This is small introduction to Ivan Turgenev’s classic novel Fathers and Sons. To those of us who do not know the Russian society, its intense engagement with the questions of life, politics and philosophy at the turn of the 19th century Fathers and Sons is a must read. Turgenev achieves the serene detachment of Tolstoy but also foresees the tumultuous and iconoclastic characterisation of Russian fiction as in Dostoyevsky in this novel. The Russian psyche, its bold engagement with ideas, the rebellious youth and also the traditionally minded who seem to love peace and family life the more, youth of a more conservative and settled nature who prefer to choose a life sans adventurism and excitement are reflected in the novel. In fact the novel is about Russian society at an intellectual crossroad.
Fathers and sons is a sad novel about the wasting of a life; of an existence gone awry, all great ideas strewn to dust in the case of Bazarov and the compromise, the decisiveness in love and marriage, the reflective, sympathetic existence in the case of Kirchanof. These are the major themes of the novel.
I find a touch of Nietzsche in Bazarov. He is ruthless and unsympathetic, has no time for weaklings. He does not believe in love or affection and puts on a tone of mockery and cynicism in his conversation. He is a nihilist who believes mostly in destruction, destroying the institutions and ideas which support them. He does not respect his feelings towards Odintsova and therefore hates his own weakness. Bazarov is the doer. He believes in work and immerses himself in his experiments. Bazarov denies even religion. His inability to respect or love his parents who are quite simple at heart, not out of any absence of love, but more out of negation of such feelings and his erudition, is indicative of his rootlessness.
Odintsova is an admiring supporter of Bazarov in this intellectual exuberance. She too denies attachments but is less troubled because of her strict, regimented style of life.
Yet it is a life wasted, since Bazarov callously infects himself with typhus, when he attends to an autopsy on behalf of the town doctor. In the closing lines Turgenev describes the life of all the characters he has introduced to us.
Bazarov’s parents are there too, old and heartbroken. They cannot leave the side of their son’s grave which is very close to the memory of their son. Inside, there rests a rebellious soul, in eternal repose. The fir branch and the upturned stake seem to speak to us about the immutability of time, of the great law of nature to which we are all bound. Fathers and Sons may be a slow and tiresome read as all the grand novels of ideas tend to be, but a true lover of literature and Russian fiction would be doing a disservice to oneself if this great book is left unread.