Turgenev's notes from a hunter, analysis of the work briefly. “Raspberry Water”, analysis of Turgenev’s story

In the stories “The Burmister”, “The Office” and “Biryuk” the theme of the nobility is continued, but in a sharply updated version. In “Burmistra,” for example, a type of landowner of a new formation is presented, and the image of a lord’s servant is also given here. The “Office” gives curious results of the transfer of old noble business habits to new forms of public institutions and new types of office servants from the peasants. The essay “Biryuk” describes a strange, mysterious man who personifies the powerful elemental forces that still unconsciously roam in the soul of the Russian person.

In the next eight stories, thematic phrases are mixed, and a kind of thematic diffusion occurs. However, at the very end of the cycle, the elegiac note of two stories about the nobleman Tchertopkhanov is replaced by a folk theme in the essays “Living Relics” and “Knocking.”

“Notes of a Hunter” depicts provincial Russia, but one can feel the deadening pressure of those spheres of life that weigh on the Russian province and dictate their terms and laws to it.

The first story in this series is called “Khor and Kalinich.” The author-narrator meets the landowner Polutykin, a passionate hunter, who invites him to his estate, where he introduces him to his peasants, whom he values quite highly. The first character is Khor, whose image is based on a certain type, quite common among the people. Khor was well acquainted with the practical side of the matter; common sense was visible in his actions and work. He is in the position of a serf, although he has the opportunity to pay off his master.

His friend Kalinich is his complete opposite. He once had a wife, but now lives alone. Hunting became the meaning of his life, giving him the opportunity to contact nature.

The characters look at life differently, perceive different situations, even their manners are completely opposite.

The author does not idealize the peasants. Turgenev saw in popular types people of common sense, whose tragedy lies in the fact that they cannot realize their talents and capabilities. Khor saw a lot, knew and understood the psychology of human relationships well. “While talking with Khorem, for the first time I heard the simple, intelligent speech of a Russian peasant.” But Khor could not read, and Kalinich could, but he was devoid of common sense. These opposites in real life do not contradict each other, but complement each other and thereby find a common language. Here the author acted as a mature master of folk storytelling, here the peculiar serfdom pathos of the entire book was determined, depicting strong, courageous, bright folk characters, whose existence transformed serfdom into the disgrace and humiliation of Russia, into a social phenomenon incompatible with the national dignity of the Russian people. In the essay “Khor and Kalinich”, the character of the landowner Polutykin is sketched only with light strokes, his passion for French cuisine is briefly reported, and also mentions the lord’s office. But this element is by no means accidental. In the essay “The Office” similar French predilections are presented in the image of the landowner Foam, and the destructive consequences of this element are shown in the story “The Burmister”.

This work mercilessly exposes the destructive economic consequences of the so-called civilizing activities of the elite. Their way of farming undermines the foundations of the peasant’s work on the land. The essay “Two Landowners,” for example, tells about the economic activities of one important St. Petersburg dignitary, who decided to sow all his fields with poppy seeds, “since it costs more than rye, so it is more profitable to sow it.” The activities of this dignitary echo the management of the land of the landowner Pantelei Eremeevich Tchertopkhanov, who began to rebuild peasant huts according to a new plan. In addition, he ordered all his subjects to be numbered and each one had his number sewn on his collar. In such atrocities of a provincial landowner, other actions of an all-Russian, state scale are visible. Here the author hints at the activities of Arakcheev, the organizer of peasant military settlements.

Gradually, the book develops an artistic idea about the absurdity of the centuries-old serfdom. For example, in the story “Ovsyanikov’s Homesteader,” the story of the transformation of the illiterate French drummer Lejeune into a music teacher, tutor, and then into a Russian nobleman is given.

In "Notes of a Hunter" there are stories that gravitate towards satire, as they contain an anti-serfdom theme. For example, the story “Lgov” talks about a peasant nicknamed Suchok, who during his life served his masters as a coachman, fisherman, cook, actor in the home theater, and bartender Anton, although his real name was Kuzma. Having several names and nicknames, the personality turned out to be completely impersonal.

Different destinies, combining and echoing others, participate in the creation of a monumental image of the serfdom, which has a disastrous effect on the life of the nation.

This image complements and enhances nature. A lifeless landscape runs like a red thread throughout the book. For the first time he appears in the essay “Khor and Kalinich”, where the Oryol village located next to the ravine is mentioned. In the story “The Singers,” the village of Kolotovka is dissected by a terrible ravine right in the middle of the street. In the essay “Bezhin Meadow,” a lost hunter experiences a “terrible feeling” when he finds himself in a hollow that looks like a cauldron with shallow glasses. The image of a terrible place cursed by people appears repeatedly in the story. Landscapes of this kind concentrate centuries-old folk troubles and hardships associated with Russian serfdom.

(function(w, d, n, s, t) ( w[n] = w[n] || ; w[n].push(function() ( Ya.Direct.insertInto(86107, "yandex_ad", ( stat_id: 3, site_charset: "utf-8", ad_format: "direct", font_size: 1, type: "horizontal", limit: 3, title_font_size: 1, site_bg_color: "FFFFFF", header_bg_color: "FFFFFF", title_color: "295485", url_color: "666666", all_color: "295485", text_color: "000000", hover_color: "CC0000" )); t = d.documentElement.firstChild; s = d.createElement("script" ); s.type = "text/javascript"; s.src = "http://an.yandex.ru/system/context.js"; s.setAttribute("async", "true"); (s, t.firstChild))(window, document, "yandex_context_callbacks"); This work is devoid of patriarchal beauty, since it touches on the all-Russian social conflict, and also two national images of the world, two Russias - official, deadening life, and folk-peasant, living and poetic - collide and argue with each other. In addition, all the heroes gravitate towards two different poles - dead or alive. Nature also plays an active role in creating a holistic image of living Russia. The best heroes of this work are not just depicted against the backdrop of nature, but also act as its continuation. In this way, the book achieves a poetic sense of the mutual connection of all living things: man, river, forest, steppe. The soul of this unity is the personality of the author, fused with the life of the people, with the deep layers of Russian culture. Nature here is not indifferent to man; on the contrary, she is very strict in her relations with him, since she takes revenge on him for being too unceremonious and rational intrusion into her secrets, as well as for being excessively bold and self-confident with her. The peculiarity of the national character is revealed in the story “Death”, which lists tragic stories about the death of the contractor Maxim, the peasant, the miller Vasil, the commoner-intellectual Avenir Sokoloumov, and the old landowner. But all these stories are united by one common motif: in the face of death, heart strings appear in a Russian person. All Russian people “die amazingly,” because in the hour of the last test they think not about themselves, but about others, about loved ones. This is the source of their courage and mental endurance.

There is a lot that attracts the writer in Russian life, but there is also a lot that repels him. However, there is one quality in it that the author places very highly - it is democracy, friendliness, a living talent for mutual understanding, which was not exterminated from the people's environment, but, on the contrary, was sharpened by the centuries of serfdom, the severe trials of Russian history.

There is another leitmotif in “Notes of a Hunter” - the musical talent of the Russian people, which was first stated in “The Choir and Kalinich”. Kalinich sings, and the businesslike Khor sings along with him. The song unites even such opposite natures in a general mood. The song is the beginning that brings people together in the joys and sorrows of life.

In the essay “Raspberry Water,” the characters have common traits: they are all losers. And at the end of the essay, on the other side, an unfamiliar singer began to sing a sad song, which brings people together, since through individual destinies it leads to an all-Russian fate and thereby makes the heroes related to each other.

In the story “Kasyan from the Beautiful Sword,” a mournful chant is heard among the fields, which calls for a journey, away from the land where untruth and evil reign, to the promised land, where all people live in contentment and justice.

