(337 words) “Asya” is one of I.S. Turgenev, which in literature is called "Hellenistic", that is, they are based on the unity of two motives - love and death. Turgenev's love is obviously unhappy, because his characters are not created for love: they want to love, but in their feelings they find not harmony, but suffering.
The main character, N.N., having stopped in one of the German towns, meets two compatriots there - Asya and Gaev, who appears to be her brother. N.N. often begins to visit them and every time he leaves, he feels happy. Gradually, he falls in love with Asya, who is also supportive of him. However, they are not destined to be together. Turgenev in the novel addresses the theme “love for the savage” (as, for example, Pechorin’s love for Bela in “The Hero of Our Time”): Asya is an orphan brought up in the village by the Gaev family; she is not spoiled by affection and attention, prefers solitude, eschews strangers. She loves Gaeva because she is used to him and is not afraid of him, but she doesn’t know the feeling of love for another man. Asya’s emotional attraction is a test: when she realizes that she’s in love, her sufferings begin: “Yesterday she had a fever all evening, she didn’t eat anything, she cried and admitted that she loves N.N. ...” The prerequisites for them were anxiety, mental confusion, changeability of mood, which only intensified after N.N. severely condemned her for the feelings shown to him. When the hero changes his mind and wants to return Asya, he no longer finds her at home.
Throughout the story N.N. and Asya were separated by the River Rhine, as they lived on different banks. And it was on the Rhine that the steamer sailed, which forever took the heroine away. Asya, as the embodiment of a natural, unspoiled principle, was doomed to suffering, and perhaps even to death. She, like Madonna, seems N.N. some ideal, which he is afraid to touch, because he does not want to take responsibility for this vulnerable creature. It is this fear that becomes fatal - fate separates the heroes forever, leaving NN, who never again had the chance to endure that love thrill, only memories, bitterness and gifted by Asya, but already a withered branch of geranium, which became a symbol of despondency and loneliness, on which a man who has lost his true love doomed himself.
Yuri Miloslavsky
