, the position of the author of "First Love" and "Asia" remains understandable and close to the modern reader, perhaps because first love is a concept that exists outside of time. Turgenev's talent and skill allow us to make sure that the feelings experienced by his heroes in the last century are quite relevant today.

Both stories aroused a keen interest in me and prompted a desire to study them more closely. Therefore, in this work, I consider some "similarities" in the genre, composition, ideological content, characters of the characters.

II. Comparative analysis.

I.S. Turgenev builds most of his works as a narrative - a memory. As a result, "there is not only a reproduction, but also a transformation of what has been experienced in memory." The writer's works are distinguished by a unique tonality - the intonation of an elegy, the intonation of light sadness of memories.

"Asya" is built as a first-person story. A certain Mr. N.N. tells about his love, who, after many years, sums up his own life. Already an elderly person finds it necessary to single out this small episode as almost the main one in a series of lived years. He evaluates his words and actions in a different way, from the height of what he has experienced.

The plot of the story "First Love" has a lot in common with Asya. Both here and there, an elderly man tells about his first feeling. Reading "Asya", we can only guess who were the listeners of Mr. N.N. In the introduction of "First Love" both the characters and the situation are concretized. The heroes are named by name - "the owner, yes Sergey Nikolaevich, yes Vladimir Petrovich." Tell the story of first love - this pastime option is offered by the owner of the house to guests after a delicious dinner. The decision to fix the experience on paper shows its significance for Vladimir Petrovich. Thus, we can classify Turgenev's story "First Love" as an epistolary genre with a pronounced "story within a story" composition.

Both heroes are united by the tragedy of love and regret about the words not said in time: “No! not a single eye has replaced for me those eyes that once looked at me with love, norto whose heart, clinging to my chest, my heart did not respond with such joyful and sweet fading! ("Asya", ch. 22), "Oh, what would I do if I wasted time!" than memories of that quickly flying, morning, spring thunderstorm? (“First Love”, ch. 22), “O meek feelings, soft sounds, kindness and calmness of a touched soul, melting joy of the first tenderness of love, where are you, where are you?” (“First love”, ch.7). Why did not the happiness of our heroes take place? Maybe because of the excessive contemplative attitude to the world of Mr. N.N. and excessive timidity and obedience to Father Volodya?

It is this that does not allow the heroes to comprehend the attitude towards people in time and even understand themselves, this does not allow them to take the right action. At decisive moments in their lives, both begin to reflect, delve into themselves, analyze their mental and psychological state. But for happiness, sometimes one word spoken at the right time is enough. “… meanwhile, my heart was very bitter.” “However,” I thought, “they know how to pretend! But why? What's the point of fooling me? I did not expect this from him ... ”(“ Asya ”, ch. 6); “Already my hands slid around her figure… But suddenly the memory of Gagin, like lightning, lit up me.” (“Asya”, ch.16). “I suddenly felt very sad ... I tried not to cry ...” (“First Love”, ch. 4)

N.N. already an adult mature young man of 25 years old, Volodya is an inexperienced enthusiastic young man of 16 years old ...

Both of them were incredibly lucky: fate gave them a rare gift - they loved and were loved. But true love does not go unnoticed. “I am unable to convey the feeling with which I left. I wouldn't want it to ever happen again; but I would consider myself unhappy if I never experienced it. (“First love”, ch.20).

Special poetry fanned female images in the work of Turgenev. Thanks to Asya and Zinaida, the famous literary term "Turgenev's girl" appeared. What unites these heroines?

Asya is an extravagant girl of 17 years old, a person of action, lives in the name of love and people. She "had something of her own, special, in the warehouse of her swarthy, round face, with a small thin nose, almost childish cheeks and black bright eyes." Asya lives by the direct movement of her heart; in her, not a single feeling is half. Turgenev from the first pages of the story reveals the inner world of Asya. It is characterized by a subtle experience of beauty. For living, she chose a poetic house, from where "the view was definitely wonderful." She knows how to see beauty where no one notices it. (Suffice it to recall the lunar pillar broken by Mr. N.N.). It was with the advent of Asya that Mr. N.N. begins to subtly feel nature: “... I was especially struck by the purity and depth of the sky, the radiant transparency of the air” (ch. 2).

Zinaida appears as a vision between green raspberry bushes in the garden, thus Turgenev emphasizes the unity of the heroine with nature, the inner harmony of the girl. It is no coincidence that in moments of sadness she asks her page to read Pushkin's "On the Hills of Georgia": "That's what poetry is good for: it tells us what is not and what is not only better than what is, but even more like the truth..." (Ch. 9). Like Grin's Assol, Zinaida "sees more than what is visible."

Zinaida, in love, turns out to be a talented poetess: she suggests a plot for a poem from the times of Ancient Greece and Rome, another time the heroine imagines “the purple sails that Cleopatra had on the golden ship when she rode towards Antony.”

