Fathers and Sons (1862)
Once you've decided to make a clean sweep, include
the ground you're standing on, too!
-Bazarov in
Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev is probably the most Western and democratic of all the Russian authors; perhaps that is why Fathers and Sons has always seemed to me the most accessible of the great Russian novels. In fact, Turgenev was attacked by other leading literary figures--like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky-- for being too much of a progressive liberal in the Western mode. He was also criticized for his inability to create a forceful and committed radical hero. Fathers and Sons resoundingly answers the first criticism and the central character, Bazarov, at least partially answers the second.
The novel opens with young Arkady and his friend Bazarov returning home from school to visit Arkady's father Nikolai Petrovitch Kirsanov, who lives on a declining estate with his young mistress and Nikolai's brother Paul. Nikolai is a reasonably well intentioned liberal aristocrat. The story takes place in 1860, the time of the liberation of the serfs, and he has tried to do right by them. But Bazarov is a nihilist, Arkady his willing acolyte, and kindly liberalism and half steps are not enough for them. Bazarov wants to tear down the entire structure of society and start over. His tirades offer a frightening foreshadowing of Russia's bloody future:
"Aristocracy,
liberalism, progress, principles," said Bazarov. "Just think what a
lot of foreign . . . and useless words! To a Russian they're no good for
anything!"
"What is good for Russians according to you? If we listen to you, we shall
find
ourselves beyond the pale of humanity, outside human laws. Doesn't the
logic of
history demand . . ."
"What's the use of that logic to us? We can get along without it."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, this. You don't need logic, I suppose, to put a piece of bread in
your
mouth when you're hungry. For what do we need those abstractions?"
Pavel Petrovich raised his hands. "I simply don't understand you after
all that.
You insult the Russian people. I fail to understand how it is possible
not to
acknowledge principles, rules! By virtue of what can you act?"
"I already told you, uncle dear, that we don't recognize any authorities,"
interposed Arkady.
"We act by virtue of what we recognize as useful," went on Bazarov. "At
present
the most useful thing is denial, so we deny--"
"Everything?"
"Everything."
"What? Not only art, poetry . . . but . . . the thought is appalling . . ."
"Everything," repeated Bazarov with indescribable composure.
Pavel Petrovich stared at him. He had not expected this, and Arkady even
blushed
with satisfaction.
"But allow me," began Nikolai Petrovich. "You deny everything, or to put
it more
precisely, you destroy everything . . . But one must construct, too, you
know."
"That is not our business . . . we must first clear the ground."
...
"We shall destroy because we are a force," remarked Arkady.
Pavel Petrovich looked at his nephew and laughed.
"Yes, a force can't be called to account for itself," said Arkady, drawing
himself
up.
"Unhappy boy," groaned Pavel Petrovich, who could no longer maintain his
show
of firmness. "Can't you realize the kind of thing you are encouraging in
Russia with
your shallow doctrine! No, it's enough to try the patience of an angel!
Force! There's
force in the savage Kalmuk, in the Mongol, but what is that to us? What
is dear to us
is civilization, yes, yes, my good sir, its fruits are precious to us.
And don't you tell
me these fruits are worthless; the poorest dauber, un barbouilleur, the
man who
plays dance music for five farthings an evening, even they are of more
use than you
because they stand for civilization and not for brute Mongolian force!
You fancy
yourselves as advanced people, and yet you're only fit for the Kalmuk's
dirty hovel!
Force! And remember, you forceful gentlemen, that you're only four men
and a half,
and the others--are millions, who won't let you trample their sacred beliefs
under
foot, but will crush you instead!"
"If we're crushed, that's in store for us," said Bazarov. "But it's an
open question.
We're not so few as you suppose."
"What? You seriously suppose you can set yourself up against a whole people?"
"All Moscow was burnt down, you know, by a penny candle," answered
Bazarov.
Later, the two young men prove unequal to the unyielding political standard that they have set themselves when both fall in love. They try manfully to keep up their facade:
Bazarov smiled:
I assure you the study of separate individuals is not worth the trouble
it involves.
All people resemble each other, in soul as well as in body; each of us
has a brain,
spleen, heart and lungs of similar construction; the so-called moral qualities
are the
same in all of us; the slight variations are insignificant. It is enough
to have one single
human specimen in order to judge all the others. People are like trees
in a forest; no
botanist would think of studying each individual birch tree.
Katya, who was arranging the flowers one by one in a leisurely way, raised
her
eyes to Bazarov with a puzzled expression, and meeting his quick casual
glance, she
blushed right up to her ears. Anna Sergeyevna shook her head.
"The trees in a forest," she repeated. "Then according to you there is
no difference
between a stupid and an intelligent person, or between a good and a bad
one."
"No, there is a difference, as there is between the sick and the healthy.
The lungs
of a consumptive person are not in the same condition as yours or mine,
although
their construction is the same. We know more or less what causes physical
ailments;
but moral diseases are caused by bad education, by all the rubbish with
which
people's heads are stuffed from childhood onwards, in short, by the disordered
state
of society. Reform society, and there will be no diseases."
