to say anything more out of respect for the talent of Turgenev, for
his former merits, and for his numerous admirers. There is no common
thread, no common action which would have tied together all the parts
of the novel; all of it is in some way just separate rhapsodies. . . .
This novel is didactic, a real learned treatise written in dialectic
form, and each character as he appears serves as an expression and
representative of a certain opinion and direction. . . . All the
attention of the author is turned on the principal hero and the other
acting characters, however, not on their personality, not on the
emotions of their souls, their feelings and passions, but rather
almost exclusively on their talks and reasonings. This is the reason
why the novel, with the exception of one nice old woman, does not
contain a single living character, a single living soul, but only some
sort of abstract ideas, and various movements which are personified
and called by proper names. Turgenev's novel is not a creation purely
objective; in it the personality of the author steps out too clearly,
his sympathies, his inspiration, even his personal bitterness and
irritation. From this we get the opportunity to find in the novel the
personal opinions of the author himself, and in this we have one point
to start from--that we should accept as the opinions of the author the
views expressed in the novel, at least those views which have been
expressed with a noticeable feeling for them on the part of the author
and put into the mouths of those characters whom he apparently
favours. Had the author had at least a spark of sympathy for the
'children,' for the young generation, had he had at least a spark of
true and clear understanding of their views and inclinations, it would
have necessarily flashed out somewhere in the run of the novel.
"The 'fathers' as opposed to the 'children' are permeated with love
and poetry; they are men, modestly and quietly doing good deeds; they
would not for the world change their age. Even such an empty nothing
as Pavel Petrovich, even he is raised on stilts and made a nice man.
Turgenev could not solve his problem; instead of sketching the
relations between the 'fathers' and the 'children' he wrote a
panegyric to the 'fathers' and a decrial against the 'children'; but
he did not even understand the children; instead of a decrial it was
nothing but a libel. The spreaders of healthy ideas among the young
generation he wanted to show up as corrupters of youth, the sowers of
discord and evil, haters of good, and in a word, very devils. In
various places of the novel we see that his principal hero is no fool;
on the contrary, a very able and gifted man, who is eager to learn and
works diligently and knows much, but notwithstanding all this, he gets
quite lost in disputes, utters absurdities, and preaches ridiculous
things, which should not be pardoned even in a most narrow and limited
mind. . . . In general the novel is nothing else but a merciless and
destructive criticism on the young generation. In all the
contemporaneous questions, intellectual movements, debates and ideals
with which the young generation is occupied, Turgenev finds not the
least common sense and gives us to understand that they lead only to
demoralisation, emptiness, prosaic shallowness, and cynicism. Turgenev
finds his ideal in quite a different place, namely in the 'fathers,'
in the more or less old generation. Consequently, he draws a parallel
and contrast between the 'fathers' and the 'children,' and we cannot
formulate the sense of the novel in this way; among a number of good
children there are also bad ones who are the ones that are ridiculed
in the novel; this is not its aim, its purpose is quite different and
may be formulated thus: the children are bad and thus are they
represented in the novel in all their ugliness; but the 'fathers' are
good, which is also proven in the novel."
One of the very few criticisms from a truly artistic standpoint
appeared in the "Russian Herald" during the year 1862, from which a
brief quotation must suffice:--
"Everything in this work bears witness to the ripened power of
Turgenev's wonderful talent; the clearness of ideas, the masterly
skill in sketching types, the simplicity of plot and of movement of
the action, and moderation and evenness of the work as a whole; the
dramatic element which comes up naturally from the most ordinary
situations; there is nothing superfluous, nothing retarding, nothing
extraneous. But in addition to these general merits, we are also
interested in Turgenev's novel because in it is caught and held a
current, fleeting moment of a passing phenomenon, and in which a
momentary phase of our life is typically drawn and arrested not only
for the time being but forever."
