Prose by Yevgenia Maykova in the context of the same old story by Ivan Goncharov

Pavlovich Kristina Konstantinovna ORCID: 0000-0002-4364-9120 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Faculty of Philology; National Research Tomsk State University 634012, Russia, Tomsk, Elizarov str., 50, sq. 80 pavlovitch.cristina@yandex.ru

I. A. Goncharov's early work was closely connected with the Maikov literary house, which became a representative of the aesthetic contradictions of that time — the struggle between romantic and realistic principles. Goncharov's first novel, The Ordinary Story (1847), was created in the depths of the Maikov family, with constant communication and correspondence with its members. It was to this creative audience that the writer presented his first "brainchild" — a manuscript, which was followed by many positive reviews.

The literary genesis of "Ordinary History" is directly related to the autobiographical aspects. The aesthetic disputes in the Maikov house, reflected in the work of its representatives, formed the basis of Goncharov's first text, which has the features of a novel of upbringing, in which the author showed the struggle of two concepts of life typical of Russian society in the 1840s - an idealistic and realistic worldview. Goncharov, speaking about the main conflict of the novel, noted that "... when I wrote Ordinary History, I, of course, meant myself and many like me, who studied at home or at university, lived in lull, under the wing of kind mothers, and then broke away from bliss, from At home, with tears, with wires <...> and who came to the main arena of activity, to St. Petersburg" ^{[1, p. 73]}.

Goncharov scholar A. P. Rybasov believed that one should not understand the type of conflict of the novel as an obvious opposition of dreams and reality, an ultimatum of one-sidedness ^{[2, p. 44]}. The question of Goncharov's relationship with the traditions of Romanticism is extremely complex ^{[3, pp.15-21],[4, pp.14-19],[5, pp. 77-81]}. This dialectic is manifested in the novel "An Ordinary Story", in the synthesis of two aesthetic principles, concepts of the life of an uncle and a nephew.

The novel's special connection with this family is evidenced by its reading in the salon in the evenings in a circle of "young, sensitive" people who are close to Goncharov. A.V. Starchevsky's memoirs are valuable in this regard: "In the evenings, on Sundays and other holidays, when many young people gathered, there were often readings of something outstanding in modern journalism, with critical and other relevant remarks. These readings were introduced by the late Vladimir Andreevich Solonitsyn. <..But with his death, they almost stopped, when suddenly Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov, having written his "Ordinary Story," declared one evening that before giving it to the press, he would like to read his first work at the Maikovs in a few evenings and listen to the comments of a young, sensitive, outspoken and unabashed man. generations; especially since all the listeners were his closest friends and well-wishers, and if their remarks turned out to be incorrect in any way, they would immediately be refuted" ^{[6, p. 716]}. Having listened to the valuable comments of V. Maikov, Goncharov made corrections to the text of the manuscript. Starchevsky, describing the events of that momentous evening, notes the fact that Goncharov listened to the young critic V. N. Maikov, who represents an anti-romantic position in his work.: "... Ivan Alexandrovich began to read his story. We all listened to her attentively. His language is good; it is written very easily, and he read it decently before tea. <..Ivan Alexandrovich drew attention to some of the remarks of the youngest of us. Valerian Maikov, and decided to make changes to the story "An Ordinary Story" in accordance with the instructions of the young critic. Of course, Ivan Alexandrovich, while reading his story in front of a large company, noticed better than others what needed to be changed and corrected, and therefore constantly made his marks on the manuscript, and sometimes simply crossed out a few lines with a pencil. Nevertheless, this revision took a little time, because a few days later it was again scheduled to listen to the "Ordinary Story" in a corrected form..." ^{[6, p. 716]}.

