"FATHERS AND CHILDREN"
I
While _On the Eve_ signalizes the end of the Crimea epoch and the
break-up of the crushing, overwhelming régime of Nicholas, _Fathers
and Children_ is a forecast of the new Liberal movement which arose
in the Russia of the 'sixties, and an analysis of the formidable type
appearing on the political horizon--the Nihilist.
Turgenev was the first man to detect the existence of this new type,
the Nihilist. His own account of his discovery gives us such an
interesting glimpse of his method in creative work that we transcribe a
passage from his paper on _Fathers and Children_, written at Baden in
1869:
"It was in the month of August 1860, when I was taking sea baths
at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, that the first idea of _Fathers
and Children_ came into my head; that novel, thanks to which the
favourable opinion of the younger generation about me, has come to an
end. Many times I have heard and read in critical journals that I
have only been elaborating an idea of my own.... For my part, I ought
to confess that I never attempted to create a type without having,
not an idea, but a living person, in whom the various elements
were harmonised together, to work from. I have always needed some
groundwork on which I could tread firmly. This was the case with
_Fathers and Children_. At the foundation of the principal figure
Bazarov was the personality of a young provincial doctor. He died not
long before 1860. In that remarkable man was incarnated to my ideas
the just rising element, which, still chaotic, afterwards received
the title of Nihilism. The impression produced by this individual
was very strong. At first I could not clearly define him to myself.
But I strained my eyes and ears, watching everything surrounding me,
anxious to trust simply in my own sensations. What confounded me was
that I had met not a single idea or hint of what seemed appearing to
me on all sides. And the doubt involuntarily suggested itself...."
_Fathers and Children_ was published in the spring of 1862 in Katkoff's
paper, _The Russian Messenger_, the organ of the Younger Generation,
and the stormy controversy that the novel immediately provoked was
so bitter, deep and lasting that the episode forms one of the most
interesting chapters in literary history. Rarely has so great an artist
so thoroughly drawn public attention to a scrutiny of new ideas rising
in its midst; rarely has so great an artist come into such violent
collision with his own party thereby; never, perhaps, has there been
so striking an illustration of the incapacity of the public, swayed
by party passion, to understand a pure work of art. The effect of
the publication was widespread excitement in both political camps.
Everybody was, at the time, on the alert to see what would be the next
move on the political board. The recent Emancipation of the Serfs was
looked upon by Young Russia as only the prelude to many democratic
measures, while the Reactionists professed to see in that measure the
ruin of the country and the beginning of the end. The fast-increasing
antipathy between the Old Order and the New, like a fire, required
only a puff of wind to set it ablaze. And Bazarov's character and aims
came as a godsend to the Reactionists, who hailed in it the portrait
of the insidious revolutionary ideas current in Young Russia; and they
hastened to crowd round Turgenev, ironically congratulating the former
champion of Liberalism on his penetration and honesty in unmasking the
Nihilist. But we will quote Turgenev's own words:
"I will not enlarge on the effect produced by this novel. I will
only say that everywhere the word Nihilist was caught up by a
thousand tongues, and that on the day of the conflagration of the
Apraksinsky shops, when I arrived in St. Petersburg, the first
exclamation with which I was greeted was, 'Just see what your
Nihilists are doing!' ... I experienced a coldness approaching to
indignation from people near and sympathetic to me. I received
congratulations, almost caresses, from people of the opposite camp,
from enemies. This confused me, wounded me; but my conscience did
not reproach me. I knew very well I had carried out honestly the
type I had sketched, carried it out not only without prejudice, but
positively with sympathy.... While some attack me for outraging
the Younger Generation, and promise me, with a laugh of contempt,
to burn my photograph, others, on the contrary, with indignation,
reproach me for my servile cringing to the Younger Generation....
'You are grovelling at the feet of Bazarov. You pretend to find
fault with him, and you are licking the dust at his feet,' says one
correspondent. Another critic represented M. Katkoff and me as two
conspirators, 'plotting in the solitude of our chamber our traps
and slanders against the forces of Young Russia.' An effective
picture!... My critics called my work a pamphlet, and referred to my
wounded and irritated vanity.... A shadow has fallen on my name. I
don't deceive myself. I know that shadow will remain."
