Concept of hunting in the Notes of Rifle Hunter of Orenburg Province by S.T. Aksakov

In the article we analyze the question of the content of hunting in The Notes of Rifle Hunter of Orenburg Province by S.T. Aksakov (1851). Passion to hunting in the book by Aksakov has a sense of an aesthetic event meaning the joy of discovery, search for the true beauty which is found in the bases of natural and spiritual lives of a Russian. The concept of hunting develops through the problem of nature considered in three directions: admiration and enjoyment of nature as pure beauty, relations between a human and nature, nature and soul. The concept of hunting including the idea of significance and value of Russian life, its nature, culture, history, fate of every person - peasant and nobleman, presented by people of the rifle hunter type. Aksakov created a philosophical utopia of all-national unification and equality: hunting introduces people to the beauty of the world of nature, which is a source of moral health. Basing on the original and pristine in nature, Aksakov discovers indissoluble unity of the natural world he describes with the image of centuries-old peasant Russia in respect of its non-realized possibilities, original and preserved people's moral values. Philosophical and aesthetic conception of national life in its completeness and development is expressed in the wide epic narrative, in details, in the chronotope, in lyrical confession. The composition of Aksakov's story presents a research of encyclopedic character. In the base of the author's conception is the idea of development as the basis of life in its natural form, as a never-ending process of change, renewal and death, as a continuous cyclical motion. Aksakov's story, as well as later articles by I.S. Turgenev and his Notes of a Hunter, is an epic layer of Russian prose, which in Russian literature became a standard of the concept of the national bases of the society manifesting the moral and spiritual health of Russian people.

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