‘L’amour est plus fort que la mort’: on France's perception of Turgenev's “Clara Militch”

The paper makes the first attempt at analyzing I. Turgenev’s tale Clara Militch as a pretext for A. France’s Leslie Wood. France uses Turgenev’s text in several ways, taking plot elements (the motives of chaste marriage, physical love between the protagonist and his dead lover, the death of the protagonist), borrowing the character system and quoting Turgenev’s characters directly. These borrowings prove that France consciously alluded to Turgenev’s tale. Such at Leslie Wood as a kind of interpretation of Clara Militch. Still, France’s perception of Turgenev’s tale seems to have been different from that of his contemporary critics. He was not interested in either historic or cultural context, nor in the psychoanalytic aspect of the tale. Instead, France concentrated on the theme of mystic love, the interaction between the male and the female, interpreting these aspects in his own way. While in Clara Militch the female protagonist is foregrounded by physical love, Leslie Wood is built around the male’s feelings and actions. Turgenev’s female protagonist displays a bright, even demonic personality, whereas France’s weak-willed character obediently follows her husband. France does not stress the fatality of love beyond grave, but rather studies its role in the progress of human soul. Placed among the other stories of the cycle L’Étui de nacre, many of which also deal with the theme of love and death and chaste marriage, Turgenev’s plot becomes another point of view in the complex narrative system of the cycle. Still, looking at Leslie Wood with the view of Clara Militch softens France’s irony, showing the characters in a more dramatic, tragic light.numerous borrowings allowed us to look