Fathers and Sons – Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev “Bazarov is my beloved son”

Fathers and Sons, one of the most important works of world literature, is also the masterpiece of its author, Turgenev. The novel is significant not only for illuminating a crucial point in Russia’s political history but also for its ruthless dramatization of generational differences, juxtaposing the new with the old, the rising with the dying, conservatism with revolution. With poetic realism, it contrasts the nihilism of the ‘son’ Bazarov with the conservative romanticism of the ‘father’. Turgenev’s work also marks the first appearance of an angry young character who opposes all traditional values ​​on the literary scene. The protagonist, Bazarov, was a revolutionary. Turgenev himself said, defending himself and his hero: “If the reader cannot love Bazarov in all his coarseness, heartlessness, and ruthless coldness, I repeat, I am to blame and I have not achieved my goal (…) Bazarov is my beloved child; could this intelligent, this heroic person be a caricature? Don’t you realize that he is one of the most sympathetic of the types I have created? He is democratic, honest, and realistic to the core (…) My novel is entirely against the nobility as a progressive class. Look at the faces of Pavel Petrovich, Nikolay Petrovich. Weakness, lethargy, and narrow-mindedness. Aesthetic feeling compelled me to choose especially the best representatives of the noble class so that I could better clarify the position: If this is the cream, what is the milk like?” 
According to Vladimir Nabokov, “Fathers and Sons” is not only Turgunyev’s best novel, but also one of the most successful novels of the nineteenth century. Turgenev masterfully portrays a still relevant, but deeper, aspect of intergenerational conflict in his work, one of the earliest examples of realistic novels.

When Fathers and Sons was first published in Russia in 1859, radical and traditionalist-conservative circles used the novel as a focal point for harsh and mutually critical attacks. The main theme of Fathers and Sons is intergenerational conflict; in other words, it’s the struggle between the currents that influence generations. There are sons who vehemently oppose their fathers’ values, and fathers who are bewildered by this opposition. However, the fathers are timid, polite, and extremely understanding; the sons, on the other hand, are dismissive, crude, and utterly insensitive. Of course, this is nothing new for the current novel tradition, but it should also be noted that Turgenev laid the groundwork for this conflict.

The Unending Pains of Westernization in Russia – A. Ömer Türkeş
(Radikal Book Supplement, September 1, 2006) 
Turgenev’s ‘Fathers and Sons’, which embodies his theses on Russia, is, as its title suggests, a novel about the ruptures and continuities in the relationship between the old and the new.

In the 19th century, the period when Russian novels flourished, the three most frequently mentioned authors were Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. Tolstoy, and especially Dostoevsky, retain their greatness to this day. However, the passage of time has taken much from Turgenev’s fame. Yet, during his lifetime, he not only created storms in Russia’s intellectual circles but also inspired admiration in Europe. This admiration for Turgenev, who spent a large part of his life outside Russia, was influenced by his friendships with renowned French writers such as Flaubert, Edmond de Concourt, Alphose Daudet, and Emile Zola. His Russian colleagues, however, did not like him much; Dostoevsky was obsessively jealous of him – not for his novels, but for his fame and fortune. This obsession is reflected in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground as a caricatured portrait of Turgenev. His rivalry with Tolstoy even escalated to a duel. However, it was Turgenev who ensured that the works of many Russian writers, most notably Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol, were translated into European languages. Considered one of the greatest writers of Russian literature, both for the social issues he addressed and for his contributions to the development of the Russian language, Turgenev’s most important novel is undoubtedly Fathers and Sons.

