About home theater, skittles, boating and carousing
“Yesterday Grigorovich, Druzhinin and Botkin left me after staying with me for three weeks - and today I am writing to you, which until now was almost impossible. We had a very pleasant and noisy time - we acted out a farce of our composition and a parodied scene from Ozerov’s “Oedipus” on the home theater. Vladislav Ozerov’s tragedy “Oedipus in Athens” (1804) seemed hopelessly outdated by Turgenev’s time, in costumes, with scenery, a curtain, the public, challenges, rivalry and even a small affair - in a word, with all the accessories of a home theater; they ate and drank terribly, played billiards and skittles, went boating, rode horses, lied and talked seriously until 2 a.m. - in a word, they caroused; and now I’m alone and wouldn’t mind taking a break from this noisy life; If I succeed, I even intend to work. I will stay here for three weeks; and then I’ll go to the very wilderness of Polesie, 250 miles from here, to shoot black grouse.”
From a letter to Pavel Annenkov. June 2, 1855
Ludwig Pietsch. Home theatrical performance in the salon of Ivan Turgenev in Baden-Baden © House-Museum of I. S. Turgenev / Diomedia
Despite the frivolous tone, the letter was written at a very tense moment - at the height of the Crimean War. Turgenev, like many of his contemporaries, reacted violently to its events and seriously thought that he would have to participate in hostilities with French and English troops. However, this did not stop him and other St. Petersburg writers from having fun and writing literary jokes - both friendly and not so friendly. A prose writer, author of stories and novels from folk life, Dmitry Grigorovich, a critic, prose writer and translator from English, Alexander Druzhinin, and another critic and author of a famous literary trip to Spain, Vasily Botkin (brother of the great surgeon), came to Spasskoye-Lutovinovo. In the farce mentioned in the letter and composed by the whole company, Nikolai Chernyshevsky was mockingly described, whom his friends disliked for his harsh judgments, rude tone and bad manners (Turgenev called him a “simple snake”, and Dobrolyubov - a “spectacled snake” N.V. Shcherban. From memories of I. S. Turgenev // I. S. Turgenev in the memoirs of his contemporaries. T. 2. M., 1983.). The literary theory of Chernyshevsky, who denied the independent significance of art and considered topical social issues to be more significant, caused even greater rejection. Later, Grigorovich will turn this humorous text into a story and publish it, marking the beginning of a literary confrontation between radical commoners and more moderate writers, and their enmity will be depicted in “Fathers and Sons,” but much more seriously and objectively.
About erasing
“Apparently this is my fate, so as not to give anything to the Russian Messenger. I eat terribly (that I consume oil is beyond my comprehension!). I sleep very well - I read the history of Greece Grotto - and, would you believe, the thoughts - the so-called creative (although between us, this word is impermissibly impertinent - who dares to say in earnest; that he is a creator!?), in a word, no composition not in my head. I started one chapter with the following (so new) words: “One fine day” - then I crossed out “beautiful” - then I erased “one” - then I erased everything and wrote in large letters: ... mother! Obscene language. Yes, that's the end of it. But I think “Russkiy Vestnik” will not be satisfied with this.”
From a letter to Vasily Botkin. May 17, 1856
Rene Be. Portrait of Ivan Turgenev at work. Beginning of the 20th century Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de la Ville de Strasbourg
In his letters, Turgenev very often talks about the process of publishing his texts. Professional writers in Russia in the mid-19th century collaborated with thick magazines - publications in them were the most prestigious (as opposed to publications in almanacs or individual publications) and were well paid. Turgenev constantly describes the terms of the next contract with this or that publication, discusses fees, asks publishers to send him proofs, and asks his friends who live in Russia to carefully review the proofs for him (he especially trusts the critic Pavel Annenkov in this regard and even allows him to cross out bad passages) .
Unlike Dostoevsky, who lived a very difficult life, Turgenev could afford relatively free relations with publishers: the owner of a large estate, he was never on the verge of acute need. At the same time, literary earnings were important to him; Moreover, publications in magazines at this time were the only path to literary fame. Opened in 1856, Mikhail Katkov’s “Russian Messenger” sought to attract as many subscribers as possible and invited famous writers, sparing no expense. Turgenev at this time was bound by numerous obligations, especially to Nekrasov’s Sovremennik; new things did not go well. An anecdotal episode with the boring history of Greece will apparently be reflected in the novel “On the Eve”: one of the heroes tries to read the monumental “History of the Hohenstaufens” before bedtime.