Jacob’s song from the story “The Singers” calls the heroes to the same country. Here, not only Jacob’s singing is poeticized, but also the spiritual connection that his song establishes in characters very different in position and origin. Yakov sang, but the souls of the people around him sang along with him. The entire Prytynny tavern lives by song.

But Turgenev is a realist writer, so he will show how such an impulse is replaced by mental depression. What follows is a drunken evening, where Yakov and the whole world in the tavern become completely different.

The collection contains stories imbued with special lyricism. For example, “Bezhin Meadow” is sharply different in elegance from other short stories in this cycle. The author pays a lot of attention here to the elements of nature. Towards evening, the traveler lost his way and decided to choose a place to stay for the night. He comes out to a fire burning near the river, near which peasant children are sitting, grazing their horses. The hunter witnesses their conversation. He is delighted with the folk stories with which he became acquainted. Kostya’s story about Gavril, a suburban carpenter who encountered a mermaid, is interesting. He went to meet her, but inner strength stopped him, he laid down the cross, after which she stopped laughing and began to cry, saying: “You will kill yourself until the end of your days.” Here satanic power is defeated by the sign of the cross, but it is capable of introducing sadness into a person.

“Notes of a Hunter” ends with the essay “Forest and Steppe.” There are no heroes here, but there is a subtle lyrical description of the natural elements, the beauty of nature and human existence in it. These two opposites do not crowd or interfere, but mutually complement each other. Both the forest and the steppe delight the traveler; he likes them at the same time. Man must also fit harmoniously into nature. The essay is imbued with a life-affirming optimistic mood, since all this is important for the healthy existence of people.

Thus, the central conflict of this book is complex and deep. Undoubtedly, social antagonisms are depicted here quite sharply. Of course, the burden of serfdom falls primarily on the shoulders of the peasant, because it is he who has to endure physical torture, hunger, poverty and spiritual humiliation. However, Turgenev looks at serfdom from a broader, national point of view, as a phenomenon painful at the same time for both the master and the peasant. He sharply condemns the cruel serf owners and sympathizes with those nobles who themselves were victims of the serfdom yoke. It is no coincidence that the singing of Yakov the Turk evokes a “heavy tear” from the eyes of the Wild Master.

In Turgenev, not only peasants are endowed with nationally Russian traits; Some landowners who escaped the corrupting influence of serfdom are also Russian by nature. Pyotr Petrovich Karataev is no less a Russian person than the peasants. National character traits are also emphasized in the moral character of Tchertopkhanov. He is a landowner, but not a serf owner. Such is Tatyana Borisovna, a patriarchal landowner, but at the same time a simple creature, with a “straightforward, pure heart.”

The author sees the living forces of the nation in both the peasant and noble environment. Admiring the poetic talent or, conversely, the efficiency of the Russian person, the writer comes to the conclusion that serfdom is contrary to national dignity, and all living Russia, not only peasant, but also noble, must take part in the fight against it.

Social and psychological works occupy one of the most important places in Russian literature, since thanks to this kind of work the reader can not only reflect on his place in life, history, think about the meaning of existence, but also receive a strong urge to fight and show heroism , win.

By analyzing the cycle “Notes of a Hunter” by Turgenev, we will be convinced that this work of art belongs precisely to the series of works mentioned above. However, we will begin our analysis of the cycle by getting to know the author’s childhood and family, because such details will help us understand what prompted him to start writing this wonderful collection.

Briefly about Turgenev’s family and his childhood

So, as we noted, it is very important to first understand what views on life the author adhered to and what his thinking was based on. Only after this is it worth reading the collection itself and, even more so, analyzing it.

The family of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was wealthy, his parents were nobles. However, the father and mother were not happy in their marriage. The father eventually abandoned the family, and the children were left in the care of their mother. Although the family did not need anything financially, young Ivan Turgenev was very worried and his childhood was difficult. In addition, his mother was raised in such a way that her character can be called complex, although she read a lot and was significantly enlightened in various matters. Unfortunately, Turgenev's mother not only physically punished her children, but also treated the serfs harshly.

This historical background greatly helps to more accurately analyze the “Notes of a Hunter” cycle, since we understand that the love of Russian literary works was instilled in young Ivan Sergeevich by Varvara Petrovna, who helped her son fall in love with such writers as: Gogol, Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky and Karamzin.

Serfdom in "Notes of a Hunter"

In addition to his mother, his valet, who was a serf, had a great influence on the development of the future writer. It must be said that in general the topic of peasants was of great interest to Ivan Sergeevich. He saw a lot with his own eyes, changed his mind about a lot. The serfs were constantly in sight of the child, and while living a village life, Turgenev observed the enslavement of the common people, the abuse and hard life of ordinary workers and farmers.

When Turgenev grew up, he was constantly traveling around the country and continued to observe how serfs lived and worked. And this is a key detail in the analysis of the “Notes of a Hunter” cycle, because thanks to these factors, Turgenev decided to write a collection of stories that we are talking about now.

Why did Turgenev name the cycle that way?

It must be said that the author himself was a passionate hunter. Sometimes Turgenev would spend many days engrossed in his favorite activity, and for many kilometers, with a gun in his hands and a hunting bag on his back, he would chase game. And how many times have they walked around the Tula, Oryol, Tambov, Kaluga and Kara provinces! What did these hikes and travels give him? Of course, the author of “Notes of a Hunter” made acquaintance with many people, most of whom were simple peasants. They shared their impressions with him, talked about their native land, and gave him some advice.

We are now analyzing the series “Notes of a Hunter,” so we are talking about what formed the basis of its content. Yes, Turgenev communicated without hesitation with ordinary people, with the poor and simple farmers. He looked at them not as slaves, but as the same people. He did not separate them by position, and wanted society to be just like that.

This is how the series “Notes of a Hunter” was born, which included Turgenev’s stories about what he managed to see and hear. But most importantly, the idea of the unity of the people and the desire to equalize people in society along social lines are clearly visible in the thread of the narrative. Pay attention, for example, to who the author chose as the prototype for the main character. This is a hunting companion - a simple peasant Afanasy.

Important details of the analysis of "Notes of a Hunter"

The year of publication of “Notes of a Hunter” as an independent work of art is 1852. The collection includes twenty-five stories, some of which can be called essays. And in each of them new events develop, each with its own heroes. But the theme of Russian nature runs through all the stories - how much you need to love it and those people who live on this land.

The cycle is distinguished by a striking original author's style. Everything is described in simple and concise language. Turgenev practically does not give his assessment of what is happening, does not dramatize events and omits lyrics. The spirit of the collection is true realism, and Turgenev writes especially about the tragedy of the serfs, and will not hide from the reader how painful it is for the author to look at the suffering of the common people. He extols and deeply respects the simple Russian peasant with a noble soul and high morals.

Thanks to the fact that we have analyzed the series "Notes of a Hunter", you can better understand the essence of the work, the author's intention and its main theme. We hope you found the article useful. Read also

“Death” was published in Sovremennik No. 2 for 1848. The story was included in the series “Notes of a Hunter” and reflected the stories that happened to Turgenev during his hunting journeys, family legends of the Turgenevs. For example, the Zusha River, mentioned at the beginning, flows not far from Spassky-Lutovinov. The lady who was going to pay the priest for the funeral prayer has a prototype. This is Turgenev’s grandmother Katerina Ivanovna Somova.

Literary direction and genre

Turgenev, as a realist, explores the peculiarities of the Russian character, highlighting a simple and cold attitude towards death as a national trait. The psychological story has the characteristics of a philosophical essay; it is a kind of ode to death and to those who accept it with dignity.

Issues

The story is dedicated to one feature of the Russian people - their attitude towards death as something ordinary and familiar. Turgenev analyzes various cases and comes to a generalization: an unusual attitude towards death is a feature of the Russian mentality. “The Russian man is dying amazingly... Russian people are dying amazingly.” An attentive reader will see behind the descriptions of various deaths the social reasons for this attitude, but contemporary reviewers did not see them.

