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wolfdan9 's review for:
Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Turgenev
“Resistance is the only way of conquering pain.”
“A son is like a looped-off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists; but you and I are like mushrooms growing in a hollow tree. Here we sit side by side without budging.”
Fathers and Sons is a very well-written novel. It’s compact but packs a powerful punch. I believe guys like Steinbeck and Hemingway modeled a lot of their realist fiction after Turgenev. His prose is steady and controlled. It doesn’t jump off the page the same way as some other legendary writers with incredibly idiosyncratic styles, like Kafka, Nabokov, or Dostoyevsky for example, but he’s sensitive and insightful without a hint of schmaltz or saccharine. He’s the kind of writer who sets out to accomplish a task and simply does what must be done to accomplish it. He’s sort of my third member to the Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Turgenev party. I don’t think he was consistently as brilliant as them, but this novel surely stands up there with some of the others’ works.
Bazarov is the central character of F&S. He is, to the reader, unbearably pretentious, yet charming to many characters in the book who believe in his apparent brilliance. He is a nihilist who tries to compensate for his humanity by being cold and aloof, but is actually just an ordinary young man trying to find himself. Bazarov is ashamed of his sentimentality, which is not abnormally great, but its mere existence within him is unacceptable. His friend, Arcady, with whom Bazarov visits their homes during a sabbatical, worships Bazarov as a mentor and friend, although they often have spats due to Bazarov’s coldness and logic-driven condescension. They represent the younger generation in Russia, whose ideas are increasingly progressive. Upon visiting his father as a changed and more learned young man from school, the differences between Arcady and his father (as represented most clearly through Bazarov’s presence) slowly form a wedge between them.
Arcady does come around to the conventional path by the end of the novel, submitting to his feelings of love for a girl named Katya (whose sister Bazarov also falls in love with and by whom is soul crushingly rejected) and marrying her. Arcady slowly releases himself from both the magnetic pull of Bazarov’s selfish charm and his nihilistic ideals by marrying Katya and reconciling with his family. To a super logical, “true free thinker” type like Bazarov, Arcady is pitiful for this behavior, although it’s obvious that Bazarov would himself have abandoned his haughty ideals had he not been rejected.
There are some interesting themes here. And I loved watching the character arcs slowly creep up behind me. Turgenev’s storytelling is so unbelievably realistic and natural. I enjoyed reading about the generational gap issue presented by Turgenev. How fathers want to impress their sons and acquiesce their newfangled and charming but mostly empty political ideals but simply cannot identify with them. Bazarov’s parents, who is also visited throughout the novel, are pitifully in love with their son and hide their devout spirituality as to not offend him. The novel spoke to me about the emotionality of youth, the difficulty of connecting with your closest loved ones after they’ve “found themselves,” the power of romantic love and how it triumphs over conviction, and the meaningfulness (of meaninglessness) of having deep convictions.
The last thing I’ll say is that the final paragraph is haunting and highly effective. The flowers growing on Bazarov’s grave, which represent the eternal continuance of life, seem to invalidate Bazarov’s nihilism without yielding to a religious interpretation of life after death. Nothing we do is useless because it contributes to the success and well-being of our children. If not our own, then to someone else’s. Yours or the world’s.
“A son is like a looped-off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists; but you and I are like mushrooms growing in a hollow tree. Here we sit side by side without budging.”
Fathers and Sons is a very well-written novel. It’s compact but packs a powerful punch. I believe guys like Steinbeck and Hemingway modeled a lot of their realist fiction after Turgenev. His prose is steady and controlled. It doesn’t jump off the page the same way as some other legendary writers with incredibly idiosyncratic styles, like Kafka, Nabokov, or Dostoyevsky for example, but he’s sensitive and insightful without a hint of schmaltz or saccharine. He’s the kind of writer who sets out to accomplish a task and simply does what must be done to accomplish it. He’s sort of my third member to the Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Turgenev party. I don’t think he was consistently as brilliant as them, but this novel surely stands up there with some of the others’ works.
Bazarov is the central character of F&S. He is, to the reader, unbearably pretentious, yet charming to many characters in the book who believe in his apparent brilliance. He is a nihilist who tries to compensate for his humanity by being cold and aloof, but is actually just an ordinary young man trying to find himself. Bazarov is ashamed of his sentimentality, which is not abnormally great, but its mere existence within him is unacceptable. His friend, Arcady, with whom Bazarov visits their homes during a sabbatical, worships Bazarov as a mentor and friend, although they often have spats due to Bazarov’s coldness and logic-driven condescension. They represent the younger generation in Russia, whose ideas are increasingly progressive. Upon visiting his father as a changed and more learned young man from school, the differences between Arcady and his father (as represented most clearly through Bazarov’s presence) slowly form a wedge between them.
Arcady does come around to the conventional path by the end of the novel, submitting to his feelings of love for a girl named Katya (whose sister Bazarov also falls in love with and by whom is soul crushingly rejected) and marrying her. Arcady slowly releases himself from both the magnetic pull of Bazarov’s selfish charm and his nihilistic ideals by marrying Katya and reconciling with his family. To a super logical, “true free thinker” type like Bazarov, Arcady is pitiful for this behavior, although it’s obvious that Bazarov would himself have abandoned his haughty ideals had he not been rejected.
There are some interesting themes here. And I loved watching the character arcs slowly creep up behind me. Turgenev’s storytelling is so unbelievably realistic and natural. I enjoyed reading about the generational gap issue presented by Turgenev. How fathers want to impress their sons and acquiesce their newfangled and charming but mostly empty political ideals but simply cannot identify with them. Bazarov’s parents, who is also visited throughout the novel, are pitifully in love with their son and hide their devout spirituality as to not offend him. The novel spoke to me about the emotionality of youth, the difficulty of connecting with your closest loved ones after they’ve “found themselves,” the power of romantic love and how it triumphs over conviction, and the meaningfulness (of meaninglessness) of having deep convictions.
The last thing I’ll say is that the final paragraph is haunting and highly effective. The flowers growing on Bazarov’s grave, which represent the eternal continuance of life, seem to invalidate Bazarov’s nihilism without yielding to a religious interpretation of life after death. Nothing we do is useless because it contributes to the success and well-being of our children. If not our own, then to someone else’s. Yours or the world’s.