"ALMOST FORGOTTEN LEGEND" OF THE RUSSIAN LITERATURE
The article deals with the attitude of the writers of the Silver Age at the turn of the XIX-XXth centuries to the personality and works of I.S. Turgenev, "half-forgotten legend"(D. Merezhkovsky). The Silver Age writers interpreted the significance of his personality in the history of the Russian literature and culture from the point of view of the modern aesthetics: they believed that the most important aspects of his works ─ among others ─ is manifested in love (both carnal and platonic) which was the significant part both of his novels and his relations with Pauline Viardot. Writers of the turn of the XIX-XXth centuries saw in this sense the manifestation of the idea of the Eternal Feminine.