“Corruption,” mutters Job in his confounding misery, “thou art my father.”
Job 17:14 seems an odd skeleton key to insert into the novel Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev. The novel, as with other 19th-century Russian greats, often freshens its story with liveliness, happiness, and loves. But there is a depression without remedy at its heart—a filial crater where inherited Russian values should be.
On either side of the crater stand the novel’s two central characters: the young nihilist, Yegveny Vasílevich Bazárov, and the middle-aged aristocrat, Pavel Petróvich Kirsánov. Certainly, there are guiding plot points to swirl around these two men. There’s even a (technical) protagonist, Arkady Nikoláyevich Kirsánov, who has befriended Bazárov and brings him to his family estate to start the novel. But in their trenchant opposition, Bazárov and Pavel Petróvich are the forges which heat Father and Sons.
A Gentle Critic: Nihilism as Corrosive Character
The novel lives in these two men and their clash of generational ideals. Bazárov is a sulky nihilist burgeoning with grubby charisma, while Pavel Petróvich is a dandified lion of the landed Russian aristocracy. Both he and his brother, Nikoláy Petróvich Kirsánov, are reform-minded gentry who in theory agree with some of the young man’s radical positions.
But their agreement misunderstands the totalizing social upheaval that Bazárov seeks in his insolent, materialist way, influencing the younger Arkady to do the same. Nihilism in this 19th-century Russian context isn’t the negate-all-belief-and-meanings variant of today, but mostly a scientistic belief in Western-style overthrow of Russian institutions. The older Kirsánovs soon find this nihilism is no ally.
However, Fathers and Sons isn’t truly concerned with the exact politics of nihilism, and so neither am I. It plumbs the personhood of the nihilist instead. Characterized in Bazárov the young doctor and amateur scientist, nihilism is the brittle combination of sharp intellect, filial disdain, impersonal coldness, and maladapted love.
I say brittle because Bazárov does not withstand his attachment to Arkady nor the widow Ánna Sergéyevna Odíntsova. When she invites Bazárov and Arkady to stay at her estate in Nikolskoye, it begins the slow dissolution of the upstart nihilist. As he and Ánna Sergéyevna sniff, approach, and rebuff each other, Bazárov dissolves himself rather than his beliefs. They remain stalwart even as he cannot. What else could his rejection of the widow’s love, of the hand of his only friend Arkady, of the adoration of his traditional father, Vassily Ivanovich?
(An aside: I am not the reviewer to speak fully of romantic subplots, given that in most fiction I find them unnecessary. Bazárov and Ánna Sergéyevna together mean little to me, as does the love between Arkady and Katya, Ánna’s sister. I enjoy sweets but rarely the sweetness of fictional romance, forgive me.)
In this characterization of Bazárov, Turgenev poses a quiet criticism of Russian nihilism: it is corrosive and self-defeating.
By his nihilistic faith Bazárov imposes antisocial solitude on himself and others, even to the point of death by a careless, infected wound he gives himself during surgery. And still he dies a noble death, when Ánna Sergéyevna visits him before the end and when sweet-smelling flowers are laid over his grave.
Come to think of it, much of Turgenev’s criticism of the characters and their beliefs is melancholy rather than polemic. Bazárov is christened by his grave, mourned by his aged parents. Pavel Petróvich, living in exile in Dresden at the novel’s end, still cuts a noble, elegiac figure. Arkady and Katya live on in vanilla bourgeois goodwill, as does Nikolay Petrovich and Fenéchka, his second wife. Even the peasants in the story—ever the romanticized object of Russian reforms—are made kindly and human enough to render them as people, rather than mystical proletariats. Turgenev sketches them all to include their foibles, but gently. Only one character, the idiotic Viktor Sítnikov, truly receives Turgenev’s caustic satire when his flailing political poses render him an effete, useless forever-radical.
But even this portrait still fits within Turgenev’s gentle, paternal touch as a social novelist.
The Weak Evolution, The Filial Crater
To repeat: Fathers and Sons lives in Bazárov and Pavel Petróvich. But it can also die upon Bazárov, as he is its sharpest point.
For Fathers and Sons has a soft spot for Bazárov. Because the third-person narrative peeks over the shoulder of Arkady, Bazárov’s one-time friend and disciple, Bazárov is always the eminent magnetic personality but also the most boorish character present. Cruel and absorbed in his own intelligence, he rejects a friend (Arkady), a lover (Ánna Sergéyevna), and a father (Vassily Ivanovich) with pitiable contempt. He collects and dissects his acquaintances for his societal pursuits, almost exactly as he collects and dissects frogs and insects for his scientific pursuits. Comprehensible though he becomes, Bazárov remains insufferable right until his death.
Generating my visceral distaste for Bazárov is a strength of the novel—its chief character has the vitality to inspire great emotion, no small feat. That my distaste didn’t deepen, dilute, nor dissolve despite constant exposure to Bazárov is a weakness of the novel. Turgenev clearly labors to make Bazarov known, and even commendable—why else would his self-stifling romance with Ánna Sergéyevna so challenge his arch detachment? And yet, for such total observation, Bazárov remains only a thick-headed upstart whose death seems a mistake, not a martyrdom.
The character never surpasses the contempt he shows others and receives, in turn, from me. Only once does he rise near the evolution his character needs: in his fated duel with Pavel Petróvich.
It’s the confrontation that the two men are circling throughout the novel, as they spar over their visions for a reformed Russia but also grow in pure, personal dislike, and it boils from their respective temperaments. Pavel Petróvich challenges Bazárov to a dawn duel of pistols after the younger man kisses Fenechka (Nikolay Petróvich’s mistress) against her will. It is the aristocrat’s response to the nihilist’s provocation.
And yet, even as they duel from their irreconcilable hatred, Bazárov’s care undoes his capacity to kill. He shoots Pavel Petróvich through the thigh but instantly rushes to tourniquet the wound, saving the older man’s life. It’s easy to forget in his coldness and antagonism that Bazárov is a country doctor able to heal others. Only in the duel do we remember the contrast: his propensity for violence and his urge to save surge up together, two joint passions alight at once.
Nowhere else in Fathers and Sons are his contradictions so poignant. The novel over-presents his cynical pride and harshness in attempts to paint him as a tragic figure of hidden, ruined idealism. But Bazárov’s one moment of tragic poignancy is when he contradicts his character—nearly in a panic—to save his enemy.
It is a response to that filial crater I first mentioned. It is his response, the only one Bazárov can give. He and Pavel Petróvich can share no heritage, and so the younger man can only give the older man his life once he’s nearly taken it. No shared values of home and homeland. No shared vision to steward their lives. No shared life beyond the material body.
Nihilism, says Pavel Petróvich to Bazárov, thou art my progeny.
Corruption, responds Bazárov to Pavel Petróvich, thou art my father.
Thanks for being here, y’all. I’ll be in touch again in 2023.
Happy New Year to one and all!
Thank you for such an in depth treatment. I (An American father of varied-Euro descent) read this book to my Russian son as he fell asleep at night during his senior year of HS. Yes, I read to him even as a senior, and yes, he let me. I recommend it to everyone. It forces them to put their phones down and concentrate on something, even if just for a few minutes. And it is an intimate time between parent and child (even an 18-year-old child). Of course, because of the novel's pace, we only got through, at most, three pages per night. before he fell asleep. But, falling asleep to a Russian novelist isn't terrible, although maybe Solzhenitsyn or Asimov would be exceptions. I doubt my son could tell you what Fathers and Sons is about. I had honestly pretty much forgotten it Kevin, until I read your review. But, your review brought it all back, and actually helped me appreciate Turgenev a lot more. Thank you.