A Nihilist in the Countryside:
We are at the Kirsanovs’ estate in the Russian countryside in May 1859. Arkady Kirsanov has finished his university studies and comes to visit his father. His father, Nikolai Petrovich, is a good-natured man who has freed his serfs. After Arkady’s mother died, he never remarried and lives with a young peasant girl named Fenichka. Arkady’s uncle, Pavel, is a retired officer who retreated to the estate after a broken love story years ago. 
Arkady has also brought his friend Bazarov, a medical student whom he values ​​highly, to his father’s house. Bazarov, the main character of the novel, is not of noble birth like the Kirsanovs; his father is a self-taught village doctor. This young man, who attracts attention with his physical appearance and demeanor, is most interesting because of the ideas he advocates. As Arkady will explain at the breakfast table, Bazarov is a nihilist. Bazarov, who respects neither the values ​​of the past, nor the nobility, nor the peasants, nor love, nor the elderly, who does not hesitate to openly express his own beliefs and criticize others, and who spends his days conducting scientific experiments, quickly makes a great impact on his household. While Nilolai Petrovich is merely offended by the words of his son’s beloved friend, Pavel Petrovich feels insulted. Only Fenichka and the baby feel comfortable in his presence. Because Fenichka senses that “Bazarov lacks the qualities found in all noble people that both attract and frighten one.” 
Bazarov also attracts the attention of Anna Sergeyevna Odintsov, a young and beautiful widow living on the neighboring farm. This interest shown by the young woman, who seems to have embraced a modern lifestyle, will ignite the fire of love in Bazarov—a love he has always denied. However, Anna also has boundaries she cannot cross. Her interest is not for a new life, but merely curiosity; in fact, she is a selfish woman who is fond of her comfort. Bazarov, whose love was rejected, ends his stay and returns to his father’s house. Arkady, whose personality is not at all suited to advocating radical views, proposes marriage to Anna’s sister Katya and abandons his pursuit of Bazarov. He is now a conscientious landowner like his father, a devoted husband to his wife, a good citizen, but also a candidate for the nobility with forward-thinking views.

Generational conflict:
Bazarov cannot find what he seeks even in the company of his loving parents. He cannot overcome the estrangement between himself and these two elderly people who love him unconditionally, or with the surrounding villagers. He devotes himself to caring for his father’s patients and increasing his medical knowledge. However, while performing an autopsy on a patient who died of typhus, he contracts an infection and dies from the same disease. His anger and resentment towards society do not subside even on his deathbed… 
In this voluminous novel of six hundred pages, many characters, their actions, and the ending of the story are symbolic. Fathers and Sons, which embodies Turgenev’s theses about Russia, is, as its title suggests, a novel of ruptures and continuities in the relationships between old and new. I must say that the instrumentalization of the story to express the author’s thoughts creates some literary weaknesses. The scenes that reveal the conflicts between the characters, the secondary characters, and the locations are only connected to each other through Bazarov. And most importantly, the characters in the novel are embodied more through their thoughts than through their actions. Turgenev “spars no effort in introducing his characters; he endows them with genealogies and distinctive personality traits, but when he finally brings it all together, you see that the fairy tale is over; whatever is destined to happen to these creatures beyond the confines of the novel is settled with a weighty epilogue, and the curtain falls (…) Throughout the development of events, alongside the changing events, the author constantly trims and develops the lives of the novel’s characters; meanwhile, he is constantly concerned with revealing the souls, minds, and natures of the characters through functional examples.” However, very little space is given to the characters’ actions. What is narrated does not add much color to the story; Turgenev seems to deliberately avoid drawing effective and dramatic scenes. In fact, this narrative style can be seen in all his novels; according to some, the absence of Tolstoy’s heroism or Dostoevsky’s passion in his works is due to Turgenev’s intellectual superiority over the other two writers.