In the proud princess, a feeling of rejection breaks through, which makes her related to Asya. Illegitimate Asya wants

"... make the whole world forget its origin..." (Ch. 8). Because of the false position, “vanity developed in her strongly, distrust too; bad habits took root, simplicity disappeared. “... but her heart did not deteriorate, her mind survived.” (Ch. 8). Zinaida is also burdened by her mother’s bad manners, her slovenliness, poverty, and promiscuity in acquaintances: “Look around ... Or do you think that I don’t understand this, don’t feel it? .. and you can seriously assure me that such a life is worth it, not to risk it for a moment of pleasure - I'm not talking about happiness ”(ch. 10)

Both heroines are not satisfied with an empty and idle existence: Asya dreams of “going somewhere ... to pray, to a difficult feat”, wants to “live for good reason, leave a trace behind her ...” (ch. 9), fly up like birds. Zinaida, "... I would have gone to the ends of the world" (Ch. 9) or rush off into the night into the darkness with the Bacchantes.

Both heroines crave strong, sincere feelings. Asya "... is able to get sick, run away, make a date ..." (ch. 14), she "... needs a hero, an extraordinary person ..." (ch. 8). Zinaida confesses to Volodya: “No; I can't love those who I have to look down on. I need someone who would break me himself ... ”(ch. 9). Indeed, Turgenev's girls are ready to obey, ready to endure pain for the sake of love, ready to sacrifice themselves. Asya, in a fit of passion, writes a letter to Mr. N.N., invites him on a date: “... her head quietly lay on my chest, lay under my burning lips ...

Yours…” she whispered in a barely audible voice. (ch.16). Zinaida, with trembling gratitude, accepts the blow with a whip: “... slowly raising her hand to her lips, she kissed the scar that was scarlet on her.” (ch.21). And even the signs of falling in love are manifested in them in the same way: humility, thoughtfulness, sadness, frequent mood swings and an abundance of questions, as if, asking others, they want to hear the answer to their feelings.

Maybe Turgenev's men are superior to Turgenev's women in prudence, but immeasurably inferior in vitality and uncompromisingness, they give in to the whole feeling of the heroines.

Invariably, next to love, the theme of death sounds in Turgenev. Asya dies morally, her feelings and life are broken, Anna Nikolaevna appears on the pages, who will never look at the world with “bright black eyes” and laugh with “quiet joyful laughter”. Physical death overtakes Father Volodya and Zinaida. At the end of both stories, elegiac philosophizing on the theme of death sounds: “So the light evaporation of an insignificant grass survives all the joys and all the sorrows of a person - it survives the person himself.” (“Asya”, ch.22). Human life is rapidly coming to an end. Nature is eternal. In "First Love" there is a slightly different interpretation of this topic: a person is arranged in such a way that he loves life and does not want to part with it: "The old body still persisted." The "horror of death" is largely due to the consciousness of grave unrepentant sins. “Lord, forgive me my sins,” the dying old woman did not stop whispering. “And I remember ... I was scared for Zinaida, and I wanted to pray for her, for my father - and for myself.” (“First love”, ch.22).

All the heroes of Turgenev are aesthetically developed, hence the strongest influence of masterpieces of art and literature on them. The background of the love of Mr. N.N. and Asya serves Lanner's waltz. The heroes remember Pushkin, read "Hermann and Dorothea" by I. Goethe. Volodya associates himself with Shakespeare's Othello, is inspired by Schiller's The Robbers, recites Pushkin's On the Hills of Georgia by heart.

The composition of the stories is interesting: already at the very beginning, the author foreshadows trouble through the details of the landscape: in "Ace" - broken by Mr. N.N. lunar pillar (ch.2). In "First Love" - ​​a thunderstorm (ch. 7).

I was also surprised to find that each of the stories consists of 22 chapters! Is it by chance? 22 is an even number, a pair of even numbers. The heroes could be together, the heroes could be happy if they acted in time. Mr. N.N. postponed his happiness “for tomorrow”, but “Happiness has no tomorrow; he does not have yesterday either; it does not remember the past, does not think about the future; he has a present - and that is not a day - but an instant ”(“ Asya ”, ch. 20). And Volodya was going to visit the former "passion" for too long: she died. “The thought that I could see her and did not see and will never see her - this bitter thought glared at me with all the force of an irresistible reproach” (“First Love”, ch. 22)

III. Conclusion.

I tried to draw parallels between two stories by I.S. Turgenev about first love. After analyzing both works, I saw a similarity in themes: experiences of first love, similarity of ideological content: lost happiness, similarity of genres: elegiac memories, similarity of compositions: 22 chapters each, the narration is in the first person, similarity in the characters of the characters: strong, passionate, tender women and indecisive men. Nevertheless, each story is charming in its own way. The plots are entertaining, poignant, expressive language of narration. Perhaps these stories still attract readers with their autobiographical nature? Turgenev himself highly appreciated his creations: “I wrote her (“Asya”) passionately, almost with tears”, “This (“First Love”) is the only thing that still gives me pleasure, because this is life itself , this is not composed ... ".

I want to finish my work with the words of N.A. Verderevskaya: “A person who has known love touches the great mystery of life ... Turgenev’s hero ... cannot stop loving ... Once experienced, it is always unique, and the trace that it leaves in a person’s soul is a bleeding wound. And here there is no place for skepticism, irony, or emphasized authorial detachment.” Before the power of feeling, Turgenev bows his head.

Literature:

1. I.S. Turgenev “Tales. Stories. Poems in prose, Moscow, Drofa, 2002.
2. O.V. Timashova "Russian classics of the 19th century", Saratov, "Lyceum", 2005
3. V.A. Nedzvetsky "Love in the life of Turgenev's hero" - LVSh, 2006, No. 11.
4. V.A. Nedzvetsky Tempted Harmony” - LHS, 2002, No. 2.