George Sand and J.S. Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev

A few words about George Sand (Letter to the publisher of Novoye Vremya)

Dear Alexey Sergeevich!

While driving through St. Petersburg, I read the words in one of your feuilletons: “George Sand died—and I don’t want to talk about it.” By this you probably wanted to say that you need to talk a lot about her or nothing. I have no doubt that later “New Time” filled this gap and, like other magazines, reported at least a biographical sketch of the great writer; but still, I ask permission to say a word about her in your magazine, although I also now have neither the time nor the opportunity to say “much” and although this “word” is not even mine, as you will now see. I had the good fortune of personally meeting George Sand - please do not take this expression as an ordinary phrase: whoever could see this rare creature up close should really consider himself lucky. I received a letter the other day from a French woman who also knew her briefly; this is what is written in this letter: “The last words of our dear friend were: “Leave... the greens!” (Laissez... verdure...), that is, do not put a stone on my grave, let grass grow on it! And her will will be respected: only wild flowers will grow on her grave. I find that these last words so touching, so significant, so in agreement with this life, which has so long ago given itself over to everything good and simple... This love of nature, truth, this humility before it, this inexhaustible kindness, quiet, always even and always present!.. Ah, what a misfortune her death is! A silent mystery has swallowed up forever one of the best creatures that ever lived - and we will never see it again noble face, this golden heart no longer beats - all this is now covered with earth. Regrets for her will be sincere and lasting, but I find that her kindness is not talked about enough. Rare as genius is, such kindness is even rarer. But it is still possible to learn at least somewhat, but genius cannot, and therefore we need to talk about it, about this kindness, glorify it, point to it. This active, living kindness attracted George Sand to her and secured for her those many friends who remained invariably faithful to her to the end and who were in all levels of society. When she was buried, one of the peasants from the environs of Nogan (George Sand Castle) approached the grave and, laying a wreath on it, said: “On behalf of the peasants of Nogan - not on behalf of the poor; by her grace there were no poor here.” But George Sand herself was not rich and, working until the end of her life, she only made ends meet!" I have almost nothing to add to these lines; I can only vouch for their complete truthfulness. When, eight years ago, I first became close to George Sand, the rapturous surprise that she once aroused in me had long since disappeared, I no longer worshiped her; but it was impossible to enter her circle privacy- and not become her admirer, in another, perhaps, in the best sense. Everyone immediately felt that they were in the presence of an infinitely generous, benevolent nature, in which everything selfish had long ago been burned out to the ground by the unquenchable flame of poetic enthusiasm, faith in the ideal, to which everything human was accessible and dear, from which there was a breath of help and participation... And above all this there is some kind of unconscious aura, something high, free, heroic... Believe me: George Sand is one of our saints; you will, of course, understand what I mean with this word. Excuse the incoherence and fragmentation of this letter and accept the assurance of the friendly feelings of your devotee

Dear Alexey Sergeevich!

Driving through St. Petersburg, I read the words in one of your feuilletons: “George Sand died - and I don’t want to talk about it.” By this you probably wanted to say that you need to talk a lot about her or nothing. I have no doubt that later “New Time” filled this gap and, like other magazines, reported at least a biographical sketch of the great writer; but still, I ask permission to say a word about her in your magazine, although I also now have neither the time nor the opportunity to say “much” and although this “word” is not even mine, as you will now see. I had the good fortune of personally meeting George Sand - please do not take this expression for an ordinary phrase: whoever could see this rare creature up close should really consider himself lucky. I received a letter the other day from a French woman who also knew her briefly; This is what is in this letter:

“The last words of our dear friend were: “Leave... the greenery!” (Laissez... verdure...), that is, do not put a stone on my grave, let herbs grow on it! And her will will be respected: only wild flowers will grow on her grave. I find that these last words are so touching, so significant, so in agreement with this life, which for so long has given itself to everything good and simple... This love of nature, truth, this humility before it, this inexhaustible kindness, quiet, always even and always present!.. Oh, what a misfortune her death is! A silent secret has swallowed up forever one of the best creatures who ever lived - and we will no longer see this noble face; this golden heart no longer beats - all this is now covered with earth. The regrets for her will be sincere and lasting, but I find that not enough is said about her

kindness. No matter how rare a genius is, like this kindness is even rarer. But it is still possible to learn at least somewhat, but genius cannot, and therefore we need to talk about it, about this kindness, glorify it, point to it. This active, living kindness attracted George Sand to her and secured for her those many friends who remained invariably faithful to her to the end and who were in all levels of society. When she was buried, one of the peasants from the environs of Nogan (George Sand Castle) approached the grave and, laying a wreath on it, said: “On behalf of the peasants of Nogan - not on behalf of the poor; By her there was no mercy for the poor here.” But George Sand herself was not rich and, working until the end of her life, she only made ends meet!”

