Ordinary Story

Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov 1812-1891 – a Russian writer, critic. Ordinary Story 1847 - Goncharov's first novel. He worked on it for three years, and only after Belinsky's enthusiastic review did he decide to publish it. The novel was first printed in the magazine Sovremennik in 1847. The novel tells about the maturation and disillusionment in one's own ideals of a provincial romantic - Alexander Aduyev. Goncharov believed that to depict only the delightful in human nature is to conceal the truth… Art, in the writer's opinion, should represent to man an unflattering mirror of his foolishness, ugliness, passions… - in a word, illuminate all the depths of life, explain its hidden foundations and the entire mechanism. It is precisely because of such a method of artistic representation that the characters and events in the novel acquire truthfulness and typicality. Alexander Aduyev, with tears torn away from the home hearth, arrives in Petersburg to his uncle, to realize his dreams of an exalted existence, fame, love… However, an ordinary story happened…