The Cultural and Philosophical Meaning of the Motif of Loneliness: The Personality and Creative Work of I.S. Turgenev

Abstract

The article deals with the little-studied but actual problem of loneliness of an outstanding creative personality as a consequence of stereotypical understanding of his works and activity. The cultural and philosophical meaning of Ivan Turgenev’s motif of loneliness is that he was a lone creator, recognized by Russian critics and historians of literature (V. Belinsky, D. Merezhkovsky, V. Rozanov) only in the context of the activities of other recognized great writers: Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov. The problem of loneliness is revealed through the paradoxical statement by Turgenev (in the essay “Hamlet and Don Quixote”) on the question about strange loners and aggressive crowd. The paper presents the loneliness of I.S. Turgenev as a rejection of the understandable and normality among the non-understandable and weirdness. In Russian literatury critical and historico-cultural tradition, during the discussion of Russian classics, the general opinion (N. Berdyaev, D. Andreev, V. Nabokov) has been formed: Turgenev is apparently non-Russian author (because he is very European unlike N. Berdyev and V. Nabokov themselves), moreover he is not a classic writer indeed (if you count that a classic writer should be irrational, when Turgenev is understandable).