Politics is a game where the mistakes and admissions of your adversary
are your good character in public opinion--a definition which goes far
to account for the easy predominance of the political sharper,--and
so Turgenev, the great artist, he who, in creating Bazarov for an
ungrateful public, to use his own words, "_simply did not know how to
work otherwise_," found to his cost. The Younger Generation, irritated
by the public capital made out of Bazarov and his Nihilism by "the
Fathers," flew into the other extreme, and refused to see in Bazarov
anything other than a _caricature_ of itself. It denied Bazarov was
of its number, or represented its views in any way; and to this day
surviving Nihilists will demonstrate warmly that the creation of his
sombre figure is "a mistake from beginning to end." The reason for this
wholesale rejection of Bazarov is easy to account for; and Turgenev,
whose clear-sightedness about his works was unaffected either by
vanity, diffidence or the ignorant onslaughts of the whole tribe of
minor critics, penetrates at once to the heart of the matter:
"The whole ground of the misunderstanding lay in the fact that the
type of Bazarov had not time to pass through the usual phases. At
the very moment of his appearance the author attacked him. It was
a new method as well as a new type I introduced--that of Realizing
instead of Idealizing.... The reader is easily thrown into perplexity
when the author does not show clear sympathy or antipathy to his own
child. The reader readily gets angry.... After all, books exist to
entertain."
An excellent piece of analysis and a quiet piece of irony this! The
character of Bazarov was in fact such an epitome of the depths of a
great movement that the mass of commonplace educated minds, the future
tools of the movement, looked on it with alarm, dislike and dread.
The average man will only recognize his own qualities in his fellows,
and endow a man with his own littlenesses. So Bazarov's depth excited
the superficiality of the eternally omnipresent average mind. The
Idealists in the Younger Generation were mortally grieved to see that
Bazarov was not wholly inspired by their dreams; he went deeper, and
the average man received a shock of surprise that hurt his vanity. So
the hue and cry was raised around Turgenev, and raised only too well.
Bazarov is the most dominating of Turgenev's creations, yet it brought
upon him secret distrust and calumny, undermined his influence with
those he was with at heart, and went far to damage his position as the
leading novelist of his day. The lesson is significant. No generation
ever understands itself; its members welcome eagerly their portraits
drawn by their friends, and the caricatures drawn by their adversaries;
but to the new type no mercy is shown, and everybody hastens to
misunderstand, to abuse, to destroy.
So widely indeed was Bazarov misunderstood that Turgenev once asserted,
"At this very moment there are only two people who have understood my
intentions--Dostoevsky and Botkin."
And Dostoevsky was of the opposite camp--a Slavophil.
II
What, then, is Bazarov?
Time after time Turgenev took the opportunity, now in an article, now
in a private or a public letter, to repel the attacks made upon his
favourite character. Thus in a letter to a Russian lady[20] he says:
"What, you too say that in drawing Bazarov I wished to make a
caricature of the young generation. You repeat this--pardon my plain
speaking--idiotic reproach. Bazarov, my favourite child, on whose
account I quarrelled with Katkoff; Bazarov, on whom I lavished all
the colours at my disposal; Bazarov, this man of intellect, this
hero, a caricature! But I see it is useless for me to protest."
[20] _Souvenirs sur Tourguéneff_, 1887.
And in a letter addressed to the Russian students at Heidelberg he
reiterates:
"_Flatter comme un caniche_, I did not wish; although in this way
I could no doubt have all the young men at once on my side; but I
was unwilling to buy popularity by concessions of this kind. It is
better to lose the campaign (and I believe I have lost it) than win
by this subterfuge. I dreamed of a sombre, savage and great figure,
only half emerged from barbarism, strong, _méchant_ and honest, and
nevertheless doomed to perish because it is always in advance of the
future. I dreamed of a strange parallel to Pugatchev. And my young
contemporaries shake their heads and tell me, '_Vous êtes foutu_, old
fellow. You have insulted us. Your Arkady is far better. It's a pity
you haven't worked him out a little more.' There is nothing left for
me but, in the words of the gipsy song, 'to take off my hat with a
very low bow.'"
What, then, is Bazarov?
Various writers have agreed in seeing in him only "criticism, pitiless,
barren, and overwhelming analysis, and the spirit of absolute
negation," but this is an error. Representing the creed which has
produced the militant type of Revolutionist in every capital of Europe,
_he is the bare mind of Science first applied to Politics_. His own
immediate origin is German Science interpreted by that spirit of
logical intensity, Russian fanaticism, or devotion to the Idea, which
is perhaps the distinguishing genius of the Slav. But he represents
the roots of the modern Revolutionary movements in thought as well
as in politics, rather than the branches springing from those roots.
