Antonovich's article about Bazarov summary.

Current page: 1 (total book has 4 pages)

Maxim Alekseevich Antonovich
Asmodeus of our time

Sadly I look at our generation.1
The first line from M. Yu. Lermontov's poem "Duma".

Everyone who was interested in literature and those close to it knew from printed and oral rumors that Mr. Turgenev had artistic intent compose a novel, portray in it the modern movement of Russian society, express in artistic form your view of the modern young generation and explain your attitude towards it. Several times rumor spread the news that the novel was ready, that it was being printed and would soon be published; however, the novel did not appear; it was said that the author stopped printing it, reworked, corrected and supplemented his work, then sent it to print again and again set about reworking it. Everyone was overcome with impatience; the feverish expectation was tense to the highest degree; everyone wanted to quickly see the new work of the banner of that sympathetic artist and favorite of the public. The very subject of the novel aroused the liveliest interest: Mr. Turgenev's talent appeals to the contemporary young generation; the poet took up youth, the spring of life, the most poetic plot. The younger generation, always gullible, delighted in advance in the hope of seeing their own; a portrait drawn by the skillful hand of a sympathetic artist, which will contribute to the development of his self-consciousness and become his guide; it will look at itself from the outside, critically look at its image in the mirror of talent and understand better themselves, their strengths and weaknesses, their vocation and purpose. And now the desired hour has come; The novel, long and eagerly awaited and several times predicted, finally appeared near the Geological Sketches of the Caucasus, well, of course, everyone, young and old, rushed at him with ardor, like hungry wolves on prey.

And the general reading of the novel begins. From the very first pages, to the great amazement of the reader, he is seized by a kind of boredom; but, of course, you are not embarrassed by this and continue to read, hoping that it will be better further, that the author will enter into his role, that talent will take its toll and involuntarily captivate your attention. And meanwhile, and further, when the action of the novel unfolds completely before you, your curiosity does not stir, your feeling remains untouched; reading makes some unsatisfactory impression on you, which is reflected not in the feeling, but, most surprisingly, in the mind. You are covered with some deadly cold; you don't live with the characters in the novel, you don't get imbued with their life, but you begin to talk coldly with them, or, more precisely, follow their reasoning. You forget that you have a romance in front of you talented artist, and imagine that you are reading a moral-philosophical treatise, but bad and superficial, which, not satisfying the mind, thereby makes an unpleasant impression on your feelings. This shows that the new work of Mr. Turgenev is extremely unsatisfactory in artistic terms. Longtime and zealous admirers of Mr. Turgenev will not like such a review of his novel, they will find it harsh and even, perhaps, unfair. Yes, we admit, we ourselves were surprised at the impression that “Fathers and Sons” made on us. True, we did not expect anything special and unusual from Mr. Turgenev, just as probably all those who remember his "First Love" did not expect; but even so, there were scenes in it, on which one could stop, not without pleasure, and rest after the various, completely unpoetic, whims of the heroine. In Mr. Turgenev's new novel there are not even such oases; there is nowhere to hide from the suffocating heat of strange reasonings and, even for a moment, to be freed from the unpleasant, irritable impression produced by the general course of the depicted actions and scenes. What is most surprising, in the new work of Mr. Turgenev there is not even that psychological analysis, with whom he used to analyze the play of feelings among his heroes, and who pleasantly tickled the feeling of the reader; No artistic images, pictures of nature, which really could not help but admire and which delivered to every reader a few minutes of pure and calm pleasure and involuntarily disposed him to sympathize with the author and thank him. In "Fathers and Sons" he skimps on description, does not pay attention to nature; after minor retreats, he hurries to his heroes, saves space and strength for something else, and instead complete pictures spends only strokes, and even then unimportant and uncharacteristic, like the fact that “some roosters fervently called to each other in the village; yes, somewhere high in the tops of the trees, the incessant squeak of a young hawk rang with a whining call” (p. 589).

All the author's attention is drawn to the protagonist and other characters, - however, not on their personalities, not on their spiritual movements, feelings and passions, but almost exclusively on their conversations and reasoning. That is why in the novel, with the exception of one old woman, there is not a single living person and living soul, and all are only abstract ideas and different directions, personified and named proper names. For example, we have a so-called negative direction and is characterized by in a certain way thoughts and views. Mr. Turgenev took it and called him Yevgeny Vasilievich, who says in the novel: I am a negative direction, my thoughts and views are such and such. Seriously, literally! There is also a vice in the world, which is called disrespect for parents and is expressed by certain deeds and words. Mr. Turgenev called him Arkady Nikolaevich, who does these things and says these words. The emancipation of a woman, for example, is called Eudoxie Kukshina. The whole novel is built on such a focus; all personalities in it are ideas and views dressed up only in a personal concrete form. - But all this is nothing, whatever the personalities, and most importantly, to these unfortunate, lifeless personalities, Mr. Turgenev, a soul highly poetic and sympathetic to everything, has not the slightest pity, not a drop of sympathy and love, that feeling that called humane. He despises and hates his main character and his friends with all his heart; his feeling for them is not, however, the high indignation of the poet in general and the hatred of the satirist in particular, which are directed not at individuals, but at the weaknesses and shortcomings noticed in individuals, and the strength of which is directly proportional to the love that the poet and satirist have for to their heroes. This is a hackneyed truth and a common place that true artist treats his unfortunate heroes not only with visible laughter and indignation, but also with invisible tears and invisible love; he suffers and hurts his heart because he sees weaknesses in them; he considers, as it were, his own misfortune, that other people like him have shortcomings and vices; he speaks of them with contempt, but at the same time with regret, as about his own grief, Mr. Turgenev treats his heroes, not his favorites, in a completely different way. He harbors some kind of personal hatred and hostility towards them, as if they personally did him some kind of insult and dirty trick, and he tries to mark them at every step, as a person personally offended; he with inner pleasure looks for weaknesses and shortcomings in them, about which he speaks with ill-concealed gloating and only in order to humiliate the hero in the eyes of readers; "Look, they say, what a scoundrel my enemies and opponents are." He rejoices as a child when he manages to prick an unloved hero with something, to joke about him, to present him in a funny or vulgar and vile form; every mistake, every thoughtless step of the hero pleasantly tickles his vanity, causes a smile of complacency, revealing a proud, but petty and inhumane consciousness of his own superiority. This vindictiveness reaches the ridiculous, has the appearance of school tweaks, showing up in trifles and trifles. Main character Romana speaks with pride and arrogance of her skill in the card game; and Mr. Turgenev makes him constantly lose; and this is not done for a joke, not for what, for example, Mr. Winkel 2
Mr. Winkel(in modern translations Winkle) - the character " Posthumous notes Pickwick Club” by C. Dickens.

Showing off the accuracy of shooting, instead of a crow, he hits a cow, but in order to prick the hero and hurt his proud pride. The hero was invited to fight in preference; he agreed, wittily hinting that he would beat everyone. “Meanwhile,” remarks Mr. Turgenev, “the hero went on and on and on. One person skillfully played cards; the other could also take care of herself. The hero was left with a loss, although insignificant, but still not entirely pleasant. “Father Alexei, they told the hero, and would not mind playing cards. Well, he answered, let's get into a jumble and I'll beat him. Father Alexei sat down at the green table with a moderate expression of pleasure and ended by beating the hero by 2 rubles. 50 kop. banknotes." - And what? beat? not ashamed, not ashamed, but also boasted! - schoolchildren usually say in such cases to their comrades, disgraced braggarts. Then Mr. Turgenev tries to present the protagonist as a glutton who only thinks about how to eat and drink, and this is again done not with good nature and comedy, but all with the same vindictiveness and desire to humiliate the hero even a story about gluttony. Rooster 3
Rooster- one of the characters in "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol.

Written more calmly and with great sympathy on the part of the author for his hero. In all the scenes and cases of food, Mr. Turgenev, as if not on purpose, notices that the hero "spoke little, but ate a lot"; if he is invited somewhere, he first of all inquires whether he will have champagne, and even if he gets to it, he even loses his passion for talkativeness, “he will occasionally say a word, but is more and more engaged in champagne.” This personal aversion of the author to his main character is manifested at every step and involuntarily revolts the feeling of the reader, who finally becomes annoyed with the author, why he treats his hero so cruelly and mocks him so viciously, then he finally deprives him of any meaning and of all human qualities, why he puts thoughts into her head, into his heart feelings that are completely inconsistent with the character of the hero, with his other thoughts and feelings. In artistic terms, this means intemperance and unnaturalness of character - a drawback consisting in the fact that the author did not know how to portray his hero in such a way that he constantly remained true to himself. Such unnaturalness has the effect on the reader that he begins to distrust the author and involuntarily becomes the hero's advocate, recognizes as impossible in him those absurd thoughts and that ugly combination of concepts that the author ascribes to him; evidence and evidence is available in other words of the same author, referring to the same hero. A hero, if you please, a physician, a young man, in the words of Mr. Turgenev himself, passionately, selflessly devoted to his science and occupations in general; not for a single minute does he part with his instruments and apparatus, he is constantly busy with experiments and observations; wherever he is, wherever he appears, immediately at the first convenient minute he begins to botanize, catch frogs, beetles, butterflies, dissect them, examine them under a microscope, expose chemical reactions; in the words of Mr. Turgenev, he carried with him everywhere "some kind of medical-surgical smell"; for science, he did not spare his life and died of infection while dissecting a typhoid corpse. And suddenly Mr. Turgenev wants to assure us that this man is a petty braggart and drunkard chasing champagne, and claims that he has no love for anything, not even for science, that he does not recognize science, does not believe in it, that he even despises medicine and laughs at it. Is this a natural thing? Isn't the author too angry with his hero? In one place, the author says that the hero "possessed a special ability to arouse the confidence of the lower people, although he never indulged them and treated them carelessly" (p. 488); “The servants of the lord became attached to him, even though he teased them; Dunyasha chuckled eagerly with him; Peter, a man extremely proud and stupid, and he grinned and brightened as soon as the hero paid attention to him; the yard boys ran after the “dokhtur” like little dogs” and even had scholarly conversations and disputes with him (p. 512). But, in spite of all this, in another place a comic scene is depicted in which the hero did not know how to say a few words with the peasants; the peasants could not understand the one who spoke clearly even with the yard boys. This latter described his reasoning with the peasant as follows: “the master was chatting something, I wanted to scratch my tongue. It is known, master; does he understand? The author could not resist even here, and at this right opportunity he inserted a hairpin to the hero: “alas! he also boasted that he knew how to talk to peasants” (p. 647).

