In the early 60s of the XIX century. in the work of the great Russian writer Turgenev, the theme of the mysterious appeared. She was first embodied in the story "Ghosts", written in 1861-1863.
Then the image of the mysterious began to appear more and more often: "Dog" (1864), "Strange Story" (1869), "Knock … Knock … Knock!.." (1870), "Clock" (1875), "Sleep" (1876), "The Story of Father Alexei" (1877), "The Song of Triumphant Love" (1881), "After Death" (1882) and some of his other works, in particular the unfinished story "Silaev", which was supposedly created in the late 1870s years. Researchers of the writer's creativity refer all these works to Turgenev's "mysterious stories".
They are opened by the story "Ghosts", named in the subtitle "Fantasy". Why did the author need such a clarification? Was he not afraid of misunderstanding, rejection of a new direction for him on the part of readers, friends, fellow writers, critics? Researchers of Turgenev's literary heritage drew attention to the fact that the writer, “as if anticipating this misunderstanding, protected himself by talking about 'trifles', 'trinkets', 'nonsense,' just in case. … "(I. Vinogradov).
Turgenev's "mysterious stories" were met with almost hostility by his contemporaries. Literary critic I. Vinogradov notes in this regard: "A sober realist, who always amazed with the amazing authenticity of his paintings, - and suddenly mystical stories about ghosts, posthumous love, mysterious dreams and meetings with the dead … Many were confused."
The writer especially got it for the story "Dog" - about a ruined landowner who fancies that he is being pursued by the ghost of some mysterious dog.
One of Turgenev's closest friends, VP Botkin, having met "Dog", wrote to him: "It is bad, frankly, and, in my opinion, it should not be published. One failure in the form of "Ghosts" is enough. And a certain P. I. Weinberg put in the satirical magazine "Alarm clock" something like an open letter to Turgenev in verse:
I read your "Dog"
And from now on
Promotional video:
There's something scratching in my brain
How is your Trezor.
Scratches by day, scrapes at night
Not lagging behind
And very strange questions
Asks me:
“What does a Russian writer mean?
Why why
Mostly he cums
The devil knows what?"
But instead of the expected "end" followed by a new rise in the writer's creativity, not understood not only by his contemporaries, but also in later times. Soviet literary critics associate the appearance of the "Ghosts" with external and internal reasons: "… when the class struggle intensified, Turgenev fell into an oppressed state"; he "experienced during this period a severe mental crisis, perhaps the most acute of all that he had ever experienced," wrote I. Vinogradov in 1962.
But amazingly, the latter is not denied by Turgenev himself. In a letter to V. P. Botkin dated January 26, 1863, he writes in connection with the "Ghosts": "This is a series of some kind of emotional dissolving-views (foggy pictures. - I. V.), caused by a transitional and really difficult and dark state of my “I.” How sincere was the writer in assessing his condition in front of a friend whose opinion he valued? Did he “pity” just in case?
Suppose "Ghosts" were written by Turgenev in a state of severe mental crisis (it is true, it remains unclear how such a masterpiece could have been created in such a state), but what about all the other "mysterious stories"? Did the exacerbation of the class struggle and the "difficult and confused state" caused by this and other reasons continue for two more decades, until 1882? After all, no, but masterpieces, including "mysterious" ones, continued to come out. So what's the deal?
Everything is very simple. Turgenev never cheated on himself. He was and remains a realist, including in the depiction of the mysterious. The gift of a writer, observation, intuition, knowledge of the life of his people allowed Turgenev to display the mysterious with such precision in detail, which is not always available to another professional. As far as is known, this circumstance was first drawn by M. G. Bykova.
In the book Legend for Adults (Moscow, 1990), which tells about the problem of hidden animals, including the so-called Bigfoot, Maya Genrikhovna asks the question: “Has Turgenev ever applied knowledge about the unusual in nature in his work? " And he answers with a specific example: "In the story" Bezhin Meadow ", nature comes close on soft paws to a child's fire. The details, specific knowledge are striking:" Leshy does not shout, he is dumb, "Ilyusha, who looks no more than twelve years old, drops. …
And in a letter to Ye. M. Feoktistov, Turgenev, regarding Bezhin Meadows, remarked: “I did not want to give this story a fantastic character.” Only a realist could say that.
"Night" painting by artist Vladimir Makovsky, inspired by the story "Bezhin Meadow"
But the writer also had a personal experience of meeting the mysterious, and such, which even the enemy would not wish to survive! This meeting is described in the book named by M. G. Bykova.
