‘My Idol, My Teacher, My Unattainable Model!’: Ivan Turgenev as a Reader of Alexander Pushkin

Abstract

The article provides a holistic analysis of the reader’s perception by Ivan Turgenev ofAlexander Pushkin’s lyrical works. It focuses on the materials of the writer’s personal library (Ivan Turgenev State Literary Museum in the city of Oryol), namely the book (volume) 3 from the first posthumous collection of the poet’s works (1838–1841) with numerous marks left by Turgenev. This paper is the first to reconstruct the picture of the writer’s thoughtful and responsive attitude to Alexander Pushkin as a poet, which is done through a comprehensive study of all the traces of reading left on the pages of the book by Ivan Turgenev (underlining, notes). The nature of the marks indicates the writer’s concentrated attention both to the form of Alexander Pushkin’s verse and to the content. The writer’s reading reflection combines poetic texts into mainly three closely related thematic areas: moral and philosophical, love, and biographical. Ivan Turgenev takes a special interest in Alexander Pushkin’s widely represented pairing of the images of life and death, he significantly deepens the dramatic notes in the author’s reflections on man and his position in the world. The philosophical meanings of Alexander Pushkin’s lyrics, which receive psychological voicing in the course of reading, also become for the writer a necessary tuning fork for the tragic sounding of the theme of love. Approaching the comprehension of the phenomenon of life creation in Alexander Pushkin’s works, Ivan Turgenev, on the one hand, places certain biographical accents in the poems, and, on the other hand, approaches the solution of the problem of the meaning and freedom of poetic creativity. For Ivan Turgenev, the sonnet To the Poet became the credo of a talented person in the matter of creativity.