Bazarov said all this with an air as though he were all the while thinking
to
himself. "Believe me or not as you wish, it's all the same to me!" He slowly
passed
his long fingers over his whiskers and his eyes strayed round the room.
"And you suppose," said Anna Sergeyevna, "that when society is reformed
there
will be no longer any stupid or wicked people?"
"At any rate, in a properly organized society it will make no difference
whether a
man is stupid or clever, bad or good."
"Yes, I understand. They will all have the same spleen."
"Exactly, madam."
Madame Odintsov turned to Arkady. "And what is your opinion, Arkady
Nikolayevich?"
"I agree with Evgeny," he answered.
But eventually Bazarov offers himself to Madame Odintsov, only to be rejected, and Arkady pairs off with Katya. This confluence of events leads Bazarov to jettison his follower, who has chosen love of a woman over commitment to the struggle:
"So you propose to build yourself a nest?" he said the same day to Arkady,
crouching
on the floor as he packed his trunk. "Well, it's a good thing. Only you
needn't have been
such a humbug about it. I expected you'd go in quite a different direction.
Perhaps,
though, it took you unawares?"
"I certainly didn't expect this when I left you," answered Arkady; "but
why are you
being a humbug yourself and calling it a 'good thing,' as if I didn't know
your opinion of
marriage?"
"Ah, my dear friend," said Bazarov, "how you express yourself. You see
what I'm
doing; there happened to be an empty space in my trunk, and I'm putting
hay into it;
that's how it is with the luggage of our life; we would stuff it up with
anything rather
than leave a void. Don't be offended, please; you probably remember what
I always
thought of Katerina Sergeyevna. Many a young lady is called intelligent
simply because
she can sigh intelligently; but yours can hold her own, and indeed she'll
hold it so well
that she'll have you under her thumb--well, and that's quite as it should
be." He slammed
the lid and got up from the floor. "And now I say again, farewell . . .
because it's useless
to deceive ourselves; we are parting forever, and you know it yourself
. . . you acted
sensibly; you were not made for our bitter, rough, lonely existence. There's
no daring in
you, no hatred, though you've got youthful dash and youthful fervor; that's
not enough
for our business. Your sort, the nobility, can never go farther than noble
resignation or
noble indignation, but those things are trifles. For instance, you won't
fight--and yet you
fancy yourselves as brave fellows--but we want to fight. So there! Our
dust would get
into your eyes, our mud would soil you, but you're not up to our standard,
you
unconsciously admire yourselves and you enjoy finding fault with yourselves;
but we're
fed up with all that--we want something else! We want to smash people!
You're a fine
fellow, but all the same you're a mild little liberal gentleman--ay volatoo,
as my parent
would say."
However, fate holds a cruel twist in store for Bazarov. Returning to his parents house, he begins a series of medical experiments and helps out local peasants with typhus. Ironically, scientific rationalism and the peasants he purports to champion bring about his death after he is infected too. His parents bury him nearby and regardless of his own worldview, they pray for him:
There is a small village graveyard in one of the remote corners of Russia.
Like
almost all our graveyards, it has a melancholy look; the ditches surrounding
it have
long been overgrown; grey wooden crosses have fallen askew and rotted under
their
once painted gables; the gravestones are all out of position, just as if
someone had
pushed them from below; two or three bare trees hardly provide some meager
shade;
the sheep wander unchecked among the tombs . . . But among them is one
grave
untouched by human beings and not trampled on by any animal; only the birds
perch
on it and sing at daybreak. An iron railing surrounds it and two young
fir trees have
been planted there, one at each end; Evgeny Bazarov is buried in this tomb.
Often
from the near-by village two frail old people come to visit it--a husband
and wife.
Supporting one another, they walk with heavy steps; they go up to the iron
railing,
& nbsp;
fall on their knees and weep long and bitterly, and gaze intently at the
silent stone
under which their son lies buried; they exchange a few words, wipe away
the dust
from the stone or tidy up some branches of a fir tree, then start to pray
again and
cannot tear themselves away from that place where they seem to be nearer
to their
son, to their memories of him . . . Can it be that their prayers and their
tears are
fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred devoted love, is not all powerful?
Oh, no!
However passionate, sinful or rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb,
the flowers
growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes; they tell
us not only of
eternal peace, of that great peace of "indifferent" nature; they tell us
also of eternal
reconciliation and of life without end.
Turgenev has masterfully depicted the eternal delusions of the young
here. Sons are always rebelling against their fathers, yearning to
tear down the world that they inherit and remake it as their own.
But Turgenev demonstrates both the mindless nature of those desires and
the impossibility of living a life according to such stridently nihilist
standards. Ultimately Bazarov is easily distracted by romantic love,
ends up doing meaningless scientific experiments rather than taking the
bold actions that he champions and is in a sense betrayed by science and
the very peasantry for whom he claims to speak. It is no wonder that
after penning this lacerating portrait of young revolutionaries, Turgenev
was persona non grata amongst Russia's radicals. This great prophetic
novel simply cut too close to the bone.
(Reviewed:17-Nov-99)
Grade: (A+)
