IIIBY K. WALISZEWSKI
The second novel of the series, "Fathers and Children," stirred up astorm the suddenness and violence of which it is not easy, nowadays, tounderstand. The figure of Bazarov, the first "Nihilist"--thus baptizedby an inversion of epithet which was to win extraordinary success--ismerely intended to reveal a mental condition which, though the fact hadbeen insufficiently recognized, had already existed for some years. Theepithet itself had been in constant use since 1829, when Nadiejdineapplied it to Pushkin, Polevoi, and some other subverters of theclassic tradition. Turgenev only extended its meaning by a newinterpretation, destined to be perpetuated by the tremendous success of"Fathers and Children." There is nothing, or hardly anything, inBazarov, of the terrible revolutionary whom we have since learnt tolook for under this title. Turgenev was not the man to call up such afigure. He was far too dreamy, too gentle, too good-natured a being.Already, in the character of Roudine, he had failed, in the strangestway, to catch the likeness of Bakounine, that fiery organiser ofinsurrection, whom all Europe knew, and whom he had selected as hismodel. Conceive Corot or Millet trying to paint some figure out of theLast Judgment after Michael Angelo! Bazarov is the Nihilist in hisfirst phase, "in course of becoming," as the Germans would say, and heis a pupil of the German universities. When Turgenev shaped thecharacter, he certainly drew on his own memories of his stay at Berlin,at a time when Bruno Bauer was laying it down as a dogma that noeducated man ought to have opinions on any subject, and when MaxStirner was convincing the young Hegelians that ideas were mere smokeand dust, seeing that the only reality in existence was the individual_Ego_. These teachings, eagerly received by the Russian youth, weredestined to produce a state of moral decomposition, the earliestsymptoms of which were admirably analysed by Turgenev.
Bazarov is a very clever man, but clever in thought, and especially inword, only. He scorns art, women, and family life. He does not knowwhat the point of honour means. He is a cynic in his love affairs, andindifferent in his friendships. He has no respect even for paternaltenderness, but he is full of contradictions, even to the extent offighting a duel about nothing at all, and sacrificing his life for thefirst peasant he meets. And in this the resemblance is true, much moregeneral, indeed, than the model selected would lead one to imagine; sogeneral, in fact, that, apart from the question of art, Turgenev--hehas admitted it himself--felt as if he were drawing his own portrait;and therefore it is, no doubt, that he has made his hero sosympathetic.--From "A History of Russian Literature" (1900).
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