The artistic idea of the first novel was influenced not only by Goncharov's stay as an educator and a good friend of the Maikov family, but also by their aesthetic positions, which were meaningfully reflected in their epistolary and their own artistic activities. This is how E. P. Maikova began writing prose in the 1830s and remained faithful to romantic traditions throughout her creative career. This fact turns out to be significant in the context of writing Goncharov's first novel. This was reflected in the salon hostess's close attention to the text of the young writer and the conflict between the romantic and the realist depicted in it. Maikova's stories "Maria" (1830) and "The Woman" (1850) are basically connected with the Pushkin tradition, intertextually included in the canvas of "Ordinary History". The novel "Ordinary History", according to many researchers, has a "Pushkin code" ^{[7, pp. 146-153],[8, pp. 42-57]}. Maikova's artistic work is significant for the study of the formation of aesthetics of early Goncharov. This is confirmed by O. V. Sedelnikova, a researcher at the Maykovsky Literary House.: "Her works, which are completely unknown in our time, deserve serious attention and study both as a phenomenon of literary life of that period, and in the context of aesthetic discussions that took place in the Maikov circle, within which the formation of the socio-aesthetic views of such major representatives of Russian literature as I.A. Goncharov and F.M.Dostoevsky" ^{[9, p. 164]}.

The ultra-romantic novel "Maria" (1835), published two years after Pushkin's novel in verse and three years earlier than I.A. Goncharov's first anti-romantic novel "Dashing Pain", is obviously connected with the "romantic" part of the novel "Ordinary Story". In the story "Maria", Maikova refers to the image of a "great dreamer" ^{[10, p. 248]}, who is tormented by a feeling of love for the poet Byron. The heroine confesses to her friend Elena about her passion for the poet: "You're all devoted to fascinating romanticism." Maria, according to the author, has a "poetic soul", she is a "child of slander" ^{[10, p. 250]}.

In the literary text by E. P. Maikova, the main character is full of deep feelings for Byron. In a conversation with her friend Elena, Maria admits this, stating that during the dates with him: "... loved and was loved like no other woman in the world."… Elena, Elena! Spare me, don't ask for an explanation. Your compassionate gaze destroys me..." The heroine recognizes the feeling of fatal passion as sinful: "Oh! don't look at me, don't despise me; I am pitiable, I am cruelly punished by him, by fate. Have mercy, have mercy on the unfortunate" ^{[10, p. 258]}. Maria admits that her existence is embodied in the aesthetic category of "duality": there is a real, married life, correspondence with a close friend, and a fantasy world in which she "loved — the love of a passionate fantasy." The heroine's whole life became an effort to capture byronic manifestations ("a voice called me to the shores of the sea in the silence of the night; "everywhere I met his poetry: the rolling thunder and the melodious trills of the nightingale spoke to me the language of my favorite poet. I despised all men, considering him alone worthy of my love" ^{[10, p. 258]}.

Three literary texts mention Byron as a symbol of the culture of romanticism, and if in Pushkin's novel in poetry and Goncharov's novel the poet's name is associated with the reading circle of the characters, characterologically revealing the personality traits of each, then in Maikova's story the heroine is not only a fan of the singer's talent of "gloomy egoism", but also his beloved: "You are delusional, You're moaning, like all the suffering faces in novels. By the way, did you read Byron, and Childe Harold seduced you?"Byron?" Maria said softly. — Have I read Byron! "What is it?" she repeated in a trembling voice, and a bright blush covered her cheeks; her heavenly gazes clouded over, the diamond of morning dew sparkled on her black eyelashes. She was silent.… But suddenly, breaking her eloquent silence, she began to speak, at first softly, then with firmness. "She thinks, poor thing, that I've only read Byron!.. No, my friend, no! I saw him, I knew him, I loved him... but she could not finish the fatal word "love"; she hesitated to pour out her whole heart into the soul of a friend" ^{[10, p. 258]}.In the process of reading the story, it becomes clear that the love relationship takes place in the fictional, ideal world of the heroine. Her book preferences had a great influence on the formation of her personality. A friend is the first to mention Byron and his famous poem, after which Maria confesses her heartfelt secret: "I read and reread the works of the great poet, memorized his inimitable poems, penetrated into his every thought, unraveled the painful feelings that drove his pen, suffered with him... Oh! how many tears of tenderness have I shed for the noble features of the singer Childe Harold<...> ^{[10, p. 255]}.