Plot and composition

The exposition of the story is the narrator's visit to the forest in which he walked as a child with his French tutor. The forest suffered from frost in 1840. The technique of contrast allows us to compare the former living and cool forest with the current dead one.

The narrator calls the oaks and ash trees old friends and describes them as sick or dead people: “Withered, naked, here and there covered with consumptive greenery... lifeless, broken branches... dead branches... fell down and rotted like corpses, on the ground".

The exposition sets the reader up to talk about human death, as quiet as the death of trees. Turgenev chooses different deaths: accidents (hit by a tree, burned), illness (strained himself, died of consumption) and death from old age. The death of people of different classes and professions is described: contractor, peasant, miller, teacher, landowner.

The death of the landowner is the climax, a kind of parable with a moral: “Yes, Russian people die surprisingly.” This refrain is the main idea of the story.

Heroes of the story

The author of the story is interested in the hero's meeting with death. The reason for reflection was the death of the contractor Maxim, who was killed in the forest by a falling ash tree, cut down by peasants. There is nothing ugly in the death of Maxim (as well as other heroes). Despite the fact that the branches of the falling tree broke Maxim’s arms and legs, he hardly moaned, bit his blue lips, and looked around “as if in surprise.” His trembling chin, hair stuck to his forehead, and unevenly rising chest make him look like a romantic hero in great excitement. He is really worried about facing death, which he feels is approaching.

But for Turgenev, what is important is not what the hero looks like, but what he thinks and feels at the moment of death. Maxim’s first thought is that he himself is to blame for his death: God punished him for telling the men to work on Sunday. Then Maxim makes arrangements for the property, not forgetting the horse he bought yesterday, for which he gave a deposit, and asks the men for forgiveness. The narrator described the death of the Russian peasant in this way: “He dies as if he were performing a ritual: coldly and simply,” but not stupidly or indifferently, as it might seem from the outside.

Another man courageously awaiting death is a burnt neighbor’s peasant. The narrator is struck not so much by the man’s behavior as by his wife and daughter, who sit in deathly silence in the hut and are also waiting for death, so the narrator “could not stand it and left.” At the same time, other family members treat the approaching death of a relative as something ordinary, and do not even stop their daily activities.

Lybovshinsky miller Vasily Dmitrich, who suffered a hernia, only came to the paramedic for help on the 10th day: “And should I die because of this kind of rubbish?” The miller utters an almost anecdotal phrase that it is better to die at home, where in his absence “the Lord knows what will happen.” The miller does not have any panic in the face of death; on the way home he bows to those he meets, and this is 4 days before his death!

The narrator describes the death of his friend Avenir Sorokoumov, who taught the children of the landowner Gur Krupyanikov. Sorokoumov had an infantilely pure soul. He rejoiced at the successes of his comrades and did not know envy or pride. Avenir enjoys the days allotted to him: reads his favorite poems, remembers Moscow and Pushkin with his guest, talks about literature and theater and feels sorry for his dead friends. Sorokoumov is satisfied with the life he has lived, he does not want to leave and receive treatment, because “it doesn’t matter where you die.” Krupyanikov informed about Sorokoumov’s death in a letter, adding that he died “with the same insensitivity, without expressing any signs of regret.” That is, Sorokoumov took death for granted.

The situation of the death of an old landowner who tried to pay the priest for her own waste and was dissatisfied with the fact that the priest shortened the required prayer looks quite anecdotal.

Stylistic features

The story is full of absurdities and paradoxes. The narrator's neighbor's cousin had a great heart, but no hair. In response to a French poem on the occasion of the opening of a Krasnogorsk hospital by a lady in an album, in which someone obsequiously called the hospital a temple, a certain Ivan Kobylyatnikov, thinking that it was about nature, wrote that he also loved it.

The sick are tamed in the hospital by the crazy carver Pavel, a withered woman works as a cook, who is even crazier than Pavel, beats him and forces him to guard the turkeys. The behavior of the dying landowner is absurd at the plot level. But the most absurd thing is the veracity of all the incredible stories.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Numerous memoirs have been preserved about the existence of real prototypes of Turgenev’s heroes from “Notes of a Hunter.” So, the real person was the famous Khor, a man “endowed with a statesman’s mind” and “the forehead of Socrates.” A. A. Fet, poet, friend and neighbor of Turgenev on the estate, wrote down his impressions of meeting this Russian peasant, whom the writer immortalized. “Last year, during the grouse hunting season,” recalls Fet, “I had the opportunity to visit one of the heroes of Turgenev’s story “Khor and Kalinich.” I spent the night with Khor himself. Interested in the poet's masterful essay, I peered with great attention into the personality and home life of my owner. Khor is now over eighty years old, but his colossal figure and Herculean build are no match for summer” (“Russian Bulletin”, 1862, book V, p. 246). Turgenev’s former serf, Ardalion Ivanovich Zamyatin (later a zemstvo school teacher), said in his memoirs: “My grandmother and mother told me that almost all the persons mentioned in the Notes were not fictitious... even their names were real... was Biryuk, who was killed by his own peasants in the forest, was Yashka-Turchonok - the son of a captive Turkish woman. Even I personally knew one of Turgenev’s heroes, namely Bitch Apgop, renamed Lady Varvara Petrovna from Kozma. Bezhyan meadow, Parakhnn bushes, Varnavitsy, Mare’s top... - all these places had the same names in 1882” (“Turg. collection”, issue II., pp. 298-299). By the way, these names have survived to this day, as well as the Krasivaya Mecha river and the village of Kolotovka. Chernsky, Belevsky, Zhndrpsky districts, “scenes of action” in “Notes of a Hunter,” were explored by Turgenev together with his constant companion Afanasy Timofeevich Alnfanov, listed in the book under the name Ermolai. He was a serf of neighboring landowners, bought free by Turgenev, “a hunter from head to toe, devoted to hunting with all his soul and thoughts” (I. F. Rynda. Traits from the life of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. St. Petersburg, 1903, p. 43). According to the testimony of one of Turgenev’s friends, E. Ya. Kolbasin, the story “Ermolai and the Miller’s Wife” “is taken entirely from an actual incident” (“The First Collection of Letters of I. S. Turgenev.” St. Petersburg, 1885, p. 92)..

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

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

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

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

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

Updated: 2011-03-13

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« Notes of a Hunter" - a collection of stories by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, published in 1847-1851 in the magazine Sovremennik and published as a separate edition in 1852. Three stories were written and added by the author to the collection much later.

Researchers do not have a consensus on the genre of the works included in the book: they are called both essays and stories.

“Notes of a Hunter” is a series of stories by I.S. Turgenev about peasant life, published as a collection in 1852. Turgenev, in his stories, managed to show the beauty of the soul of a simple peasant man, and this became the writer’s main argument against the outrages of serfdom. Turgenev wrote the truth about peasant life, without embellishing it, and with this he opened a new world for readers - the peasant world. “Notes of a Hunter” reflects both the plight of the Russian people and the glorification of their talent and love of life.

History of creation and publication

Turgenev spent the summer and part of the autumn of 1846 in Spassky-Lutovinovo. The writer almost never touched his pen, but he hunted a lot; his constant companion was the huntsman of the Chern district Afanasy Alifanov. Having left for St. Petersburg in mid-October, the writer learned that changes had occurred at Sovremennik: the magazine was acquired by Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev. The new editors asked Turgenev to “fill the mixture department in the 1st issue.”

