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Introduction
The Momentum of Byronism
Terms of engagement
Turgenev: biography
Early upbringing
Early influences
Developing lifestyle
Exile, repatriation, death
Turgenev and political turbulence
Slavophiles and Westernizers
Forces of negation
Byronic influence through others
Pushkin and Lermontov
Anarchists and early nihilists
Fathers and Sons: from the source
Bazarov as nihilist?
Bazarov as Romantic hero?
Conclusion
Bazarov as Byronic negator and idealist
Bibliography
Turgenev never admitted to consciously attempting a Byronic lifestyle, unlike Pushkin and Lermontov who readily admitted their Byronic influences. His lifestyle, however, sometimes reflects a Byronic romantic whimsy. His mother seems to have ordered one of her young chambermaids to introduce her fifteen year old son to his own sexuality, his first introduction to sexual love. This was his first of several mistresses, among whom could be counted a peasant-girl whom he impregnated and Bakunin and Tolstoy's sisters (though not at the same time). He loved only one woman-the not so beautiful but remarkably talented Pauline Viardot, opera prima donna and wife to the much older French writer Louis Viardot-whom he met in St. Petersburg in 1843 when Pauline was twenty-one (Lowe 19). They never consummated their love, but he lived near the Viardot family off and on for the rest of his life, almost like a near-platonic version of Byron's cavalier servante. His love for Pauline contrasted considerably with his early disregard for his daughter-only later did he take an interest in Paulinette when he returned to Russia in 1850; Pauline offered to raise her, so he sent her to Pauline in Paris late in 1850 (Lowe 22). Turgenev's frustrated love life found literary expression through characterizing the mysteries of female-male relationships in his novels and short stories. These sometimes meaningful, sometimes frivolous liaisons and their consequences provide evidence of similarities between Turgenev and Byron.