“A Hard Preparation for the Real Way”, Or What is the Meaning of “A Common Story”
The article discusses different reading strategies for Goncharov's novel “A Common Story”, which have developed in literary critical and research practice. From the very beginning, the “real philosophy” has dominated critical studies of this work, which mainly noted a struggle against the ‘ordinary' romanticism there and considered “A Common Story” as a social novel about ‘lost illusions'. No less significant there was the point of view celebrating ‘Flemishness' in Goncharov's novel as a way to accept the world in all its diversity. Later on, certain concepts took hold, according to which “A Common Story” appeared in the light of the poetics of “dialogical conflict”, which proved to be productive in the era of the “natural school”; the novel was also studied as a variant of the European Bildunsroman on the Russian soil. The author of the article believes that in “A Common Story” Goncharov pursued other tasks, which were directly related to the urgent problems of the society in religious crisis, when the ancient patriarchal institutions were being replaced by new models of social life, which gave priority to earthly values (moreover, such models were scientifically backed up). As a scrupulous artist with strong integrity, Goncharov justly stated that it had been difficult, almost impossible for his contemporaries, under new, adverse conditions, to keep the “faith of a child” alive, without which, nonetheless, no one can retain humanity. However, his novel was devoted to the artistic study not only of the mechanisms of the soul's debasement, but also of those new blossomings of religious feeling, which might become salvation for modern man. Hence, Dante's “The Divine Comedy” specifically drew Goncharov's attention as the story of the human soul lost in the “dark forest” of present-day vices and, as it would seem, without any hope for salvation. In the article, the meaning of a “common story” is informed not only and not entirely by the growth and aging of the hero, neither by his loss of excessive romantic enthusiasm, but by the progress of the human soul, which reaches the hellish limits and still hopes for Redemption.