The interlocutor admits that she pays great attention to the work of the "singer of Britain", she presents his creative portrait, seeing in him a genius: "It was amazing to me, it was incomprehensible how Byron's compatriots did not comprehend this great genius, this friend of humanity, who, with the poetry of his soul, showed even his enemies the true path to high and beautiful. <…>. For the heroine, Byron appears as a man of hard fate who sacrificed his own fortune for the sake of "the freedom of forgotten Greece, Greece, groaning on the ruins of its ancient power, as a victim of the selfishness of centuries and peoples!" ^{[10, p. 255]}. The heroine inherits an important principle of her lover's life—building — "life and poetry are one", proving by her own example the tragedy of her feelings. Maria Maikovskaya mentions the name of Augustine, Byron's blood sister, whom he was fascinated by, frankly admitting that she would like to be in her place: "Why am I not his sister, whom he loved so much and remembered so plaintively in his bitter, dreary solitude!" ^{[10, p. 255]}.

Lord Byron is also a member of the reading circle of Tatiana Larina, who at the beginning of the novel in verse, staying in the literary world, dreams of a narrowed one. A. S. Pushkin, using Byron's name in the text, emphasizes the aesthetic features of his work.: "Lord Byron by a whim of good fortune/He has clothed himself in a dull romanticism/And hopeless egoism" ^{[11, p. 53]}.

One of the "Onegin stanzas" shows Pushkin's dialectical position in relation to Byron. On the one hand, throughout his career, Pushkin never ceased to appreciate the poet's freedom-loving lyrics, especially during the period of the "Southern Exile" (1820-1824), and, according to V. S. Bayevsky, "A. S. Pushkin's assimilation of the creative personality of J. G. Byron became a phenomenon in the cosmos of culture, similar to the collision of two super-bright stars" ^{[12, p. 106]}, but at the same time, these lines present Pushkin's close to critical, ironic position regarding autobiographical elements: "Comparing my features here,/ I didn 't repeat it afterwards godlessly,/That I painted my portrait, / As Byron, the poet of pride, / As if it were impossible for us/ To write poems about another, / As only about myself" ^{[11, p. 28]} In the interior of the young heroine, the poet places "... Lord Byron's portrait" ^{[11, p. 127]}, and in In the story "Maria," the heroine "takes out his portrait" ^{[10, p. 255]}.

Byron's name appears on the pages of Ordinary History when Alexander Aduyev tries to enter the writing field and receives negative comments from the editors of the magazines to which he sends his experiments. Reviewers note "excessive fervor, unnaturalness, everything is on stilts, there is no human in sight anywhere ... the hero is ugly ... such people do not exist..."^{[6, p. 258]}. Young Aduyev objects: "There are no such people! Alexander thought, disappointed and amazed. but I'm the hero myself" ^{[6, p. 268]}. After this confession, Aduyev "invoked the shadow of Byron, referred to Goethe and Schiller to confirm the purity of his doctrine of the elegant" ^{[6, p. 268]}. At the very beginning of the novel, Byron's name appears on the list of literary hobbies, which indicates the romantic attitude of the hero, solitude and attention to the "dark side of humanity." His uncle, Pyotr Ivanovich, defines his melancholic state as a reference to the English idol.: "And now the guy is patronizing, walking around so sullen and not asking for money" ^{[6, p. 359]}.