Inasmuch as the early work of the pure scientific spirit, knowing
itself to be fettered by the superstitions, the confusions, the
sentimentalities of the Past, was necessarily destructive, Bazarov's
primary duty was to Destroy. In his essence, however, he stands
for _the sceptical conscience of modern Science_. His watchword is
_Reality_, and not Negation, as everybody in pious horror hastened to
assert Turgenev, whose first and last advice to young writers was,
"You need truth, remorseless truth, as regards your own sensations,"
was indeed moved to declare, "Except Bazarov's views on Art, I share
almost all his convictions." The crude materialism of the 'sixties
was not the basis of the scientific spirit, it was merely its passing
expression; and the early Nihilists who denounced Art, the Family and
Social Institutions were simply freeing themselves from traditions
preparatory to a struggle that was inevitable. Again, though Bazarov
is a Democrat, perhaps his kinship with the people is best proved by
the contempt he feels for them. He stands forward essentially as an
Individual, with the "isms" that can aid him, mere tools in his hand;
Socialist, Communist or Individualist, in his necessary phases he
fought this century against the tyranny of centralized Governments,
and next century he will be fighting against the stupid tyranny of the
Mass. Looking at Bazarov however, as a type that has played its part
and vanished with its generation, as a man he is a new departure in
history. His appearance marks the dividing-line between two religions,
that of the Past--Faith, and that growing religion of to-day--Science.
His is the duty of breaking away from all things that men call Sacred,
and his savage egoism is essential to that duty. He is subject to
neither Custom nor Law. He is his own law, and is occupied simply
with the fact he is studying. He has thrown aside the ties of love
and duty that cripple the advance of the strongest men. He typifies
Mind grappling with Nature, seeking out her inexorable laws, Mind
in pure devotion to the What Is, in startling contrast to the minds
that follow their self-created kingdoms of What Appears and of What
Ought to Be. He is therefore a foe to the poetry and art that help to
increase Nature's glamour over man by alluring him to yield to her; for
Bazarov's great aim is to see Nature at work behind the countless veils
of illusions and ideals, and all the special functions of belief which
she develops in the minds of the masses to get them unquestioning to
do her bidding. Finally, Bazarov, in whom the comfortable compromising
English mind sees only a man of bad form, bad taste, bad manners and
overwhelming conceit, finally, Bazarov stands for Humanity awakened
from century-old superstitions and the long dragging oppressive dream
of tradition. Naked he stands under a deaf, indifferent sky, but he
feels and knows that he has the strong brown earth beneath his feet.
This type, though it has developed into a network of special branches
to-day, it is not difficult for us to trace as it has appeared and
disappeared in the stormy periods of the last thirty years. Probably
the genius and energy of the type was chiefly devoted to positive
Science, and not to Politics; but it is sufficient to glance at the
Revolutionary History, in theory and action, of the Continent to see
that every movement was inspired by the ideas of the Bazarovs, though
led by a variety of leaders. Just as the popular movements for Liberty
fifty years earlier found sentimental and _romantic_ expression in
Byronism, so the popular movements of our time have been realistic in
idea, and have looked to Science for their justification. Proudhon,
Bakunin, Karl Marx, the Internationals, the Russian Terrorists, the
Communists, all have a certain relation to Bazarov, but his nearest
kinsmen in these and other movements we believe have worked, and have
remained, obscure. It was a stroke of genius on Turgenev's part to
make Bazarov die on the threshold unrecognized. He is Aggression,
destroyed in his destroying. And there are many reasons in life for the
Bazarovs remaining obscure. For one thing, their few disciples, the
Arkadys, do not understand them; for another, the whole swarm of little
interested persons who make up a movement are more or less engaged in
personal interests, and they rarely take for a leader a man who works
for his own set of truths, scornful of all cliques, penalties and
rewards. Necessarily, too, the Bazarovs work alone, and are given the
most dangerous tasks to accomplish unaided. Further, they are men whose
brutal and breaking force attracts ten men where it repels a thousand.
The average man is too afraid of Bazarov to come into contact with him.
Again, the Bazarovs, as Iconoclasts, are always unpopular in their own
circles. Yesterday in political life they were suppressed or exiled,
and even in Science they were the men who were supplanted before their
real claim was recognized, and to-day, when order reigns for a time,
the academic circles and the popular critics will demonstrate that
Bazarov's existence was a mistake, and the crowd could have got on much
better without him.