The reason for the excitement and debate generated by Fathers and Sons was precisely this intellectual
depth. Turgenev’s use of the term ‘nihilist’ to analyze the Western character of the Russian intelligentsia of the time led to its widespread adoption in Russia. However, the character of Bazarov was not well-received; this unfortunate young man seemed too destructive to conservatives and too caricatured to radicals. The reaction of pro-Slav Russian conservatives is understandable. What saddened Turgenev were the harsh criticisms from progressive circles. Because, for Turgenev, who used the term nihilist to describe someone who disregards established principles and all authority—a hero who mocks religion, poetry, patriotism, liberals, nature, and love—Bazarov was a revolutionary. To defend himself and his hero, he said: “If the reader cannot love Bazarov in all his coarseness, heartlessness, and ruthless coldness, I repeat, then I am to blame and I have not achieved my goal (…) Bazarov is my beloved child; could this intelligent, this heroic person be a caricature? Don’t you realize that he is one of the most sympathetic of the types I have created? He is democratic, honest, and realistic to the core (…) My novel is entirely against the nobility as a progressive class. Look at the faces of Pavel Petrovich, Nikolay Petrovich. Weakness, lethargy, and narrow-mindedness. Aesthetic feeling compelled me to choose especially the best representatives of the noble class so that I could better clarify the position: If this is the cream, what is the milk like?” 
Was Turgenev’s defense justified? It is difficult to dismiss this question with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Written during a turbulent period when Russian intellectuals felt their country was lagging behind the West, harboring both anger and admiration for it, Fathers and Sons, along with its protagonist Bazarov, fully reflects the mentality of its time. The type of person Turgenev supposedly idealized angered the Slavophiles by exposing the superstition and ignorance of the Russian people, and the hollowness and snobbery of the nobility. However, it was not to be expected that a revolutionary novel character—incapable of connecting with the common people, ridiculed by peasants, rejecting the legacy of Pushkin, and writhing in the pangs of love despite not believing in it—would be embraced by those who favored change. Leaving aside whether the reactions were justified or not, the fact that a literary work’s content was directly translated into the political and social sphere and generated such controversy is noteworthy in itself.
Looking back now, I must say I found the grand pronouncements of a young man, only twenty-three or twenty-four years old, and his inability to practically back them up, his sense of incompleteness, his self-confidence in conquering the world, endearing, warm, and genuine. Moreover, the revolutionary youth prototype that Turgenev, a Russian intellectual oscillating between old and new, couldn’t grasp but could capture through his observations and intuition, would truly influence Russia’s destiny half a century later. 
I deliberately avoided making comparisons in the text, but I want to add one last thing: don’t Fathers and Sons, Bazarov, and the political and intellectual environment of Russia seem familiar to you?”

Summer Classics – A. Ömer Türkeş
(Radikal Book Supplement, August 20, 2010)
The cliché that light books are read in the summer is being broken by the successive publications of classic works. Lucas’s literary study, *Historical Novel*, Balzac’s *The Cursed Child*, Tolstoy’s *War and Peace*, Sadik Çubek’s *The Patience Stone*, Stefan Zweig’s *Clarissa*, Jack London editions, and finally, *Fathers and Sons*, a masterpiece of Russian literature; these are unmissable opportunities for those who want to read good books…
In cinema, music, painting, and literature, works that have achieved “classic” status are those that withstand the ravages of time, providing pleasure in reading, watching, and listening in every era. But aren’t such general statements questionable? “A great truth exists not to be believed, but to be criticized,” said Nietzsche. There is no doubt about the greatness of the classics: they have an untouchable, sublime status in the eyes of institutions and people, and reading them is a human activity whose “goodness” is not denied even by those who have never opened a single book in their lives… To delve into their critique, however, is a topic for a separate essay. Without going on too long and spoiling the enjoyment, let’s suffice with a few questions that will keep the doubts alive: do we still appreciate classic novels, for example, the “great” novels of the 19th century, because we derive literary pleasure from them, or because they are branded as classics in Western culture? How many of us have the courage to openly declare that we don’t like Balzac, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Joyce, Proust, or any of the “greats,” without quoting a master critic? How many of us can admit to being bored with reading Proust, never picking up Ulysses, finding Ivanhoe childish, never reading Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, or Robinson Crusoe in their entirety, and only knowing most classics through film adaptations?