Already in the fourth chapter, Goncharov mentions Byron in connection with the image of Alexander in a different context. Young Lisa reads the romantic poem "Childe Harold", which causes Aduyev regret ("I'm sorry that this book fell into your hands" ^{[6, p. 401]} and concern: "... I did not advise you to read Byron, that... perhaps he will awaken such chords in your soul that would have been silent for a century without that; perhaps your life will flow quietly, like this stream: see how small it is, shallow;<...> it will not reflect the whole sky in itself, nor clouds; there are no rocks or precipices on its shores; it runs playfully; just a slight ripple ripples its surface; it reflects only the greenery of the shores, a patch of sky and small clouds... This is probably how your life would have gone, but you are asking for unnecessary worries, storms; you want to look at life and people through a gloomy glass... Leave it, don't read it! look at everything with a smile, don't look into the distance, live day by day, don't sort out the dark sides in life and people, otherwise... "Or what?" "Nothing! - Alexander said, as if coming to his senses" ^{[6, p. 401]}. It is this dialogue with the heroine that turns out to be important on the path of the younger Aduyev's moral evolution, debunking his exaltation. He warns his interlocutor: "... otherwise, a terrible discord may happen... both in the head and in the heart. - Here he shook his head, hinting that he himself is a victim of this disorder" ^{[6, p. 402]}. Thus, the name of the English poet in the space of Goncharov's novel turns out to be a symbol of romanticism. In Aduyev's moral evolution, Byron's name is mentioned at the very beginning of the novel and closer to the finale, which indicates changes in the thoughts of the protagonist and his life principles.

The Pushkin line in Maikova's story turns out to be connected with the main characters. Maikovskaya Maria turns out to be similar in many ways to the image of Tatiana Larina. Young Maria did not realize how dangerous it was to indulge in the "dreams of an ardent heart" ^{[10, p. 251]}, since her whole life was spent in the "reflections of a melancholic luminary" ^{[10, p. 251]}, in her youth she "reveled in the poison of sensitivity"^{[10, p. 251]}. We find similar features in the artistic image of Tatiana, who indulges in feeling and suffers from it: "Leave me alone: I'm in love."/ And meanwhile the moon was shining / And shining with languid light/Tatiana's pale beauties,/And loose hair,/And drops of tears, and on the bench/Before the young heroine..." ^{[11, p. 56]}, and in the image of the young Aduyev, who brought Sonushka's hair and ring to St. Petersburg.

Maria, like Pushkin's heroine, was at a young age, which is associated with reverie, an ideal world: "She existed entirely in a dream, created worlds for herself according to the will of her fantastic imagination. She was only fifteen years old" ^{[10, p. 251]}. Upon arrival in the city, the young Alexander Aduyev, who had just left his native penates, also "dreamed of noble work, high aspirations and performed bravely along Nevsky Prospekt, considering himself a citizen of the new world..." ^{[6, p. 25]}.

In Maikova's story, dreams of a lover are accompanied by romantically sublime pictures of nature: "The day was getting dark. The mist descended to the ground in the form of an ethereal gas adorning the lovely head of a woman, and the woman, beautiful as a spring morning, sat thoughtfully on the balcony of her rural house. She seemed to be listening to the babble of every leaf. Some kind of impatience, full of sadness, was expressed by her eyes when she turned them in the direction where the main road leading to her estate lay"^{[10, p. 247]}. Tatiana, in love, also "loved on the balcony."/To warn the dawn of sunrise / When the dance of Stars disappears in the pale sky / ..." ^{[11, p. 42]}. Having grown up in Grachy, surrounded by idyllic landscapes, Alexander does not find natural views in St. Petersburg: "He looked at the houses and it became even more boring for him: he was bored by these monotonous stone masses, which, like colossal tombs, stretch one after another in a continuous mass. "Here the street ends, now there will be plenty of room for the eyes," he thought, "or a slide, or greenery, or a collapsed fence," no, the same stone fence of lonely houses begins again, with four rows of windows" ^{[6, p.204]}.