And there are enough such inconsistencies in the novel. Almost every page shows the desire of the author to humiliate the hero at all costs, whom he considered his opponent and therefore heaped on him all sorts of absurdities and mocked him in every possible way, scattering in witticisms and barbs. All this is permissible, appropriate, perhaps even good in some polemical article; but in the novel it is a flagrant injustice that destroys its poetic action. In the novel, the hero, the opponent of the author, is a defenseless and unanswerable creature, he is completely in the hands of the author and is silently forced to listen to all sorts of fables that are raised against him; he is in the same position in which the opponents were in learned treatises written in the form of conversations. In them, the author orates, always speaks intelligently and reasonably, while his opponents appear to be miserable and narrow-minded fools who do not know how to say words decently, and not even to present some kind of sensible objection; whatever they say, the author refutes everything in the most victorious manner. From various places in Mr. Turgenev's novel it is clear that the main character of his man is not stupid, but, on the contrary, very capable and gifted, inquisitive, diligently studying and knowing a lot; meanwhile, in disputes, he is completely lost, expresses nonsense and preaches absurdities that are unforgivable to the most limited mind. Therefore, as soon as Mr. Turgenev begins to joke and mock his hero, it seems that if the hero were living face if he could free himself from the silence and speak independently of himself, he would strike Mr. Turgenev on the spot, laugh at him much wittier and more thoroughly, so that Mr. Turgenev himself would then have to play the pitiful role of silence and unanswerability. Mr. Turgenev, through one of his favorites, asks the hero: “Do you deny everything? not only art, poetry... but and... it’s scary to say ... - That’s it, the hero answered with inexpressible calmness ”(p. 517). Of course, the answer is unsatisfactory; but who knows, a living hero, perhaps, would have answered: “No,” and would have added: we deny only your art, your poetry, Mr. Turgenev, your and; but we do not deny and even demand another art and poetry, another and, at least this and as imagined, for example, by Goethe, a poet like you, but who denied your and. - There is nothing to say about the moral character and moral qualities of the hero; this is not a man, but some terrible creature, just a devil, or, to put it more poetically, asmodeus. He systematically hates and persecutes everything from his good parents , which he hates, and ending with frogs, which he cuts with merciless cruelty. Never had a feeling crept into his cold heart; there is not a trace of any infatuation or passion in him; he releases the very hatred calculated, by the grain. And notice that this hero is a young man, a young man! He appears as some kind of poisonous creature that poisons everything he touches; he has a friend, but even him he despises not the slightest favor; he has followers, but he also hates them. He teaches immorality and senselessness to all who are generally subject to his influence; their noble instincts and lofty feelings he kills with his contemptuous mockery, and with it he keeps them from every good deed. A woman, kind and sublime by nature, is at first carried away by him; but then, recognizing him closer, with horror and disgust, she turns away from him, spitting and "wiping with a handkerchief." He even allowed himself to be contemptuous of Father Alexei, a priest, a "very good and reasonable" man, who, however, jokes evilly at him and beats him at cards. Apparently, Mr. Turgenev wanted to depict in his hero, as they say, a demonic or Byronic nature, something like Hamlet; but, on the other hand, he gave him features that make his nature seem the most ordinary and even vulgar, at least very far from demonism. And this, on the whole, produces not a character, not a living personality, but a caricature, a monster with a tiny head and a gigantic mouth, a small face and a very large nose, and, moreover, the most malicious caricature. The author is so angry with his hero that he does not want to forgive him and reconcile with him even before his death, at that, oratorically speaking, sacred moment when the hero is already standing with one foot on the edge of the coffin - an act completely incomprehensible in a sympathetic artist. In addition to the sacredness of the minute, prudence alone should have softened the author's indignation; the hero dies - it is too late and useless to teach and denounce him, there is no need to humiliate him before the reader; his hands will soon go numb, and he can do no harm to the author, even if he wants to; seems like it should be left alone. So no; the hero, as a physician, knows very well that he has only a few hours to die; he calls to himself a woman for whom he had not love, but something else, not like a real sublime love. She came, the hero and said to her: “the old thing is death, but new for everyone. Until now, I’m not afraid ... and there, unconsciousness will come, and fuit! Well, what can I tell you ... That I loved you? it made no sense before, and now even more so. Love is a form, and my own form is already decaying. I'd rather say that what a glorious you are! And now here you are standing, so beautiful ... ”(The reader will see more clearly what a nasty meaning lies in these words.) She came closer to him, and he spoke again:“ oh, how close, and how young, fresh, clean ... in this nasty room!..” (p. 657). From this sharp and wild dissonance, the spectacularly painted picture of the death of the hero loses all poetic meaning. Meanwhile, in the epilogue there are pictures that are deliberately poetic, meant to soften the hearts of readers and lead them to sad daydreaming, and which completely do not achieve their goal due to the indicated dissonance. Two young Christmas trees grow on the hero's grave; his father and mother - "two already decrepit old men" - come to the grave, weep bitterly and pray for their son. “Are their prayers, their tears fruitless? Isn't love, holy, devoted love, all-powerful? Oh no! No matter how passionate, sinful, rebellious the heart is hidden in the grave, the flowers growing on it serenely look at us with their innocent eyes: they tell us not only about eternal calmness, about that great calmness of “indifferent” nature; they also speak of eternal reconciliation and endless life” (p. 663). It seems that what is better; everything is beautiful and poetic, and old people, and Christmas trees, and innocent looks of flowers; but all this is tinsel and phrases, even unbearable after the death of the hero is depicted. And the author turns his tongue to talk about all-reconciling love, oh endless life, after himself, this love and the thought of endless life could not keep him from inhuman treatment of his dying hero, who, lying on his deathbed, calls on his beloved in order to view her charms in last time tickle your dying passion. Very cute! This is the kind of poetry and art worth both denying and condemning; in words they sing touchingly about love and peace, but in reality they turn out to be malicious and irreconcilable. - In general, artistically, the novel is completely unsatisfactory, to say the least out of respect for the talent of Mr. Turgenev, for his former merits and for his many admirers. common thread, general action, which would connect all parts of the novel, no; all some separate rhapsodies. Completely superfluous personalities are brought out, it is not known why they appear in the novel; such is, for example, Princess X ... th; she appeared several times for dinner and tea in the novel, sat "on a wide velvet armchair" and then died, "forgotten on the very day of her death." There are several other personalities, completely random, bred only for furniture.

However, these personalities, like all others in the novel, are incomprehensible or unnecessary from the artistic point of view; but Mr. Turgenev needed them for other purposes, alien to art. From the point of view of these goals, we even understand why Princess X ... aya came. The fact is that his last novel was written with tendencies, with clearly and sharply protruding theoretical goals. It is a didactic novel, a real scholarly treatise, written in colloquial form, and every face drawn serves as an expression and representative of a certain opinion and trend. That's how powerful and strong the spirit of the times! Russkiy vestnik says that at present there is not a single scientist, not excluding, of course, himself, who would not start dancing trepak on occasion. It can be just as accurately said that at present there is not a single artist and poet who would not dare to create something with trends on occasion, Mr. "First Love", left his service to art and began to enslave it to various theoretical considerations and practical goals and wrote a novel with trends - a very characteristic and remarkable circumstance! As can be seen from the very title of the novel, the author wants to portray in it the old and the young generation, fathers and children; and indeed, he brings out in the novel several instances of fathers and even more instances of children. He does little with fathers, for the most part, fathers only ask, ask questions, and the children already answer them; His main focus is on the younger generation, on children. He tries to characterize them as fully and comprehensively as possible, describes their tendencies, sets out their general philosophical views on science and life, their views on poetry and art, their concepts of love, the emancipation of women, the relationship of children to parents, marriage; and all this is presented not in the poetic form of images, but in prose conversations, in the logical form of sentences, expressions and words.

How does the modern young generation imagine Mr. Turgenev, our artistic Nestor, our poetic coryphaeus? He, apparently, is not disposed towards him, he even treats children with hostility; to fathers he gives full precedence in everything and always tries to exalt them at the expense of children. One father, a favorite of the author, says: “Putting all selfishness aside, it seems to me that children are further from the truth than we are; but I feel that they have some advantage over us ... Isn't this advantage that they have fewer traces of nobility than us? (p. 523). It's the one and only good trait, which Mr. Turgenev recognized in the younger generation, it can only console itself with it; in all other respects, the younger generation has moved away from the truth, wandering through the wilds of delusion and lies, which kills all poetry in it, leads it to misanthropy, despair and inaction, or to activity, but senseless and destructive. The novel is nothing but ruthless, also destructive criticism. younger generation. In all contemporary questions, intellectual movements, rumors and ideals that occupy the younger generation, Mr. Turgenev does not find any sense and makes it clear that they lead only to debauchery, emptiness, prosaic vulgarity and cynicism. In a word, Mr. Turgenev looks at modern principles of the younger generation, as Nikita Bezrylov and Pisemsky, that is, he does not recognize any real and serious significance for them and simply mocks them. Mr. Bezrylov's defenders tried to justify his famous feuilleton and presented the case in such a way that he dirtyly and cynically mocked not the principles themselves, but only deviations from them, and when he said, for example, that the emancipation of a woman is a demand for her complete freedom in a riotous and depraved life, then he expressed by this not his own concept of emancipation, but the concepts of others, which he allegedly wanted to ridicule; and that he generally spoke only of abuses and reinterpretations of contemporary issues. Perhaps there will be hunters who, by means of the same strained device, will want to justify Mr. Turgenev, they will say that, depicting the younger generation in a funny, caricatured and even absurd way, he had in mind not the younger generation in general, not its best representatives, but only the most miserable and limited children, what he says is not about general rule, but only about its exceptions; that he mocks only the younger generation, which is displayed in his novel as the worst, but in general he respects him. Modern views and tendencies, the defenders may say, are exaggerated in the novel, understood too superficially and one-sidedly; but such a limited understanding of them belongs not to Mr. Turgenev himself, but to his heroes. When, for example, in a novel it is said that the younger generation follows the negative direction blindly and unconsciously, not because it is convinced of the failure of what it denies, but simply because of a feeling, this, the defenders may say, does not mean that Mr. Turgenev himself thought in this way about the origin of the negative trend - he only wanted to say by this that there are people who think this way, and there are freaks about whom such an opinion is true.

...Reading makes some unsatisfactory impression on you, which is reflected not in the feeling, but, most surprisingly, in the mind. You are covered with some deadly cold; you don't live with the characters in the novel, you don't get imbued with their life, but you begin to talk coldly with them, or, more precisely, follow their reasoning. This shows that the new work of Mr. Turgenev is extremely unsatisfactory in artistic terms.

In "Fathers and Sons" he skimps on description, does not pay attention to nature. solely on their conversations and reasoning.

All the personalities in him are ideas and views, dressed up only in a personal concrete form ... Mr. Turgenev has not the slightest pity for these unfortunate, lifeless personalities, not a drop of sympathy and love, that feeling that is called humane.

There is nothing to say about the moral character and moral qualities of the hero; this is not a man, but some terrible creature, just a devil, or, to put it more poetically, asmodeus. He systematically hates and persecutes everything from his kind parents, whom he cannot stand, to frogs, which he cuts with merciless cruelty. He teaches immorality and senselessness to all who are generally subject to his influence; their noble instincts and lofty feelings he kills with his contemptuous mockery, and with it he keeps them from every good deed.

As can be seen from the very title of the novel, the author wants to portray in it the old and the young generation, fathers and children. The novel is nothing but a merciless, destructive criticism of the younger generation. Conclusion: Mr. Turgenev's novel serves as an expression of his own personal likes and dislikes, the views of the novel on the younger generation express the views of the author himself; it depicts the whole young generation in general, as it is and what it is even in the person of its best representatives; the limited and superficial understanding of contemporary issues and aspirations expressed by the heroes of the novel lies with the responsibility of Mr. Turgenev himself. If you look at the novel from the point of view of its tendencies, then it is just as unsatisfactory from this side as it is from an artistic point of view.

But all the shortcomings of the novel are redeemed by one virtue - the heroes of his flesh were vigorous, and the spirit was weak. The protagonist of the last novel is the same Rudin ... but it was not without reason that time passed, and the characters developed progressively in their bad qualities. Fathers = children, that's our conclusion. Nihilism. Turgenev defines it as follows: “A nihilist is one who does not recognize anything; who respects nothing; who treats everything from a critical point of view. The author directs the arrows of his talent against what he has not penetrated into the essence of. Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov. "Fathers and Sons" oman, apparently, did not come at the right time; it does not seem to correspond to the needs of society; it does not give it what it seeks. And yet he makes a strong impression.

If Turgenev's novel throws readers into bewilderment, then this happens for a very simple reason: it brings to consciousness that which was not yet conscious, and reveals that which has not yet been noticed. Bazarov in him is so true to himself, so full, so generously supplied with flesh and blood, that to call him composed there is no possibility for man. But he is not a walking type ... Bazarov, in any case, is a person created, and not only reproduced, foreseen, and not only exposed.