These prophetically true words constitute a great exception to the
prevailing contemporary criticism, which, as has been seen, was
passionately unjust. Twenty years later, a Russian writer, Boorenin,
was able to view the novel as we see it to-day:--
"We can say with assurance that since the time of "Dead Souls" not a
single Russian novel made such an impression as "Fathers and Children"
has made. A deep mind, a no less deep observation, an incomparable
ability for a bold and true analysis of the phenomena of life, and for
their broadest relations to each other,--all these have shown
themselves in the fundamental thought of this positively historical
creation. Turgenev has explained with lifelike images of 'fathers' and
'children' the essence of that life struggle between the dying period
of the nobility which found its strength in the possession of peasants
and the new period of reforms whose essence made up the principal
element of our 'resurrection' and for which, however, none had found a
real, true (BRIGHT) definition. Turgenev not only gave such a
definition, not only illumined the inner sense of the new movement in
the life of that time, but he also has pointed out its principal
characteristic sign--negation in the name of realism, as the
opposition to the old ideally liberal conservatism. It is known that
he found not only an unusually appropriate nickname for this negation,
but a nickname which later became attached to a certain group of
phenomena and types and as such was accepted not only by Russia alone
but by the whole of Europe. The artist created in the image of Bazarov
an exceedingly characteristic representative of the new formation of
life, of the new movement, and christened it with a wonderfully
fitting word, which made so much noise, which called forth so much
condemnation and praise, sympathy and hatred, timid alarm and bold
raving. We can point out but few instances in the history of
literature of such a deep and lively stir called forth in our literary
midst by an artistic creation and by a type of almost political
significance. This novel even after twenty years appears the same
deep, bright, and truthful reflection of life, as it was at the moment
of its first appearance. Now its depth and truthfulness seem even more
clear and arouse even more wonder and respect for the creative thought
of the artist who wrote it. In our days, when the period of
development pointed at by Turgenev in his celebrated novel is almost
entirely lived through, we can only wonder at that deep insight with
which the author had guessed the fundamental characteristic in that
life movement which had celebrated that period. The struggle of two
social streams, the anti-reform and post-reform stream, the struggle
of two generations; the old brought up on aesthetical idealism for
which the leisure of the nobility, made possible by their rights over
the peasants, afforded such a fertile soil; and the young generation
which was carried away by realism and negation,--this is what made up
the essence of the movement of the epoch in the sixties. Turgenev with
the instinct of genius saw through this fundamental movement in life
and imaged it in living bright pictures with all its positive and
negative, pathetic and humorous sides.
"In his novel Turgenev did not at all side with the 'fathers' as the
unsympathetic progressive critics of that time insisted, he did not
wish to in the least extol them above the 'children' in order to
degrade the latter. Just so he had no intention of showing up in the
character of the representative of the 'children' some kind of model
of a 'thinking realist' to whom the young generation should have bowed
and imitated, as the progressive critics who received the work
sympathetically imagined. Such a one-sided view was foreign to the
author; he sketched both the 'fathers' and the 'children' as far as
possible impartially and analytically. He spared neither the 'fathers'
nor the 'children' and pronounced a cold and severe judgment both on
the ones and the others. He positively sings a requiem to the
'fathers' in the person of the Kirsanovs, and especially Paul
Kirsanov, having shown up their aristocratic idealism, their
sentimental aestheticism, almost in a comical light, ay almost in
caricature, as he himself has justly pointed out. In the prominent
representative of the 'children,' Bazarov, he recognized a certain
moral force, the energy of character, which favourably contrasts this
strong type of realist with the puny, characterless, weak-willed type
of the former generation; but having recognised the positive side of
the young type, he could not but show up their shortcomings to life
and before the people, and thus take their laurels from them. And he
did so. And now when time has sufficiently exposed the shortcomings of
the type of the generation of that time, we see how right the author
was, how deep and far he saw into life, how clearly he perceived the
beginning and the end of its development. Turgenev in "Fathers and
Children" gave us a sample of a real universal novel, notwithstanding
the fact that its plot centres on the usual intimate relations of the
principal characters. And with what wonderful skill the author solves
this puzzling problem--to place in narrow, limited frames the broadest
and newest themes (CONTENT). Hardly one of the novelists of our age,
beginning with Dickens and ending with George Sand and Spielhagen, has
succeeded in doing it so compactly and tersely, with such an absence
of the DIDATIC element which is almost always present in the works of
the above-mentioned authors, the now kings of western literatures,
with such a full insight into the very heart of the life movement
which is reflected in the novel. I repeat again, "Fathers and
Children" is thought of highly by European critics, but years will
pass and it will be thought of even more highly. It will be placed in
a line with those weighty literary creations in which is reflected the
basic movement of the time which created it."
It would have been well for Turgenev if he could have preserved an
absolute silence under the terrific storm of abuse that his most
powerful novel brought down on his head; it would have been well to
let the book speak for itself, and trust to time to make the strong
wine sweet. But this was asking almost too much of human nature. Stung
by the outrageous attacks of the Radicals, and suffering as only a
great artist can suffer under what he regards as a complete
misrepresentation of his purpose, Turgenev wrote letters of
explanation, confession, irony, letters that gained him no affection,
that only increased the perplexity of the public, and which are much
harder to understand than the work itself. The prime difficulty was
that in this book Turgenev had told a number of profound truths about
life; and nobody wanted the truth. The eternal quarrel between the old
and the young generation, the eternal quarrel between conservative and
liberal, was at that time in Russia in an acute stage; and everybody
read "Fathers and Children" with a view to increasing their
ammunition, not with the object of ascertaining the justice of their
cause. The "fathers" were of course angry at Turgenev's diagnosis of
their weakness; the "sons" went into a veritable froth of rage at what
they regarded as a ridiculous burlesque of their ideas. But that is
the penalty that a wise man suffers at a time of strife; for if every
one saw the truth clearly, we should never fight each other at all.