The reading circle of the characters serves as one of the important means of characterology, the fantasy world of the Maikov heroine was closed on reading.: "Poetry, books, the lovely Maria always wandered thoughtfully, like heavenly poetry in an ideal world; she was looking for deeper impressions, impressions of the heart; she needed books that delight a high soul" ^{[10, p. 251]}. Tatiana Larina was also a lover of "novels", which "replaced everything for her" ^{[11, p. 42]}. "Thrice a romantic — by nature, by upbringing and by the circumstances of life" ^{[13, p. 38]} Alexander writes romantic poems, one of which ("Longing and Joy" (1835), in the text of the novel is presented on the one hand as a poetic sample of the hero's lyrics, and on the other — as an obvious self-parody ^{[10, pp. 20-35]} Goncharova on early experiments related to romantic lyrics.

The fervor of the youthful heart in all the texts turns out to be associated with the category of passion, which was the "essential goal of life" ^{[10, p. 252]} for Maria; Pushkin asks the reader: "Surely you won't forgive her. Are you frivolous of passions?" ^{[11, p. 57]}. In Goncharov's text, Aduyev, accustomed to provincial life, dreams of "a colossal passion that knows no barriers and performs great feats" ^{[6, p.179]}.

All this distinguishes romantic heroes from realists, to whom they are plot-wise opposed. In Maikova's text, Maria is contrasted with her friend, to whom she confesses her secrets. In Pushkin's text, Larina's romantically exalted image is opposed by the image of the realist Onegin, and in The Ordinary Story, Aduyev Sr. is opposed by Aduyev Jr.

The content of the epistolary material in the structure of the Maikov story is devoted to the love theme, as in Eugene Onegin and Goncharov's The Ordinary Story. The very first letter belongs to Byron. This is followed by Elena's letter about Maria to her sister, Maria's letter to Elena, and the last epistolary fragment, Byron's letter addressed to Maria. There are no sent letters from Maria to Byron in the literary text, however, almost in the finale of the story there are unsent passages in which she writes about herself in the third person, as if distancing herself from the "former", dreamy Maria, who was disappointed in her own ideals, like Pushkinskaya Tatiana and Goncharovsky Aduyev Jr.

Maikov's heroine undergoes a moral evolution, turning from an exalted woman into a disappointed one in her ideals. The heroine ends her "relationship" with Byron due to the realization of her own marriage.:"Hide, you adorable monster! Be happy if you can. I beg for one tear on my grave. Goodbye!.." ^{[10, p. 257]}. In her notes, she already acts detached from this love story, as if she speaks of herself as a stranger, a stranger to her: "So, this is him! I saw him. Could I have been mistaken not to recognize him as Maria's murderer?.. (our italics are K.P.). I saw him hugging the cross over my friend's ashes; I saw his tears flowing, I saw that proud brow drooping over the grave. He wept like a child, but a child who has lost his beloved doll is nothing more" ^{[10, p. 262]}.

E. P. Maikova sympathizes with Maria. There is a tragic pathos in the final lines, which is associated with the impossibility of living in the real world without a romantic ideal (love for the poet Byron. The writer has built the plot of her own story so that the reader is constantly on the border of reality and the heroine's dreams. While reading, there is an illusion, an understatement about whether this was really a story. Maikova, summing up the tragic death of the heroine, concludes philosophically, in the spirit of romantic pathos: "To live and love is the destiny of a woman. Love is her life. Take away her love — she cannot live"^{[10, p. 263]}.

Maikova's novel "The Woman" (1850), created shortly after the publication of Goncharov's first novel, begins with a letter from Sofia to her friend Natasha. In it, the heroine (Sofia – approx. our) formulates one of the main conflicts of the story: "And what is the happiness of a woman like me?" ^{[14, p. 147]}.The author attributes the image of Sophia to dreamy natures: "These people make up a special caste in humanity.: they live a more inner life than an outer one. <...> Alas! These poor hearts wander like pariahs in the material world, and soon become victims of a vulgar life.<...> "They are completely unhappy when an unchangeable disappointment opens up to them the panorama of reality in all its nakedness" ^{[14, p. 152]}.

