Life-long love

In 1843, at the age of 25, the Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev met the French singer Pauline Viardot, whose love for whom would largely determine the course of his life. Contemporaries unanimously admitted that she was not at all a beauty. But as soon as the "divine Viardot" began to sing, her face was magically transformed. At the time of one of such transformations, the beginning Russian prose writer Ivan Turgenev saw her on stage. This exciting and mysterious, attractive, like a drug, woman managed to tie the writer to herself for the rest of her life. Turgenev followed Polina all his life, closing his eyes to the fact that his chosen one was a married woman. For her sake, he left his homeland, relatives, friends. Their beautiful romance lasted 40 years, dividing Turgenev's entire life into periods before and after meeting Polina. There was a legend that his love was platonic, but the tone of his letters to Viardot, filled with tenderness, refutes this. Her letters have not survived. During periods of short-term cooling, Turgenev made attempts to start a family, but in vain, only hurting the women who loved him. For the last 20 years he lived in France, in the Viardot family and died in the arms of Pauline; she took his departure hard.
Some time later, the artist A. P. Bogolyubov visited her, and the singer told him very important words for understanding her relationship with Turgenev: “... we understood each other too well to care about what they say about us, because our mutual position was recognized as legitimate by those who knew and appreciated us. If Russians value the name of Turgenev, then I can proudly say that the name Viardot compared with him does not diminish him in any way ... ”. She survived him by 27 years.