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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

Text-Only Version

Tracing Byron's Influence on the Creation and Development of the Nihilist Bazarov in Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons

TURGENEV & TURBULENCE

Forces of Negation

Bazarov found his immediate Russian roots in the young revolutionaries of the day, those members of the intelligentsia who had embraced and popularized a concept of negation-particularly Slavophilic in nature, expressing a need to denounce and reject the prevailing Westernizing trend of Alexander II's reforms-which emerged as early anarchism and nihilism. These young revolutionaries, second generation followers of such leaders as the anarchist Bakunin (whom Turgenev had befriended in Berlin and whose amorous sister he had unfeelingly rejected), sometimes complained at Turgenev's depiction of their kind in Bazarov, finding the members of the dominant ruling class-Pavel and Nicholas-much more sympathetically portrayed than the tragic and meaningless figure of Bazarov. These same revolutionaries, like Dmitry Pisarev, interpreted Bazarov as "a disease of our time" that "must be endured to the end, no matter what palliatives and amputations are employed. . . you will not be able to put a stop to it; it is just the same as cholera" (189). Bazarov also became part of the vehicle by which Turgenev expressed a concept that had not yet been expressed in Russian literature, that of the gap between the conservative reforming of the fathers and the radical revolutionizing of the children (sons).

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* F O O T N O T E *

1

. . . amorous sister he had unfeelingly rejected . . .
As mentioned previously, Turgenevs affairs with women never quite turned out right. Women seemed to fall for him, but he seemed never to be satisfied with what he hadexcept for Paulina Viardot, whom he never really had at all. Turgenev experienced the same problems with Tolstoys sister. Such "problems" made continued relationships with these brothers difficult.

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2

. . . tragic and meaningless figure of Bazarov . . .
This became the crux of criticism of the novel. Conservative critics rebuked Turgenev for creating and sympathizing with such an evil character as Bazarov and blamed him for the destruction caused by the nihilists in St. Petersburgs mysterious fires of June 1862: the first acquaintance Turgenev met in St. Petersburg on that day upbraided him, "Look, what your nihilists are doing! They are setting Petersburg on fire" (Magarshack 219). On the other hand, members of the hardcore revolutionaries criticized Turgenev for making Bazarov such a weak character and for sympathizing with the predominant ruling class characters in the novel. Turgenev could not win for trying; as Magarshack puts it,

    Turgenev was appalled: he noticed a coldness amounting almost to indignation in many people he liked and with whose views he sympathised, and he received congratulations and almost kisses from people whom he regarded as political enemies. He was receiving letters from all over Russia, some of his correspondents accusing him of being a die-hard reactionary and telling him that they were burning his photographs with a contemptuous laugh, and others reproaching him for kowtowing to the nihilists and groveling at the feet of Bazarov" (219).

In a letter to poet and critic Sluchevsky, Turgenev wrote how he felt the novel should be interpreted, "My whole novel is directed against the nobility as the foremost class of Russian society" (Turgenev, Ivan. "To K. K. Sluchevsky." 14/26 April 1862. In Turgenev Letters Vol. 2.) This incredible backlash forced Turgenev to continually defend his novel and drove him away from Russia for many years.

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3

. . . the gap . . .
The breadth of this gap can be found in the opposing essays of Pisarev ("Bazarov") and Herzen ("Bazarov Again"). Pisarev represents the younger "sons," Herzen the older "fathers."

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