The image of Ivan the Terrible in I.S. Turgenev's works of the 1870s: the story "A Lear of the Steppes"

The article deals with the question about features of Ivan Turgenev's works of the second half of the 1860s - early 1870s. In the genre of the story he makes a national Russian human type which receives deep dramatic features expressing the sense of modern reality. The theory of typification which Turgenev acquires is closely connected with the meaning and content of Shakespeare's traditions. This fact is confirmed by the letters and critical articles of the indicated period. The story "A Lear of the Steppes" represents the experience of the human nature comprehension in the categories of Shakespeare's imagery by an appeal to the epic plan of Russian history. The image of the main character is put in the "text" of the late Russian Middle Ages, meaningful for his interpretation, and directly correlates with Tsar Ivan the Terrible. During the work on the story, Turgenev was reading works of S.M. Soloviev, N.I. Kostomarov, N.G. Ustryalov about Ivan the Terrible. He paid significant attention to N.M. Karamzin's tradition. Besides the scientific and historical context of Ivan the Terrible's interpretation, Turgenev also immersed in the artistic-publicist context: from the tragedy "Boris Godunov" by A.S Pushkin and "The Songs about Tsar Ivan Vasilievitch . . ." by M.Yu. Lermontov to "Stories from Russian History" by A.N. Maykov. The time of Ivan the Terrible becomes the time of the Harlov family appearance. The main character proudly and complacently narrates how his Swedish ancestor Harlus came to Russia "in the princely reign of Ivan Vasilie-vich the Dark". Separate insertions are significant indications on the "royal" nature of the main character in the story. Most of them are connected with the originality of his activities and actions, their symbolic meaning. His disregard for the Swedish-Finnish allegiance which Harlov expresses through the definition "Earl Chukhonsky" deserves special attention. This fact leads to the parallel of personal hostile relationship between Ivan the Terrible and Swedish King and Finnish Duke John III. The imaginative connection of the provincial landowner and the Russian Tsar intensifies at the moment of the estate division made by the character when he leaves a small area for himself and calls it oprichnina. The conscious identification of the oprichnina policy introduced in 1565 with a common estate division at the level of figurative poetics confirms correspondence between Martyn Harlov and Tsar Ivan the Terrible. In 1871, Turgenev publishes "A Note on the Statue of Ivan the Terrible by M. Antokolsky" in the newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskie Ve-domosti. In the sculpture image of Ivan IV the writer finds a lively response to his own views. Staring into each detail of the statue, Turgenev verbalizes a psychological picture that exactly corresponds to the image of Martyn Harlov he created.

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