The system of beliefs, the range of thoughts that Bazarov represents, were more or less clearly expressed in our literature. Turgenev understands the younger generation much better than they understand themselves. People of a negative direction cannot reconcile themselves with the fact that Bazarov has consistently reached the end in denial ... Deep asceticism permeates the whole personality of Bazarov; this feature is not accidental, but essential. Bazarov came out as a simple man, devoid of any brokenness, and at the same time strong, powerful in soul and body. Everything in him is unusually suited to his strong nature. It is remarkable that he, so to speak, more Russian than all the other faces in the novel.

Turgenev finally reached in Bazarov the type of a whole person. Bazarov is the first strong person, the first integral character, who appeared in Russian literature from the environment of the so-called educated society. Despite all his views, Bazarov craves love for people. If this thirst is manifested by malice, then such malice is only the reverse side of love.

From all this one can at least see what a difficult task Turgenev took on and, as we think, completed in his last novel. He depicted life under the deadening influence of theory; he gave us a living person, although this person, apparently, embodied himself without a trace in an abstract formula. What is the meaning of the novel? he had the proud aim of pointing the temporal to the eternal, and wrote a novel neither progressive nor retrograde, but, so to speak, eternal. Generational change- this is the external theme of the novel, he portrayed the relationship between these two generations excellently.

So, here it is, here is the mysterious moralizing that Turgenev put into his works. Bazarov eschews life; the author does not expose him as a villain for this, but only shows us life in all its beauty. Bazarov rejects poetry; Turgenev does not make him a fool for this, but only portrays him with all the luxury and insight of poetry. In a word, Turgenev stands for eternal beginnings human life, for those basic elements that can endlessly change their forms, but in essence always remain unchanged.

Be that as it may, Bazarov is still defeated; defeated not by persons and not by the accidents of life, but by the very idea of ​​this life.

Antonovich saw in the novel a panegyric to the “fathers” and a slander on the younger generation. In addition, it was argued that the novel was very weak artistically, that Turgenev, who set out to discredit Bazarov, resorted to caricature, depicting the protagonist as a monster "with a tiny head and a giant mouth, with a small face and a big nose." Antonovich is trying to defend women's emancipation and the aesthetic principles of the younger generation from Turgenev's attacks, trying to prove that "Kukshina is not as empty and limited as Pavel Petrovich." Regarding the denial of art by Bazarov
Antonovich declared that this was a pure lie, that the younger generation denies only "pure art", among whose representatives, however, he ranked Pushkin and Turgenev himself. According to Antonovich, from the very first pages, to the reader's greatest amazement, he is overcome by a kind of boredom; but, of course, you are not embarrassed by this and continue to read, hoping that it will be better further, that the author will enter into his role, that talent will take its toll and involuntarily captivate your attention. And meanwhile, and further, when the action of the novel unfolds completely before you, your curiosity does not stir, your feeling remains untouched; reading makes some unsatisfactory impression on you, which is reflected not in the feeling, but, most surprisingly, in the mind. You are covered with some kind of deadly cold; you don't live with the characters in the novel, you don't get imbued with their life, but you begin to talk coldly with them, or, more precisely, follow their reasoning. You forget that you have a novel by a talented artist in front of you, and you imagine that you are reading a moral-philosophical treatise, but bad and superficial, which, not satisfying your mind, thereby makes an unpleasant impression on your feelings. This shows that Turgenev's new work is extremely unsatisfactory artistically. Turgenev treats his heroes, not his favorites, in a completely different way. He harbors some kind of personal hatred and hostility towards them, as if they personally did him some kind of insult and dirty trick, and he tries to take revenge on them at every step, like a person personally offended; he with inner pleasure looks for weaknesses and shortcomings in them, about which he speaks with ill-concealed gloating and only in order to humiliate the hero in the eyes of readers: "Look, they say, what scoundrels my enemies and opponents are." He rejoices as a child when he manages to prick an unloved hero with something, to joke about him, to present him in a funny or vulgar and vile form; every mistake, every thoughtless step of the hero pleasantly tickles his vanity, causes a smile of complacency, revealing a proud, but petty and inhumane consciousness of his own superiority. This vindictiveness reaches the ridiculous, has the appearance of school tweaks, showing up in trifles and trifles. From various places in Turgenev's novel it is clear that the main character of his man is not stupid, - on the contrary, he is very capable and gifted, inquisitive, diligently studying and knowing a lot; meanwhile, in disputes, he is completely lost, expresses nonsense and preaches absurdities that are unforgivable to the most limited mind. There is nothing to say about the moral character and moral qualities of the hero; this is not a man, but some kind of terrible creature, just a devil, or, more poetically, an asmodeus. He systematically hates and persecutes everything from his parents to frogs, which he cuts with merciless cruelty. Never had a feeling crept into his cold heart; there is not a trace of any infatuation or passion in him; he releases the very hatred calculated, by grains. And mind you, this hero is a young man, a young man! He appears as some kind of poisonous creature that poisons everything he touches; he has a friend, but he despises him too and has not the slightest disposition towards him; he has followers, but he also hates them. The novel is nothing but a merciless and also destructive criticism of the younger generation.

Maxim Alekseevich Antonovich

The text of the article is reproduced according to the publication: M. A. Antonovich. Literary-critical articles. M.--L., 1961.

Sadly I look at our generation.

Everyone who was interested in literature and those close to it knew from printed and oral rumors that Mr. Turgenev had an artistic intention to compose a novel, depict in it the modern movement of Russian society, express in an artistic form his view of the modern young generation and explain his attitude towards him. Several times rumor spread the news that the novel was ready, that it was being printed and would soon be published; however, the novel did not appear; it was said that the author stopped printing it, reworked, corrected and supplemented his work, then sent it to print again and again set about reworking it. Everyone was overcome with impatience; the feverish expectation was tense to the highest degree; everyone wanted to quickly see the new work of the banner of that sympathetic artist and favorite of the public. The very subject of the novel aroused the liveliest interest: Mr. Turgenev's talent appeals to the contemporary young generation; the poet took up youth, the spring of life, the most poetic plot. The younger generation, always gullible, delighted in advance in the hope of seeing their own; a portrait drawn by the skillful hand of a sympathetic artist, which will contribute to the development of his self-consciousness and become his guide; it will look at itself from the outside, take a critical look at its image in the mirror of talent and better understand itself, its strengths and weaknesses, its vocation and purpose. And now the desired hour has come; The novel, long and eagerly awaited and several times predicted, finally appeared near the Geological Sketches of the Caucasus, well, of course, everyone, young and old, rushed at him with ardor, like hungry wolves on prey.

And the general reading of the novel begins. From the very first pages, to the great amazement of the reader, he is seized by a kind of boredom; but, of course, you are not embarrassed by this and continue to read, hoping that it will be better further, that the author will enter into his role, that talent will take its toll and involuntarily captivate your attention. And meanwhile, and further, when the action of the novel unfolds completely before you, your curiosity does not stir, your feeling remains untouched; reading makes some unsatisfactory impression on you, which is reflected not in the feeling, but, most surprisingly, in the mind. You are covered with some deadly cold; you don't live with the characters in the novel, you don't get imbued with their life, but you begin to talk coldly with them, or, more precisely, follow their reasoning. You forget that you have a novel by a talented artist in front of you, and you imagine that you are reading a moral-philosophical treatise, but bad and superficial, which, not satisfying your mind, thereby makes an unpleasant impression on your feelings. This shows that the new work of Mr. Turgenev is extremely unsatisfactory in artistic terms. Longtime and zealous admirers of Mr. Turgenev will not like such a review of his novel, they will find it harsh and even, perhaps, unfair. Yes, we admit, we ourselves were surprised at the impression that "Fathers and Sons" made on us. True, we did not expect anything special and unusual from Mr. Turgenev, just as probably all those who remember his "First Love" did not expect; but even so, there were scenes in it, on which one could stop, not without pleasure, and rest after the various, completely unpoetic, whims of the heroine. In Mr. Turgenev's new novel there are not even such oases; there is nowhere to hide from the suffocating heat of strange reasonings and, even for a moment, to be freed from the unpleasant, irritable impression produced by the general course of the depicted actions and scenes. What is most surprising of all, in the new work of Mr. Turgenev there is not even that psychological analysis with which he used to analyze the play of feelings in his heroes, and which pleasantly tickled the feeling of the reader; there are no artistic images, pictures of nature, which really could not help but admire and which delivered to every reader a few minutes of pure and calm pleasure and involuntarily disposed him to sympathize with the author and thank him. In "Fathers and Sons" he skimps on description, does not pay attention to nature; after minor retreats, he hurries to his heroes, saves space and strength for something else, and instead of complete pictures, draws only strokes, and even then unimportant and uncharacteristic, like the fact that "some roosters fervently called to each other in the village; but somewhere high in the tops of the trees, the incessant squeak of a young hawk rang with a whining call" (p. 589).