The Crowd, the ungrateful Crowd! though for it Bazarov has wrested much
from effete or corrupt hands, and has fought and weakened despotic and
bureaucratic power, what has its opinion or memory to do with his brave
heroic figure? Yes, heroic, as Turgenev, in indignation with Bazarov's
shallow accusers, was betrayed into defining his own creation, Bazarov,
whose very atmosphere is difficulty and danger, who cannot move without
hostility carrying as he does destruction to the old worn-out truths,
contemptuous of censure, still more contemptuous of praise, he goes his
way against wind and tide. Brave man, given up to his cause, whatever
it be, it is his joy _to stand alone_, watching the crowd as it races
wherever reward is and danger is not. It is Bazarov's life to despise
honours, success, opinion, and to let nothing, not love itself, come
between him and his inevitable course, and, when death comes, to turn
his face to the wall, while in the street below he can hear the voices
of men cheering the popular hero who has last arrived. The Crowd!
Bazarov is the antithesis of the cowardice of the Crowd. That is the
secret why we love him.
III
As a piece of art _Fathers and Children_ is the most powerful of all
Turgenev's works. The figure of Bazarov is not only the political
centre of the book, against which the other characters show up in
their respective significance, but a figure in which the eternal
tragedy of man's impotence and insignificance is realized in scenes
of a most ironical human drama. How admirably this figure dominates
everything and everybody. Everything falls away before this man's
biting sincerity. In turn the figureheads of Culture and Birth, Nicolai
and Pavel representing the Past; Arkady the sentimentalist representing
the Present; the father and mother representing the ties of family that
hinder a man's life-work; Madame Odintsov embodying the fascination
of a beautiful woman--all fall into their respective places. But the
particular power of _Fathers and Children_, of epic force almost,
arises from the way in which Turgenev makes us feel the individual
human tragedy of Bazarov in relation to the perpetual tragedy
everywhere in indifferent Nature. In _On the Eve_ Turgenev cast his
figures against a poetic background by creating an atmosphere of War
and Patriotism. But in _Fathers and Children_ this poetic background
is Nature herself, Nature who sows, with the same fling of her hand,
life and death springing each from each, in the same rhythmical cast
of fate. And with Nature for the background, there comes the wonderful
sense conveyed to the reader throughout the novel, of the generations
with their fresh vigorous blood passing away quickly, a sense of
the coming generations, whose works, too, will be hurried away into
the background, a sense of the silence of Earth, while her children
disappear into the shadows, and are whelmed in turn by the inexorable
night. While everything in the novel is expressed in the realistic
terms of daily commonplace life, the characters appear now close to us
as companions, and now they seem like distant figures walking under
an immense sky; and the effect of Turgenev's simply and subtly drawn
landscapes is to give us a glimpse of men and women in their actual
relation to their mother earth and the sky over their heads. This
effect is rarely conveyed in the modern Western novel, which deals so
much with purely indoor life; but the Russian novelist gained artistic
force for his tragedies by the vague sense ever present with him of
the enormous distances of the vast steppes, bearing on their bosom
the peasants' lives, which serve as a sombre background to the life of
the isolated individual figures with which he is dealing. Turgenev has
availed himself of this hidden note of tragedy, and with the greatest
art he has made Bazarov, with all his ambition opening out before him,
and his triumph awaited, the eternal type of man's conquering egoism
conquered by the pin-prick of death. Bazarov, who looks neither to
the right hand nor to the left, who delays no longer in his life-work
of throwing off the mind-forged manacles; Bazarov, who trusts not to
Nature, but would track the course of her most obscure laws; Bazarov,
in his keen pursuit of knowledge, is laid low by the weapon he has
selected to wield. His own tool, the dissecting knife, brings death to
him, and his body is stretched beside the peasant who had gone before.
Of the death scene, the great culmination of this great novel, it is
impossible to speak without emotion. The voice of the reader, whosoever
he be, must break when he comes to those passages of infinite pathos
where the father, Vassily Ivanovitch, is seen peeping from behind the
door at his dying son, where he cries, "Still living, my Yevgeny is
still living, and now he will be saved. Wife, wife!" And where, when
death has come, he cries, "I said I should rebel. I rebel, I rebel!"
What art, what genius, we can only repeat, our spirit humbled to the
dust by the exquisite solemnity of that undying simple scene of the old
parents at the grave, the scene where Turgenev epitomizes in one stroke
the infinite aspiration, the eternal insignificance of the life of man.
Let us end here with a repetition of a simple passage that, echoing
through the last pages of _Fathers and Children_, must find an echo
in the hearts of Turgenev's readers: "'To the memory of Bazarov,'
Katya whispered in her husband's ear, ... but Arkady did not venture
to propose the toast aloud." We, at all events, can drink the toast
to-day as a poor tribute in recompense for those days when Turgenev in
life proposed it, and his comrades looked on him with distrust, with
coldness and with anger.
VIII
"SMOKE"