Turgenev's Fathers and Sons

So Fathers and Sons is a novel written by the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. It was published in 1862. The story centers around Bazarov—a self-proclaimed nihilist—who has journeyed from school to the home of his friend, where his outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off all sorts of quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements. Turgenev meant the various views being expressed to reflect the changes taking place across all of nineteenth-century Russia. Fathers and Sons is one of the greatest works of literature of the 19th century and a strong contender for the first true Russian novel. 

So Bazarov is most often considered the central character in the novel. And what he does is he embodies the central idea of nihilism. Now nihilism is being used here as a sort of life-view which involves the rejection of anything that has traditionally been accepted as valuable or good or important. It’s a view that rejects all traditional institutions and forms of authority. And importantly, it’s a view that denies and destroys, without at all building anything new in its place.

Now Bazarov himself, who’s a young medical researcher, the only thing that he has faith in, is science, and so it’s only the laws of natural science that have any validity for him, it’s only that which can be scientifically proven that matters to him. Everything else is romantic rubbish! In other words, he’s a hardcore empiricist. 

And he’s also extremely reductive in his scientific approach to things. If it can’t be reduced to quantitative measurement it doesn’t exist. Bazarov loves to spend his time under the microscope dissecting the bodies of frogs for his studies, and he even performs autopsies, actually he eventually dies from this, and we’ll get to this later. 

And I should add too that he’s not only all about science but he’s also about incessant argument. He’s an intellectual. He loves to try to persuade others. He’s uncouth and forthright and stubborn and intolerant. 

Ok now I think that what Turgenev is doing in creating this character Bazarov is he’s suggesting to us what is, well, what is ultimately degenerative. Actually you know, before I continue I should emphasize something. I say he’s pointing out what’s degenerative in Bazarov’s outlook, but I have to make clear that he’s not preaching this to us. No, Turgenev’s actually a very objective writer and doesn’t explicitly take sides, you know like someone like Tolstoy might. But that said, I still do think that he is hinting that there’s something deeply problematic going on here.  In other words, I think he’s suggesting that science, rationalism, nihilism, over-intellectualization, and too much argument, these are all unhealthy and degenerative forces. And so I think that what Turgenev sees as most important, as most existentially healthy, is actually the opposite of everything that Bazarov stands for. So, for example, family, children, the arts, music, love, the beauty of nature - this is the stuff that truly matters, despite the fact that some of it may be traditional and despite the fact that some of it defies analysis or isn’t susceptible to reduction.  

Actually you know what, I said the beauty of nature, why don’t I spend some time on that, cause it might be instructive. So one of the things that’s really interesting is that Bazarov doesn’t see nature as poetic, or beautiful or enchanted. No, he sees it as a hardcore botanist would see it. Nature, in other words, is treated as a workshop. Nature, that is, is worked on, classified, reduced to its parts. So what Bazarov doesn’t see, is he doesn’t see nature as flowing, as holistic, as regenerative, or as cyclical. He sees it instead, as static micro units, in their smallest discernible parts. Ok now why is this a potentially destructive, unhealthy attitude or outlook to take towards nature? Well because to not see nature as a vast current of life that flows around us and of which we ourselves are a part of, is really to cut us off from the continuity between all things, including each other. It’s to see ourselves as isolated clumps of atoms in an indifferent universe! And ultimately this is how Bazarov sees himself, and it explains his despair. I mean if you don’t believe me, let’s listen to the poor man himself: Echoing Pascal over 200 years before him, he says:

“I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... What chaos! What a farce!”

So notice, nothing has any relation to him, he says. Everything is separate from everything else. Nothing is connected. And death means sure oblivion. 

Now I think part of what Turgenev is suggesting to us is that this is the price you pay if you take an overly empirical and reductive, rational, and positivistic outlook. This is how science and rationalism can be degenerative. It leaves you all alone, without any connective tissue, and without meaning! This is Bazarov. He’s solipsistic, alone, preoccupied with self, largely incapable of connecting and loving, and living in a denuded world. There is little magic in his world, no enchantment. I mean at one point he says, “Man is only a frog that walks on legs.” Can he make his outlook on life any clearer than this?! 

Now things are very different for the more poetical, nature loving characters in the novel. For those who see nature in a larger, more holistic and beautiful way they’re less preoccupied with self. They’re less cut off from others. And because they see nature as a regenerative force, because they see themselves as part of something much larger, their death doesn’t mean simple oblivion. 

Actually you know what, it might not be what Turgenev had in mind exactly, but I think it’s possible to draw a similar sort of consolation and reverence from taking a certain view of our cosmos and everything we know about it today. I mean we know now that most of the elements that make up our bodies were formed in stars over the course of billions of years and multiple star lifetimes. And some of the hydrogen and lithium in us originated from the Big Bang itself. So, as Carl Sagan once said, we’re made of stardust, dust as old as the universe itself. So from a certain point of view, we’re not a finite, isolated entity in a vast void, no we’re all 13.7 billion years old, inextricably a part of everything else, all sharing a common source, a cosmic origin. And from this point of view, our own personal death then is not just an end, but it’s also a gateway to new life, just like a supernova! 

Anyway, so back to the novel and Bazarov. So I wanted to say one last thing. And it has to do with Bazarov’s arguing, disputatious nature and his resistance to the world outside of him. Again, I think this is suggestive. I don’t know, there’s something desperate and unhealthy about constantly trying to persuade or debate others. It’s egocentric in that what it’s doing is it’s pitting the self in opposition to all that is not self. Everyone is wrong, because they’re not me! There’s no tolerance here, no sensitivity and so no connection to, and learning from, the world outside of oneself. 

I don’t know, maybe this is a consequence of Bazarov’s nihilism. Where he doubts and questions pretty much everything, everything except himself. Where he doesn’t believe the world outside of him has anything to offer him in terms of meaning and connection. But here’s the thing. The world is bigger and stronger than the nihilist! Try as they might, ultimately the nihilist just can’t shut out a world brimming over with beauty and light and meaning and insight. Values, that is, not of the nihilist’s own making. Eventually the world will persist and reveal itself as more than its material substrate!

And so it happens with Bazarov. Despite himself and against all his principles and his reductive rationalism, Bazarov is finally passionately struck by a woman’s beauty and falls in love with her. But she refuses him and he suffers. And not long after, he dies as a result of an infection he got while performing an autopsy. Now, Typhoid got him, sure. But even if it hadn’t, a broken heart might have. That damn romantic rubbish!