Fathers and Sons

If you're intimidated by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky's long masterpieces, consider starting instead with Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons." This book is of course a masterpiece of Russian literature. It's characters and themes are timeless and absolutely relatable to our modern culture. This is a story of family relationships, romance, and philosophy. Highly recommended. p.s. When you're done here, try "War and Peace" or at least "Crime and Punishment."

This is such a wonderful novel about two young men returning home from University - Arkady Kirsanov and his friend, Yevgeny who is known mostly as Basarov. Firstly they stop at Arkady's father's poor farm - but he is a landowner. Arkady's father's name is Nikolai and living with him is his brother Pavel. What contrasts we immediately meet - Nikolai whose wife has died (Arkady's mother) but who is living with one of the local peasant women (Fenitchka) and has a son by her, and Pavel whose playboy life collapsed when the princess he hoped to marry rejected him.So here we have two young men with all the potential of their living beings contrasted with Nikolai and Pavel and their strange life outcomes. What complicates the matter is that Basarov is a nihilist - someone called him the first 'angry young man'. He is cynical and argumentative - prepared to accept Nikolai's simple innocence and honesty in living, unprepared to tolerate Pavel's Anglophile airs and graces.The young men move on to Basarov's parent's place (simple folk living a traditional old age) but on the way meet Madame Odintsova - quickly called Odintsov (presumably because she is widowed). They spend some time with Odintsov and we learn her name is Anna Sergyevna. Anna lives with her younger sister Katya and and older aunt. The contrasts are once again evident. Anna has no feeling for Arkady at all and quickly Arkady and Katya become friends as Anna and Basarov fascinate each other. But Basarov is appalled at his romantic feelings - not what he expects a nihilist should experience! And when Odintsov's flirting causes him to express that love he has to flee to his parent's place horrified by what he has felt.But he is no more at home with his parents whose love and affection overwhelms him, so the young men return to the Kirsanov's farm, stopping briefly at Odintsov's country residence where they are not really welcomed. However Arkady, home again, is ill at ease and has to return to Odintsov, leaving Basarov behind. What happens at Odintsov's residence is perhaps not unexpected, what happens at the Kirsanov's farm - with Fenitchka and Pavel is remarkable. Eventually Basarov joins Arkady at Madame Odintsov's before returning home. The outcomes I will leave to Turgenev. As a mid-fifties person myself I can readily identify with Nikolai and Pavel who see themselves as old, although they too are only fiftyish. But we all have memories and I can see myself as Basarov and Arkady - in some ways each of them, but in no ways entirely either of them. While, as a young man, I too had ideals (anarchist rather than nihilist) that I used to obscure other things in my life, subsequent experiences in my life have lead me to regret that path my life took for a while. Turgenev's outcome for Basarov is entirely in accord with my view. But what then of Pavel? Perhaps the most extraordinary thing for me about this beautiful novel is that at the end - but not during the novel - I loved each and every one o

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 see

Turgenev's Fathers and Sons is a timeless novel. Set in mid-19th century Russia it follows a few weeks in the lives of two young men, Arkadi and Bazarov. Turgenev sets the characters beliefs against each other and against themselves. Fathers and Sons operates on many levels, a story of generation vs generation, of ideology vs love, new vs old and friend vs friend. Turgenev takes the pair on a journey through rural Russia. Each stop along the journey sets up the scenario for the tensions and revelations of the characters.The character of Bazarov is one of the most vivid characters in literature. The timeless representation of a brash bright young man ready to teach the world everything it's doing wrong.When Fathers and Sons was first published it caused outrage on both the right and the left in Russia. Both sides believed their characterizations were overdone and many never forgave him.Fathers and Sons is highly recommended. Easily one of the best novels I have ever read.

Following a link from Hamsun to Gogol found Fathers and Sons. Like the manic haunted heroes of Hamsun's Mysteries and Hunger there is Turgenev's Bazarov - a nihilist passionate - a hero of a kind. Take the path from Turgenev to Lermontov then to Dostoyevsky or criss cross paths and return to Hamsun. For this reader Turgenev's beautiful Fathers and Sons is but one part of this world of inspiration and Bazarov but one example of the gift these authors had for characterisation. Turgenev's novel - the cause of furious debate in its day and long beyond - is a powerful, challenging, emotional, wonderful book. Read it. Read them all.