Ostrovsky in Turgenev’s Assessment: Reflections on the Prospects for a Socio-Psychological Theater

Aim. We systematize the literary-critical observations on Ostrovsky’s comedy “The Poor Bride” expressed by Turgenev in the review of this play, which are not so much a criticism of the text, but statements about the principles of the psychological theater that emerged in Russia in the middle of the 19 th century. Methodology. Use is made of the historical-cultural and comparative-typological approaches. Results. It is found that with the advent of Ostrovsky, who relied on popular culture and developed democratic theater, Turgenev became disillusioned with the possibility of creating a subtle psychological play adequate to the possibilities of stage, and that his article on “The Poor Bride” is partly an admission of his defeat. The article proves that Turgenev considers Ostrovsky not so much as an opponent in the dramatic field, but as a like-minded person. Turgenev the critic finds in Ostrovsky’s new play a deep understanding of the nature of modern man, since the most successful characters in “The Poor Bride” embody various egoistic traits in an original way. Turgenev’s criticism of the “false manner,” or “false” psychologism is significantly corrected by the support of deep psychologism, which is expressed in the so-called “sudden movements.” Turgenev’s disagreement with the principles of building the character of Ostrovsky’s central heroine is motivated by a lack of understanding of the psychological pattern of her character and the enthusiasm of the critic for Goethe’s “Faust” and the tragic image of Gretchen. On the whole, in “The Poor Bride” Turgenev sees a play that is close to his dramatic line, since he himself repeatedly turned to plots in the spirit of the “natural school”, which differed from the trend outlined by Ostrovsky in the comedy “Our people – let’s get along”. It was the failure in the dramatic field that caused Turgenev to strongly wish Ostrovsky to return to the lost path. Turgenev did not call on the playwright to abandon the psychological vector, but he acknowledged that a writer for the theater must choose very balanced decisions in the stage embodiment of the inner person. Research implications. The work is of theoretical importance, since the content of the methods of psychological reconstruction of a person in the dramatic art of the 1840s‒1850s is specified. It is also of practical importance for understanding the history of the development of Russian drama, and for concretizing the problem of the creative dialogue between Turgenev and Ostrovsky.