Fathers and Sons (34 page)

Bazarov starts behaving rudely from the very second he appears before the reader. Immediately he’s rude to master and peasant:
he reluctantly offers his hand to the hospitable Nikolay Petrovich, Arkady’s father, and calls the peasant by some offensive
name. Arriving as an uninvited guest at Kukshina’s, Bazarov drinks his fill of champagne, after which he yawns loudly and
leaves without saying goodbye. Raphael, he declares, is ‘[not] worth a brass farthing’. And the sky? ‘I look at the heavens
only when I want to sneeze.’ On seeing the beautiful Anna Sergeyevna, Bazarov is enraptured, producing the celebrated phrase:
‘And what a splendid body!… I’d like to see it now on the dissecting table.’ In general he looks upon women pragmatically:
if there’s a chance of ‘using’ them, then why not use them? Clever women tend only to be freaks. On the whole principles do
not exist, only sensations. Likewise honesty is just a sensation. A chunk of meat is better than a chunk of bread. If you
can eat it then eat your fill. When he’s out visiting Bazarov is rude to his amiable hosts and at home he’s rude to his parents.
At times the reader wants to throw the book down and shout: someone hit him – anyone! But at the same time he is not malicious.
The village boys love him – he’s on equal terms with them. They catch frogs together in order to dissect and study them: after
all, discover how frogs are constructed and a doctor will discover how man is constructed, and Bazarov intends to become a
doctor.

‘Aristocracy, liberalism, progress, principles,’ Bazarov was saying meanwhile, ‘goodness, what a lot of foreign… and useless
words! A
Russian doesn’t need them, even if they come free… We are guided by what we recognize as useful… The most useful course of
action at present is to reject – and we reject.’

What do you do, then, the fathers ask.

‘This is what we do. At first, not so long ago, we were saying that our civil servants take bribes, that we have no roads,
no trade, no proper courts of justice… But then we realized that to witter away about the sores on the face of society just
isn’t worth doing, it only leads to trivial and doctrinaire thinking. We came to see that our so-called progressives and denouncers
are good for nothing, that we’re spending our time on nonsense, talking about some kind of art, unconscious creativity, parliamentarianism,
the bar and God knows what else, when what’s at stake is people’s daily bread, when we’re suffocating under the crudest superstition,
when all our public companies are going bankrupt solely because there aren’t enough honest men, when the liberation the government
is so concerned with will probably bring us little benefit because our muzhiks are happy to rob themselves in order to go
and drink themselves silly in a tavern.’

All this is far from ‘loutishness’ and ‘sensations’, but a bitter, sober, intelligent and sad analysis of Russian society.
Is Bazarov right? Yes. So what is to be done? Well, here we have one of those ‘cursed questions’ of life in Russia.
What Is to Be Done?
is the title of a novel by another Russian writer, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, which was for a century far more popular in Russia
than Turgenev’s novel. Strictly speaking, Chernyshevsky’s work can’t be called a novel. It is poorly written, simply a load
of verbal and thematic rubbish lumped together in one great heap, completely lacking any artistic merit and only of interest
these days as a historical document. It is prolix, filled with bombast, and sings the praises of the life of these ‘new people’
and describing life in a commune; a great deal of attention is paid to the freedom of women. As I have said already, everything
artistic was sincerely rejected at that particular epoch, in that particular environment, and it was Chernyshevsky’s
novel that became a cult text for many succeeding decades rather than Turgenev’s. This was precisely that same girl in fetters
– and literally so. Only, the fetters in the novel are reduced to garters that the ‘new’ heroine refused to wear for fear
of making her legs look ugly. Chernyshevsky’s heroes solve their dilemma in the interests of revolution (the author wrote
his book while in prison). Chernyshevsky himself was sent to Siberia and his novel banned. Turgenev, incidentally, couldn’t
stand Chernyshevsky and called him ‘a man who stinks of bugs’.

Turgenev had no inclination at all to go to prison, and that’s why he leaves a great deal unsaid and unwritten. The possibility
of interference by the censors prevented him from developing Bazarov’s character in more detail. But for all that, vague hints
in the text at Bazarov’s revolutionary ways are very much in evidence. ‘You destroy everything,’ he is told. ‘But one must
also build.’ ‘That’s not our concern,’ is his reply. ‘First one must clear the ground.’

This ‘clearing’ later turned into terrorism, explosions and arson – all this is in Dostoyevsky’s great novel
The Devils
, but that came later. The rejection of principles, of playing the cello and of women’s dignity – this destructive view of
the world – is mirrored in the assassination of the Tsar Reformer, Alexander II, and, in the final reckoning, in the 1917
Revolution, and then in the nightmarish and bloody twentieth century in Russia – all that was even later. But meanwhile, on
the threshold of 1862, Turgenev writes his novel, trying first to construct his comfortless hero at a time of great pressure
from the censors, then trying to understand him. In my opinion he cannot decide what to do with him and therefore, without
rhyme or reason, suddenly removes him from life and from the novel. Bazarov is successful at nothing – either in life or love
And he harms no one except frogs. Those who wanted to dissect frogs ‘for everyone’s benefit’ would come later.

The reader will find contradictions in Bazarov’s character: it’s as if the hero is good and wicked, sensitive and insensitive
at the same time – and, what’s more, in a combination that does not really ring true. This is particularly noticeable against
the
background of other characters. In what direction should Turgenev develop his character? One can see the difficulty the writer
is having. Social analysis is closed to him – he doesn’t want to go to Siberia. Psychologically he quickly exhausts himself.

Of course, the publication of the novel gave rise to a scandal: the liberal public took offence and accused the author of
libelling the new generation and everything that was best in Russia. This is and isn’t the case: the liberal public didn’t
suspect what was in store for the country. The opening lightning flashes of the approaching storm, the harbingers of a terrible
future – it was Turgenev who provided the first, albeit foreclosed, vision of what was to come.

Tatyana Tolstaya

(translated by Ronald Wilks)