The story “Khor and Kalinich,” written for the first issue, was published in the January issue of Sovremennik (1847). The subtitle “From the Notes of a Hunter,” which gave the name to the entire cycle, was proposed by Panaev. At first, Turgenev did not clearly see the perspective of the future work: the “crystallization of the plan” proceeded gradually:

“The observations made by the writer during his stay in the village were so abundant that he later had enough material for several years of work, which resulted in a book that opened a new era in Russian literature. »

Summer of 1847 Turgenev and Belinsky left for Salzbrunn. There, work on “Notes of a Hunter” continued. When Turgenev I read the story “The Burmister” to my friends, Belinsky, according to the recollections of Annenkov, who was present in the room, reacted to one of the episodes with an emotional phrase: “What a bastard with delicate tastes!” This story was the only one under which the author indicated the place and time of writing: “Salzbrunn, in Silesia, July, 1847.”

In 1852, “Notes of a Hunter” was published as a separate book. An official of the censorship department, having carefully checked the proofs prepared for printing with the texts posted on the pages of Sovremennik, wrote in conclusion that “the content of the stories is the same everywhere,” after which he gave permission to publish the collection. The censor was later removed from office.

The book opens with the essay “Khor and Kalinich,” in which the author talks about two men he met in the Zhizdrinsky district of the Oryol province. One of them - Khor - after the fire, settled with his family far in the forest, lived in trade, regularly paid his master's rent, and was known as an “administrative head” and a “rationalist.” The idealist Kalinich, on the contrary, had his head in the clouds, was afraid even of his own wife, was in awe of the master, and had a meek disposition; at the same time, he could charm blood, relieve fears, and had power over bees. The narrator was very interested in his new acquaintances; he listened with pleasure to the conversations of people so different from each other.

The master allowed the careless hunter (“Yermolai and the Miller’s Wife”) to live anywhere on the condition that he would bring him two pairs of black grouse and partridges to his kitchen every month. The narrator had a chance to spend the night with Ermolai in the miller’s house. In his wife Arina Petrovna one could guess a courtyard woman; it turned out that she had lived in St. Petersburg for a long time, served as a maid in a rich house and was in good standing with the lady. When Arina asked the owners for permission to marry the footman Petrushka, the lady ordered the girl to have her hair cut and sent to the village. The local miller, having bought the beauty, took her as his wife.

A meeting with a doctor (“County Doctor”) allowed the author to write down a story of hopeless love. Arriving one day on a call to the house of a poor landowner, the doctor saw a girl with a fever. Attempts to save the patient were unsuccessful; Having spent all her last days with Alexandra Andreevna, the doctor, even years later, could not forget the desperate powerlessness that arises when you cannot hold someone else’s life in your hands.

The landowner Radilov (“My neighbor Radilov”) gave the impression of a man whose whole soul “went inside for a while.” For three years he was happily married. When his wife died from childbirth, his heart “as if turned to stone.” Now he lived with his mother and Olga, the sister of his late wife. Olga’s look, when the landowner shared his memories with the hunter, seemed strange: both compassion and jealousy were written on the girl’s face. A week later, the narrator learned that Radilov and his sister-in-law had left in an unknown direction.

The fate of an Oryol landowner named Lezhen (“Odnodvorets Ovsyanikov”) took a sharp turn during the Patriotic War. Together with Napoleon's army, he entered Russia, but on the way back he fell into the hands of Smolensk men, who decided to drown the “Frenchman” in an ice hole. Lezhen was saved by a landowner passing by: he was just looking for a music and French teacher for his daughters. Having rested and warmed up, the prisoner moved to another gentleman; in his house he fell in love with a young pupil, got married, entered the service and became a nobleman.

The kids, who went out at night to guard the herd (“Bezhin Meadow”), told stories about the brownie that lives in the factory until dawn; about the suburban carpenter Gavrila, who became sad after meeting a mermaid; about the crazy Akulina, “spoiled by a merman.” One of the teenagers, Pavel, went to fetch water, and upon his return reported that he heard the voice of Vasya, a boy who had drowned in the river. The guys decided that this was a bad omen. Soon Pavel died after falling from his horse.

A small nobleman (“Pyotr Petrovich Karataev”) took a liking to the serf girl Matryona, who belonged to the wealthy landowner Marya Ilyinichna. Attempts to buy the pretty singer led nowhere: the old lady, on the contrary, sent the “servant” to the steppe village. Having found the girl, Karataev arranged an escape for her. For several months the lovers were happy. The idyll ended after the landowner found out where the fugitive was hiding. Sent complaints to the police officer, Pyotr Petrovich began to get nervous. One day, Matryona, realizing that there would be no more quiet life, went to her mistress and “gave herself away.”

Images of heroes

According to researchers, the peasants Khor and Kalinich are carriers of “the most typical features of the Russian national character.” The prototype of Khorya was a serf peasant, distinguished by his power, insight and “extraordinary cordiality.” He knew how to read and write, and when Turgenev sent him a story, “the old man reread it with pride.” Afanasy Fet also mentioned this peasant; in 1862, during a grouse hunt, he stopped at Khorya’s house and spent the night there:

“Interested in the poet’s masterful essay, I peered with great attention into the personality and home life of my owner. Khor is now over eighty, but his colossal figure and Herculean build are no match for summer. »

If Khor is “a positive, practical person,” then Kalinich is one of the romantics, “enthusiastic and dreamy people.” This is manifested in his caring attitude towards nature and soulful songs; when Kalinich began to sing, even the “pragmatist” Khor could not resist and, after a short pause, picked up the song.

Pyotr Petrovich Sokolov. Illustration from the 1890s for the story “Pyotr Petrovich Karataev.”

Arina, the heroine of the story “Yermolai and the Miller’s Wife,” does not try to evoke pity from the guests who stayed in her house in the evening. However, the narrator understands that both the landowner, who did not allow the girl to marry Petrusha, and the “hateful miller” who bought her, became the cause of bitter experiences for the woman.

For Matryona, a serf girl, the love of the landowner becomes a serious test (“Peter Petrovich Karataev”). Loving and pitying Karataev, she first decided to run away from the lady, and then returned to her. In this act of Matryona, who was trying to save Pyotr Petrovich from the prosecutions started by her mistress, researchers see “a feat of selflessness and selflessness.”

The essay “Bezhin Meadow” recorded folk poetic fictions about brownies, mermaids, and goblin; The author does not hide his surprise at the talent of peasant children, in whose oral histories legends and fairy tales heard from adults are harmoniously intertwined with impressions of nature. The voice of Yakov (“The Singers”) evoked an equally strong emotional response in the narrator: one could hear in it “passion, youth, strength, and some kind of fascinating, carefree, sad sorrow.”

Analysis of the series of stories “Notes of a Hunter”