All the author's attention is drawn to the protagonist and other characters, - however, not to their personalities, not to their spiritual movements, feelings and passions, but almost exclusively to their conversations and reasoning. That is why in the novel, with the exception of one old woman, there is not a single living person and living soul, but all are only abstract ideas and different directions, personified and called by their proper names. For example, we have a so-called negative direction and is characterized by a certain way of thinking and views. Mr. Turgenev went ahead and named him Yevgeny Vasilyevich, who says in the novel: I am a negative direction, my thoughts and views are such and such. Seriously, literally! There is also a vice in the world, which is called disrespect for parents and is expressed by certain deeds and words. Mr. Turgenev called him Arkady Nikolaevich, who does these things and says these words. The emancipation of a woman, for example, is called Eudoxie Kukshina. The whole novel is built on such a focus; all personalities in it are ideas and views dressed up only in a personal concrete form. - But all this is nothing, whatever the personalities, and most importantly, to these unfortunate, lifeless personalities, Mr. Turgenev, a highly poetic soul and sympathetic to everything, has not the slightest pity, not a drop of sympathy and love, that feeling which is called humane. He despises and hates his main character and his friends with all his heart; his feeling for them is not, however, the high indignation of the poet in general and the hatred of the satirist in particular, which are directed not at individuals, but at the weaknesses and shortcomings noticed in individuals, and the strength of which is directly proportional to the love that the poet and satirist have for to their heroes. It is already a hackneyed truth and a commonplace that a true artist treats his unfortunate heroes not only with visible laughter and indignation, but also with invisible tears and invisible love; he suffers and hurts his heart because he sees weaknesses in them; he considers, as it were, his own misfortune, that other people like him have shortcomings and vices; he speaks of them with contempt, but at the same time with regret, as about his own grief, Mr. Turgenev treats his heroes, not his favorites, in a completely different way. He harbors some kind of personal hatred and hostility towards them, as if they personally did him some kind of insult and dirty trick, and he tries to mark them at every step, as a person personally offended; he with inner pleasure looks for weaknesses and shortcomings in them, about which he speaks with ill-concealed gloating and only in order to humiliate the hero in the eyes of readers; "Look, they say, what a scoundrel my enemies and opponents are." He rejoices as a child when he manages to prick an unloved hero with something, to joke about him, to present him in a funny or vulgar and vile form; every mistake, every thoughtless step of the hero pleasantly tickles his vanity, causes a smile of complacency, revealing a proud, but petty and inhumane consciousness of his own superiority. This vindictiveness reaches the ridiculous, has the appearance of school tweaks, showing up in trifles and trifles. The protagonist of the novel speaks with pride and arrogance of his skill in the card game; and Mr. Turgenev makes him constantly lose; and this is done not for fun, not for the sake of which, for example, Mr. Winkel, who boasts of his marksmanship, instead of a crow, falls into a cow, but in order to prick the hero and wound his proud pride. The hero was invited to fight in preference; he agreed, wittily hinting that he would beat everyone. "Meanwhile," notes Mr. Turgenev, "the hero kept shrinking and shrinking. One person skillfully played cards; the other could also stand up for herself. The hero remained at a loss, although insignificant, but still not entirely pleasant" . “Father Alexei, they told the hero, and would not mind playing cards. Well, he answered, we’ll sit in a jumble, and I will beat him. Father Alexei sat down at the green table with a moderate expression of pleasure and ended up beating the hero by 2 rubles. 50 kopecks in banknotes". -- And what? beat? not ashamed, not ashamed, but also boasted! - schoolchildren usually say in such cases to their comrades, disgraced braggarts. Then Mr. Turgenev tries to present the protagonist as a glutton who only thinks about how to eat and drink, and this is again done not with good nature and comedy, but all with the same vindictiveness and desire to humiliate the hero even a story about gluttony. Petukha is written more calmly and with great sympathy on the part of the author for his hero. In all the scenes and cases of eating, Mr. Turgenev, as if not on purpose, notices that the hero "spoke little, but ate a lot"; if he is invited somewhere, he first of all inquires whether he will have champagne, and if he gets to it, he even loses his passion for talkativeness, "occasionally says a word, and is more and more engaged in champagne." This personal aversion of the author to his main character is manifested at every step and involuntarily revolts the feeling of the reader, who finally becomes annoyed with the author, why he treats his hero so cruelly and mocks him so viciously, then he finally deprives him of any meaning and of all human qualities, why he puts thoughts into her head, into his heart feelings that are completely inconsistent with the character of the hero, with his other thoughts and feelings. In artistic terms, this means incontinence and unnaturalness of character - a drawback consisting in the fact that the author did not know how to portray his hero in such a way that he constantly remained true to himself. Such unnaturalness has the effect on the reader that he begins to distrust the author and involuntarily becomes the hero's advocate, recognizes as impossible in him those absurd thoughts and that ugly combination of concepts that the author ascribes to him; evidence and evidence is available in other words of the same author, referring to the same hero. A hero, if you please, a physician, a young man, in the words of Mr. Turgenev himself, passionately, selflessly devoted to his science and occupations in general; not for a single minute does he part with his instruments and apparatus, he is constantly busy with experiments and observations; wherever he is, wherever he appears, immediately at the first convenient minute he begins to botanize, catch frogs, beetles, butterflies, dissect them, examine them under a microscope, subject them to chemical reactions; in the words of Mr. Turgenev, he everywhere carried with him "some kind of medical-surgical smell"; for science, he did not spare his life and died of infection while dissecting a typhoid corpse. And suddenly Mr. Turgenev wants to assure us that this man is a petty braggart and drunkard chasing champagne, and claims that he has no love for anything, not even for science, that he does not recognize science, does not believe in it. that he even despises medicine and laughs at it. Is this a natural thing? Isn't the author too angry with his hero? In one place, the author says that the hero "possessed a special ability to arouse the confidence of the lower people, although he never indulged them and treated them carelessly" (p. 488); "The lord's servants became attached to him, even though he teased them; Dunyasha willingly giggled with him; Peter, a man extremely proud and stupid, and he grinned and brightened as soon as the hero paid attention to him; the yard boys ran after the "dokhtur" like little dogs" and even had scholarly conversations and disputes with him (p. 512). But, in spite of all this, in another place a comic scene is depicted in which the hero did not know how to say a few words with the peasants; the peasants could not understand the one who spoke clearly even with the yard boys. This latter described his reasoning with the peasant as follows: "The master was talking something, he wanted to scratch his tongue. It is known, master; does he understand anything?" The author could not resist even here, and at this right opportunity he inserted a hairpin to the hero: “alas! he also boasted that he knew how to talk to peasants" (p. 647).

And there are enough such inconsistencies in the novel. Almost every page shows the desire of the author to humiliate the hero at all costs, whom he considered his opponent and therefore heaped on him all sorts of absurdities and mocked him in every possible way, scattering in witticisms and barbs. All this is permissible, appropriate, perhaps even good in some polemical article; but in the novel it is a flagrant injustice that destroys its poetic action. In the novel, the hero, the opponent of the author, is a defenseless and unanswerable creature, he is completely in the hands of the author and is silently forced to listen to all sorts of fables that are raised against him; he is in the same position in which the opponents were in learned treatises written in the form of conversations. In them, the author orates, always speaks intelligently and reasonably, while his opponents appear to be miserable and narrow-minded fools who do not know how to say words decently, and not even to present some kind of sensible objection; whatever they say, the author refutes everything in the most victorious manner. From various places in Mr. Turgenev's novel it is clear that the main character of his man is not stupid, - on the contrary, he is very capable and gifted, inquisitive, diligently studying and knowing a lot; meanwhile, in disputes, he is completely lost, expresses nonsense and preaches absurdities that are unforgivable to the most limited mind. Therefore, as soon as Mr. Turgenev begins to joke and mock his hero, it seems that if the hero were a living person, if he could free himself from silence and speak independently of himself, then he would immediately strike down Mr. Turgenev, laugh would have been much wittier and more thorough with him, so that Mr. Turgenev himself would then have to play the pitiful role of silence and unanswerability. Mr. Turgenev, through one of his favorites, asks the hero: "Do you deny everything? not only art, poetry ... but and... it’s scary to say ... - That’s it, the hero answered with inexpressible calmness "(p. 517). Of course, the answer is unsatisfactory; but who knows, a living hero, perhaps, would have answered:" No, "and added would: we deny only your art, your poetry, Mr. Turgenev, your and; but we do not deny and even demand another art and poetry, another and, at least this and as imagined, for example, by Goethe, a poet like you, but who denied your and . - There is nothing to say about the moral character and moral qualities of the hero; this is not a man, but some terrible creature, just a devil, or, to put it more poetically, asmodeus. He systematically hates and persecutes everything from his kind parents, whom he cannot stand, to frogs, which he cuts with merciless cruelty. Never had a feeling crept into his cold heart; there is not a trace of any infatuation or passion in him; he releases the very hatred calculated, by the grain. And note that this hero is a young man, a young man! He appears as some kind of poisonous creature that poisons everything he touches; he has a friend, but even him he despises not the slightest favor; he has followers, but he also hates them. He teaches immorality and senselessness to all who are generally subject to his influence; their noble instincts and lofty feelings he kills with his contemptuous mockery, and with it he keeps them from every good deed. A woman, kind and sublime by nature, is at first carried away by him; but then, recognizing him closer, with horror and disgust, she turns away from him, spitting and "wiping him with a handkerchief." He even allowed himself to be contemptuous of Father Alexei, a priest, a "very good and sensible" man, who, however, plays an evil joke on him and beats him at cards. Apparently, Mr. Turgenev wanted to depict in his hero, as they say, a demonic or Byronic nature, something like Hamlet; but, on the other hand, he gave him features that make his nature seem the most ordinary and even vulgar, at least very far from demonism. And this, on the whole, produces not a character, not a living personality, but a caricature, a monster with a tiny head and a gigantic mouth, a small face and a very large nose, and, moreover, the most malicious caricature. The author is so angry with his hero that he does not want to forgive him and reconcile with him even before his death, at that, oratorically speaking, sacred moment when the hero is already standing with one foot on the edge of the coffin - an act completely incomprehensible in a sympathetic artist. In addition to the sacredness of the minute, prudence alone should have softened the author's indignation; the hero dies - it is too late and useless to teach and denounce him, there is no need to humiliate him before the reader; his hands will soon go numb, and he can do no harm to the author, even if he wants to; seems like it should be left alone. So no; the hero, as a physician, knows very well that he has only a few hours to die; he calls to himself a woman for whom he had not love, but something else, not like a real sublime love. She came, the hero, and said to her: “The old thing is death, but it’s new for everyone. I still don’t fear ... and there, unconsciousness will come, and fuck! Well, what can I tell you ... That I loved you? and before it had no meaning, and now even more so. Love is a form, and my own form is already decaying. I would rather say that you are glorious! And now you are standing, so beautiful ... "(The reader will see more clearly further what a nasty meaning lies in these words.) She came closer to him, and he spoke again: "Oh, how close, and how young, fresh, clean ... in this nasty room! .." (p. 657 ). From this sharp and wild dissonance, the spectacularly painted picture of the death of the hero loses all poetic meaning. Meanwhile, in the epilogue there are pictures that are deliberately poetic, meant to soften the hearts of readers and lead them to sad daydreaming, and which completely do not achieve their goal due to the indicated dissonance. Two young Christmas trees grow on the hero's grave; his father and mother - "two already decrepit old men" - come to the grave, weep bitterly and pray for their son. "Are their prayers, their tears, fruitless? Isn't love, holy, devoted love, all-powerful? Oh, no! No matter how passionate, sinful, rebellious heart hides in the grave, the flowers growing on it look serenely at us with their innocent eyes: they speak to us not only of eternal tranquility, of that great tranquility of "indifferent" nature; they also speak of eternal reconciliation and endless life" (p. 663). It seems that what is better; everything is beautiful and poetic, and old people, and Christmas trees, and innocent looks of flowers; but all this is tinsel and phrases, even unbearable after the death of the hero is depicted. And the author turns his tongue to talk about all-reconciling love, about endless life, after this love and the thought of endless life could not keep him from inhuman treatment of his dying hero, who, lying on his deathbed, calls his beloved in order to to tickle his fading passion for the last time with the sight of her charms. Very cute! This is the kind of poetry and art worth both denying and condemning; in words they sing touchingly about love and peace, but in reality they turn out to be malicious and irreconcilable. - In general, artistically, the novel is completely unsatisfactory, to say the least out of respect for the talent of Mr. Turgenev, for his former merits and for his many admirers. There is no common thread, no common action that would bind all parts of the novel; all some separate rhapsodies. Completely superfluous personalities are brought out, it is not known why they appear in the novel; such is, for example, Princess X .... th; she appeared several times for dinner and tea in the novel, sat "on a wide velvet armchair" and then died, "forgotten on the very day of her death." There are several other personalities, completely random, bred only for furniture.

However, these personalities, like all others in the novel, are incomprehensible or unnecessary from the artistic point of view; but Mr. Turgenev needed them for other purposes, alien to art. From the point of view of these goals, we even understand why Princess Kh .... aya came. The fact is that his last novel was written with tendencies, with clearly and sharply protruding theoretical goals. It is a didactic novel, a real scholarly treatise, written in colloquial form, and every face drawn serves as an expression and representative of a certain opinion and trend. That's how powerful and strong the spirit of the times! Russkiy vestnik says that at the present time there is not a single scientist, not excluding, of course, himself, who would not start dancing trepak on occasion. It can be just as accurately said that at present there is not a single artist and poet who would not, on occasion, decide to create something with trends, Mr. "First Love", left his service to art and began to enslave it to various theoretical considerations and practical goals and wrote a novel with trends - a very characteristic and remarkable circumstance! As can be seen from the very title of the novel, the author wants to portray in it the old and the young generation, fathers and children; and indeed, he brings out in the novel several instances of fathers and even more instances of children. He does little with fathers, for the most part, fathers only ask, ask questions, and the children already answer them; His main focus is on the younger generation, on children. He tries to characterize them as fully and comprehensively as possible, describes their tendencies, sets out their general philosophical views on science and life, their views on poetry and art, their concepts of love, the emancipation of women, the relationship of children to parents, marriage; and all this is presented not in the poetic form of images, but in prose conversations, in the logical form of sentences, expressions and words.