The Adventures of a Nihilist Man:
If you haven’t read it before, or if it’s been a long time since you last read it, now’s the perfect time to reread Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons in this meticulously prepared new edition. Turgenev is one of the most important figures in Russian literature. He lived during the same period as many important writers of Russian literature, including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and was considered superior to all of them by the critics of the time, his works generating great excitement. Having spent a large part of his life outside Russia, Turgenev also formed close friendships with renowned French writers – such as Flaubert, Edmond de Concourt, Alphose Daudet, and Emile Zola – and his works were also appreciated in France. However, a century later, we cannot name another Turgenev novel besides Fathers and Sons that we could call a “classic.” Compared to Dostoevsky, with whom he was once compared, Turgenev’s name pales in comparison. 
Fathers and Sons is a poignant love story set against the backdrop of Russian social issues: It’s May 1859, and we’re at the Kirsanov estate in rural Russia. Arkady Kirsanov, having completed his university studies, comes to visit his father. His father, Nikolai Petrovich, is a good-natured man who has freed his serfs. After Arkady’s mother’s death, he never remarried and lives with a young peasant girl named Fenichka. Arkady’s uncle, Pavel, is a retired officer who retreated to the estate after a broken love affair years ago. Arkady has brought his dear friend, Bazarov, a medical student, to his father’s house. Bazarov, the main character, is not of noble birth like the Kirsanovs; his father is a self-taught village physician. This young man, notable for his physical appearance and demeanor, is truly interesting for the ideas he holds. As Arkady will explain at breakfast, Bazarov is a nihilist. Bazarov, who respected neither the values ​​of the past, nor the nobility, nor the peasants, nor love, nor the elderly, who did not hesitate to openly express his own beliefs and criticize others, and who spent his days conducting scientific experiments, quickly made a great impact on the household. While Nilolai Petrovich merely took offense at his son’s dear friend’s words, Pavel Petrovich felt insulted. Only Fenichka and the baby felt comfortable in his presence. For Fenichka sensed that Bazarov lacked “the qualities found in all noble people that both attract and frighten.”
Bazarov also attracts the attention of Anna Segeyevna Odintsov, a young and beautiful widow living on a neighboring farm. The young woman, who seems to have embraced a modern lifestyle, ignites in Bazarov the flames of love he has always denied. However, Anna also has boundaries she cannot cross. Her interest is not driven by a desire for a new life, but merely by curiosity; in reality, she is a selfish woman who indulges in comfort. Unrequited, Bazarov ends his stay and returns to his father’s house. Arkady, whose personality is not at all suited to advocating radical views, proposes marriage to Anna’s sister, Katya, and abandons his pursuit of Bazarov. He is now a conscientious landowner like his father, a devoted husband, a good citizen, but also a candidate for a nobleman with forward-thinking ideas. 
Bazarov cannot find what he seeks even with his loving parents. He cannot overcome the estrangement between himself and these two elderly people who love him unconditionally, or with the surrounding villagers. He devotes himself to caring for his father’s patients and improving his medical knowledge. However, while performing an autopsy on a patient who died of typhus, he would contract an infection and die from the same disease. His anger and resentment towards society did not subside even on his deathbed…

The clash of generations:
In this voluminous six-hundred-page novel, many characters, their actions, and the ending of the story are symbolic. Fathers and Sons, which embodies Turgenev’s theses on Russia, is, as its title suggests, a novel about the relationships between old and new – ruptures and continuities. I must say that the instrumentalization of the story to express the author’s thoughts creates some literary weaknesses. The scenes revealing the conflicts between characters, the secondary characters, and the settings are only connected to each other through Bazarov. And most importantly, the characters in the novel are embodied more through their thoughts than through their actions. Turgenev spares no effort to introduce his characters; he equips them with family trees and distinctive personality traits, but when he finally brings them all together, you see that the fairy tale is over; whatever is destined to happen to these creatures beyond the confines of the novel is settled with a heavy epilogue, and the curtain falls. Throughout the development of events, alongside the changing events, the author constantly trims and develops the lives of the novel’s characters; Meanwhile, he is constantly concerned with revealing the souls, minds, and natures of individuals through functional examples. However, very little space is given to the characters’ actions. What is narrated doesn’t add much color to the story; Turgenev seems to deliberately avoid drawing effective and dramatic scenes. In fact, this narrative style can be seen in all his novels; according to some, the absence of Tolstoy’s heroism or Dostoevsky’s ambition in his works is due to Turgenev’s intellectual superiority over the other two writers. 
The excitement and debate generated by Fathers and Sons was precisely this intellectual depth. Turgenev’s use of the term “nihilist” while analyzing the Western character of the Russian intelligentsia of that period led to the widespread use of this term in Russia. However, the Bazorov character was not well-received; this unfortunate young man seemed too destructive to conservatives and too caricatured to radicals. The reaction of pro-Slav Russian conservatives is understandable. What saddened Turgenev were the harsh criticisms from progressive circles. For Turgenev, who used the term nihilist to describe someone who disregards established principles and all authority—a character who mocks religion, poetry, patriotism, liberals, nature, and love—Bazarov was a revolutionary.
Written during a tumultuous period when Russian intellectuals felt their country was lagging behind the West, harboring both anger and admiration for it, Fathers and Sons, along with its protagonist Bazarov, fully reflects the mentality of its time. The type of person Turgenev supposedly idealized angered the Slavophiles by exposing the superstition and ignorance of the Russian people, and the hollowness and snobbery of the nobility. However, it was not to be expected that a revolutionary novel character—incapable of connecting with the common people, ridiculed by peasants, rejecting the legacy of Pushkin, and writhing in the pangs of love despite not believing in it—would be embraced by those who favored change. Leaving aside whether the reactions were justified or not, the fact that a literary work’s content was directly translated into the political and social sphere and generated such controversy is noteworthy in itself.

On Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” – Ö. Aydın Süer

Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons in 1860, at a time when the Crimean War had revealed the weakness and backwardness of serf Russia. The defeat in this war exacerbated the divisions that had begun to emerge within Russian society. On one side were the democrats, led by Chernyshevsky and Dobrolybov, who argued that Russia could not progress under the established order and that radical change was necessary; on the other side were the aristocratic landowners and the Tsarist administration, detached from the people, living privileged lives, unaware of the changes taking place in society, and opposed any change that would disrupt their comfort. These two main groups formed the basis of this division.

Turgenev’s novel reflects the intellectual conflicts in such an environment. The novel was first published in 1862 in “Russkiy Vestnik,” a conservative publication. It can be said that no other novel in Russian literature has been discussed and interpreted in so many different ways as Fathers and Sons. For example, M. Katkov, the editor-in-chief of “Russkiy Vestnik,” accused Turgenev of exaggerating Bazarov’s superior qualities, while M.A. Antonovich, a writer for the democratic “Sovremennik” (Contemporary) magazine, argued that Turgenev, in the character of Bazarov, mercilessly, even destructively, criticized the younger generation. Annenkov, a family friend of Turgenev who criticized all his books before publication, declared that he saw in Bazarov a destructive Mongol, a Genghis Khan. (1)

The renowned critic Lunacharsky stated that Bazarov was the first positive hero in Russian literature.

To better understand these accusations and debates, which continue to this day, it is necessary to read the novel carefully several times, to examine the characteristics of the “fathers” and “children” impartially in light of the historical and social conditions of Russia at that time, and most importantly, to know what the author thought about the novel and its protagonist.

At the beginning of the novel, Turgenev introduces us to the village and village life: “…villages consisting of a few small huts under half-collapsed and blackened roofs… brick or wooden churches with peeling plaster… the villagers they met on the road were also in rags and rode scrawny, exhausted horses… weak and dirty cows, parched with hunger, were furiously tearing at the grass at the edge of the ditches.”2 (2) This is how village life is depicted, with such depressing lines. Even the noble boy Arkadiy cannot help but think, “No,… there is no prosperity here; there is no trace of abundance or work. This cannot go on like this, it must change completely… But how will we do this, where should we start?”

Before discussing Bazarov’s personality, it’s necessary to mention the “fathers,” that is, the Kirsanovs, especially Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov. He’s a handsome man in his mid-forties, dressed like an Englishman, behaving like a European, frequently using words of foreign origin; he’s the son of a general. His behavior and speech amuse Bazarov, who expresses his feelings by saying, “What snobbery in this country!” According to Bazarov, he’s “an old relic,” “an old romantic.” His principles consist of a man sitting with his hands clasped, justifying himself. In his youth, he was a darling of society, later he fell in love with a woman, pursued her for years, and wasted his youth. By losing his past, he lost everything, because he has nothing left from it—no wife, no children, no positive achievements. During this dark period of his life, he settled on his brother Nikolay Petrovich’s estate. He particularly reads English books and tries to organize his life like a European. He frightens old-fashioned landowners with his moderate views, but keeps his distance from representatives of the new generation; however, those around him respect him for his past philandering, for always staying in the best rooms of the best hotels, and for carrying a silver toiletry bag and a portable bathtub wherever he goes. In short, he is a parasitic, detached gentleman, a product of the serfdom system in Russia. He outwardly loves peasants, but when speaking to them, he grimaces and sniffs cologne. According to Bazarov, he is a useless man, but because he reads Galignani and saves a peasant from the whip once a month, he truly considers himself a man of action.

