“...Wonderful type, quite like Cooper’s Pathfinder: something is in him so spontaneous!”: the novel “Pathfinder” by J. F. Cooper in the creative perception of I. S. Turgenev

Abstract

This paper considers Ivan Turgenev’s perception of James Cooper’s works. The so-called sea trilogy should have made an especially deep impression on the Russian writer. The poetics of Cooper’s seascape novels can be clearly seen in Turgenev’s images of the sea element. The Russian writer used the texture or contours of Cooper’s seascapes, creating an expressive image. Turgenev’s impressions of Cooper’s novel “The Pathfinder” were embodied in his story “A Trip to Polesie.” It begins with a picture of a mighty and silent pine forest, with description immersed in the hero’s reflection. The images of nature and man are given in a sharp and unequal contrast. To express the full scale of Polesie’s vastness, a meaningful comparison to the sea is given. This dramatic conversation between nature and man in Turgenev’s work is directly correlated with the reflections of the narrator in Cooper’s exposition of the novel. However, Turgenev contrasts the arising motif of loneliness and despair embracing the self-absorbed consciousness of the narrator with another epic motif in the same woodland slums. These are two extraordinary peasant faces: a simple and sedate hunter-guide Yegor and a dashing and unbridled rogue Ephraim. Both bear a non-coincidental resemblance to the characters of Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook from “The Pathfinder”. Turgenev’s heroes are similar to Cooper’s ones primarily due to being conceptualized in a strong connection with nature, the element of the ancient forest. In both cases, the life of the main characters is in a decisive dependence on the “green ocean.”