How does the modern young generation imagine Mr. Turgenev, our artistic Nestor, our poetic coryphaeus? He, apparently, is not disposed towards him, he even treats children with hostility; to fathers he gives full precedence in everything and always tries to exalt them at the expense of children. One father, a favorite of the author, says: “Putting all pride aside, it seems to me that children are further from the truth than we are; but I feel that they have some advantage over us ... Isn’t it the advantage that they have less traces of nobility than us?" (p. 523). This is the one and only good trait that Mr. Turgenev recognized in the younger generation, and this is the only thing they can console themselves with; in all other respects, the younger generation has moved away from the truth, wandering through the wilds of delusion and lies, which kills all poetry in it, leads it to misanthropy, despair and inaction, or to activity, but senseless and destructive. The novel is nothing but a merciless, also destructive criticism of the younger generation. In all contemporary questions, intellectual movements, rumors and ideals that occupy the younger generation, Mr. Turgenev does not find any sense and makes it clear that they lead only to debauchery, emptiness, prosaic vulgarity and cynicism. In a word, Mr. Turgenev looks at the contemporary principles of the younger generation in the same way that Messrs. Nikita Bezrylov and Pisemsky, that is, he does not recognize any real and serious significance for them and simply mocks them. Mr. Bezrylov's defenders tried to justify his famous feuilleton and presented the case in such a way that he dirtyly and cynically mocked not the principles themselves, but only deviations from them, and when he said, for example, that the emancipation of a woman is a demand for her complete freedom in a riotous and depraved life, then he expressed by this not his own concept of emancipation, but the concepts of others, which he allegedly wanted to ridicule; and that he generally spoke only of abuses and reinterpretations of contemporary issues. Perhaps there will be hunters who, by means of the same strained device, will want to justify Mr. Turgenev, they will say that, depicting the younger generation in a funny, caricatured and even absurd way, he had in mind not the younger generation in general, not its best representatives, but only the most miserable and limited children, that he speaks not of a general rule, but only of its exceptions; that he mocks only the younger generation, which is displayed in his novel as the worst, but in general he respects him. Modern views and tendencies, the defenders may say, are exaggerated in the novel, understood too superficially and one-sidedly; but such a limited understanding of them belongs not to Mr. Turgenev himself, but to his heroes. When, for example, in a novel it is said that the younger generation follows the negative direction blindly and unconsciously, not because it is convinced of the failure of what it denies, but simply because of a feeling, then this, the defenders may say, does not mean so that Mr. Turgenev himself thinks in this way about the origin of the negative trend, he only wanted to say by this that there are people who think this way, and there are freaks about whom such an opinion is true.

But such an excuse by Mr. Turgenev would be unfounded and invalid, as it was in relation to Mr. Bezrylov. (Mr. Turgenev's novel is not a purely objective work; the personality of the author, his sympathies, his enthusiasm, even his personal bile and irritation come out too clearly in it. Through this we get the opportunity to read in the novel the personal opinions of the author himself, and in this we already have one reason is to take the thoughts expressed in the novel as the author’s judgments, at least the thoughts expressed with noticeable sympathy for them by the author, expressed in the mouth of those persons whom he obviously patronizes. Further, if the author had even a spark of sympathy for " children", to the younger generation, even a spark of a true and clear understanding of their views and aspirations, it would certainly shine somewhere throughout the entire novel. Mr. Turgenev does not have this; in the whole novel we do not see the slightest hint of what should be the general rule, the best young generation; all "children", that is, the majority them, he sums them up into one and presents them all as an exception, as an abnormal phenomenon. If indeed he portrayed only one bad part of the younger generation, or only one dark side of it, then he would see the ideal in another part or other side of the same generation; but he finds his ideal in a completely different place, namely in the "fathers", in a more or less old generation. Therefore, he draws a parallel and contrast between "fathers" and "children", and the meaning of his novel cannot be formulated as follows: among the many good "children" there are also bad ones, who are ridiculed in the novel; his task is completely different and is reduced to the following formula: "children" are bad, they are presented in the novel in all their ugliness; and "fathers" are good, which is also proven in the novel. Apart from Gothe, meaning to show the relationship between "fathers" and "children", the author could not have acted otherwise than by depicting most of the "children" and most of the "fathers". Everywhere, in statistics, economy, trade, averages and figures are always taken for comparison; the same should be true of moral statistics. Defining the moral relationship between two generations in the novel, the author, of course, describes not anomalies, not exceptions, but ordinary phenomena, often occurring, average figures, relations that exist in most cases and under equal conditions. From this follows the necessary conclusion that Mr. Turgenev imagines young people in general, such as the young heroes of his novel are, and, in his opinion, those mental and moral qualities, by which the latter are distinguished, belong to the majority of the younger generation, that is, in the language of averages, to all young people; the heroes of the novel are examples of modern children. Finally, there is reason to think that Mr. Turgenev portrays the best young people, the first representatives of the modern generation. To compare and determine known objects, it is necessary to take the appropriate quantities and qualities; you cannot remove maximum on one side and minimum on the other. If fathers are bred in the novel known size and caliber, then the children must be exactly the same size and caliber. The "fathers" in Mr. Turgenev's work are all respectable, intelligent, indulgent people, imbued with the most tender love for children, which God grant to everyone; these are not some grumpy old men, despots, autocratically disposing of children; they give children complete freedom in their actions, they themselves studied and they try to teach children and even learn from them. After this, it is necessary to accept that the "children" in the novel are the best possible, so to speak, the color and beauty of youth, not some ignoramuses and revelers, in parallel with which one could pick up the most excellent fathers cleaner than Turgenev's - and decent, inquisitive young men, with all the virtues characteristic of them, will grow. Otherwise, it will be absurd and the most flagrant injustice if you compare the best fathers and the worst children. We are not talking about the fact that under the category of "children" Mr. Turgenev summed up a significant part of modern literature, its so-called negative direction, the second he personified in one of his heroes and put into his mouth words and phrases that are often found in the press and expressing thoughts that are approved by the younger generation and do not arouse hostile feelings in people of the middle generation, and perhaps even the old. - All these arguments would be superfluous, and no one could have come up with the objections that we have eliminated if the matter was about someone else, and not about Mr. Turgenev, who enjoys great honor and has acquired for himself the significance of authority; when expressing a judgment about Mr. Turgenev, one must prove the most ordinary thoughts, which in other cases are readily accepted even without proof, as obvious and clear in themselves; consequently, we considered necessary the above preliminary and elementary considerations. They now give us full right to affirm that Mr. Turgenev's novel serves as an expression of his own personal likes and dislikes, that the views of the novel on the younger generation express the views of the author himself; that it depicts the whole young generation in general, as it is and what it is even in the person of its best representatives; that the limited and superficial understanding of contemporary issues and aspirations expressed by the heroes of the novel lies with the responsibility of Mr. Turgenev himself. When, for example, the protagonist, a representative of "children" and of the way of thinking shared by the younger generation, says that there is no difference between a man and a frog, this means that Mr. Turgenev himself understands the modern way of thinking in precisely this way; he studied the modern doctrine shared by young people, and therefore it really seemed to him that it did not recognize any difference between a man and a frog. The difference, you see, is great, as modern teaching shows; but he did not notice him - philosophical insight betrayed the poet. If he saw this difference, but only hid it in order to exaggerate modern teaching, then this is even worse. Of course, on the other hand, it must also be said that the author is not obliged to answer for all the absurd and deliberately disfigured thoughts of his heroes - no one will demand this from him in all cases. But if the thought is expressed, at the suggestion of the author, quite seriously, especially if there is a tendency in the novel to characterize famous direction and way of thinking, then we have the right to demand that the author does not exaggerate this direction, that he presents these thoughts not in a distorted form and caricature, but as they are, as he understands them in his extreme understanding. Just as precisely, what is said about the young personalities of the novel applies to all the youth they represent in the novel; so that she, not in the least embarrassed, must take into account the various tricks of the "fathers", dutifully listen to them as the sentences of Mr. Turgenev himself and not be offended, for example, by the following remark directed against the main character, a representative of the younger generation:

"-- So, so. At first, pride is almost satanic, then mockery. This is what young people are fond of, this is what inexperienced boys' hearts are subdued! And this infection has already spread far. I was told that in Rome our artists did not go to the Vatican: they think they are almost a fool, because it is, they say, authority, and they themselves are powerless and fruitless to the point of disgust; and their own fantasies are not enough beyond "The Girl at the Fountain", even what are you! And the girl is written badly. In your opinion, they well done, isn't it?

In my opinion, - objected the hero, - even Rafael is not worth a penny; and they are no better than him.

Bravo! Bravo! Listen, this is how the young people of today should express themselves. And how, you think, they can't follow you! Formerly young people had to learn; they did not want to pass for ignoramuses, so they involuntarily worked. And now they should say: everything in the world is nonsense! -- and it's in the hat. The young people rejoiced. And in fact, before they were just blockheads, and now they have suddenly become nihilists.

If you look at the novel from the point of view of its tendencies, then it is just as unsatisfactory from this side as it is from an artistic point of view. There is nothing to say about the quality of the trends yet, and most importantly, they are carried out very awkwardly, so that the author's goal is not achieved. Trying to cast an unfavorable shadow on the younger generation, the author got too excited, overstepped, as they say, and already began to invent such fables that they believe with great difficulty - and the accusation seems biased. But all the shortcomings of the novel are redeemed by one merit, which, however, has no artistic significance, which the author did not count on, and which, therefore, belongs to unconscious creativity. Poetry, of course, is always good and deserves full respect; but prosaic truth is not bad either, and it has a right to respect; we should rejoice in a work of art, which, although it does not give us poetry, but on the other hand promotes truth. In this sense, Mr. Turgenev's latest novel is an excellent thing; it does not give us poetic pleasure, it even affects the senses unpleasantly; but he is good in the sense that in him Mr. Turgenev revealed himself clearly and completely, and thereby revealed to us the true meaning of his former works, said without circumlocution and directness that last word of his, which, in his former works, was softened and obscured by various poetic embellishments and effects that hid its true meaning. Indeed, it was difficult to understand how Mr. Turgenev treated his Rudins and Hamlets, how he looked at their aspirations, extinguished and unfulfilled, due to their inaction and apathy and due to the influence of external circumstances. Our credulous criticism decided that he treated them with sympathy, sympathized with their aspirations; according to her concepts, the Rudins were people not of deeds, but of words, but words of good and reasonable; their spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak; they were propagandists who spread the light of sound concepts and, if not by deed, then by their word, aroused in others higher aspirations and interests; they taught and said how to act, even though they themselves lacked the strength to translate their teachings into practice, to fulfill their aspirations; they languished and fell at the very beginning of their activity. Criticism thought that Mr. Turgenev treated his heroes with touching sympathy, grieved for them and regretted that they died along with their wonderful aspirations, and made it clear that if they had willpower and energy, they could do a lot of good. And criticism had some right to such a decision; different positions the heroes were depicted with effect and affectation, which could easily be mistaken for real enthusiasm and sympathy; just as surely as in the epilogue of the last novel, which speaks eloquently of love and reconciliation, one might have thought that the love of the author himself extended to "children." But now we understand this love, and on the basis of Mr. Turgenev's last novel, we can positively say that criticism was mistaken in explaining his previous works, introduced their own thoughts into them, found meaning and significance that did not belong to the author himself, according to whose concepts the heroes his flesh was vigorous, but his spirit was weak, they did not have sound concepts, and their very aspirations were illegal, did not have faith, that is, they did not accept anything on faith, they doubted everything, had no love and feelings, and therefore, naturally, died fruitlessly . The protagonist of the last novel is the same Rudin, with some changes in style and expression; he is a new, modern hero, and therefore even more terrible than Rudin in his concepts and insensitive than him; he is a real asmodeus; time passed not in vain, and the heroes developed progressively in their bad qualities. The former heroes of Mr. Turgenev fit into the category of "children" of the new novel and must bear the entire burden of contempt, reproaches, reprimands and ridicule to which "children" are now subjected. One has only to read the last novel to be fully convinced of this; but our criticism, perhaps, will not want to admit its mistake; therefore, one must again begin to prove what is clear and without proof. We present only one proof. - It is known what Rudin and the nameless hero "Asia" did with their beloved women; they coldly pushed them away at the moment when they wholeheartedly, with love and passion, gave themselves to them and, so to speak, burst into their arms. Criticism scolded the heroes for this, called them sluggish people who did not have courageous energy, and said that a real reasonable and healthy man in their place would have acted completely differently. Meanwhile, for Mr. Turgenev himself, these actions were good. If the heroes had acted as our criticism requires, Mr. Turgenev would have called them low and immoral people, deserving of contempt. The protagonist of the last novel, as if on purpose, wanted to deal with the woman he loved precisely in the sense of criticism; on the other hand, Mr. Turgenev presented him as a dirty and vulgar cynic and forced the woman to turn away with contempt and even jump away from him "far into the corner." Similarly, in other cases, criticism usually praised the heroes of Mr. Turgenev, precisely what he himself seemed to be reprehensible and what he really reproaches in the "children" of the last novel, with which we will have the honor to acquaint ourselves with this very minute.

