The article examines the problem of Russian national character in the story by I.S. Turgenev's “Lear the Steppe King” in the light of Shakespearean images as cultural constants. It is noted that in Russia the formation of Shakespeareanism as a cultural phenomenon occurred in the Pushkin era, after which each subsequent era of Russian literature and culture was supplemented by its own understanding of Shakespeare, introducing its own meanings into the interpretation of Shakespeare’s eternal images. The article establishes the significance of Shakespeare and the inexhaustible Shakespearean images in Turgenev's work. The author proceeds from Turgenev’s understanding of Shakespeare as an “all-forgiving nature of someone who knew everything about a human’s heart”, who became part of the “flesh and blood” of Russian literature. The idea of this was voiced in the “Speech on Shakespeare,” specially written by Turgenev on the occasion of the great English playwright’s three hundredth anniversary. In the story “Lear the Steppe King,” the archetype of Shakespeare’s
Lear becomes the semantic core of the protagonist’s character. However, in Turgenev work it is passed through the Russian national consciousness and the humane idea of forgiveness. The key to understanding the action of Martyn Kharlov, repeating the action of Shakespeare’s Lear, is his “sleepy dream” about a black foal, which in the story is read in the spirit of the Revelation of St. John the Theologian — as the approach of the apocalypse. Finally, it is concluded that the aesthetic sacrament of accepting Shakespeare was refracted by Turgenev in the spiritual and religious sacrament, and the idea of forgiveness was conceived by the Russian writer as a spiritual component of the national character.
For citation: Shevchenko E.S. “Am I not cursing you or not forgiving you?” About one phrase in the story by I.S. Turgenev “Steppe King Lear”, Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2024, iss. 3, pp. 55—61.