At the age of seventeen, after the death of her parents, Sophia got married. In one of her letters, she described her husband as "a kind, respectable man who wanted to protect her youth" ^{[14, p.149]}.Like Maria from Maikova's earlier story (1835) and Tatiana Larina from Pushkin's novel in verse, the heroine "fell in love with her husband like a father's child" ^{[14, p. 150]}. In the image of Sophia, the "wild wildflower" (p. 150), who was "nurtured by rural freedom" ^{[14, p. 150]}, the features of Larina, who grew up in the provinces, are discernible: "Wild, sad, silent, | / Like a doe, timid"^{[11, p. 41]}.

An important means of characterization for Maikova is once again the circle of reading characters. So, Sophia "became addicted to reading. One summer I read a lot of books: Buffon, Karamzin, Rousseau, Pushkin and Zhukovsky introduced me to nature and people" ^{[14, p.151]}. In the space of Maikova's mature story, the name of the British poet is found: "They gave me Byron: reading him, I stopped indulging in cheerful dreams and began to think about vague things that were not entirely clear to me: some new feeling was born in me – a languid, sweet pain in my soul and in my heart" ^{[14, p.151]}. It is from this that the heroine's fascination with romanticism begins, her everyday life begins to acquire Byronic features. Thus, nature plays a special role in the storyline of "Balzac's" [14.p. 82] story of Maikova, she repeatedly praises her in correspondence.: "Would you look at the sky on a beautiful summer night when diamond stars cover its space? Have you admired the greatness of the sea, in the blue of which your gaze would be lost?" ^{[14, p. 148]}.

Further, the storyline of the story largely repeats the plot of "Eugene Onegin". The reader learns that a young man has arrived from the capital" ^{[14, p.157]} — Dmitry Lvovich Ruslov, who is valued in the village as a rarity, like a diamond found in the desert" ^{[14, p.157]}. He immediately captivates the heart of young Sofia. However, unlike Pushkin's love story, their relationship lasted about two years. The heroine admits that this love was mutual, she has a dream breakdown with reality due to the criticism of her lover, regarding sensitivity, detachment from real life. This statement should be accompanied by the words of Sophia: "I would spend my days like a faithful dog at your feet."To which Ruslov declares that "I would like to see more reasonable, positive affection in my wife." <...> " ^{[14, p. 160]}.

Despite the fact that Maikova's prose is called ultra-romantic ^{[15, p. 79]}, and indeed her poetics and content are associated with the exclusivity of romanticism, Maikova, in our opinion, in the space of her novels ("Maria" and "The Woman") She points to the limitations of one-sided idealism, which is directly related to the fate of her main characters, who by the end lose faith in the idealization of life and passions. This is especially evident in the story "The Woman", in which Maikova seems to lead her character to a moral reassessment ("Now I'm not the one; <...> I have redone my character: I live without the knowledge of my heart: reason governs my will") ^{[14, p. 168]}, which turns out to be connected, on the one hand, with the finale of "Eugene Onegin", and, on the other, with the finale of "Ordinary History", in which Goncharov swaps the romance of his nephew and the realist. My uncle. This story, called "ordinary" by Goncharov, was connected with the representatives of the Maykovsky literary house themselves. Goncharov's first imitative poetic experiments, which were a tribute to literary fashion, were replaced by a text-dispute, the writer's first novel, as well as the romantic experiments of V. N. Maikov, who later became a critic, Belinsky's successor in the field of realistic aesthetics. According to the journalist and historian of Russian literature A.V. Starchevsky, V. A. Solonitsyn (Solik) and his uncle V.A. Solonitsyn are the prototypes for two artistic images of the Aduyevs. The literary story of the romantic and realist from Goncharov's first novel took place in the life of Evgenia Petrovna herself. This was reflected in her aesthetic position and her relationship with the elder V. A. Solonitsyn, who satirized romanticism in life and literature in all his works, "advocating simplicity and naturalness, against the sophistication and embellishment of "style and thought" ^{[15, p. 30]}.

