For me, Turgenev is a real artist in Russian literature, best of the best, I read his prose like poetry. He first saw the light though: what are we doing? People do on Russian soil are different and how many such different and yet somewhat similar to each other as countrymen from the same parish. And we write not portraits of living people, but customize common features under our beliefs. First we have the man seemed not to notice or idealized "mass", depicting peasants, burghers, nobles all the crowd, as the procession or to the fair. I see Turgenev are not the masks and symbols, and unique people. And each of them valuable freedom of manifestation itself. Even ordinary people do not depict a crowd of serfs and slaves without a face and soul. The author is so stares in the details that the father Arkady Kirsanov even able to shed a tear from how abruptly flashed away legs peasant horses on a background of white-trunked birches. Not everyone is capable enough to melt the peasant way of life, we are all urban and civilized.
Turgenev opened up Russia and the Russian people, beginning a "peasant theme" in Russian literature, as much as I didn't mind. And did it quite precisely and objectively, without the "directions" and trends, and the completeness of the artist's soul. Frankly, I don't like a mourning crowd of oppressed serfs Nekrasov or admiring dorodstve and satiety wealthy man Solzhenitsyn. A gentleman, a connoisseur of the subtle sensations, the possessor of impeccable taste and elegance in everything - Turgenev, Russia has shown what it is. And it turned out beautiful. I regularly read books on the school curriculum and even recommended "criticism". I admit I seen a writer so weak and spineless opportunist, some mocked him Dostoevsky in "Demons". We were taught in school to read, but do not grasp. In the text of Turgenev will not be able to penetrate skygazer and squirt, what are trying to do us teachers. Only the second and even the third time I "squeezed" in the charm of the lines of Turgenev and then realized Hemingway that a day could not do without the "Notes of hunter".
Turgenev belonged to one of the oldest Russian noble families. He lived, like a real Russian nobleman, - enjoyed hunting and had numerous novels and children on the side, but the rest of his life was chivalrously faithful to the Great Lady of his heart - the French singer Pauline Viardot, even died in her arms. Traveled extensively abroad, was familiar with almost all significant men of his time. In his youth sinned liberalism, even made friends with the recognized leader of the anarchists, Mikhail Bakunin. Sobstvennymi eyes watched France's revolution of 1848. Of course, no did not participate, because until the abolition of serfdom remained the owner of the farm shower. A year and a half he served in the Ministry of the interior, and then resigned. Most of my life then live abroad, in Russia will come only in the hot summer. And that's sort of the gentleman-playboy suddenly write to us "notes of hunter", a cycle of lyrical essays and stories about life of Russian peasants and landlords. They are as truthful as it is beautiful. Still not a single critic was to blame Turgenev in the distortion of Russian reality. Although this was a connoisseur of fine wines and fine women, hunting weapons and dogs, from landlords'm harmless, somehow managed to become a "victim of tsarist repression" and to earn "respect" in revolutionary circles.
For a response to the death of N. In. Gogol Turgenev on the highest command planted on shezhou (detention center, so it sounds modern). In solitary confinement he ate of the best restaurants in protest against the atrocities of the tsarist regime under lock and key wrote the famous story "Mumu". The one where we are talking about the tragic love of a deaf corvee peasant Gerasim to the yard girl Tatiana. Turgenev with subtle psychological story of petty malice senile ladies, from the Caprice trample on the feelings of a person, not a deaf mute, a disabled farmer who wanted and willingly walked back onto the earth cormetallis the sweet stuff in the house of a lady. This is exactly the same story, which is all now known as the bike "about a dog".
After a month of a writer "exiled" to the family estate of Spasskoe six months. Each childhood of Tsar Alexander II, Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy easy to convince the monarch that "liberal" Turgenev is no threat to the throne, because that leads to friendship not only with the anarchist Bakunin and Belinsky Democrat, but with the Slavophiles A. A. FET and S. T. Aksakov. For all it is equally dear, that was beautiful and good-natured man, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. However, he had his principles, and he brought their courtesy and versatility for yourself irritation on the part of almost all the writers of Russia. Fell out almost forever with a Thick, forever - Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, and Pisarev and Dobrolyubov.