Narratology as a resource of interpretation: “Cabbage soup” (poem in prose) by Ivan Turgenev in the aspect of eventfulness

The paper is, on the one hand, considers poem in prose “Cabbage Soup” by Ivan Turgenev in the aspect of eventivity, on the other hand, it illustrates the thesis that narratological tools can place an interpretation on a solid foundation of verifiable judgments. The author tries to show that “Cabbage Soup” for all its apparent simplicity, is often interpreted not entirely correctly, since analysts proceed from the fact that the grief of a lady and the grief of a commoner woman are identical. The author comes to the conclusion that this situation, which is certainly correct from the mundane point of view, turns out to be fundamentally erroneous from the point of view of narratology. The events that the lady and the woman experience are identical in terms of surprise criterion but, at the same time, differ in terms of relevance. The widow woman who lost her only son, “the chief worker in the village”, is literally in danger of starvation, whereas the lady who “lost her nine-month-old daughter several years ago”, is automatically freed from such threats by virtue of her social status. The woman, however, experiences the event as its complete absence, behaves as if nothing happened, while the lady recalls that, living through the death of her infant daughter, she refused the “beautiful dacha” she had already rented and spent the whole summer in the city. A communication barrier of almost Chekhovian strength arises between the Turgenev’s heroines, but this barrier is further strengthened by the fact that the narrator penetrates into the lady’s mind, making it “transparent” to the reader, while the woman’s inner world remains completely closed.