Here is a complete picture of Russia, illuminated by the author’s loving, poetic attitude towards his native land, reflections on the present and future of its talented people. There are no scenes of torture, but it is the everyday pictures of serf life that testify to the anti-human essence of the entire social system. In this work, the author does not offer us bright plot moves with active action, but pays great attention to the portrait characteristics, manners, habits and tastes of the heroes. Although the overall plot is still present. The narrator makes a voyage across Russia, but its geography is very limited - this is the Oryol region. He meets various types of people along the way, as a result of which a picture of Russian life emerges. Turgenev attached great importance to the arrangement of stories in the book. This is how not a simple selection of thematically homogeneous stories appears, but a single work of art, within which the patterns of figurative interconnection of essays operate. " Notes of a Hunter ” open with two thematic “phrases,” each of which includes three stories. First, variations on a folk theme are given - “Khor and Kalinich”, “Ermolai and the miller’s wife”, “Raspberry water”. The next three stories develop the theme of the ruined nobility - “The District Doctor”, “My Neighbor Radimov”, “Ovsyanikov’s Homesteader”. The following stories: “Lgov”, “Bezhin Meadow”, “Kasyan with a Beautiful Sword” - again develop the theme of the people, but in them the motives of the decaying harmful influence of serfdom on the souls of people appear and sound more and more persistently, this is especially felt in the essay “Lgov” " In the stories “The Burmister”, “The Office” and “Biryuk” the theme of the nobility is continued, but in a sharply updated version. In “Burmistra,” for example, a type of landowner of a new formation is presented, and the image of a lord’s servant is also given here. The “Office” gives curious results of the transfer of old noble business habits to new forms of public institutions and new types of office servants from the peasants. The essay “Biryuk” describes a strange, mysterious man who personifies the powerful elemental forces that still unconsciously roam in the soul of the Russian person. In the next eight stories, thematic phrases are mixed, and a kind of thematic diffusion occurs. However, at the very end of the cycle, the elegiac note of two stories about the nobleman Tchertopkhanov is replaced by a folk theme in the essays “Living Relics” and “Knocking.” “Notes of a Hunter” depicts provincial Russia, but one can feel the deadening pressure of those spheres of life that weigh on the Russian province and dictate their terms and laws to it. The first story in this series is called “Khor and Kalinich.” The author-narrator meets the landowner Polutykin, a passionate hunter, who invites him to his estate, where he introduces him to his peasants, whom he values quite highly. The first character is Khor, whose image is based on a certain type, quite common among the people. Khor was well acquainted with the practical side of the matter; common sense was visible in his actions and work. He is in the position of a serf, although he has the opportunity to pay off his master. His friend Kalinich is his complete opposite. He once had a wife, but now he lives alone. Hunting became the meaning of his life, giving him the opportunity to contact nature. The characters look at life differently, perceive different situations, even their manners are completely opposite. The author does not idealize the peasants. Turgenev saw in popular types people of common sense, whose tragedy lies in the fact that they cannot realize their talents and capabilities. Khor saw a lot, knew and understood the psychology of human relationships well. “While talking with Khorem, for the first time I heard the simple, intelligent speech of a Russian peasant.” But Khor could not read, and Kalinich could, but he was devoid of common sense. These opposites in real life do not contradict each other, but complement each other and thereby find a common language. Here the author acted as a mature master of folk storytelling, here the peculiar feudal pathos of the entire book was determined, depicting strong, courageous, bright folk characters, the existence of which turned serfdom into a shame and humiliation of Russia, into a social phenomenon incompatible with the national dignity of the Russian person. In the essay “Khor and Kalinich,” the character of the landowner Polutykin is sketched out only with light strokes, his passion for French cuisine is briefly reported, and the master’s office is also mentioned. But this element is by no means accidental. In the essay “The Office” similar French predilections are presented in the image of the landowner Foam, and the destructive consequences of this element are shown in the story “The Burmister”. This work mercilessly exposes the destructive economic consequences of the so-called civilizing activities of the elite. Their way of farming undermines the foundations of the peasant’s work on the land. The essay “Two Landowners,” for example, tells about the economic activities of one important St. Petersburg dignitary, who decided to sow all his fields with poppy seeds, “since it costs more than rye, so it is more profitable to sow it.” The activities of this dignitary echo the management of the land of the landowner Pantelei Eremeevich Tchertopkhanov, who began to rebuild the peasant huts according to a new plan. In addition, he ordered all his subjects to be numbered and each one had his number sewn on his collar. In such atrocities of a provincial landowner, other actions of an all-Russian, state scale are visible. Here the author hints at the activities of Arakcheev, the organizer of peasant military settlements. Gradually, the book develops an artistic idea about the absurdity of the centuries-old serfdom. For example, in the story “Ovsyanikov’s Homesteader,” the story of the transformation of the illiterate French drummer Lejeune into a music teacher, tutor, and then into a Russian nobleman is given. In "Notes of a Hunter" there are stories that gravitate towards satire, as they contain an anti-serfdom theme. For example, the story “Lgov” talks about a peasant nicknamed Suchok, who during his life served his masters as a coachman, fisherman, cook, actor in the home theater, and bartender Anton, although his real name was Kuzma. Having several names and nicknames, the personality turned out to be completely impersonal. Different destinies, combining and echoing others, participate in the creation of a monumental image of the serfdom, which has a disastrous effect on the life of the nation. This image complements and enhances nature. A lifeless landscape runs like a red thread throughout the book. For the first time he appears in the essay “Khor and Kalinich”, where the Oryol village located next to the ravine is mentioned. In the story “The Singers,” the village of Kolotovka is dissected by a terrible ravine right in the middle of the street. In the essay “Bezhin Meadow,” a lost hunter experiences a “terrible feeling” when he finds himself in a hollow that looks like a cauldron with shallow glasses. The image of a terrible place cursed by people appears repeatedly in the story. Landscapes of this kind concentrate centuries-old folk troubles and hardships associated with Russian serfdom. This work is devoid of patriarchal beauty, since it touches on the all-Russian social conflict, and also two national images of the world, two Russias - official, deadening life, and folk-peasant, living and poetic - collide and argue with each other. In addition, all the heroes gravitate towards two different poles - dead or alive. Nature also plays an active role in creating a holistic image of living Russia. The best heroes of this work are not just depicted against the backdrop of nature, but also act as its continuation. In this way, the book achieves a poetic sense of the mutual connection of all living things: man, river, forest, steppe. The soul of this unity is the personality of the author, fused with the life of the people, with the deep layers of Russian culture. Nature here is not indifferent to man; on the contrary, she is very strict in her relations with him, since she takes revenge on him for being too unceremonious and rational intrusion into her secrets, as well as for being excessively bold and self-confident with her. The peculiarity of the national character is revealed in the story “Death,” which lists tragic stories about the death of the contractor Maxim, the peasant, the miller Vasil, the commoner-intellectual Avenir Sokoloumov, and the old landowner. But all these stories are united by one common motif: in the face of death, heart strings appear in a Russian person. All Russian people “die amazingly,” because in the hour of the last test they think not about themselves, but about others, about loved ones. This is the source of their courage and mental endurance. There is a lot that attracts the writer in Russian life, but there is also a lot that repels him. However, there is one quality in it that the author places very highly - it is democracy, friendliness, a living talent for mutual understanding, which was not exterminated from the people's environment, but, on the contrary, was sharpened by the centuries of serfdom, the severe trials of Russian history. There is another leitmotif in “Notes of a Hunter” - the musical talent of the Russian people, which was first stated in “The Choir and Kalinich”. Kalinich sings, and the businesslike Khor sings along with him. The song unites even such opposite natures in a general mood. The song is the beginning that brings people together in the joys and sorrows of life. In the essay “Raspberry Water,” the characters have common traits: they are all losers. And at the end of the essay, on the other side, an unfamiliar singer began to sing a sad song, which brings people together, since through individual destinies it leads to an all-Russian fate and thereby makes the heroes related to each other. In the story “Kasyan from the Beautiful Sword,” a mournful chant is heard among the fields, which calls for a journey, away from the land where untruth and evil reign, to the promised land, where all people live in contentment and justice. Jacob’s song from the story “The Singers” calls the heroes to the same country. Here, not only Jacob’s singing is poeticized, but also the spiritual connection that his song establishes in characters very different in position and origin. Yakov sang, but the souls of the people around him sang along with him. The entire Prytynny tavern lives by song. But Turgenev is a realist writer, so he will show how such an impulse is replaced by mental depression. What follows is a drunken evening, where Yakov and the whole world in the tavern become completely different. The collection contains stories imbued with special lyricism. For example, “Bezhin Meadow” is sharply different in elegance from other short stories in this cycle. The author pays a lot of attention here to the elements of nature. Towards evening, the traveler lost his way and decided to choose a place to stay for the night. He comes out to a fire burning near the river, near which peasant children are sitting, grazing their horses. The hunter witnesses their conversation. He is delighted with the folk stories with which he became acquainted. Kostya’s story about Gavril, a suburban carpenter who encountered a mermaid, is interesting. He went to meet her, but inner strength stopped him, he laid down the cross, after which she stopped laughing and began to cry, saying: “You will kill yourself until the end of your days.” Here satanic power is defeated by the sign of the cross, but it is capable of introducing sadness into a person. “Notes of a Hunter” ends with the essay “Forest and Steppe.” There are no heroes here, but there is a subtle lyrical description of the natural elements, the beauty of nature and human existence in it. These two opposites do not crowd or interfere, but mutually complement each other. Both the forest and the steppe delight the traveler; he likes them at the same time. Man must also fit harmoniously into nature. The essay is imbued with a life-affirming optimistic mood, since all this is important for the healthy existence of people. Thus, the central conflict of this book is complex and deep. Undoubtedly, social antagonisms are depicted here quite sharply. Of course, the burden of serfdom falls primarily on the shoulders of the peasant, because it is he who has to endure physical torture, hunger, poverty and spiritual humiliation. However, Turgenev looks at serfdom from a broader, national point of view, as a phenomenon painful at the same time for both the master and the peasant. He sharply condemns the cruel serf owners and sympathizes with those nobles who themselves were victims of the serfdom yoke. It is no coincidence that the singing of Yakov the Turk evokes a “heavy tear” from the eyes of the Wild Master. In Turgenev, not only peasants are endowed with nationally Russian traits; Some landowners who escaped the corrupting influence of serfdom are also Russian by nature. Pyotr Petrovich Karataev is no less a Russian person than the peasants. National character traits are also emphasized in the moral character of Tchertopkhanov. He is a landowner, but not a serf owner. Such is Tatyana Borisovna, a patriarchal landowner, but at the same time a simple creature, with a “straightforward, pure heart.” The author sees the living forces of the nation in both the peasant and noble environment. Admiring the poetic talent or, conversely, the efficiency of the Russian person, the writer comes to the conclusion that serfdom is contrary to national dignity, and all living Russia, not only peasant, but also noble, must take part in the fight against it.