I have almost nothing to add to these lines; I can only vouch for their complete truthfulness. When, about eight years ago, I first became close to George Sand, the enthusiastic surprise that she once aroused in me had long since disappeared, I no longer worshiped her; but it was impossible to enter into the circle of her private life - and not become her admirer, in another, perhaps better, sense. Everyone immediately felt that they were in the presence of an infinitely generous, benevolent nature, in which everything selfish had long ago been burned to the ground by the unquenchable flame of poetic enthusiasm, faith in the ideal, to which everything human was accessible and dear, from which there was an air of help and participation... And over all this there is some kind of unconscious aura, something high, free, heroic... Believe me: George Sand is one of our saints; you will, of course, understand what I mean with this word.

Excuse the incoherence and fragmentation of this letter and accept the assurance of the friendly feelings of your devotee

For a long time, the work of George Sand was close to Turgenev. As a result, analysis of the problems of formation and genre originality Turgenev's novelistic work in other cases is unthinkable without recourse to artistic manner George Sand, without comparing her works, from the indicated point of view, with some of his novels and especially with the first of them - the novel “Rudin”.

As is known, attempts of this kind have already been made. First of all, mention should be made of the works of Vl. Karenin (Stasova-Komarova), in which the novel “Rudin” is briefly compared with the novel “Horace” (1843). The researcher comes to the conclusion that the image of Dmitry Rudin is nothing more or less than a Russian variation of Georges Sandov's phrase-monger Horace; that Natalya Lasunskaya, Volyntsev and Lezhnev, in turn, if not “written off”, are at least very similar, respectively, to the characters of J. Sand Martha, Paul Arsene and Théophile. “The main thing,” she argues, “is not in these individual similarities characters, and in the general course of the story and in the attitude of both authors to their hero: debunking a man of his word before people simple heart, ardent feeling, honest, albeit modest deed.” “This,” the author continues, “is George Sand’s favorite theme: the opposition of two types: the type that Apollo Grigoriev calls the predatory type and the tame type... i.e. people absorbed in their personality, intelligent, reflective, selfish or half-hearted, cold or weak-willed, unable to indulge in one idea, one ardent feeling, people of the mind who turn out to be untenable before people of will and heart. This idea runs, as they say, as a red thread through almost all of George Sand’s novels, from “Indiana” to “Valvedre” or the lovely “Marianne Chevreuse”... and it is also dominant in the works of Turgenev, from “Rendezvous” in “Notes of a Hunter” and "Asi" to " Clara Milic", not to mention "Spring Waters" or "Yakov Pasienkov"...".

The key to understanding how the ideological and artistic traditions of George Sand were sometimes used in a unique and unexpected way during the initial formation of Turgenev’s novel is the already mentioned article about “The Niece.” But judgments about J. Sand can hardly be correctly understood in an isolated analysis, without their connection with a number of other statements of the writer on the same subject. Therefore, first we should dwell on the characteristics of some main points from the history of Turgenev’s perception of the personality and work of George Sand in different years his life.

Turgenev's interest in the ideas and images of George Sand began, like most of the major figures of Russian literature, his contemporaries (Belinsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Herzen, Dostoevsky, Pisemsky, Goncharov, etc.), in the forties and had certain consequences in a series of essays "Notes of a Hunter."

In this regard, for example, Turgenev’s letter to Pauline Viardot (January 5 (17), 1848) was often quoted, in which he admires the “description autumn day"in the novel "François the Foundling" (1847-1848). “This woman,” Turgenev wrote about J. Sand, “has the gift of conveying the most subtle, most fleeting impressions firmly, clearly and understandably; she knows how to draw even fragrances, even the smallest sounds.” George Sand's mastery in this area, her characteristic psychologism and the soulful lyricism of the landscape find a lively and kindred response in Turgenev, cementing in his imagination the impressions generated by Russian nature, the images of which abound in “Notes of a Hunter.” At the time of their creation, Turgenev was undoubtedly influenced by George Sand’s love of the people, expressed in a soft, poetically feminine form. In this regard, one of the researchers noted in the essays “Khor and Kalinich” and “Kasyan with the Beautiful Sword” a certain overlap with the images of peasants in George Sand’s novel “Mopra” (1837).

Subsequently, the writers seemed to switch roles. In 1872, J. Sand published her essay “Pierre Bonnin”, accompanying it with an enthusiastic dedication to Turgenev. Talking about the deep impression made on her by “Notes of a Hunter,” which she became acquainted with quite late through Charrière’s imperfect translation, J. Sand described with particular warmth in this dedication the “sense of touching goodwill” characteristic of Turgenev, which, in her words, “was not other “Russian” poets and novelists possessed... You are a realist who knows how to see everything, a poet to decorate everything, and a great heart to pity everyone and understand everything.” And two years later, after reading the story “Living Relics,” J. Sand, according to P.V. Annenkova, wrote to Turgenev: “Teacher, we all must go through your school!”

So, at the time of the creation of “Notes of a Hunter” and later, Turgenev was brought closer to George Sand by the inherent respect for both of them for the human person in general and in particular for the oppressed person.

