Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

My friend, Harlow Robinson, has recommended Turgenev to me several times. I’ve not read him before. This is his most famous novel, from 1862. The setting is a few years earlier, meaning that Turgenev is writing during the significant years of political and social upheaval in Russia leading up to the freeing of the serfs in 1961. At this momentous time, Turgenev writes a small story about generational conflict. The “sons” are two friends who recently finished their studies in St. Petersburg, named Arkady and Bazarov. The “fathers” are Arkady’s father Nikolay, a farm owner, and Bazarov’s father, Vasily, a retired military doctor. The novel takes place over a few summer months in 1859.

The two fathers are meant to represent traditional Russian society. Bazarov is the young radical ready to throw over every social authority following a philosophy he calls “nihilism.” He contrasts his scientific study and rationalism with the romanticism of others. He is honest and free (he says); they are misled by emotions and bound by social codes of manners and class. Arkady follows him as a disciple. He professes the same philosophy but it’s clear he’s really simply idolizing his friend and by the end of the novel has given up his friend’s negativism and embraced life.

I read a Penguin classics edition with a 2009 translation by Peter Carson that I found very readable. The edition included helpful end notes and an introduction by Rosamund Bartlett with background material about Turgenev.

The novel begins with Arkady arriving in the unnamed province where his father has his farm, Marino. He’s brought his friend Basarov with him. Arkady’s father, Nikolay is a widower, although he’s recently taken up with a young woman named Fenechka, the young daughter of his former housekeeper. They have a baby together, Mitya. They haven’t married partly out of deference to the memory of his dead wife, partly from class issues. He doesn’t want to offend his son, Arkady, who quickly announces he is happy for his father, and happy to have the opportunity to display a lack of sentimentality to his friend Bazarov. Living with Nikolay is his brother, Pavel. Pavel is offended by Basarov’s nihilism. The tension begins immediately and the two finally have it out in chapter X, a great scene in a drawing room. Nikolay and Arkady are also present.

“We are guided by what we recognize as useful,’ said Bazarov. “The most useful course of action at present is to reject – and we reject.”
“You reject everything?”
“Everything.”
“What? Not just art, poetry… but also… I hardly dare say it…”
“Everything,” Bazarov repeated with an air of ineffable calm.

Some of the characters, and apparently some readers, find Bazarov attractive. I found him to be insufferable. He’s rude and arrogant and a downer. My sympathy immediately lay with the older generations: the men and women who are responsible for households, care about relationships, able to enjoy a beautiful day or a beautiful poem, rather than the self-proclaimed genius who abjures all those things. Perhaps it’s because I’m older now myself. Maybe if I had read this when I was Bazarov’s age (mid-twenties, a few years older than Arkady) I would have related more to him.

Bazarov and Arkady go off to town. They meet Sitnikov, an admirer of Bazarov’s. Sitnikov introduces them to an “emancipated” woman named Kukshina. They spend an afternoon at her home. Bazarov abuses her hospitality and makes fun of her. At the Governor’s ball, they meet a woman named Odintsova. Bazarov and Arkady visit her at her home called Nikolskoye. She’s a wealthy woman, a widow, though still in her twenties. She lives with an elderly aunt, a comic character who hasn’t a single line of dialogue in the novel but makes her irritation about the visitors and basically everything else well known. Also living with Odintsova is her younger sister, Katya. Both young men fall in love with the beautiful Odintsova, but Arkady is also charmed by Katya and soon realizes that he has no chance with Odintsova who is interested in Bazarov and who considers Arkady to be too young.

They spend two weeks as guests at Nikolskoye then leave. Bazarov intends to visit his parents, who also live in the area, and Arkady to return to his father, but being forced to travel with Sitnikov, who arrived unexpectedly and uninvited, Arkady decides to accompany Bazarov instead. Before they leave, Bazarov admits to Odinstsova why he’s been acting so strangely. “So you must know that I love you, foolishly, madly… That’s what you’ve got out of me” (p. 101). But Bazarov can’t abide such romantic feelings in himself. He’s ashamed. He denies. He insults.

Bazarov’s parents turn out to be simple and kind. His mother, Arina, is superstitious. His father is proud of his son. Bazarov feels stifled by their attention and they leave after only two days. On the way back to Arkady’s father’s farm they stop again at Nikolskoye for a few hours.

Arkady stays with his father only for ten days before he finds an excuse to go back to Nikolskoye to continue his romance with Katya. Bazarov stays on at Marino where he continues to annoy Arkady’s uncle, Pavel. Pavel catches Bazarov indulging in an innocent flirtation with Fenechka. He sees him kissing her. That evening, in another wonderful scene between the two of them, Pavel challenges Bazarov to a duel, very formal, very proper. If Turgenev was consistent with his character, Bazarov should laugh at him because what is more artificial and bound by manners than a duel? Instead, Bazarov accepts the challenge. At first we believe that Pavel is defending his brother’s honor. Then, we realize Pavel is in love with Fenechka himself and is offended that Bazarov, the nihilist, is taking what Pavel selflessly renounces. They duel the following morning. Pavel is wounded in his leg. Bazarov, training to be a doctor like his father, tends the older man’s wound. Bazarov leaves Marino the next day.

He stops at Nikolskoye. Arkady and Katya confirm their love. Arkady proposes. Katya accepts. Bazarov and Odintsova decisively end their relationship. Bazarov and Arkady also come to the end of their friendship as Arkady realizes that in life there are things worth saying “yes” to, and Bazarov taunts his friend for giving in.

Bazarov returns to his parents who are delighted to see him. Folks come to Vasily, the father, for medical care and Bazarov assists. Then a man arrives dying from typhus who they are unable to cure. Bazarov, then, attends the autopsy of the man and cuts his finger, infecting himself. The final twenty pages are a long scene of Bazarov dying of typhus. He send for Odintsova, who arrives. They reconcile. Arkady does not appear and is not sent for. Bazarov dies.

In the final chapter we learn of a double wedding: Arkady and Katya, and Nikolay and Fenechka. And then in a final, “where are they now” we learn that Pavel has gone abroad to Dresden, Odintsova has married, “out of principle, rather than love” (p. 197). Arkady and Katya have a son. The closing scene is at Bazarov’s grave visited by his grieving parents.

The novel, for all its reputation, feels small to me. It’s short, only two hundred pages. It reads like a minor episode from Tolstoy. (War and Peace would be published seven years later.) There is none of Dostoevsky’s passion or depth. (Crime and Punishment would be published four years later.) The stakes are very low. The theme of generational conflict seems unfairly weighted against Bazarov whose philosophy I felt was never given a persuasive argument by Turgenev. About halfway through the novel, when Arkady and Bazarov meet the sisters Odintsova and Katya, the novel shifts from social commentary to romance. It’s a fun read, but slight.

I write a diary entry like this after every book I read, mostly novels, mostly the best of nineteenth and twentieth century literature.  To see what else is on my reading list click here.