2023-06-17 07:59:46
When the historian Orlando Figes writes his magisterial essay ‘The Europeans’ where he recounts the birth of the current European culture and how it expands, with the great contribution of the railway, throughout the continent, he does so taking this movement as the axis and center cosmopolitan to three figures, three important figures of that mid-century era. They are the Spanish-born singer Pauline Viardot, her husband, Louis Viardot, and her lover, the Russian writer Iván Turguénev. The biography of these three characters allows the British historian to describe life in large European cities and the circle of artists and intellectuals who will illuminate the cultural landscape of that century.
This is how we see, in the middle of the 19th century, Iván Turguénev, turned into a central character in what was then the center of Europe: Paris; the shine of him; His relevance was not only as a famous writer but also as a disseminator of that new cultural and social ideology of liberal and universal modernity that helped so much in the reconstruction of Europe. Turgenev was then doubly imprisoned: by her love for Pauline Viardot, which she maintained until his death, and by those liberal and cosmopolitan ideas that together with her and her husband she dedicated herself to spreading.
Once this great task was accomplished, the writer returned to Russia around 1850 and it is from there that the production of his best literary works began, which opened with ‘Tales of a hunter’. Those were dark times in Russia with a Tsar Nicholas I marking his oppressive policy with blood and fire, which resulted in problems for intellectuals and writers such as Dostoevsky or Turgenev himself. Then, with Alexander II, his hand opened somewhat and servants and intellectuals breathed.
It is at that time that Turgenev writes one of his best short stories: ‘Nobles’ Nest’, although he had to wait for the arrival of the new tsar to see it published. ‘Nido de nobles, which is now republished by Alba publishing house, is a thoughtful and difficult love story, which becomes impossible, and which above all allowed the writer to recreate Liza and draw one of the most notable female characters in Russian literature.
In his role as a writer, Turgenev was a man best at short distances. Hence, the most intense brightness of him achieves it in his short stories, more than in his novels. The use he made of both texts also has a lot to do with it. While the novels were the field where he wanted to narrate the social and political problems of the moment, reflecting the Russian society of that time; in the short stories Turgenev was inclined to reflect those eternal themes of humanity, such as the world of feelings, or the great passions of love. And at the center of everything, love, the great protagonist, the great guide of human lives, although almost always, as in ‘Nido de nobles’, it leads the protagonists to disaster, misfortune and misfortune. But it is here in the short stories, like the one that concerns us now or ‘Tales of a hunter’, ‘Diary of a superfluous man’ or ‘First love’, where we will find and read the best Turgenev.
In the case of Nido de nobles, as Joaquín Fernández-Valdés points out in his introduction, there are two central protagonists: Fiódor Iványch Lavretski “a man with good intentions and ideals unable to put them into practice and who therefore feels useless before society ”. As for her, Elizaveta Kalítina or Liza, “she is introverted, sensitive, idealistic, kind, pure, with great moral strength and deep religiousness.”
Liza is beautiful and charming at 19 years old. She lives in the town of O. together with her widowed mother, Maria Dmitrievna Kalitina. She attracts the attention of an ambitious 28-year-old, Vladimir Nikolaich Panshin, who works at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and is already a chamberlain.
Then Feodor Iványch Lavretsky unexpectedly arrives in the city. He is a distant relative of Maria Dmitrievna. Lavretski returns from Europe after separating from her wife Varvara Pavlovna Korobine, because of her libertine life. As soon as he arrives and sees Liza, he falls in love with her. She also has feelings for him, and it seems that a marriage may be possible after news reaches Lavretsky that his wife has died.
However, their hopes are dashed when Varvara Pavlovna unexpectedly appears at Lavretsky’s house with a daughter in tow and informs him of her decision to settle on the family estate. Liza enters a convent and Fyodor Lavretsky lives out his days alone with the only memories of his time with Liza to support him.
One of Turgenev’s great ideas in this story is that life is primarily a loss, though not an irrevocable one, and that the decisions we make in our youth, often on a whim and with little understanding of ourselves and the world, can change the course of our lives. But the tragic result of those decisions is only fully felt when it is already too late.
It is your own state of mind that strongly influences these reflections. When Turgenev writes ‘Nest of Nobles’ he is around forty years old. He is not old, but he has lived a lot in his long stay in Europe and he is aware that the years of youth and maturity have passed and it is no longer time to change anything or to be happy again. He had a sudden passage to forty, which he experienced as the beginning of old age; such a cherished past was falling apart, and it seemed that there was no hope ahead. From there arises ‘Nest of Nobles’ where Turgenev also returns to his portrait of the superfluous man, that rich and noble landowner, educated in Europeanizing ideas and who disdains Russian traditions.
#prince #European #culture #Russian #hopelessness