To put it in a scholarly style, the concept of the novel does not represent any artistic features and tricks, nothing intricate; its action is also very simple and takes place in 1859, therefore already in our time. The main thing actor, the first hero, a representative of the younger generation, is Evgeny Vasilyevich Bazarov, a physician, a young man, smart, diligent, knowing his job, self-confident to the point of insolence, but stupid, loving revelry and strong drinks, imbued with the wildest concepts and unreasonable to the point that his everything Fool, even simple peasants. He has no heart at all; he is as insensitive as a stone, cold as ice, and fierce as a tiger. He has a friend, Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov, a candidate of St. Petersburg University, of which faculty - it is not said, a young man sensitive, kind-hearted, with an innocent soul; unfortunately, he submitted to the influence of his friend Bazarov, who is trying in every possible way to dull the sensitivity of his heart, kill with his ridicule the noble movements of his soul and inspire him with contemptuous coldness towards everything; as soon as he discovers some sublime impulse, his friend will immediately besiege him with his contemptuous irony. Bazarov has a father and a mother; father, Vasily Ivanovich, an old physician, lives with his wife in his small estate; good old men love their Enyushenka to infinity. Kirsanov also has a father, a significant landowner who lives in the countryside; his wife is dead, and he lives with Fenechka, a sweet creature, the daughter of his housekeeper; his brother lives in his house, so his uncle Kiranova, Pavel Petrovich, is a bachelor in his youth, a metropolitan lion, and in old age - a village veil, endlessly immersed in worries about smartness, but an invincible dialectician, at every step striking Bazarov and his nephew. The action begins with the fact that young friends come to the village to Kirsanov's father, and Bazarov enters into an argument with Pavel Petrov, which immediately expresses his thoughts and his direction to him and hears from him a refutation of them. Then the friends go to the provincial town; there they met Sitnikov, a stupid fellow who was also under the influence of Bazarov, got acquainted with Eudoxie Kukshina, who is presented as an "advanced woman", "Imancipie * in true sense words". From there they went to the village to Anna Sergeevna Odintsova, the widow of a sublime, noble and aristocratic soul; Bazarov fell in love with her; but she, seeing his vulgar nature and cynical inclinations, almost drove him away from her. Kirsanov, who at first fell in love was in Odintsova, then fell in love with her sister Katya, who, with her influence on his heart, tried to eradicate traces of his friend's influence in him.Then the friends went to Bazarov's fathers, who greeted their son with the greatest joy; enjoy the presence of his son as long as possible, hastened to leave them, and together with a friend again went to the Kirsanovs.In the house of the Kirsanovs Bazars, like the ancient Paris8, he "violated all the rights of hospitality", kissed Fenichka, then fought in a duel with Pavel Petrovich and returned again to his fathers, where he died, calling Odintsova to him before his death and telling her several compliments already known to us about her appearance.Kirsanov married Katya and lives still.

That's all the external content of the novel, the formal side of its action and all the characters; all that remains now is to get to know the inner content, the tendencies, to know the innermost qualities of fathers and children. So what are the fathers, the old generation? As already noted above, the fathers are presented in the best possible way. I, Mr. Turgenev reasoned to himself, am not talking about those fathers and about that old generation, which is represented by the puffed-up Princess X ..., who could not stand youth and sulked at the "new frenzied" Bazarov and Arkady; I will portray the best fathers of the best generation. (Now it’s clear why Princess X .... oh is given two pages in the novel.) Kirsanov’s father, Nikolai Petrovich, is an exemplary person in all respects; he himself, despite his general origin, was brought up at the university and had a candidate's degree and gave his son a higher education; having lived almost to old age, he did not cease to take care of supplementing his own education. He used all his strength to keep up with the century, followed contemporary movements and questions; "lived three winters in St. Petersburg, almost never going anywhere and trying to make acquaintances with young son's comrades; spent whole days sitting on the latest writing, listening to conversations young people and rejoiced when he managed to insert his own word into their ebullient speeches "(p. 523). Nikolai Petrovich did not like Bazarov, but conquered his dislike," willingly listened to him, willingly attended his physical and chemical experiments; he would come every day, as he put it, to study, if it were not for household chores; he did not constrain the young natural scientist: he would sit somewhere in a corner of the room and look attentively, occasionally allowing himself a cautious question "(p. 606). He wanted to get close to the younger generation, to be imbued with its interests, so that together with him, amicably, hand in hand But the younger generation rudely pushed him away from himself. He wanted to get along with his son in order to begin his rapprochement with the younger generation from him; but Bazarov prevented this, he tried to humiliate his father in the eyes of his son and thereby interrupted all moral “We,” the father said to his son, “we will live happily with you, Arkasha; we need to get close to each other now, get to know each other well, don't we?" But whatever they talk about among themselves, Arkady always begins to sharply contradict his father, who attributes this - and quite rightly - to the influence of Bazarov. Father , for example, tells his son about his love for his native places: you were born here, everything should seem to you something special here. "Well, dad," the son answers, "it's completely the same, no matter where a person is born." These the words upset the father, and he looked at his son not directly, but "from the side" and stopped talking. But the son still loves his father and does not lose hope of ever getting closer to him. "My father," he says to Bazarov, " golden man. "-" It's amazing, - he answers, - these old romantics! Develop in yourself nervous system filial love spoke up in Arcadia, he stands up for his father, says that his friend still does not know him enough. But Bazarov killed in him the last remnant of filial love with the following contemptuous response: “Your father is a good fellow but he is a retired man, his song is sung. He reads Pushkin. Explain to him that this is no good. After all, he is not a boy: it's time to quit this nonsense. Give him something sensible, at least Buchner's Stoff und Kraft **9 for the first time. "The son fully agreed with the words of his friend and felt regret and contempt for his father. The father accidentally overheard this conversation, which struck him to the very heart, insulted him to the depths soul, killed in him all energy, all desire for rapprochement with the younger generation; he lowered his hands, frightened by the abyss that separated him from young people. "Well," he said after that, "maybe Bazarov is right ; but one thing hurts me: I hoped to get close and friendly with Arkady, but it turns out that I stayed behind, he went ahead, and we cannot understand each other. It seems that I am doing everything to keep up with the times: I arranged for the peasants, started a farm, so that I was in the whole province red dignify; I read, I study, in general I try to become on a level with contemporary needs and they say that my song is sung. Yes, I myself am beginning to think so "(p. 514). These are the harmful actions that the arrogance and intolerance of the younger generation produces; one trick of the boy struck down the giant, he doubted his strength and saw the futility of his efforts to lag behind the century. Thus, the younger generation due to his own fault, he lost the assistance and support of a person who could be a very useful figure, because he was gifted with many wonderful qualities that young people lack.Youth is cold, selfish, has no poetry in itself and therefore hates it everywhere, has no moral convictions; whereas this man had a poetic soul and, despite the fact that he knew how to set up a farm, retained his poetic fervor to old age, and most importantly, was imbued with the strongest moral convictions.

"The slow sounds of the cello flew to them (Arkady with Bazarov) from home at that very moment. Someone played with feeling, albeit with an inexperienced hand Expectation Schubert, and a sweet melody poured through the air like honey.

What's this? said Bazarov in astonishment.

This is the father.

Does your father play the cello?

Yes, how old is your father?

Forty four.

Bazarov suddenly burst out laughing.

What are you laughing at?

Have mercy! at forty-four years old, a man, pater familias *** in ... county - plays the cello!

Bazarov continued to laugh; but Arkady, no matter how much he revered his teacher, did not even smile this time.

Nikolai Petrovich lowered his head and passed his hand over his face.

"But to reject poetry?" thought Nikolai Petrovich, "not to sympathize with art, with nature!" (How the youth do it.)

And he looked around, as if wishing to understand how one could not sympathize with nature. It was already evening; the sun hid behind a small aspen grove that lay half a verst from the garden: its shadow stretched endlessly across the motionless fields. A peasant was trotting on a white horse along a dark narrow path along the grove itself: he was all clearly visible, all up to the patch on his shoulder, even though he rode in the shade "(a patch is a picturesque, poetic thing, against which one speaks, but at the sight she is not dreamed of, but it is thought that without a patch it would be better, albeit less poetic); "pleasant, distinctly flashed the horse's legs. The rays of the sun, for their part, climbed into the grove and, breaking through the thicket, doused the aspen trunks with such a warm light that they became like pine trunks (from the warmth of the light?), and their foliage almost turned blue (also from the warmth?), and above it a pale blue sky was rising, slightly flushed with the dawn. The swallows flew high; the wind stopped completely; belated bees buzzed lazily and drowsily in the lilac flowers; midges huddled in a column over a lonely, far-stretched branch. "How good; my God!" thought Nikolai Petrovich, and his favorite poems came to his lips: he remembered Arkady, Stoff und Kraft, and fell silent, but continued to sit, continued to indulge in the sorrowful and gratifying game of lonely thoughts.

He got up and wanted to return home; but his softened heart could not calm down in his chest, and he began to slowly walk around the garden, now looking thoughtfully at his feet, now raising his eyes to the sky, where the stars were already swarming and winking. He walked a lot, almost to the point of fatigue, but the anxiety in him, some kind of searching, indefinite, sad anxiety still did not subside. Oh, how Bazarov would laugh at him if he knew what was going on in him then! Arkady himself would have condemned him. He, a forty-four-year-old man, an agronomist and a landlord, was welling up with tears, unreasonable tears; it was a hundred times worse than the cello" (pp. 524--525).

And such and such a person was pushed away by the youth and even prevented him from reciting his "favorite verses." But his main merit lay nevertheless in his strict morality. After the death of his dearly beloved wife, he decided to live with Fenechka, probably after a stubborn and lengthy struggle with himself; he was constantly tormented and ashamed of himself, felt remorse and reproaches of conscience until he was legally married to Fenechka. He sincerely and frankly confessed to his son his sin, his unlawful cohabitation before marriage. And what? It turned out that the younger generation had no moral convictions on this score at all; the son took it into his head to assure his father that it was nothing, that living with Fenechka before marriage was not at all a reprehensible act, that this was the most common thing, that, consequently, the father was falsely and vainly ashamed. Such words deeply revolted the moral sense of the father. And yet in Arcadia there still remained a particle of consciousness of moral obligations, and he found that his father must certainly enter into a legal marriage with Fenechka. But his friend, Bazarov, destroyed this particle with his irony. "Hey, hey!" he said to Arkady. It is clear how after that Arkady looked at his father's act.

“A strict moralist,” the father said to his son, “will find my frankness inappropriate, but, firstly, this cannot be hidden, and secondly, you know, I have always had special principles about the relationship of father to son. However, , of course, you will have the right to condemn me. At my age ... In a word, this ... this girl, about whom you probably already heard ...

Fenechka? asked Arkady casually.

Nikolai Petrovich blushed.

Of course, I should be ashamed,” said Nikolai Petrovich, blushing more and more.

All right, daddy, all right, do me a favor! Arkady smiled kindly. "What an apology!" he thought to himself, and a feeling of condescending tenderness for his kind and gentle father, mingled with a feeling of some secret superiority filled his soul. "Stop, please," he repeated once more, involuntarily enjoying consciousness own development and freedom" (pp. 480--481).