Turgenev's subsequent statement, that so far from Bazarov being a
burlesque, he was his "favourite child," is hard to understand even
to-day. The novelist said that with the exception of Bazarov's views
on art, he himself was in agreement with practically all of the ideas
expressed by the great iconoclast. Turgenev probably thought he was,
but really he was not. Authors are poor judges of their own works, and
their statements about their characters are seldom to be trusted. Many
writers have confessed that when they start to write a book, with a
clear notion in their heads as to how the characters shall develop,
the characters often insist on developing quite otherwise, and guide
the pen of the author in a manner that constantly awakens his surprise
at his own work. Turgenev surely intended originally that we should
love Bazarov; as a matter of fact, nobody really loves him,* and no
other character in the book loves him for long except his parents. We
have a wholesome respect for him, as we respect any ruthless, terrible
force; but the word "love" does not express our feeling toward him. It
is possible that Turgenev, who keenly realised the need in Russia of
men of strong will, and who always despised himself because he could
not have steadily strong convictions, tried to incarnate in Bazarov
all the uncompromising strength of character that he lacked himself;
just as men who themselves lack self-assertion and cannot even look
another man in the eye, secretly idolise the men of masterful
qualities. It is like the sick man Stevenson writing stories of rugged
out-door activity. I heard a student say once that he was sure Marlowe
was a little, frail, weak man physically, and that he poured out all
his longing for virility and power in heroes like Tamburlaine.
*I cannot believe that even Mr. Edward Garnett loves him, though in
his Introduction to Constance Garnett's translation, he says, "we love
him."
Bazarov, as every one knows, was drawn from life. Turgenev had once
met a Russian provincial doctor,* whose straightforward talk made a
profound impression upon him. This man died soon after and had a
glorious resurrection in Bazarov, speaking to thousands and thousands
of people from his obscure and forgotten grave. It is rather
interesting that Turgenev, who drew so many irresolute Russian
characters, should have attained his widest fame by the depiction of a
man who is simply Incarnate Will. If every other person in all
Turgenev's stories should be forgotten, it is safe to say that Bazarov
will always dwell in the minds of those who have once made his
acquaintance.
* It is difficult to find out much about the original of Bazarov.
Haumant says Turgenev met him while travelling by the Rhine in 1860;
but Turgenev himself said that the young doctor had died not long
before 1860, and that the idea of the novel first came to him in
August, 1860, while he was bathing on the Isle of Wight. Almost every
writer on Russian literature has his own set of dates and incidents.
And yet, Turgenev, with all his secret admiration for the Frankenstein
he had created, did not hesitate at the last to crush him both in soul
and body. The one real conviction of Turgenev's life was
pessimism,--the belief that the man of the noblest aspiration and the
man of the most brutish character are treated by Nature with equal
indifference. Bazarov is the strongest individual that the novelist
could conceive; and it is safe to say that most of us live all our
lives through without meeting his equal. But his powerful mind, in its
colossal egotism and with its gigantic ambitions, is an easy prey to
the one thing he despised most of all--sentiment; and his rugged body
goes to the grave through a chance scratch on the finger. Thus the
irony of this book--and I know of no novel in the world that displays
such irony--is not the irony of intentional partisan burlesque. There
is no attempt in the destruction of this proud character to prove that
the "children" were wrong or mistaken; it is the far deeper irony of
life itself, showing the absolute insignificance of the ego in the
presence of eternal and unconscious nature. Thus Bazarov, who seems
intended for a great hero of tragedy, is not permitted to fight for
his cause, nor even to die for it. He is simply obliterated by chance,
as an insect perishes under the foot of a passing traveller, who is
entirely unaware that he has taken an individual life.