American literary historian V. Yefremov argues that Turgenev, in the characters of the Kirsanovs, portrays the best representatives of humane, intelligent, and cultured nobles and gentlemen.(3) According to him, the Kirsanovs are positive types, while Bazarov is impudent and selfish. In reaching this conclusion, Yefremov ignores what Turgenev thought of the characters he created. In a letter to K.K. Sluchevsky on April 14, 1862, Turgenev states the following about the Kirsanovs: “My novel is entirely against the nobility as a progressive class. Look at the faces of Pavel Petrovich and Nikolay Petrovich. Weakness, lethargy, and narrow-mindedness. Aesthetic feeling compelled me to choose the best representatives of the noble class in order to better clarify the situation: If this is the cream, what is the milk like?”

Indeed, Pavel Petrovich’s own words at the end of the novel are very interesting: “I’m beginning to agree with Bazarov, who accuses me of being a noble dandy. No, my dear brother, let’s stop worrying about what others will say or think. We are grown men; it’s time to set aside the ostentatious desires of this world, and you’ll see, we’ll gain happiness in return.” These words prove that Pavel Petrovich is denying his own way of life and thinking.

Although it has not attracted the attention of many researchers, Arkadiy’s personality and his relationship with Bazarov are quite important. Arkadiy Kirsanov is a nobleman’s son. He has a weak and easily influenced personality. Instead of developing a worldview through his own efforts, he finds it easier to blindly accept Bazarov’s views. Although he is ostensibly opposed to the nobility, he will never be a progressive man of action. Bazarov immediately realizes this. When they definitively part ways, he says to him: “You are not suited to our bitter, harsh, lonely existence; you have neither boldness nor hatred in you… People like you, for example, cannot get up and fight… and they think of themselves as good people… But we say fight and nothing else. Our dust blinds your eyes, our mud defiles yours… You are a charming child; but a very soft, liberal little nobleman.” (4)

Time proves Bazarov right. The weak-willed Arkadiy, who had abandoned progressive actions, now falls under the influence of his young wife and emerges at the end of the novel as a successful landowner. 
Bazarov is a representative of the materialistic worldview that was beginning to emerge in Russian society. Turgenev recognized the emergence of these new types of people. Bazarov is a character inspired by, and thus drawn from, the doctor D., a type that surprised Turgenev. In D., Turgenev found not only positive qualities but also negative, unpleasant traits. Unlike the noble Kirsanovs, Bazarov is not a nobleman but the son of a “physician.” This title of “physician” was a despised title in Russia at that time. Bazarov is a cultured young man from the lower classes of society who, through personal effort and willpower, managed to break free from the narrow confines, outdated habits, and beliefs of his environment and completed his education with difficulty. This is immediately apparent in his speech, his clothing, and his relationships with those around him. He views the nobility as his enemies and despises them. The servants, however, immediately feel a closeness to him, understanding that he is one of them. Bazarov carefully observes social events and sees himself as someone who can guide society. He differs from the heroes of Russian literature before him, who did not know where to direct their energies. Pisarev, comparing Bazarov to “superfluous individuals,” says: “In Pechorins there is an unconscious will, in Rudins a consciousness without will. In Bazarovs, however, there is both will and consciousness; thought and action are united as a whole in them.”

What does Bazarov want? What kind of alternative can he offer? What does he reject? Bazarov wants to change the order of serf Russia. According to him, those called intellectuals, progressives, and reformers have achieved nothing. They have been preoccupied with nonsense, art debates, unconscious works, parliamentarism, and the bar association. According to Bazarov, it is necessary to reject all the institutions, authorities, and principles of society. Bazarov shows that they are not as few as they are thought to be, and that they will not be easily crushed. They will clean up the mess, and the rest is not important. In these thoughts, the meaning of Turgenev’s statement, “If he is called a nihilist, it should be read as a revolutionary” (5), becomes apparent.

According to Bazarov, “reading Pushkin gets you nowhere,” “a good chemist is twenty times more useful than a poet,” and “Raphael is worthless.” Bazarov also mocks Nikolay Petrovich’s cello playing. Bazarov’s views on art are marked by extremism. This extremism should be perceived as typical of periods of complete transformation in thought and understanding. 
Similarly, he views nature differently. For him, nature is “a workplace, and man is a worker there.” Therefore, for Bazarov, nature is not a place where romantic feelings arise, but a source to be explored and studied.