“Perhaps,” said the father, “and she supposes ... she is ashamed ...

She's really ashamed. Firstly, you know my way of thinking (Arkady was very pleased to utter these words), and secondly, would I even want to restrict your life, your habits, even by a hair? Besides, I'm sure you couldn't have made a bad choice; if you let her live under the same roof with you, then she deserves it; in any case, a son is not a judge of a father, and especially I, and especially a father like you, who never hindered my freedom in anything.

Arkady's voice trembled at first, he felt magnanimous, but at the same time he understood that he was reading something like an admonition to his father; but the sound of his own speeches has a strong effect on a person, and Arkady uttered last words firmly, even with effect!" (eggs teach chicken) (p. 489).

Bazarov's father and mother are even better, even kinder than Arkady's parent. The father just as certainly does not want to lag behind the century; and the mother lives only by love for her son and the desire to please him. Their common, tender affection for Enyushenka is depicted by Mr. Turgenev in a very captivating and lively way; here are the most best pages throughout the novel. But the contempt with which Enyushenka pays for their love, and the irony with which he regards their gentle caresses, seems all the more disgusting to us. Arkady - one can see that he is a kind soul - stands up for his friend's parents, but he ridicules him too. “I,” says Bazarov’s father, Vasily Ivanovich, about himself, “of the opinion that for a thinking person there is no backwater. At least I try not to overgrow, as they say, with moss, to keep up with the century.” Despite his advanced years, he is ready to help anyone with his medical advice and means; in illness, everyone turns to him, and he satisfies everyone as best he can. “After all,” he says, “I refused to practice, and once or twice a week I have to shake the old days. They go for advice - you can’t drive it in the neck. It happens that the poor resort to help. oppression10, I poured in opium, and pulled out another tooth. And this I do gratis****" (p. 586). "I idolize my son; but I dare not express my feelings in front of him, because he does not like it." His wife loved her son "and was afraid of him unspeakably." “Look now how Bazarov treats them.

"Today they are waiting for me at home," he said to Arkady. he immediately sent him away, saying that he wanted to sleep, but he himself did not fall asleep until morning. With wide eyes, he looked angrily into the darkness: childhood memories had no power over him" (p. 584). “One day my father began to tell his memoirs.

I have experienced many, many things in my lifetime. For example, if I may, I will tell you a curious episode of the plague in Bessarabia.

For which he received Vladimir? said Bazarov. - We know, we know... By the way, why don't you wear it?

After all, I told you that I have no prejudices, - muttered Vasily Ivanovich (only the day before he ordered to tear the red ribbon from his coat), and began to tell the episode of the plague. “But he fell asleep,” he suddenly whispered to Arkady, pointing to Bazarov and winking good-naturedly. -- Evgeniy! get up! - he added loudly "(what cruelty! to fall asleep from the stories of his father!) (p. 596).

“Here you go! A very amusing old man,” added Bazarov, as soon as Vasily Ivanovich left. “The same eccentric as yours, only in a different way. “He talks a lot.

And your mother seems to beautiful woman Arkady remarked.

Yes, I have it without cunning. Let's see what kind of dinner we will ask.

Not! - he said the next day to Arkady, - I will leave here tomorrow. Boring; I want to work, but I can't. I will go back to your village; I left all my drugs there. At least you can lock yourself up. And here my father keeps telling me: "My office is at your service - no one will interfere with you," but he himself is not a step away from me. Yes, and ashamed to somehow lock himself away from him. Well, so does the mother. I hear her sigh behind the wall, and you go out to her and she has nothing to say.

She will be very upset,” said Arkady, “and he too.

I will return to them.

Yes, that's how I'm going to Petersburg.

I feel sorry for your mother.

What's wrong? Berries, or what, did she please you?

Arkady lowered his eyes" (p. 598).

That's what (fathers! They, in contrast to children, are imbued with love and poetry, they are moral people, modestly and secretly doing good deeds; they never want to lag behind the century. stilts and exposed by a beautiful man. "For him, youth has passed, but old age has not yet come; he retained youthful harmony and that aspiration upward, away from the earth, which for the most part disappears after the twenties." This is a man also with soul and poetry; in his youth he loved passionately, with sublime love, one lady, "in whom there was something cherished and inaccessible, where no one could penetrate, and that nestled in this soul - God knows, "and which looks a lot like Ms. Svechina. When she stopped loving him, he seemed to die for the world, but sacredly kept his love, did not fall in love another time," did not expect anything special either from himself or from others , and did nothing, "and therefore remained to live in the village with his brother. But he did not live uselessly, he read a lot," he was distinguished by impeccable honesty, "he loved his brother, helped him with his means and wise advice. When, it happened, a brother would get angry with the peasants and wants to punish them, Pavel Petrovich stood up for them and said to him: "du calme, du calme" ***** He was distinguished by curiosity and always followed Bazarov's experiments with the most intense attention, despite the fact that he had every right to hate Pavel Petrovich's best decoration was and his morality. - Bazarov liked Fenechka, "and Fenechka liked Bazarov"; "once he kissed her firmly on her open lips," by which he "violated all the rights of hospitality" and all the rules of morality. "Fenechka herself, although she rested both hands on his chest, but rested weakly, and he could resume and prolong his kiss" (p. 611). Pavel Petrovich was even in love with Fenechka, several times he came to her room "for nothing", several times he remained alone with her; but he was not low enough to kiss her. On the contrary, he was so prudent that because of a kiss he fought with Bazarov in a duel, so noble that only once "he pressed her hand to his lips, and so clung to her, not kissing her and only occasionally convulsively sighing" (literally so , p. 625), and finally he was so selfless that he said to her: "love my brother, do not cheat on him for anyone in the world, do not listen to anyone's speeches"; and, in order not to be tempted by Fenechka any longer, he went abroad, "where he can be seen even now in Dresden on the Bryulevskaya terrace11, between two and four o'clock" (p. 661). And this intelligent, respectable man proudly treats Bazarov, does not even give him a hand, and to self-forgetfulness plunges into worries about smartness, anoints himself with incense, flaunts English suits, fezzes and tight collars, "with inexorability resting on the chin"; his nails are so pink and clean, "even send them to an exhibition." After all, it's all ridiculous, said Bazarov, - and it's true. Of course, slovenliness is not good either; but also excessive worries about panache show in a person emptiness and lack of seriousness. Can such a person be inquisitive, can he, with his incense, with his white hands and pink nails, seriously take up the study of something dirty or stinking? Mr. Turgenev himself expressed this about his favorite Pavel Petrovich: "once even he brought his face perfumed and washed with an excellent drug to the microscope in order to see how a transparent ciliate swallowed a green speck." What a feat, think; but if under the microscope there was not an infusoria, but some thing - fi! - if it were necessary to take it with fragrant pens, Pavel Petrovich would give up his curiosity; he would not even have entered Bazarov's room if there had been a very strong medical-surgical smell in it. And such and such a person is passed off as a serious, thirsty for knowledge; What a contradiction! why the unnatural combination of properties that exclude one another - emptiness and seriousness? What are you, the reader, slow-witted; Yes, it was necessary for the trend. Remember that the old generation is inferior to the youth in that there are "more traces of nobility" in it; but this, of course, is unimportant and trifling; but in essence the old generation is closer to the truth and more serious than the young. It is this idea of ​​the seriousness of the old generation with traces of nobility in the form of a face washed with an excellent drug, and in tight collars, that is Pavel Petrovich. This also explains the inconsistencies in the depiction of Bazarov's character. The trend demands: in the younger generation there are fewer traces of nobility; in the novel, therefore, it is said that Bazarov aroused confidence in the lower people, they became attached to him and loved him, seeing in him not a gentleman. Another trend demands: the younger generation understands nothing, can do nothing good for the fatherland; the novel fulfills this requirement, saying that Bazarov was not even able to speak clearly with the peasants, and not even to arouse confidence in himself; they mocked him, seeing in him the stupidity bestowed on him by the author. The trend, the trend, has ruined the whole thing—"the Frenchman is shitting everything!"

So, the high advantages of the old generation over the young are undoubted; but they will be even more certain when we consider in more detail the qualities of the "children." What are "children"? Of those "children" who are bred in the novel, only one Bazarov seems to be an independent and intelligent person; under what influences the character of Bazarov was formed is not clear from the novel; it is also unknown where he borrowed his beliefs from and what conditions favored the development of his way of thinking. If Mr. Turgenev had thought about these questions, he would certainly have changed his ideas about fathers and children. Mr. Turgenev said nothing about the part that the study of the natural sciences, which constituted his specialty, could take in the development of the hero. He says that the hero took a certain direction in his way of thinking as a result of sensation; what it means is impossible to understand; but in order not to offend the philosophical insight of the author, we see in this feeling simply only poetic wit. Be that as it may, Bazarov's thoughts are independent, they belong to him, to his own activity of the mind; he is a teacher; other "children" of the novel, stupid and empty, listen to him and only repeat his words senselessly. In addition to Arcadia, such, for example. Sitnikov, whom the author, at every opportunity, reproaches with the fact that his "father is all paid off." Sitnikov considers himself a student of Bazarov and owes his rebirth to him: “Would you believe it,” he said, “that when Yevgeny Vasilyevich said in my presence that he should not recognize authorities, I felt such delight ... as if I had seen the light! Here, I thought I finally found a man! Sitnikov told the teacher about Eudoxie Kukshina, a model of modern daughters. Bazarov then only agreed to go to her when the student assured him that she would have a lot of champagne. They set off. "In the hall they were met by some sort of maid, or a companion in a cap—obvious signs of the hostess's progressive aspirations," Mr. Turgenev sarcastically remarks. Other signs were as follows: “on the table lay the numbers of Russian magazines, mostly uncut; cigarette butts were white everywhere; Sitnikov collapsed in his armchair and lifted his

ASMODAEUS OF OUR TIME. (FATHERS AND CHILDREN. ROMAN TURGENEV)

To put it in a scholarly style, the concept of the novel does not represent any artistic features and tricks, nothing intricate; its action is also very simple and takes place in 1859, therefore, in our time. The main protagonist, the first hero, a representative of the younger generation, is Yevgeny Vasilyevich Bazarov, a physician, a smart, diligent young man who knows his business, self-confident to the point of insolence, but stupid, loving revelry and strong drinks, imbued with the wildest concepts and unreasonable to the point that everyone fools him, even ordinary men. He has no heart at all; he is insensitive - like a stone, cold - like ice and fierce - like a tiger. He has a friend, Arkady Nikolaevich Kirsanov, a candidate of St. Petersburg University, which faculty - it is not said - a sensitive, kind-hearted young man with an innocent soul; unfortunately, he submitted to the influence of his friend Bazarov, who is trying in every possible way to dull the sensitivity of his heart, kill his soul and inspire him with contemptuous coldness towards everything ...

Bazarov has a father and a mother; Father Vasily Ivanovich, an old physician, lives with his wife in his small estate; good old men love their Enyushenka to infinity. Kirsanov also has a father, a significant landowner who lives in the countryside; his wife is dead, and he lives with Fenechka, a sweet creature, the daughter of his housekeeper; his brother lives in his house, therefore, uncle Kirsanov, Pavel Petrovich, a bachelor, in his youth a metropolitan lion, and in old age - a village veil, endlessly immersed in worries about smartness, but an invincible dialectician, at every step striking Bazarov and his nephew. What are the fathers, the old generation? As noted above, the fathers are presented in the best possible way. Kirsanov's father, Nikolai Petrovich, is an exemplary person in all respects; he himself, despite his general origin, was brought up at the university and had a candidate's degree and gave his son a higher education; having lived almost to old age, he did not cease to take care of supplementing his own education. He used all his strength to keep up with the times, followed contemporary movements and issues; “he lived three winters in St. Petersburg, almost never going anywhere and trying to make acquaintances with his son’s young comrades ...

