«INVOLUNTARY WITNESS» OF SOMEBODY’S LOVE STORY:
ON ONE MODEL OF PLOT AND NARRATION IN THE PROSE OF TURGENEV

A. L. Bem (“Thoughts about Turgenev”, 1933) called Turgenev “the saddest of all our
authors”. The source of this ontological sadness can be found, in the opinion of A. L. Bem, in the
“instinctive fear of happiness” that is typical for Turgenev.
The current article studies the model of narration and plot that appears in the works of Turgenev
with particular frequency: that is the model of being an accident observer of somebody’s love
story. All Turgenev’s works with this model form one of the Turgenev’s metaplot, varying within
the range of his texts. This model can be often found in the early prose of Turgenev (“Andrey
Kolosov”, 1844; “My neighbour Radilov” 1847; “The diary of a superfluous man”, 1850; “Three
meetings”, 1852; “A quiet spot”, 1854 “First love”, 1860), but it also occurs later on, in one of the
verse of the cycle “Senilia” (“Rose”, 1982). Thus this model creates a sort of a frame
of the metatext in the author’s works.
All the plots of the paradigm have a lot of differences, but also one common feature – highlighting
of the observer’s figure. The tendency to “observing” is one of the “main element
of author’s intentionality in Turgenev’s works” (A. P. Chudakov). This observing can be characterized
not as a “passive watching”, but “passionate visioning”.
The situations of observing in Turgenev’s works always come beyond the empirical perception,
they balance between “observing / dream / vision / seeing dreams”. As a character of the for those who is not lucky or who was not lucky”.
The plots of the paradigm “passionate visioning” of the author has the fruitful conditions for
its implementation: it corresponds with yearning for love as one of the deepest personal experience
of Turgenev.
The situation of observing comes out the accident connectedness of the narrator to the “anybody
else’s” love story. The plot of the “anybody else’s” life story is mostly often out of the
frame of the text; it is given as a fragment. The life of a narrator is also beyond the frame
of the text: it’s described only in its crossings with the main love story, observed by the narrator
as “an involuntary witness”. The main focus of the attention is always on the woman in the highest
points of her love story: anticipation of love, happiness of the mutual feeling, love catastrophe.
All other parts of the story are hidden or omitted.
The power of imagination of the character in the plots of the paradigm becomes the compensation
of the unfulfilled need in love and happiness, and the visioning experience can be a way to
substitute the events, that ae missing in the individual life of the “observer”.