“People of the Forties” by Aleksey Pisemsky: Bildungsroman traditions and “working on mistakes”

This paper endeavors to reconstruct the history of the Bildungsroman in Russian literature, employing the novel “Lyudi sorokovykh godov” (“People of the Forties”) by Aleksey Pisemsky as a case study. This study offers an analysis and description of the pretexts of the novel as they relate to the Western European heritage and its adaptations in Russian literature, including the novel “V put’-dorogu” (“On the Road”) by Pyotr Boborykin. The analysis reveals the “historical” framework of the plot designed to create an epic separation between the reader and the 1840s. At the same time, Pisemsky addresses the controversies emerging from the novels of his contemporaries: “Nekuda” (“Nowhere”) by Nikolai Leskov, “Dym” (“The Smoke”) by Ivan Turgenev, and “Obryv” (“The Cliff”) by Ivan Goncharov. The fourth part of the novel is examined in relation to the supposed prototypes: Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nikolai Danilevsky. Pisemsky is shown to overcome the established monopoly in representing the people of the forties, which elicited negative reactions from critics and contemporaries. A key aspect of the novel involves “working on past mistakes”, specifically reevaluating the artistic and ideological viewpoints expressed in the novel “Vzbalamuchennoe more” (“The Turbulent Sea”). In the novel under study, Pisemsky significantly diminishes the accusatory tone, highlighting moderate liberal figures rather than exaggerated radical ones. This paper suggests interpreting the novel as a sum of the writer’s previous works foreshadowing the development of the meta-novel, following “The Life of David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens and “The Cliff” by Ivan Goncharov.

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