Notes of a hunter. Summary

by chapter

Bezhin meadow

On a beautiful July day, one of those days when the weather settled for a long time, the narrator was hunting black grouse in the Chernsky district of the Tula province. He shot quite a lot of game, and when it began to get dark, he decided to return home, but got lost. The hunter wandered for quite a long time, meanwhile the night was approaching. He even tried to ask his hunting dog Dianka where he had wandered and where he was. “The smartest of four-legged creatures” was silent and just wagged her tail. Continuing to wander, the hunter found himself over a terrible abyss. The hill on which he was located descended into a sheer cliff. On the plain near the river, two lights were burning and glowing, and people were scurrying around them.

The narrator found out where he went. This. the place was known as Bezhina Meadows. The hunter went down and was going to ask people for an overnight stay near the fire. The dogs greeted him with an angry bark. Children's voices were heard near the lights, and the hunter answered the children from afar. They drove away the dogs, who were especially struck by Dianka's appearance, and the man approached the fire.

The hunter told the boys that he was lost and sat down by the fire. There were five boys sitting by the fire: Fedya, Pavlusha, Ilyusha, Kostya and Vanya.

Fedya was the oldest. He was about fourteen years old. He was a slender boy with bright eyes and a constant cheerful half-smile. He belonged, by all accounts, to a rich family, and went to the field for fun. Pavlusha was unprepossessing in appearance. But he spoke intelligently and directly, and there was strength in his voice. Ilyusha's face expressed dull, painful solicitude. It was as if he was squinting from the fire. He and Pavlusha were twelve years old. The fourth, Kostya, a boy of about ten, aroused curiosity with his thoughtful and sad gaze. Vanya was only seven years old, he was dozing on the matting.

The kids were talking about this and that, but suddenly Fedya turned to Ilyusha and asked him, as if continuing an interrupted story, if Ilyusha had seen the brownie. Ilyusha replied that he didn’t see him, because he couldn’t be seen, but he heard him in the old factory, in the old factory. Under the brownie, boards cracked at night, a wheel could suddenly rattle, boilers and devices on which paper was made would move. Then the brownie seemed to go to the door and suddenly coughed and choked. The kids who were spending the night at the factory then fell down from fear and crawled under each other.

And Kostya told another story - about the suburban carpenter Gavril, who was sad all the time because he saw a mermaid in the forest. The mermaid laughed all the time and called the guy to her. But the Lord advised him, and Gavrila crossed himself. The mermaid burst into tears and disappeared, complaining that the man should not have been baptized. Now she will cry all the time, they say, but she also wished for him to kill himself until the end of his days. After these words, the evil spirit disappeared, and it became clear to Gavrila how to get out of the forest. But since then he has been sad.

The next story was Ilyushina. It was a story about how the huntsman Yermil picked up a white lamb from the grave of a drowned man, who bared his teeth at night and spoke to Yermil in a human voice.

Fedya continued the conversation with a story about the late master Ivan Ivanovich, who keeps walking the earth in a long-length caftan and looking for something. Grandfather Trofimych, who asked the deceased what he was looking for, Ivan Ivanovich replied that he was looking for a gap - grass. The grave presses him, and he wants to get out.

Ilyusha picked up the conversation and said that the deceased can be seen on parental Saturday if you sit on the porch of the church. But you can also see the living, whose turn to die this year. Grandma Ulyana saw Ivashka Fedoseev, the boy who died in the spring, and then herself. And from that day on, her soul barely holds on, even though she is still alive. Ilyusha also spoke about Trishka, an extraordinary man, the legends about whom were very similar to the legends about the Antichrist. The conversation turned to the merman, and from him to the fool Akulina, who had gone crazy since she tried to drown herself in the river.

The boy Vasya also drowned in the same river. His mother raked hay while her son played on the shore. The boy suddenly disappeared, only the cap floated on the water. His mother has been out of her mind since then.

Pavel came with a full pot of water in his hands and said that something was wrong, the brownie had called him. Fedya added at this news that the drowned Vasyatka called Pavel.

The hunter was gradually overcome by sleep, and he woke up only at dawn. All the boys slept near the fire. Only Pavel woke up and looked intently at the night guest, who nodded his head to him and walked along the river.

Unfortunately, Pavel died that same year: he fell from his horse and was killed.

Khor and Kalinich

The narrator meets the landowner Polutykin, a passionate hunter, who invites him to his estate. They go to spend the night with the peasant Khorya. Khor had a strong economy and had a practical mindset. He was Polutykin's serf, although he had the opportunity to pay off his master. But this was unprofitable for Khor, so he abandoned such thoughts.

Khor's manners are unhurried, he does not get down to business without thinking and calculating everything in advance, he does not think abstractly, he is not visited by dreams.

His friend Kalinich is the complete opposite. He once had a wife, whom he was very afraid of, but that was a long time ago. Now he lives alone and often accompanies Polutykin on hunts. This activity became the meaning of his life, as it gives him the opportunity to communicate with nature.

Khor and Kalinich are friends, despite the fact that they have different views on life. Kalinich, as an enthusiastic, dreamy person who does not really understand people, was in awe of the master. Khor saw right through Polutykin, so he treated him somewhat ironically.

Khor loved Kalinich and patronized him because he felt that he was wiser. And Kalinich, in turn, loved and respected Khor.

Khor knew how to hide his thoughts, be cunning, and spoke little. Kalinich explained himself passionately and enthusiastically. Kalinich was familiar with the secrets of nature, he could stop blood and charm fear. The practical Khor, who “stood closer to society, to people,” did not possess all these skills, while Kalinich was closer to nature.

Ermolai and the miller's wife

The narrator tells how one day he and the hunter Ermolai went on a “drag” - an evening hunt for woodcock.

