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by Lee Trepanier
The importance of place is often neglected by liberal theorists, with the assumption that liberal ideas are understood and articulated in the same manner from one society to another.[2]But as much as ideas shape a society’s culture and politics so do culture and politics shape ideas. In this article, I want to explore these relationships of politics, culture, and ideas in Turgenev’s novel,Fathers and Sons. In this work, liberalism as expressed in nineteenth-century Russia adopts a very different form than that found in Europe or America. What we discover is that Turgenev’s liberalism is based on a love of the family, the arts, and nature. It creates and sustains a common good that seeks to preserve and reform tradition instead of destroying it and reveals to us the importance of place in affecting how the same ideas are articulated and understood in different contexts.[3]
The political and intellectual context of Turgenev’s novel (1862) was in the aftermath of Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1853-56), which prompted the liberal reforms of Alexander II (reign 1855-81), with the most famous being the liberation of the serfs (1861).[4]In this new ideological climate, educated commoners began to assert themselves as the “new men” who would reform Russia. They considered themselves different from the “men of the forties” who were portrayed as weak, wavering idealist liberals of the gentry.[5]Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Doroliubov, Dmitry Pisarev, and others were leading examples of these “new men” with their journal,The Contemporarya, where they espoused ideas of materialism, naturalism, and rationalism as the means to remove and reform the semi-feudal institutions of Russia.[6]Influenced by the thought of Feuerbach and Hegelian dialectics, these thinkers developed an ethics of rational egoism that was similar to British utilitarianism where material pleasure was valued as the highest good for both the individual and society.
These “new men,” “the sons of the sixties,” later to be known as nihilists, were critical of the “fathers of the forties” because the latter were concerned only about political freedoms and incremental reform rather than revolutionary progress and the social welfare of the people. Of particular importance was the thought of Dmitry Pisarev, who became the model for the character Bazarov in Turgenev’sFathers and Sons(and later an influential figure in Lenin’s own political thought).[7]Having rejected everything that could not be justified from a utilitarian perspective, Pisarev sought to liberate individuals from traditional beliefs and behavior and re-establish human relations on the rationality of the natural sciences. The greatest enemies of nihilism were the aesthetic and idealist attitudes towards life characteristic of the intellectuals from the gentry. For Pisarev, aesthetics were superfluous products that contradicted the economic principles of material and intellectual forces. It was this ideological position to which Turgenev would respond and defend the liberal ideas of the gentry in his novel,Fathers and Sons.
Unlike Chernyshevsky, Doroliubov, Pisarev, and others, Turgenev expressed his ideas in literature rather than in political and philosophical pamphlets. Because of the strict censorship laws in nineteenth-century Russia, political and philosophical ideas could only be articulated indirectly and in the medium of literature without fear of reprisal from the state.[8]For instance, because of their explicit political writings, Chernyshevsky and Pisarev were imprisoned and Doroliubov went into voluntary exile. Therefore, if one wanted to engage in political and philosophical debate, literature was the safest way to protect oneself from persecution. Novels like Turgenev’sFathers and Sonsshould therefore be understood not as a works of literature that have political and philosophical elements but rather as political and philosophical treatises that have literary elements.
In Turgenev’sFathers and Sonstwo movements are presented that will wrestle for the mantle of reform in Russia: nihilism and liberalism. The former is characterized as abstract, scientific, and destructive, while the latter is concrete, integral, and regenerative. Both nihilism and liberalism want to replace arbitrary decrees with the rule of law, establish rights in place of privileges, and looked to their Western European counterparts as models for governance. But these two movements disagreed about the pace of reform and the place of traditional values like the family, art, and nature.
This conflict about the speed of reform and the place of traditional values is dramatically represented in the two characters, Bazarov and Arkady. Bazarov represents nihilism, while Arkady personifies a regenerative liberalism undergirded with the principle of love that nihilism lacks. For example, the unrequited love of Bazarov and Odinstov causes them a despair from which they cannot recover. By contrast, Arkady and Katya are able to integrate their emotional lives with their intellectual ones and thereby find happiness. The nihilism of Bazarov is refuted by Turgenev in favor of the regenerative liberalism of Arkady in order to advocate a reform of Russia that preserves the best of its past while looking forward towards its future.
Summary of the Novel
Fathers and Sonsopens with Arkady, who has just graduated from the University of St. Petersburg and returned to his father’s modest estate in an outlying province of Russia called Maryino. Nikolai feels awkward with his son’s return because he has taken a servant, Fenichka, into his house to live with him and already has a son with her. However, Arkady assures his father that, as “a more advanced person,” he is not be disturbed by this unorthodox relationship.