Bazarov rejects anything unscientific that cannot be proven through experimentation. He asks, “When it thunders, people believe that the Prophet Elijah is traveling through the sky in his chariot. Should I follow their example?” Indeed, Bazarov’s greatest quality is his unwavering faith in natural sciences. His involvement with sciences such as medicine, zoology, and botany instilled this belief in him.

According to Bazarov, marriage is also unnecessary. He says to Arkadiy, “So you still attach importance to marriage. I wouldn’t have expected that from you.”

Bazarov denies the very existence of love. However, his misconceptions change when he meets Odintsova, and he begins to experience a powerful and passionate love. While some portray this as a complete defeat for Bazarov, it is in fact nothing more than the emergence of the most humane emotion within him. Defeated by love, Bazarov doesn’t give up like Pavel Petrovich; he quickly recovers. This is also a sign of his willpower.

Many critics accuse Bazarov of ingratitude, claiming he treated his parents cruelly. They emphasize his weariness of staying with them and his deprivation of the joy of having their only son by their side—a seemingly true but debatable point. Bazarov has been through a harsh life and is no longer the type to sit at his parents’ feet, waiting for their caresses and kind words. Bazarov is a man of thought and action, with a restless, free spirit. He truly loves his parents, stating this openly on his deathbed: “You couldn’t find people like them anywhere else in the world.” 
Bazarov doesn’t idealize the common people, but he opposes the nobility who view their backwardness, superstition, and ignorance as something desirable. Even in his progressive ideas, a detachment from the common people is evident. He is individualistic; for example, he considers it unnecessary to make sacrifices for peasants who will never understand him. But figures like Bazarov are, in time, precursors to intellectuals like Solomin, who will shed their individualism and fully integrate with the people.

At the end of the novel, Bazarov dies of typhus while treating a peasant. What is significant here is that Bazarov dies while engaged in a useful activity. His predecessors, such as Rudin and Pechorin, died without accomplishing anything positive. In this respect, Bazarov is superior to them.

Bazarov’s positive personality is also revealed in his duel with Pavel Petrovich. After Pavel Petrovich is wounded, Bazarov, forgetting all his resentment towards him, begins to treat his wound. He does this with a sincerity that especially avoids hurting Pavel Petrovich’s pride. 
Pisarev explains Bazarov’s death at the end of the novel as follows: “Turgenev shows us how Bazarov dies without showing how he lived and what he was capable of. Turgenev could not complete a character that was still forming and which only time and events could clarify.”

Despite his many negative aspects, Bazarov is still a superior figure to the nobility. The author’s sympathy is also on Bazarov’s side. We can understand this from Turgenev’s various responses to the discussions about his novel. “If the reader cannot love Bazarov with all his coarseness, heartlessness, and ruthless coldness, I repeat, I am guilty and I have not achieved my goal.(6) Bazarov is my beloved child, could this intelligent, this heroic person be a caricature?(7) Don’t you realize that he is one of the most sympathetic of the types I have created?(8) He is a democrat to the core, honest and realistic.”(9)

Despite everything, Bazarov is a hero that neither the Russia of that era nor the author could fully understand. Turgenev tried to convey that he was not yet necessary for Russia, a lonely and doomed figure. As a nobleman, although he followed the decline of the aristocratic class and social developments in Russia, Turgenev did not believe that individuals like Bazarov could lead Russia to brighter days. However, in this novel, as some critics argue, he is on the side of the “Bazarovs,” that is, the “children,” not the “fathers.” But the limitations inherent in his nobility cannot be denied in this support.

Turgenev would only be able to create a truly positive hero, one who could be useful to Russia, ten years later, in the character of Solomon, the protagonist of his novel Virgin Soil.