Nature herself could hardly be colder or more passive than the woman
with whom it was Bazarov's bad luck to fall in love. The gradual
change wrought in his temperament by Madame Odintsov is shown in the
most subtle manner. To Bazarov, women were all alike, and valuable for
only one thing; he had told this very woman that people were like
trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying an individual
birch tree. Why, then, should this entirely unimportant individual
woman change his whole nature, paralyse all his ambitions, ruin all
the cheerful energy of his active mind? He fights against this
obsession like a nervous patient struggling with a dreadful depression
that comes over him like a flood. He fights like a man fighting with
an enemy in the dark, whom he cannot see, but whose terrible blows
rain on his face. When he first meets her, he remarks to the shocked
Arkady, "What a magnificent body! Shouldn't I like to see it on the
dissecting table!" But he is unable long to admire her with such
scientific aloofness. "His blood was on fire directly if he merely
thought of her; he could easily have mastered his blood, but something
else was taking root in him, something he had never admitted, at which
he had always jeered, at which all his pride revolted." It is this
bewilderment at meeting the two things that are stronger than
life--love and death--that both stupefy and torture this superman. It
is the harsh amazement of one who, believing himself to be free,
discovers that he is really a slave. Just before he dies, he murmurs:
"You see what a hideous spectacle; the worm half-crushed, but writhing
still. And, you see I thought too: I'd break down so many things, I
wouldn't die, why should I! there were problems to solve, and I was a
giant! And now all the problem for the giant is how to die decently,
though that makes no difference to any one either. . . . I was needed
by Russia. . . . No, it's clear, I wasn't needed."
Madame Odintsov's profound and subtle remark about happiness is the
key to her character, and shows why she never could have been happy
with Bazarov, or have given him any happiness.
"We were talking of happiness, I believe. . . . Tell me why it is that
even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a fine evening, or a
conversation with sympathetic people, it all seems an intimation of
some measureless happiness existing apart somewhere rather than actual
happiness such, I mean, as we ourselves are in possession of? Why is
it? Or perhaps you have no feeling like that?"
Many of us certainly have feelings like that; but while these two
intellectuals are endeavouring to analyse happiness, and losing it in
the process of analysis, the two young lovers, Arkady and Katya, whose
brows are never furrowed by cerebration, are finding happiness in the
familiar human way. In answer to his declaration of love, she smiled
at him through her tears. "No one who has not seen those tears in the
eyes of the beloved, knows yet to what a point, faint with shame and
gratitude, a man may be happy on earth."
Although the character of Bazarov dominates the whole novel, Turgenev
has, I think, displayed genius of a still higher order in the creation
of that simple-minded pair of peasants, the father and mother of the
young nihilist. These two are old-fashioned, absolutely pious,
dwelling in a mental world millions of miles removed from that of
their son; they have not even a remote idea of what is passing in his
mind, but they look on him with adoration, and believe him to be the
greatest man in all Russia. At the end of a wonderful sketch of the
mother, Turgenev says: "Such women are not common nowadays. God knows
whether we ought to rejoice!"
This humble pair, whom another novelist might have treated with scorn,
are glorified here by their infinite love for their son. Such love as
that seems indeed too great for earth, too great for time, and to
belong only to eternity. The unutterable pathos of this love consists
in the fact that it is made up so largely of fear. They fear their son
as only ignorant parents can fear their educated offspring; it is
something that I have seen often, that every one must have observed,
that arouses the most poignant sympathy in those that understand it.
It is the fear that the boy will be bored at home; that he is longing
for more congenial companionship elsewhere; that the very solicitude
of his parents for his health, for his physical comfort, will irritate
and annoy rather than please him. There is no heart-hunger on earth so
cruel and so terrible as the hunger of father and mother for the
complete sympathy and affection of their growing children. This is why
the pride of so many parents in the development of their children is
mingled with such mute but piercing terror. It is the fear that the
son will grow away from them; that their caresses will deaden rather
than quicken his love for them. They watch him as one watches some
infinitely precious thing that may at any moment disappear forever.
The fear of a mother toward the son she loves is among the deepest
tragedies of earth. She knows he is necessary to her happiness, and
that she is not to his.
Even the cold-hearted Bazarov is shaken by the joy of his mother's
greeting when he returns home, and by her agony at his early
departure. He hates himself for not being able to respond to her
demonstrations of affection. Unlike most sons, he is clever enough to
understand the slavish adoration of his parents; but he realises that
he cannot, especially in the presence of his college friend, relieve
their starving hearts. At the very end, he says "My father will tell
you what a man Russia is losing. . . . That's nonsense, but don't
contradict the old man. Whatever toy will comfort the child . . . you
know. And be kind to mother. People like them aren't to be found in
your great world if you look by daylight with a candle."
The bewildered, helpless anguish of the parents, who cannot understand
why the God they worship takes their son away from them, reaches the
greatest climax of tragedy that I know of anywhere in the whole
history of fiction. Not even the figure of Lear holding the dead body
of Cordelia surpasses in tragic intensity this old pair whose whole
life has for so long revolved about their son. And the novel closes
with the scene in the little village churchyard, where the aged
couple, supporting each other, visit the tomb, and wipe away the dust
from the stone. Even the abiding pessimism of the novelist lifts for a
moment its heavy gloom at this spectacle. "Can it be that their
prayers, their tears, are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred,
devoted love, is not all-powerful? Oh, no! However passionate,
sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers
growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they
tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of indifferent
nature; they tell us too of eternal reconciliation and of life without
end."