Accompanying Arkady is his friend and philosophical mentor, Bazarov. The father gladly receives the two young men into his estate, but Nikolai’s brother, Pavel, soon becomes distressed by the strange new philosophy named nihilism that the young men espouse. According to Arkady, a nihilist is someone “Who looks at everything critically . . . a person who does not take any principle for granted, however much that principle may be revered” (94).[9]Nikolai and Pavel argue that any philosophical concept must have a positive end, but Bazarov insists that the nihilist is only interested in cleaning the site by destroying the corruption that presently exists. Until all things can be destroyed, the nihilist must revile and undermine all things. They act not for the sake of any values, but merely because they are a force. It does not even matter if they understand why they destroy as long as they destroy. As a result, there is nothing that the nihilist will respect.
Of the two brothers, Pavel is the more upset by Bazarov’s nihilism, which leads Bazarov to hold him in contempt. However, Arkady defends Pavel and explains that his uncle’s arrogant and disputatious personality is due to his experience of unrequited love from a Princess R–. He wants Bazarov to feel some compassion for Pavel, a compassion built upon understanding why Pavel had developed into the person that he is. This ability to feel compassion for people and later to enter into a wholesome relationship with others is a major point of distinction between Arkady and Bazarov.
The two young men later decide to visit a relative of Arkady’s in a neighboring province where they meet the local gentry and Madame Odintsov, an elegant woman of independent means who invites them to spend a few days at her estate. Both men become attractive to the women there, with Arkady to Katya, Odinstov’s sister, and Bazarov to Odinstov herself. At the end of their stay, Bazarov declares his love for Odinstov who does not return his declaration. Soon after this incident, both Arkady and Bazarov leave for the latter’s home.
Although unrequited, Bazarov has become deeply affected by his love and the rejection of it. He experiences a greater change than Odinstov, and, as a result, violates his own principles of nihilism. As a nihilist Bazarov should be the person who can live totally alone and without dependence on another person; yet it is Odintsov who can and does live without love or human companionship. She is more the nihilist than the nihilist Bazarov, who craves her company and love.
When the two companions arrive at Bazarov’s home, his parents receive them enthusiastically. Still disturbed by his rejection, Bazarov becomes even more socially difficult and almost comes to blows with his friend Arkady. After a brief stay, they decide to return to Maryino, and circle by to see Madame Odintsov, who receives them coolly. They leave almost immediately and return to Arkady’s home.
However, Arkady remains only a few days and makes an excuse to leave in order to see Katya. Bazarov stays at Maryino to do some scientific research, and the tension between him and Pavel increases. Bazarov enjoys talking with Fenichka and playing with her child, and one day he gives Fenichka a kiss, which is observed by Pavel. The older man feels it is his duty to defend his brother’s honor, and he challenges Bazarov to a duel, to which Bazarov agrees. At the duel, Pavel is wounded slightly, but he tries to maintain the right for Bazarov to shoot again. Bazarov refuses his right and assumes the role of doctor to care for Pavel’s wound. For the first time, Pavel realizes that a man as different from him as Bazarov can still be an honorable man.
After leaving Maryino, Bazarov stops briefly at Madame Odintsov’s estate and then continues on to his parents’ home. Meanwhile, Arkady and Katya have fallen in love and become engaged. At home, Bazarov cannot keep his mind on his work and, while performing an autopsy, fails to take the proper precautions. He contracts typhus and is taken to his deathbed where he refuses the ministrations of the church. He comforts his father that the last rites can be administered to an unconscious man. During the death scene, Bazarov succumbs to his romantic inclinations and calls for Odintosv, who arrives and whose beauty is admired by Bazarov. As Bazarov becomes delirious, he says things that contradict his earlier views of nihilism. At the end, Bazarov even recognizes that certain types of men are needed by Russia and that he is not one of them.
At the conclusion of the novel, Arkady marries Katya and successfully takes over the management of his father’s estate. His father marries Fenichka and is delighted to have his Arkady at home with him. Pavel leaves the country and lives the rest of his life as a self-exiled aristocrat in Dresden; and Bazrov’s parents visit his gravesite to remember their son.
Nihilism
Critical reception ofFathers and Sonshas focused either on the ideological confrontation between generations or the character Bazarov. For example, Isaiah Berlin states that “the central topic of the novel is the confrontation of the old and the young, of liberals and radicals, traditional civilization and the new, harsh positivism.”[10]V.S. Pritchett continues this vein of criticism, saying that “Fathers and Sons [is] the tragedy of conflict between two generations.”[11]Other critics have been preoccupied with Bazarov, such as Peter Henry who argues that “Fathers and Sons is essentially the story of Bazarov.”[12]Likewise, Richard Freeborn agrees that “The main feature of Fathers and Children is the figure of Bazarov.”[13]
Although the work does pay attention to the ideological and generational differences between the fathers and sons, I believe that the most significant difference is within the generation of the sons themselves, specifically between Bazarov and Arkady who each offer a competing account of how to reform and renew Russian society. Bazarov’s nihilism is characterized by its abstract, scientific, and empirical features with no positive political program; while Arkady’s liberalism is concrete, subjective, and integrates both emotions and reason for the preservation of traditional values and the promotion of progressive political reform. Turgenev presents his readers a choice between these two alternatives.