He then introduces readers to Ermolai. “Yermolai was a strange kind of man: carefree, like a bird, quite talkative, absent-minded and awkward in appearance.” At the same time, “no one could compare with him in the art of catching fish in spring, in hollow water, getting crayfish with his hands, finding game by instinct, luring quails, hatching hawks, catching nightingales...”

After standing on the draft for about an hour, having killed two pairs of woodcocks, the narrator and Ermolai decided to spend the night at the nearest mill, but they were not allowed in, but were allowed to spend the night under an open canopy. The miller's wife Arina brought them food for dinner. It turned out that the narrator knows her former master, Mr. Zverkov, for whose wife Arina served as a maid. One day she asked the master for permission to marry the footman Petrushka. Zverkov and his wife considered themselves insulted by this request: the girl was exiled to the village, and the footman was sent to serve as a soldier. Arina later married a miller, who bought her.

Raspberry water

The action takes place in the heat of early August, when the narrator went hunting and went in the direction of a spring known as Raspberry Water.

Near the river he meets two old men fishing - Shumikhinsky's Stepushka and Mikhailo Savelyev, nicknamed Fog. What follows is a recounting of their life stories.

County doctor

One autumn, returning from a field away, the narrator caught a cold and fell ill. It happened in a county town, in a hotel. The doctor was called. The district doctor, Trifon Ivanovich, prescribed medicine and began to talk about how one day, while playing preference with a local judge, he was called to the house of an impoverished widow. She was a landowner who lived twenty miles from the city. A note from her said that her daughter was dying, and she asked the doctor to come as soon as possible.

Having arrived, the doctor began to provide medical assistance to her daughter, Alexandra Andreevna, who was sick with fever. Trifon Ivanovich stayed with them for several days to care for the patient, feeling “a strong affection for her.” Despite all his efforts, the girl did not recover. One night, feeling that she would soon die, she confessed her love to the doctor. Three days later, Alexandra Andreevna died.

And the doctor then entered into a legal marriage, taking as his wife the merchant’s daughter Akulina, evil, but with a dowry of seven thousand.

Odnodvorets Ovsyanikov

Here the narrator introduces readers to Ovsyanikov, a man of the same estate. He was a plump, tall man, about seventy years old, with a face somewhat reminiscent of Krylov’s face, with a clear and intelligent gaze, with an important posture, measured speech and a slow gait. All his neighbors respected him extremely and considered it an honor to know him. Ovsyanikov lived alone with his wife in a cozy, neat house. He kept a small servant, dressed his people in Russian and called them workers. “He considered it a sin to sell bread - God’s gift, and in the year 40, during a general famine and terrible high prices, he distributed his entire supply to the surrounding landowners and peasants; The next year they gratefully paid him their debt in kind.” Ovsyanikov read only spiritual books. Neighbors often came to him for advice and help, asking him to judge and reconcile them.

One of Ovsyanikov’s neighbors was Franz Ivanovich Lezhen. In 1812 he went to Russia with Napoleonic army as a drummer. During the retreat, Lezhen fell into the hands of Smolensk men who wanted to drown him. A landowner passing by took pity on the Frenchman. He asked if he played the piano and brought him home as a teacher for His daughters. Two weeks later, Lejeune moved from this landowner to another, a rich and educated man, who fell in love with the Frenchman for his kind and cheerful disposition and married his pupil. Lejeune entered the service, became a nobleman, and in the end - a Russian landowner. He moved to live in Orel and made friends with Ovsyanikov.

Lgov

The narrator and Ermolai go to shoot ducks in Lgov, a large steppe village. Once at the river bank, they find the boat of the fisherman Kuzma, nicknamed Suchok. He was everything in his life: a Cossack, a coachman, a cook, a coffee shop worker, an actor, a postman, a gardener, a delivery driver, and now he is the master’s fisherman, who has been assigned to fish for seven years in a pond where there are no fish. He had several names and nicknames throughout his life.

Kasyan with a Beautiful Sword

The narrator returns from hunting on a sultry summer day. The axle of their cart’s wheel breaks, and the coachman Erofey blames the funeral procession he met along the road for this. It is believed that meeting a dead person is a bad omen. The narrator learns that they are burying Martyn the carpenter, who died of fever. The coachman, meanwhile, suggests going to Yudiny settlement to get a new axle for the wheel there. At the outskirts, the narrator meets Kasyan, a dwarf of about fifty with a small, dark and wrinkled face, a sharp nose, brown, barely noticeable eyes and curly, thick black hair. His whole body was extremely frail and thin, and his gaze was strange and unusual.

Kasyan says that a new axle can be obtained from merchant clerks in an oak grove that is being cut down for sale, and agrees to accompany the hunter there. He decides to hunt in the grove. Kasyan asks to take him with him. After much wandering, the narrator manages to shoot only a corncrake.

“- Master, oh master! - Kasyan suddenly said in his sonorous voice.

I stood up in surprise; Until now he had barely answered my questions, otherwise he suddenly spoke.

- What do you want? - I asked.

- Well, why did you kill the bird? - he began, looking me straight in the face.

- How for what? Crake is game: you can eat it.

“That’s not why you killed him, master: you’ll eat him!” You killed him for your amusement."

Kasyan argues that it is a sin to kill any forest creature, but man is entitled to other food - bread and “tame creatures from the ancient fathers.” He says that “neither man nor creature can lie against death. Death does not run, and you cannot run away from it; Yes, she shouldn’t be helped..."

The narrator learns that Kasyan knows medicinal herbs well, at one time he went “to Simbirsk - the glorious city, and to Moscow itself - the golden domes; I went to the Oka-nurse, and to the Volga-mother.” “And I’m not the only sinner... there are many other peasants walking around in bast shoes, wandering around the world, looking for the truth... yes!.. And what about at home, eh? There is no justice in man - that’s what it is...”

The coachman Erofey considers Kasyan a holy fool and a stupid person, but admits that Kasyan cured him of scrofula. “God knows: he’s silent as a stump, then he suddenly speaks, and what he speaks, God knows. Is this manners? This is not manners. An incongruous person, as he is.”

Mayor

About fifteen verts from the narrator’s estate lives a young landowner - retired guards officer Arkady Pavlovich Penochkin. His house was built according to the plan of a French architect, people are dressed in English, and he runs the house with great success. Penochkin orders French books, but practically does not read them. He is considered one of the most educated nobles and eligible bachelors in the province. In winter he travels to St. Petersburg. The narrator is reluctant to visit him, but one day he has to spend the night at Penochkin’s estate. In the morning there was breakfast in the English style. Then they travel together to the village of Shipilovka, where they stay in the hut of the local mayor Sofron Yakovlevich. He answered all of Penochkin’s questions about affairs on the farm that everything was going very well thanks to the master’s orders. The next day, Penochkin, together with the narrator and the mayor Sofron, went to inspect the estate, where extraordinary order reigned. Then we went hunting in the forest, and when we returned, we went to look at a winnowing machine that had recently been ordered from Moscow.

Coming out of the barn, they saw two men, old and young, kneeling. They complained that they were completely tortured by the mayor, who had taken two of the old man’s sons as recruits, and was now taking away the third. He took the last cow from the yard and beat his wife. They claimed that the mayor was not the only one ruining them. But Penochkin did not listen to them.

Two hours later, the narrator was already in the village of Ryabov, where he talked with a peasant he knew, Anpadist, about the Shipilovsky peasants. He explained that Shipilovka is only listed as the master’s, but Sofron owns it as his property: the peasants around him owe him money, they work for him like farm laborers, and the mayor earns a living in land, horses, cattle, tar, oil, hemp, so he is very rich, but beats peasants. The men don’t complain to the master, because Penochkin doesn’t care: the main thing is that there are no arrears. And Sophron got annoyed with Antipas because he quarreled with him at the meeting, so now he is taking revenge on him.

