Word and Deed in the Novels of I.S. Turgenev

Abstract

Russian classic writer Ivan Turgenev, analyzing the Russian reality of the second half of the 19th century, presented inside one work – novel Smoke – an anthropological review of society, showing a change in the speech styles of different layers of the population. The novel is dominated by the idea of a dialogue of cultures – an obvious dialogue of Western European and Russian culture, and no less obvious dialogue that took place within the multitude of Russian cultures: gentry’s and common people’s, merchants’, raznochintsys’, and philistines’ cultures. In Turgenev’s novel, the sign of a new time is freely discussed opportunities of solving the problems that have arisen, fnding solutions not in a rational way but in the hope for suddenness and fortune. However, the ways of solving problems, regardless of the possibilities for their implementation, must be discussed, argued, and analyzed. Therefore, the novel intuitively shows the way of the birth of a parliament, which was absent inRussia at that time. The article demonstrates the importance of a rational, philosophical way of reasoning, which can become a life principle when words and deeds correspond with each other. Turgenev in some way – through different speech instances – stratifed the new generation, showing a new face of unstableRussia. The main driving force of many, if not all, of Turgenev’s novels is freedom and the words and deeds born by it. A previously unseen fgure of a revolutionary appears, expressing a new attitude to society and to power. Turgenev’s modernity and timeliness consists in fxing such a mentality in which the emphasis is placed on the metaphysical idea of the beginning: it exists, it receives an impetus – and there is almost no movement, everything is only projected, only utopized, turning the thinker into an odd man. And although not only the idea of freedom, but thefree state of a person is recognized as a historical fact (this Hegelian thought appeals to Turgenev), he emphasizes that Russian freedom was born without waking up.