Nikolai Petrovich did not like Bazarov, but he conquered his dislike, “willingly listened to him, willingly attended his physical and chemical experiments; he would come every day, as he put it, to study, if it were not for household chores; he did not embarrass the young naturalist: he would sit somewhere in a corner of the room and look intently, occasionally allowing himself a cautious question. He wanted to get closer to the younger generation, imbued with its interests, so that together with him, together, hand in hand, go towards a common goal. But the younger generation rudely pushed him away. He wanted to get along with his son in order to start his rapprochement with the younger generation from him; but Bazarov prevented this, he tried to humiliate the father in the eyes of his son and thereby interrupted all moral connection between them. “My father,” he says to Bazarov, “is a golden man!” - “It's amazing,” he answers, “these old romantics! They will develop the nervous system in themselves to the point of irritation, well, the balance is disturbed. Sons of love spoke in Arcadia, he stands up for his father, says that his friend does not yet know him enough. But Bazarov killed in him the last remnant of filial love with the following contemptuous review: “Your father is a kind fellow, but he is a retired man, his song is sung. He reads Pushkin. Explain to him that this is no good. After all, he is not a boy: it's time to quit this nonsense.

The son fully agreed with the words of his friend and felt pity and contempt for his father. Father accidentally overheard this conversation, which struck him to the very heart, offended him to the depths of his soul, killed all his energy, all desire for rapprochement with the younger generation; he dropped his hands, frightened by the abyss that separated him from the young people. “Well,” he said after that, “maybe Bazarov is right; but one thing hurts me: I hoped to get close and friendly with Arkady, but it turns out that I stayed behind, and he went ahead, and we cannot understand each other. It seems that I am doing everything to keep up with the times: I arranged for peasants, started a farm, so that they call me red in the whole province; I read, study, in general I try to become up to date with modern needs, and they say that my song is sung. Yes, I'm starting to think the same." These are the harmful effects produced by the arrogance and intolerance of the younger generation; one trick of the boy struck down the giant, he doubted his strength and saw the futility of his efforts to keep up with the century. Thus, through their own fault, the younger generation was deprived of assistance and support from a person who could be a very useful figure, because he was gifted with many excellent qualities that the youth lacks. Young people are cold, selfish, have no higher moral convictions; while this man had a poetic soul and, despite the fact that he knew how to set up a farm, retained his poetic fervor until his advanced years, and, most importantly, was imbued with the strongest moral convictions.

Bazarov's father and mother are even better, even kinder than Arkady's parent. The father just as certainly does not want to lag behind the century; and the mother lives only by love for her son and the desire to please him. Their common, tender affection for Enyushenka is depicted by Mr. Turgenev in a very captivating and lively way; here are the best pages in the whole novel. But the contempt with which Enyushenka pays for their love, and the irony with which he regards their gentle caresses, seems all the more disgusting to us.

That's what fathers are! They, in contrast to children, are imbued with love and poetry, they are moral people, modestly and secretly doing good deeds; they never want to be behind the times. Even such an empty veil as Pavel Petrovich, and he was raised on stilts and displayed by a beautiful person. What are the "children"? Of those "children" who are bred in the novel, only one Bazarov seems to be an independent and intelligent person; under what influences the character of Bazarov was formed, it is not clear from the novel, it is also unknown where he borrowed his convictions from and what conditions favored the development of his way of thinking. Be that as it may, Bazarov's thoughts are independent, they belong to him, to his own activity of the mind; he is a teacher; other "children" of the novel, stupid and empty, listen to him and only repeat his words senselessly.

We will now deal with this best specimen of the younger generation. As said above, he appears as a cold person, incapable of love, or even of the most ordinary affection; even a woman he cannot love with the poetic love that is so attractive in the old generation. If, at the request of an animal feeling, he loves a woman, then he will love only her body; he even hates the soul in a woman; he says, “that she does not need to understand a serious conversation at all, and that only freaks think freely among women.”

We will not defend the young male generation; it really is and is as depicted in the novel. So we agree exactly that the old generation is not at all embellished, but is presented as it really is, with all its respectable qualities. We just don't understand why Mr. Turgenev gives preference to the old generation; the younger generation of his novel is in no way inferior to the old. Their qualities are different, but the same in degree and dignity; as fathers are, so are children; fathers to children are traces of nobility. We will not defend the younger generation and attack the old, but only try to prove the correctness of this formula of equality. The youth pushes away the old generation, this is very bad, harmful to the cause and does not do honor to the youth. But why does the older generation, more prudent and experienced, not take measures against repulsion, and why does it not try to win over the youth? Nikolai Petrovich, a respectable, intelligent man, wanted to get closer to the younger generation, but when he heard the boy call him retired, he frowned, began to lament his backwardness, and immediately realized the futility of his efforts to keep up with the times. What kind of weakness is this? If he realized his justice, if he understood the aspirations of the youth and sympathized with them, then it would be easy for him to win over his son to his side. And in alliance with Pavel Petrovich, an invincible dialect, he could even convert Bazarov himself; after all, it’s only difficult to teach and retrain old people, and youth is very receptive and mobile, and you can’t think that Bazarov would renounce the truth if it were shown and proved to him? Mr. Turgenev and Pavel Petrovich exhausted all their wit in arguing with Bazarov and did not skimp on harsh and insulting expressions; Bazarov, however, did not lose his drink, did not become embarrassed, and remained unconvinced in his opinions, in spite of all the objections of his opponents, probably because the objections were bad. So, "fathers" and "children" are equally right and wrong in mutual repulsion; “children” repel their fathers, but these passively move away from them and do not know how to attract them to themselves; equality is complete. In calm times, when movement is slow, development is underway gradually, on the basis of old principles, the disagreements of the old generation with the new concern unimportant things, the contradictions between “fathers” and “children” cannot be too sharp, therefore the very struggle between them has a calm character and does not go beyond certain limited limits. But in busy times, when development takes a bold and significant step forward or turns sharply to the side, when the old principles turn out to be untenable and completely different conditions and requirements of life arise in their place - then this struggle takes on significant volumes and sometimes expresses itself in the most tragically. The new teaching appears in the form of an unconditional negation of everything old; it declares an irreconcilable struggle against old views and traditions, moral rules, habits and way of life. The difference between the old and the new is so sharp that, at least at first, agreement and reconciliation between them is impossible. At such times, family ties seem to weaken, brother rebels against brother, son against father; if the father remains with the old, and the son turns to the new, or vice versa, discord is inevitable between them. A son cannot waver between his love for his father and his convictions; the new teaching, with visible cruelty, requires him to leave his father, mother, brothers and sisters, and be true to himself, his convictions, his vocation and the rules of the new teaching, and follow these rules steadily.

Excuse me, Mr. Turgenev, you did not know how to define your task; instead of depicting the relationship between "fathers" and "children", you wrote a panegyric for "fathers" and a rebuke for "children"; and you didn’t understand the “children” either, and instead of denunciation, you came up with slander. You wanted to present the spreaders of sound concepts among the younger generation as corrupters of youth, sowers of discord and evil, who hate goodness - in a word, Asmodeans.

(No Ratings Yet)

1. Cross-Cutting Themes Writer and character: the relationship problem. (Based on the cycle of stories by I. S. Turgenev “Notes of a Hunter”, novels by I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons” and M. Yu. Lermontov “A Hero of Our Time”)...
2. The meaning of the title of the novel by I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons” I. “Fathers and Sons” is the first in Russian literature ideological novel, a novel-dialogue about the social prospects of Russia. 1. Artistic and moral insight ...
3. Alas, on the reins of life With an instant harvest, generations Ascend, mature and fall; Others follow them. A. S. Pushkin For the first time, Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” was published in 1862 ...
4. How does Bazarov allegorically emphasize the difference between himself and Arkady Kirsanov (based on I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”)? To build a reasoning on the proposed topic, refer to the observations of researchers on parallels ...
5. The problem of lack of understanding between representatives of different generations is as ancient as the world. "Fathers" condemn and do not understand their own "children". And those trying to defend their own positions at any cost, completely rejecting everything positive, ...
6. The connection of the novel with the era (50s of the 19th century) is the recent defeat in the war with Turkey, the change of reign. A camp of raznochintsy appears, who proclaim the need to get a profession in order to be able to have the means to ...
7. The novel by I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons” reflected the social atmosphere that prevailed the day before peasant reform 1861, when a diverse intelligentsia appeared in Russia. These were people who came from poorer strata of society: ...
8. WHAT DID I. S. TURGENEV’S NOVEL “FATHERS AND CHILDREN” MAKE ME THINK ABOUT? Every person must educate himself. I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons” is one of the best works great...
9. When reading the novel by I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons”, a not too thoughtful reader may ask himself the question: “Bazarov is a positive or negative hero?”. But, of course, this question cannot be answered unequivocally ....
10. The novel “Fathers and Sons” was written at the junction of two eras, and it reflects the main ideas of the nobles and raznochintsy-democrats and the contradictions that separate them. The protagonist of the novel, Bazarov, is...
11. The novel by I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons” contains a large number of conflicts in general. These include love conflict, clash of worldviews of two generations, social conflict and internal conflict of the main ...
12. The image of Bazarov is contradictory and complex, he is torn apart by doubts, he is experiencing mental trauma, primarily due to the fact that he rejects the natural principle. The theory of life of Bazarov, this extremely practical person, physician and ...
13. The ability to sensitively guess the problems and contradictions that have matured in Russian society is an important distinguishing feature of Turgenev as a novelist. In the work “Fathers and Sons” (1861), the era preceding the abolition of serfdom is recreated. In an environment...
14. It seems that the internal struggle between parents and children is an eternal unsolvable problem. She is quite often mentioned by many writers, but I. S. Turgenev paid special attention to her, writing the great ...
15. After its publication in 1862, Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" caused a flurry of critical articles. None of the public camps accepted Turgenev's new work. Liberal criticism is not...
16. “If we can be Rudins, Bazarovs, if we tirelessly propagate the idea of ​​destroying the old, then in the future people of real business will appear or we ourselves will gain a lot of experience.” Fatih Amirkhan. Here...
17. The work of the remarkable writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev is a hymn to high, inspired, poetic love. It is enough to recall the works “Rudin” (1856), “Asya” (1857), “First Love” (1860), and you understand that love ...
18. Russian literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century The problem of fathers and children in the novel “Fathers and Sons” by I. S. Turgenev I. S. Turgenev spent almost his entire life abroad, in Europe, ...
19. Arkady and Bazarov are very different people, and the friendship that has arisen between them is all the more surprising. Despite belonging to the same era, young people are very different. It should be noted that they originally belonged ...
20. Russian literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century The meaning of the title and the problems of the novel by I. S. Turgenev “Fathers and Sons” The title of the novel by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev reflects the main problem of the whole work - the conflict ...
21. "Fathers and Sons" is one of eternal works Russian literature. And not only because new generations of readers perceive the difficult position of the author differently, but also because the novel captures ...
22. I. S. Turgenev and N. G. Chernyshevsky are writers of the second half of the 19th century. Both authors were engaged in social and political activities, were employees of the journals Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski. N. G. Chernyshevsky was an ideological ...
The novel by I. S. Turgenev reflected the struggle of two socio-political camps that had developed in Russia by the 60s of the XIX century. The writer conveyed in the novel a typical conflict of the era and put a series of actual problems, in... Plan 1. Women's images in Fathers and Sons. 2. The image of Anna Sergeevna. 3. Bazarov's love for Odintsova as evidence of the inconsistency of his life position. Female images in Turgenev's novel "Fathers...
23. It is known that half of the poetic lines of “Woe from Wit” by A. S. Griboedov became proverbs, as A. S. Pushkin predicted. There is nothing to say about the fables of I. A. Krylov. But in Russian...
24. The most outstanding female figures in Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" are Anna Sergeevna Odintsova, Fenechka and Kukshina. These three images are extremely unlike each other, but nevertheless ...