Mumu. Stories and Tales

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) is a classic of Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century, the author of many significant works ("Rudin", "A Month in the Country", "On the Eve", "Fathers and Sons", "Asya", "First Love", "Spring... Waters", "A Month in the Country").
The Turgenev family belonged to an ancient lineage of Tula nobility and was wealthy. The future writer's childhood was spent in the estate of the village of Spasskoye-Lutovinovo in the Mtsensk district. Little Ivan was educated by governesses, and French, favored by his mother, was almost the main language spoken at home. This did not prevent him from falling in love with Russian literature; he began to write at the age of 15, and by the age of 19, he had already composed about one hundred poems and narratives. Turgenev received his education in private boarding schools for nobles, and later at the philosophy faculty of St. Petersburg University. In his works, the writer responded to all events of his time: he was the first to embody the contradictory image of the "new man" - a nihilist, realistically describing the life of the people, fighting for the abolition of serfdom, assessing the changing role of women in society, and finally, being the first to depict modest rural landscapes with such sincere love and lyrical quality.
In 1852, while under arrest due to the publication of a necrology on the death of Gogol, Turgenev wrote the now-classic story "Mumu". He contrasted the character of the capricious cruel lady with a true hero, who, however, cannot speak and is not free in his feelings. The symbolic nature of the hero, the embodiment of the unfree peasant, was so obvious that the censorship did not allow the story to be printed for a long time. Interestingly, it is based on real events: the prototype of Gerasim was Andrei the Mute, a janitor at the Turgenev's Moscow house, who indeed drowned his dog Mumu at the writer's mother's command.