Notes
(1) Pis?mo î. S. Turgeneva k Sluchevskomu (Turgenev’s Letter to Sluchevsky). 
(2) I. S. Turgenev, Otsy i Deti (Fathers and Children), Leningrad, 1965. 
(3) V. Yefremov, Ocherki po İstorii Russkoy Literaturı XIX. veka (Observations on Russian Literature of the 19th Century), Washington, p. 174. 
(4) I.S. Turgenev, Otsi i Deti, Leningrad, 1965, p. 177. 
(5) Pis?mo î. S. Turgeneva k Siuchevskomu. 
(6) AGY 
(7) îz Pis?ma 1. S. Turgeneva k AP Filosofovoy (IS Turgenev’s Letter to AP Filosofova). 
(8) Iz Pis?ma 1. S. Turgeneva k ME Saltıkovomu (Letter of I.S. Turgenev to ME.Saltıkov). 
(9) Pis?mo IS Turgeneva k. Sluçevskomu

Bibliographic Information for the Source Book:
Essays on 19th Century Russian Literature, 
Ö. Aydın Süer, 
Evrensel Publishing House / Review Series, 
Cover Design: Savaş Çekiç, 
Istanbul, 2006, 1st Edition 
, 175 pages.

Book Details : 
Fathers and Sons 
by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Translated by Ayşe Hacıhasanoğlu, Can Yayınları, 2010, 256 pages.

*** 
Fathers and Sons by 
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev 
Foreword: Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev 
Translated by: Kaya Genç 
Afterword: Vladimir Nabokov 
Translated by: Ayşe Nihal Akbulut 
Translated by: Leyla Soykut 
İletişim Yayınları 
Publication Edition: 3rd Edition December 2009, Istanbul (1st Edition August 2006, Istanbul) 
Pages: 335

The Life Story of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev:
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born on October 28, 1818, in the city of Orel. His father came from a noble family, but they had fallen into poverty. His father, a cavalry colonel, married Varvara Petrovna Lutovina, an elderly woman who owned the Spasskoye estate. Ivan was born from this marriage. His mother, educated and fond of learning and culture, was also very strict, mercilessly punishing and flogging serfs who committed offenses. Turgenev’s ideas began to take shape at a young age due to these circumstances. When the family moved to Moscow in 1827, Turgenev received private education and lessons from private tutors. While still a child, he began speaking German, English, and French fluently. He later studied at Moscow and St. Petersburg universities, graduating with honors from the Faculty of Philosophy.

He later went to Germany, entered Berlin University, and stayed there for four years. He studied history and classical philology, and learned Greek and Latin. He returned home and passed the professorship exam at St. Petersburg University. However, because German philosophy was not accepted in the country at that time and was viewed with suspicion, he was unable to teach. 1842 was a turning point for Turgenev. It was then that he met the Russian critic Belinsky. Belinsky’s dialogues were with intellectuals who opposed serfdom. Apart from his first literary attempts, his first serious works date back to 1842. The path he chose was realism, which Pushkin had introduced and Gogol had developed. His first work that brought him fame was the series entitled “A Hunter’s Notes,” which in its 1880 edition contained 25 stories. The subjects of the stories are the lives and conditions of landowners and peasants.

In 1852, following Gogol’s death, Turgenev wrote an essay, which, despite censorship, was published in Moscow magazines. He was arrested and spent a month in prison, and then lived under police surveillance for another year. After 1855, he began publishing his major novels. In these novels, like his mother, he portrays cultured landowners, all reflecting an evolutionary-liberal worldview. After 1862, every novel he published was met with attacks from critics. Turgenev died on September 3, 1883, in Bougival, near Paris, France, after an illness lasting about two years. His funeral was held in St. Petersburg on October 9 of the same year.

The novel Fathers and Sons, which left its mark on the literary world and is considered a cornerstone of Nihilism, is set in 1859. Its epilogue describes the period after the abolition of serfdom (1861). It realistically reflects the most important problem of Russian life during this period: the inhumanity of serfdom, the collapse of feudal-aristocratic Russia, and the rise of new bourgeois-democratic forces. Fathers and Sons emphasizes nihilism, which arises from the conflict between reformist and radical currents. Even an intellectual writer like Dostoevsky described the nihilist protagonist Bazarov as a “fictional character,” proving the distinctiveness of his novels.

His works
include : A Hunter’s Notes (1852 – Short Stories), 
Rudin (1855 – Novel), 
A Gentleman’s Nest (1855 – Novel), 
The Eve (1858 – Novel), 
Fathers and Sons (1862 – Novel) (the first novel written on nihilism), 
Tugbay (1867 – Short Stories), 
Virgin Soil (1876 – Novel) 
, Smoke (1870 – Novel), 
A King Lear in the Steppe (1870 – Short Stories), 
First Love (novel).