Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics Hardcovers) [Hardcover]

As Turgenev preceded Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, I always assumed that he belonged to a stuffier time; picking up "Fathers and Sons" in the bookstore, the first few pages seemed to confirm this assumption. Unlike Dostoevsky's prose, which I've always found compulsively readable, Turgenev's style seemed dense and somewhat stilted. Thankfully, the writing gets much more fluid and engaging as the story progresses.

Turgenev is in fact a wonderful stylist: economical, precise, lyrical when it befits his characters, yet never wordy. Whereas Dostoevsky's characters sometimes seem to be acting in a vacuum, and Tolstoy occassionally digresses into paeans on the wonders of nature, Turgenev straddles the happy medium. There are many brief but vivid descriptions of atmosphere, times of day--a horses hooves flashing at dusk, Arcady and Eugene reclining on recently mown hay--yet they are alway in service to the story and not overly symbolic.

Turgenev's approach to his characters is similarly nimble and balanced; sometimes he adopts a more distant tone, sometimes he's in a particular character's head, sometimes he gives a brief description of a character's backgound, at others a character will relate another's history from his point of view.

In fact everything in the novel testifies to Turgenev's faith in humanity, without ever seeming didactic or boring. All of the characters are sympathetic, and I could imagine actually traveling with them or engaging in conversation with them. Nobody beats Dostoevsky when it comes to penetrating psychological insight and dark humor, but his characters are always on some level types, intended to personify philosophical extremes. Tolstoy always seems to be hiding a profound but nonetheless conservative morality up his sleeve. Turgenev's characters, though, are somehow more believable than either of these author's. Eugene Bazarov and Anna Sergeyevna Odintzov are extreme, intense, and difficult people, but they are not caricatures, and they are no more the center of attention than Arcady, his relatives, or Bazarov's parents. Everone is held in equal regard, but everyone is distinct. In reminds me of Ibsen, who seems to regard his characters with the same sort of passionate, humane equanimity.

In a way, Turgenev is the anti-Dostoevsky (intending no disrespect to the master); at every opportunity where he might stage a cathartic "pathetic scene"--the duel, the climactic encounter over the deathbed of one of the main characters--he stays true to the fundamentally disjointed nature of life. The characters don't kiss and make up, nor do they hurl themselves under trains, yet somehow it remains gripping and illuminating. And Turgenev doesn't succumb to the opposite temptation, namely to undermine the gravity of real feelings by interrupting these scenes with trivial details, as Flaubert does so often in "Madame Bovary" for example.

What else can I say? There's no reason not to give this book a try if you like character driven stories that seem full of the essence of real life. Unlike other great Russian novels, this one is short, so if it's not to your taste, at least it's brief. However, I can almost guarantee that you'll wish it lasted longer, and that it'll leave you with a warm feeling inside.

"Fathers and Sons" comes very close to perfection. At times, Turgenev's use of the language borders on poetry. The characters are intriguing and sympathetic. The novel deals beautifully with man's inability to live without holding something sacred, and its tragic "hero" goes to the grave realizing that he has been trying to fill that void with "straw" instead of something more meaningful--like faith, or family, or true love.

Some critics have said that Turgenev supported the "nihilists," the young men who scoffed at all things sacred. They say Bazarov is the hero of the novel, intended to be idolized. But I consider it impossible to read "Fathers and Sons" and not be moved by a deep need to hold something--anything--sacred.

With Fathers and Sons, Turganev shocked the Russian literati with his portrayal of Bazarov, the self-described 'nihilist'. Rejecting everything and recognising no single authority, Bazarov was a kick in the teeth of the aristocracy's grand old men, a rebellion of the son against the father.

Evgeny Bazarov is a young man, with ideas that he believes are the only rational, reasonable way to live and behave. He is contemptuous of love, of sentimentality, of tradition and of the aristocracy. Yet he is intelligent and capable, and believes the way he does not through a sense of hostility and outrage, but because it seems right to him. His younger friend, Arkady, considers Bazarov his 'mentor', and though the two disagree with the depth of nihilism that is necessary for accurate living, they are for the most part in agreement.

Bazarov's nihilism is argued amongst the characters at several different stages of the novel. Turganev chose not to make the hero an unassailable target - both the negatives and the positives of such an outlook are admirably explained, discussed and dissected. The characters are intelligent in their own field or experiences, and all are willing to add to the argument. Obviously, the title should reveal to all that it is the father's of the two main characters, Arkady and Bazarov, who have problems with the younger generations ideas, though the 'fathers' of the story do try to understand Bazarov's thinking, rather than merely stamping him down with their experience and wisdom.

The characters are very well realised. Pavel Petrovich is the typical Russian aristocrat, unable to fully understand the scope of change that the emancipation of the serfs will bring. Arkady is the eager student, a man who wishes to embrace the concepts of nihilism, but who finds himself drawn into sentimentality towards his family, and who falls in love. Katya, Arkady's love, is one of the shallowest characters, but even she works on a level beyond being merely a foil to Arkady's belief. Anna Sergeevna, Katya's sister, is a tremendous character, being both passionate and intelligent, and able to duel equally - and sometimes better - against Bazarov's wit.

A word on the translation by Richard Freeborn. For the most part it is good, and the dialogue is very good, but there are moments that feel awkward or amateurish. An odd turn of phrase or - more common - an inexplicably placed colloquial term of slang phrase lessens the impact of a scene. Bazarov referring to his 'mates' in conversation tends to decrease the impact of the ideas set forth, and while would not have been so noticeable if the entire novel was constructed in such a matter, the rest of the writing is quite formal, and as it is, the narrative structure suffers somewhat. Regardless, Fathers and Sons is a very interesting examination of the conflict of ideas that parents and their children necessarily experience, and has the admirable quality of being fair and honest to both sides, with very little in the way of bias on either side, even considering that Bazarov is the main thrust of the narrative.

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