There are literary works about which the words “summary” sound inappropriate. "Bezhin meadow" Turgenev - one of them. If you compare this story with the paintings of the master, you will not see there dense strokes of saturated oil paint, carefully "written" details. Everything is transparent, fleeting, like life itself.
It is no coincidence that Ivan Turgenev picked up such changing, growing characters in his story. “Bezhin Meadow” is both a freemen and a huge world of childhood for boys: Vanya (7 years old), Ilyusha (12 years old), Bones (10 years old), Pavlushi (12 years old) and Fedi (14 years old). Ivan Sergeyevich individualizes the guys with individual touches: Fedya is a slender, handsome boy from a wealthy family; Pavlusha - with ordinary appearance, but with tangible inner strength; the blind-eyed and hunchbacked Ilyusha is notorious and guided in essence; Kostya - thoughtful and sad; Vanya, the smallest, tired, falls asleep without participating in the conversation.
The writer is, of course, a fatalist, so he creates a romantic feeling of the uniqueness and irreversibility of this summer evening by artistic means . After all, the boys will grow up, become different. Is it not in this grace of “drawing in the sand” that its summary is fraught with a story ?! Turgenev captured the Bezhin Meadow with the words of a hunter who, by chance, overheard a children's conversation by the fire, this night, flashes of flame, the inspired faces of little storytellers, fluttering mane of horses in the wind, stars burning out in their pupils. Later, the impression of fleetingness, “watercolors,” will intensify from the fact that, reading a mini-epilogue of the story, we find out that Paul will soon be killed by falling from his horse.
Let us follow the idea of the story, presenting its brief content. Turgenev's “Bezhin Meadow” begins with the storyteller “from the author,” hunting near Tula in the Chernsky Uyezd, lost his way and went out into the expanse of steppe by evening. He saw the above-mentioned children, who led horses at night to graze in the steppe (at night). The boys told different naive and mysterious stories. Ilyusha - about the brownie, whom he heard while spending the night at a paper mill. Kostya - about the meeting of the carpenter Gavrila with a mermaid. Ilyusha - infernal "horror stories" about the dogman Yermil and about the woman Ulyana. Ilyusha - about Trishka, who appears during a solar eclipse. All this seems mysterious and significant to the boys. Already in the morning, having spoken the night, they are trying to determine the difference between goblin and water. Kostya tells the story of a boy who was dragged away by a water man. Only in the morning the guys fall asleep. Formally, the above sequence of stories the author defines a summary. Thus, Turgenev's “Bezhin Meadow” appears as a kind of poem in prose - about nature, about childhood, and in the broad sense - about the beauty of the Motherland.
Let us return to the analogy of Turgenev’s story with watercolors - light, fleeting and therefore beautiful. The work does not carry documentation. There is no analytical reasoning in it. But it certainly carries a mood. An adult reader will certainly feel the longing that childhood has passed, and he is already far from simple and clean boy’s dreams and fantasies, that he will not hide at night with steppe feather grass, do not jump on a horse in the middle of the night and rush off towards the steppe towards the wind after the boys. He will feel sad that his childhood has gone, like a night fog melted under the morning rays of the sun.
About Turgenev’s story “Bezhin Meadow”, one can probably say the words of the great Pushkin that “Russian spirit” is piercingly felt in him. Both in the description of the night steppe and in the muffled conversation of the boys, it is imperceptibly and in Turgenev's harmonious “Russia smells”. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote about Turgenev in about the same way, noting that after getting acquainted with the works of Ivan Sergeyevich “it is easy to believe”, “easy to breathe”, life seems more harmonious and perfect.