Office

The action takes place in autumn. The hunter was wandering through the fields with a gun and suddenly saw a low hut in which an old watchman was sitting, who showed him the way. So the narrator ended up in the estate of Elena Nikolaevna Losnyakova, in the main master’s office, where the clerk Nikolai Eremeev manages. The narrator, being in the next room and pretending to be asleep, finds out

there is a lot of new information about him and about life on the estate.

Biryuk

The hunter was returning home alone, on a racing droshky. A thunderstorm was approaching, and suddenly the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly, in the darkness, with the flash of lightning, a tall figure stood near the droshky. The man demanded in a stern voice to identify himself and, upon hearing the answer, calmed down. He himself turned out to be a local forester and invited the hunter to wait out the rain in his hut. The forester took the horse by the bridle, and soon a small hut in a wide yard appeared before the hunter’s eyes. On the threshold they were met by a girl of about twelve, wearing a shirt with a belt around the hem, and with a lantern in her hand. The forester went to put the droshky under the shed, and the master entered the hut. Appalling poverty appeared before him. There was a child lying in the cradle, breathing heavily and rapidly. The girl rocked him, straightening the splinter with her left hand. The forester entered. The master thanked the forester and asked his name. He replied that his name was Thomas, nicknamed Biryuk.

The hunter looked at the forester with redoubled curiosity.

There were legends about Biryuk's honesty, incorruptibility and strength.

The master asked where the hostess was. The forester first answered that she had died, and then corrected herself, saying that she had run away with a passing tradesman, abandoning her barely born child.

Biryuk offered the master bread, but he said that he was not hungry. The forester went out into the yard and returned with the news that the thunderstorm was passing, and invited the guest to escort him out of the forest. He himself took the gun, explaining that they were cutting down a tree at Kobylye Verkh, they were playing pranks - he heard from the yard.

The master and the forester did not have time to get to the felling site. The hunter rushed to the place where the noise of the struggle was coming from, and saw the forester, who had tied the thief’s hands with a sash behind his back. The thief turned out to be a man in rags, with a long beard. The master mentally gave his word: to free the poor fellow at all costs. The man was seated on a bench, and there was dead silence in the house.

Suddenly the prisoner spoke and asked Foma Kuzmich, i.e. Biryuk, to free him. Foma was adamant, and after much arguing, the man issued threats against the forester. Biryuk stood up and, in a fit of anger, approached the man. He was afraid that they would beat him, and the master stood up for the prisoner. Biryuk told the master to leave him alone, pulled the sash from the man’s elbows, pulled his cap over his eyes, grabbed him by the collar and pushed him out of the hut.

The master praised Biryuk, saying that he is a verbal fellow. The forester waved him off and only asked him not to tell anyone anything.

Then he saw the master off and said goodbye to him at the edge of the forest.

Lebedyan

The narrator talks about how five years ago he came to Lebedyan at the very collapse of the fair. After lunch, he goes to the coffee shop, where they played billiards.

The next day he went to choose a horse for himself, looked at it for a long time, and finally bought it. But it turned out to be burnt and lame, and the seller refused to take it back.

Singers

The action takes place in the small village of Kolotovka. It tells about the competition between two singers from the people - Yakov Turk and a soldier from Zhizdra. The rower sang “in the highest falsetto,” his voice was “rather pleasant and sweet, although somewhat hoarse; he played and wiggled this voice like a top,<…>would fall silent and then suddenly pick up the same tune with some kind of rollicking, arrogant prowess. His transitions were sometimes quite bold, sometimes quite funny: they would bring a lot of pleasure to a connoisseur.”

Yakov “sang, completely forgetting both his opponent and all of us, but, apparently, lifted like a vigorous swimmer by the waves, by our silent, passionate fate. He sang, and from every sound of his voice there was a breath of something familiar and vastly wide, as if the familiar steppe was opening up<…>, going into endless distance."

“There was more than one path in the field,” Yakov sang, and everyone present felt terrified. In his voice there was genuine deep passion, and youth, and strength, and sweetness, and some kind of fascinatingly carefree, sad grief. “The Russian, truthful, ardent soul sounded and breathed in him and grabbed you by the heart, grabbed you right by its Russian strings.”

Having rested in the hayloft and leaving the village, the hunter decided to look into the window of the Prytynny tavern, where a few hours ago he had witnessed a wonderful singing. A “gay” and “motley” picture was presented to his eyes: “Everyone was drunk - everyone, starting with Yakov. He sat bare-chested on a bench and, humming in a hoarse voice some kind of dance, street song, lazily plucked the strings of his guitar...”

Moving away from the window, from which came the discordant sounds of tavern “fun,” the hunter quickly walked away from Kolotovka.

Petr Petrovich Karataev

The action took place in the autumn, on the road from Moskra to Tula, when the narrator sat for almost the whole day due to a lack of horses in the post house, where he met the small nobleman Pyotr Petrovich Karataev. Karataev tells the narrator his story. He is almost ruined - due to crop failures and his own inability to manage the farm, and now he is going to Moscow to serve. Then he remembers how he once fell in love with a beautiful serf girl, Matryona, and decided to buy her from her mistress. A relative of the lady received him and told him to call in two days. Having arrived at the specified time, Pyotr Petrovich learned that Matryona was being sent to a steppe village, since the lady did not want to sell the girl. Then Karataev went to the village where Matryona had been exiled, and took her to his place secretly, at night. So they lived for five months in joy and harmony.

But one day, while riding a sleigh, they went to the village of Matryona’s lady, where they were seen and recognized. The lady filed a complaint against Karataev that her runaway girl was living with him. The police officer arrived, but this time Pyotr Petrovich managed to buy himself off. However, he was not left alone. He got into debt, hid Matryona, but she, taking pity on Karataev, went and gave herself away.

A year after this meeting, the narrator arrived in Moscow, went into a coffee shop there, where he saw him coming out of the billiard room

Peter Petrovich. He said that he does not serve anywhere, his village was sold at auction, and he intends to remain in Moscow for the rest of his life.

Date

Tenderly loving Akulina comes to the grove on a date with the noble valet's spoiled valet and finds out that he is leaving with his master for St. Petersburg, possibly leaving her forever. Victor leaves without a hint of frustration or remorse, and the poor deceived girl indulges in inconsolable sobs.

Nature here is a subtle lyrical commentary on the girl’s painful, hopeless state: “... through the gloomy, although fresh smile of fading nature, the sad fear of the near winter seemed to creep in. High above me, heavily and sharply cutting through the air with its wings, a cautious raven flew by, turned its head, looked at me from the side, soared up and, cawing abruptly, disappeared behind the forest...”

Living relics

The narrator, together with Ermolai, goes for black grouse to Belevsky district. The rain did not stop since the morning. Then Ermolai suggested going to spend the night in Alekseevka - a farmstead that belonged to the narrator’s mother, the existence of which he had not previously suspected.

The next day he went to wander through the wild garden. Having reached the apiary, I saw a wicker shed, where lay a small figure that looked like a mummy. She turned out to be Lukerya, a former beauty. She told her story of how she fell off the porch seven years ago and started getting sick. Her body withered and she lost the ability to move. The gentlemen first tried to treat her, and then sent her to the village to stay with relatives. Here Lukerya was nicknamed “Living Relics”. She says about her current life that she is happy with everything: God sent the cross, which means he loves her. He says that he dreams: Christ; parents who bow to her and say that she atones for their sins with her suffering; death, which Lukerya begs to take her with him. The narrator refuses the offer to take her to the hospital - medical procedures do not help her, causing only unnecessary suffering. She asks the master to tell his mother to reduce the rent for the local peasants - their lands are poor, the harvests are bad.

A few weeks after their meeting, Lukerya died.