In all three of the works under consideration, after a while, the characters discover moral changes concerning "lost illusions." In the story of the same name, Maria recognizes the criminal component of her own passion and dies. Dmitry Lvovich meets Sophia "no longer ardent, dreamy, or poetic" ^{[14, p.165]}. ("Is this my Sophia, my half-earthly angel, my beautiful idyll" - I thought) ^{[14, p. 175]} and discovers "the prosaic direction of her character" ^{[14, p.168]}, when she soberly reflects on the social structure of other countries in conversation: "They say everything there is already sacrificed to one mind and calculation: poetry, reverie, tenderness of feelings are considered stupidity, nonsense" ^{[14, p. 178]}. Wanting to confess his feelings, Ruslov, like Onegin ("Rushed to her, to his Tatiana/My uncorrected crank")^{[11, p. 158]}, in Maikova's words, "came to Sophia's porch" ^{[14, p. 178]} "to hear the verdict", having discovered her "stoniness" ("Sophia.... You're made of stone!... ^{[14, p. 171]}. Sofia's confession at the end of the story is allusively connected with the famous explanation scene in Eugene Onegin:

Unlike the ending of "Maria", where the life of the main character ends tragically because of love, in the text of the mature story "The Woman" Sofia is disappointed in the idealization of her feelings, continuing to love and be an exemplary wife and mother. Sophia, disappointed, does not die, like the heroes of Goncharov's novel. In the finale of Goncharov's novel, there is a mirror situation of the "transformation" of a romantic into a realist-a nephew into an uncle and vice versa. The younger Aduyev informs Peter Ivanovich that he did not neglect his advice to marry a rich bride early, but the elder Aduyev changed ("... it was strange to see on the face of this impassive and deceased man - as we have known him up to now - more than a caring, almost wistful expression") ^{[6, p. 453]} he realizes that he has ruined the touching nature of his young wife with his rationality and practicality. He informs Lizaveta Alexandrovna of his decision to change everything: "It's enough to live this wooden life! I want to rest, to calm down; and where can I calm down if not alone with you?.. We will go to Italy...."^{[6, p. 462]}.

Thus, "dear Madam Evgenia Petrovna," as Goncharov called her in one of his letters, ends the story of a dreamy nature, its rebirth, the rejection of "sincere outpourings," and, like Larina and Aduyev, asserts with her artistic image disappointed in romanticism the main aesthetic statement of literature of the 1840s-1850s of the nineteenth century — "full of tears." yellow flowers" ^{[6, p. 465]}. The romantic texts of the writer turn out to be consonant with the ideas of the "aesthetic crossroads" at which modern literature was located. True to the romantic traditions, Evgenia Petrovna, building her artistic texts as full of sensitivity and double-mindedness, fatal predestination, in the late novella "The Woman" takes as a basis the scene of Onegin and Tatiana's explanation to demonstrate and affirm the "lost illusions" of the heroine, certainly starting from the denouement of Goncharov's "Ordinary Story", a text created in the depths of her a literary house that absorbed all the contradictions of the literature of that time, consisting in the synthesis of romantic and realistic principles. It is obvious that Maikova's late novel turns out to be closer to the aesthetics of realism of the 1840s and 1850s, where a non-romantic personality comes to the fore, and there is a movement towards objectivity in the depiction of both the hero and the environment. Russian Russian prose's mature prose work demonstrates the changes that have taken place in Russian prose, associated with the appearance in it of "the features of the phenomenon of the Russian psychological novel, characterized by a breadth of approaches to understanding life, a variety of forms of personality research and philosophical content" ^{[9, p. 169]}.