In addition to these two accounts, Turgenev also portrays other ideologies that exist in nineteenth-century Russia: the familial warmth but romantic impracticability of Nikolai; the reformed-minded but cold-hearted Pavel; the icy material comfort and severe order of Odinstov; and the simple-minded religiosity and superstitions of the peasantry, as illustrated by Bazarov’s mother and Fenichka. However, for Turgenev, these avenues are exhausted and no longer present a viable option for Russian society to reform itself, as demonstrated by these characters’ unwillingness to leave their domicile (Nikolai, Odinstov, the peasantry) or their self-committed exile (Pavel). The only ideologies that possess the energy, vitality, and youth for genuine reform in Russia are the ones of the “sons.”
Each ideology is associated throughout the novel with a set of characteristics that are regenerative or destructive in nature. The positive characteristics of liberalism are ones connected with the family, the arts, and nature, while the negative characteristics of nihilism are linked with science, disputation, and self-absorption. The characters Arkady, Katya, and Fenichka are associated with these regenerative forces, while the figures Bazarov, Odinstov, and Pavel are connected with the destructive ones. By consistently developing and juxtaposing these forces, Turgenev is able to clarify these two alternatives that were available for the reform of Russia.
Bazarov best represents and articulate the philosophy of nihilism with his self-absorption, disruptive behavior, and preoccupation with science. For example, in the beginning of the novel, he interrupts the reunion between father and son at Maryino by commanding Arkady to bring him a match for “I’ve nothing to light my pipe with” (84). The interruption is not only significant because it prefigures the interruption that Bazarov will have on the relationship between Nikolai and Arkady; but the interruption also cuts off Nikolai’s recitation of Puskin when the father is welcoming the return of his son, anticipating Bazarov’s preference for science over poetry. Bazarov’s disruptive force continues in this episode as the smoke from his pipe diffuses about him “such a strong and acrid smell of cheap tobacco that Nikolai Petrovich, who had never been a smoker, was forced to avert his nose” (84). The smoke symbolizes the destructive chemical force that Bazarov brings to Maryino as well as to Arkady’s own education in the philosophy of nihilism.
At Maryino, Bazarov becomes associated with his microscope, his dissections, and his laboratory. He shuts himself off from the beauty of nature and its regenerative elements in favor of scientific experimentation. Unlike Nikolai or Arkady, who marvel at nature and are sensitive to its variety, wholeness, and harmony, Bazarov reduces it to a workshop where he “shall cut the frog open to see what goes on inside him, and then, since you and I are much the same as frogs except that we walk about on our hind legs, I shall know what’s going on inside us too” (90). Like Francis Bacon, Bazarov perceives nature as a phenomenon to inspect, dominate, and eventually control with human beings having no special place in the world and being no different from the frogs that he cuts open to investigate.[14]
Bazarov also rejects the arts as a source of vitality and regeneration with his continual rejection of literature: he criticizes Nikolai for “wast[ing] his time reading poetry” (88; also see 118, 123) and “playing the ‘cello’” (116); and argues with Pavel that “A decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet” (97). Instead of pursuing activities that produce practical results, these “fathers,” the liberals of the 1830s-1840s, “stimulate their nervous systems to the point where they completely break down,” observes Bazarov. By wasting their time on aesthetic activities of no practical value, these people become useless, like Nikolai who “knows precious little about farming,” and actually retards society’s progress (88).
But it is the familial disruptions where Bazarov causes the most damage, especially in the relationships among the Nikolai, Pavel, and Arkady. Bazarov not only pits the son against the father, but he also creates conflict between the two brothers, Nikolai and Pavel. Whereas Arkady has superficially adopted Bazarov’s nihilism and thereby causing a rift between father and son as well as between uncle and nephew, Nikolai and Pavel disagree about the seriousness of the threat that nihilism poises to the younger generation. Nikolai is more resigned but sympathetic to the ideas of the “sons” while Pavel remains adamant that they are wrong (129).
Underlying these disruptive episodes is the idea of nihilism, which both Nikolai and Pavel describe as producing one “who recognizes nothing . . . who respects nothing,” although Arkady later modifies this position to one “Who looks at everything critically” (94). When asked whether this is a good or bad thing, Arkady is evasive: “It depends on the individual, my dear uncle. It’s good in some cases and very bad in others.” This answer is interpreted by both Nikolai and Pavel as a philosophy without principles, and “without principles taken as you say on trust one cannot move an inch or draw a single breath” (94). They wonder how nihilists can “exist in a void, in an airless vacuum,” in a world without principles (94).