The noble humanism of George Sand often gave a special color to Turgenev's ethics and his statements on issues of the literary and social life of his era. In February 1856, Turgenev almost quarreled with L.N. Tolstoy, who “over lunch at Nekrasov’s... about J. Sand expressed so many vulgarities and rudenesses that it is impossible to convey.” D.V. Grigorovich, who was present at this dinner, says in his memoirs that Tolstoy declared himself a “hater” of George Sand, “adding that the heroines of her novels, if they really existed, should, for the sake of edification, be tied to a shameful chariot and driven around Petersburg streets."

As can be seen from these memoirs, Turgenev, in a dispute with Tolstoy, ardently stood up for J. Sand, who promoted ideas in her novels women's emancipation. And this despite the fact that in his own story “Two Friends” the emancipated widow Sofya Kirillovna Zadneprovskaya was already drawn - the prototype of the future caricature Evdoxia Kukshina. In December 1856, Turgenev admitted to A.V. Druzhinin that when meeting with J. Sand, he could not tell her “about the fall of her (no doubt) bad play...”. An even more characteristic confession can be found in one of Turgenev’s letters to J. Sand herself (October 18 (30), 1872): “... on the way to Nohant, I intended to tell you how great your influence was on me as a writer... on this Once again I want to tell you how excited and proud I was when I read what J. Sand wrote about my book, and how happy I was that she wanted to do it. Schiller has the following verses:

"Who lived for the best people of its time,

He lived for all times."

And now I’m tired of life, you gave me a piece of your immortality!” In 1876, outraged by the indifference of the Russian press, which did not honor the memory of the deceased J. Sand, Turgenev, in letters to Flaubert and to the editor of the newspaper “Novoye Vremya”, called her “a great writer” who had “on the Russian public... the greatest influence... with a generous, benevolent nature "

It would, however, big mistake forget about the significant differences in the writer’s attitude towards the personality of J. Sand and her work. Turgenev himself, in his obituary article for Novoye Vremya, says the following about this: “When, about eight years ago, I first became close to J. Sand, the enthusiastic surprise that she once aroused in me had long disappeared, I no longer worshiped to her…". The date of Turgenev’s departure from J. Sand dates back to the time before the creation of the novel “Fathers and Sons.” Critics who expressed judgments on the J. Sand-Turgenev problem were also guided by approximately the same considerations: in their analysis they usually did not go beyond chronological framework creation of the novel "On the Eve".

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Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
A few words about George Sand
(Letter to the publisher of Novoye Vremya)

Dear Alexey Sergeevich!

Driving through St. Petersburg, I read the words in one of your feuilletons: “George Sand died - and I don’t want to talk about it.” By this you probably wanted to say that you need to talk a lot about her or nothing. I have no doubt that later Novoye Vremya filled this gap and, like other magazines, reported at least a biographical sketch of the great writer; but still, I ask permission to say a word about her in your magazine, although I also now have neither the time nor the opportunity to say “much” and although this “word” is not even mine, as you will now see. I had the good fortune of personally meeting George Sand - please do not take this expression as an ordinary phrase: whoever could see this rare creature up close should really consider himself lucky. I received a letter the other day from a French woman who also knew her briefly; This is what is in this letter:

“Our dear friend’s last words were: “Leave... the greens!” (Laissez... verdure...), that is, do not put a stone on my grave, let grass grow on it! And her will will be respected: only wild flowers will grow on her grave. I find that these last words are so touching, so significant, so in agreement with this life, which for so long has given itself to everything good and simple... This love of nature, truth, this humility before it, this inexhaustible kindness, quiet, always even and always present !.. Oh, what a misfortune her death is! A silent secret has swallowed up forever one of the best creatures who ever lived - and we will no longer see this noble face, this golden heart no longer beats - all this is now covered with earth. Regrets for her will be sincere and lasting, but I find that her kindness is not talked about enough. Rare as genius is, such kindness is even rarer. But it is still possible to learn at least somewhat, but genius cannot, and therefore we need to talk about it, about this kindness, glorify it, point to it. This active, living kindness attracted George Sand to her and secured for her those numerous friends who remained invariably faithful to her to the end and who were in all levels of society. When she was buried, one of the peasants from the environs of Nogan (George Sand Castle) approached the grave and, laying a wreath on it, said: “On behalf of the peasants of Nogan - not on behalf of the poor; by her grace there were no poor people here.” But George Sand herself was not rich and, working until the end of her life, she only made ends meet!”

I have almost nothing to add to these lines; I can only vouch for their complete truthfulness. When, about eight years ago, I first became close to George Sand, the enthusiastic surprise that she once aroused in me had long since disappeared, I no longer worshiped her; but it was impossible to enter into the circle of her private life - and not become her admirer, in another, perhaps better, sense. Everyone immediately felt that they were in the presence of an infinitely generous, benevolent nature, in which everything selfish had long ago been burned to the ground by the unquenchable flame of poetic enthusiasm, faith in the ideal, to which everything human was accessible and dear, from which one could feel help and participation... And over all this there is some kind of unconscious aura, something high, free, heroic... Believe me: Georges Sand is one of our saints; you will, of course, understand what I mean with this word.

Excuse the incoherence and fragmentation of this letter and accept the assurance of the friendly feelings of your devotee

Iv. Turgenev