Два века русской классики (Mar 2020)
“My good, kind Anatoly Fedorovich…” (On the issue of relations of Ivan Goncharov and Anatoly Koni)
Abstract
The prominent lawyer Anatoly Koni was one of the few people with whom Ivan Goncharov had been particularly friendly in the last thirteen years of life. On the occasion of Ivan Goncharov’s death, a feature article — memories of the latter — was written by Anatoly Koni. In the scientific literature, there has until now been no attempt to analyse that feature article in the broad context of known facts and thus to delve deeper into the relations of Ivan Goncharov with Anatoly Koni and, in a certain sense, with the entire liberal circle of the magazine “Vestnik Evropy” (Herald of Europe). Anatoly Koni, despite doing justice to public significance of that “man of broad views” — the author of the novel “Oblomov” — devoted nearly the greatest part in the coverage of the writer’s personality to the weak and negative sides of character. Anatoly Koni, in particular, speaks of the “insane mood of the soul” of Ivan Goncharov — and the lawyer pays a disproportionate attention to the conflict of Ivan Goncharov with Ivan Turgenev, which is strange for a commemoration speech, and the author of the epitaph categorically does not side with the recently deceased friend. Relations of Ivan Goncharov and Anatoly Koni have been presented in the “bosom-friend” form until recently, but everything is more complicated in fact. The motivation of Anatoly Koni, who persistently tried to prevent the publication of “An Uncommon Story” by Ivan Goncharov, is analysed in the article. The sequence of events and positions of all the main participants of the conflict around Ivan Goncharov’s manuscript publication is considered. Thus, significant adjustments are generally made to the notion of relations of Ivan Goncharov with Anatoly Koni and with the magazine “Vestnik Evropy” (Herald of Europe).
Keywords
