SOCRATES THE ATHENIAN SAGE AND KHOR THE RUSSIAN PEASANT: THE CHARACTER THROUGH THE EYES OF THE NARRATOR OF ONE OF I. S. TURGENEV’S SHORT STORIES
SOCRATES THE ATHENIAN SAGE AND KHOR THE RUSSIAN PEASANT: THE CHARACTER THROUGH THE EYES OF THE NARRATOR OF ONE OF I. S. TURGENEV’S SHORT STORIES

Summary/Abstract: In Ivan S. Turgenev’s Khor and Kalinych (1846), which opens the collection of stories A Sportsman’s Sketches, the narrator compares the Athenian sage to one of the main characters of the sketch, Khor. This old man, whose family has long moved away from the rest of the private peasants, resembles Socrates in appearance. Turgenev’s character resembles Socrates in more ways than one: his manner of speaking – “a simple, wise discourse of a Russian peasant”. The narrator highlights his “philosophical” traits that liken him to Socrates: he is referred to as “an old sceptic”, “a positive man”, “a rationalist”; he is a clever old man who “speaks ingeniously”. These two characters (Socrates of Athens is known to us as a hero in the writings of his disciples – Xenophon and Plato) are akin in their propensity to ask questions, ironic as they might be. The narrator speaks about Khor’s contempt for women and his own old wife, who was “cross, and incessantly grumbled and scolded”. Which immediately evokes Socrates’ old woman – perhaps, one of the bestknown women of Antiquity and, surely, the best-known wife of philosophers of all times. It is crossness that made Socrates’ spouse notorious. Khor and Socrates are brought close even in their care of themselves and their homestead. The comparison of the peasant Khor with the ancient sage Socrates testifies to the tradition of perceiving in our national culture a simple, peasant-like, wise, original, our Russian Socrates.

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