Once in Paris, Pauline Viardot's audience began to talk about the nature of the terrible. They wondered why horror always arises when meeting the inexplicable, mysterious. And then Ivan Sergeevich told about the incident that happened to him when he met a terrible and mysterious creature in the forests of central Russia. Maupassant, who was present at the same time, on fresh tracks, wrote down what was told, reflecting what he heard in the little-known novel "Horror". There she is.
“While still young, Turgenev once hunted in the Russian forest. I wandered all day and in the evening I came to the bank of a quiet river. It flowed under the trees. All overgrown with grass, deep, cold, clean. The hunter was seized by an irresistible desire to plunge. Undressing, he threw himself into the water. Tall, strong and sturdy, he swam well. Calmly surrendered to the will of the current, which quietly carried him away.
Grasses and roots brushed against his body, and the light touch of the stems was pleasant. Suddenly, a hand touched his shoulder. He quickly turned around and … saw a terrible creature who was looking at him with eager curiosity. It looked like a woman or a monkey. Wide and wrinkled, grimacing and laughing face.
Something indescribable - two sacks of some sort, obviously breasts, were dangling in front; long matted hair, red from the sun, framed her face and fluttered behind her. Turgenev felt a wild, chilling fear of the supernatural. Without hesitation, without trying to understand, to comprehend what it is, he swam with all his might to the shore.
But the monster swam even faster and with a joyful squeal now and then touched his neck, back, legs. Finally, the young man, distraught with fear, reached the shore and with all his might began to run through the forest, throwing away his clothes and a gun.
The terrible creature followed him; it ran just as fast and still squealed. The exhausted fugitive, his legs shaking with horror, was about to collapse when a boy armed with a whip came running, grazing a herd of goats. He began to whip the hideous humanoid beast, which took off, screaming in pain. Soon this creature, similar to a female gorilla, disappeared into the thickets."
Of course, this is an exceptional case in the biography of the writer - so unusual that if he were to display it in a story, even with the subtitle “fantasy,” he would be accused of at least far-fetchedness. Realizing all the originality of what had happened, Turgenev only once, and even then in a circle of close people, remembered that terrible and mysterious incident. The internal censorship did not allow him more: he was a realist, but that event clearly went beyond any boundaries of generally acceptable reality.
And some elements of the mysterious in his works were not so cool, and the reading public could well perceive them as a flight of creative imagination. Apparently, the writer himself regarded his "mysterious" creations in a similar way, but his inherent sensation of the mysterious sides of life and an unusually developed intuition allowed him, as it were, involuntarily and to some extent unconsciously to reflect in the "mysterious stories" something more - fantastic reality itself, clothed in an exquisitely artistic form.
Take, for example, the story "Ghosts," as already mentioned, the first in a series of "mysterious" works by Turgenev. The plot is based on the unusual night flights of the hero of the story, who is rapidly sweeping over the earth in the arms of a ghost in the form of a woman named Ellis.
“I was beginning to get used to the sensation of flight and even found it pleasant: everyone who happened to fly in a dream will understand me” - with these words the author describes the strange impressions of his hero, who eventually becomes convinced that this is not a dream at all, but something more: “Hey-ge! - I thought. "Flying, then, is beyond doubt."
… Since the writing of "Ghosts" it took about a century before parapsychologists paid attention to the stories of people about the sometimes unusual experiences they experienced, known as "out of body", "out of body state", "astral projection", "wandering clairvoyance" and some others.
Their distinctive feature is manifested in the ability to see scenes or events that are inaccessible to perception in the place where the physical body of the eyewitness is.
The latter has a feeling that his consciousness temporarily leaves its corporeal shell and is able to travel through cities and towns.
At the same time, he realizes that this is not a dream, but something more. And even after returning to his usual state, he does not have the feeling that everything that happened was a dream. Moreover, in those cases where it was possible to verify scenes or events witnessed by the “out of body” consciousness of an eyewitness, their descriptions often corresponded to reality. There is also reliable confirmation of this, obtained in an experiment with people whose ability to "leave the body" is manifested at will.
Usually, the "out-of-body state" occurs when a person is on the verge of death as a result of illness or accident, sometimes it is caused by the strongest emotional stress, but most often it manifests itself without any obvious reason during sleep. The phenomenon is known throughout human history, and its manifestations coincide in representatives of various countries and cultures - in Egypt, Tibet, India, China, America and Europe.
For some people, during sleep, "out of the body" occurs systematically. For example, the Englishman D. Whiteman in his book "The Mysterious Life" (London, 1960) shared with the readers his experience of over six hundred "exits from the body." The American businessman R. Monroe, in his book "Traveling out of the body", published in the USA in 1977, summarized his personal experience of such "travels" - he "left the body" more than nine hundred times! His work was published in Russian by the Nauka publishing house in 1993.
