return to title page 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 INTRODUCTION Terms of Engagement To discuss Bazarov in terms of his Byronic traits and ancestry, several terms should be defined. The phenomenon of "Byronism" alone deserves an entire monograph study. It is not my intention to definitively establish a definitive conception of "Byronism;" rather, it is to identify traces of European and Russian Byronic imitations and influences on Turgenev as author and creator of Bazarov. To avoid encountering serious debate on the specific characteristics of Byronism as a literary movement, "Byronism" as understood in this essay can be characterized by the personal and public lifestyle of the poet and by the darkly heroic characters he created which were modeled on his own philosophical conception of himself and his place in the world. Russian Romanticism will be considered a later extension or continuation of a particularly Byronic brand of European Romanticism that, in its later incarnations, focused upon the perceived demonic and oriental nature of Byron and his characters, often applied to the contemporary political and social situation in Russia. Though various specific dates have been applied to this intellectual period, this essay will combine and conflate the dating used by D. S. Mirsky and by Charles A. Moser to between 1820 and 1841. Most often Russian Romantic authors expressed their philosophies in poetry-often in imitations and loose interpretations of Byron's oriental tales-but frequently chose also to express their ideals in their manner of living. Nihilism requires at least a working definition; while a more detailed listing of several characteristics of nihilism will be developed later in the paper, a general conception of the term will be a movement of which Bazarov was the first literary example, the creation of whom became a critical defining moment in Russian revolutionary history. Bazarov's emergence created a dual conception of nihilism-a philosophical stance of negation with various precedents, including Byron himself; and a movement of revolutionary reform, involving a group of individuals practicing nihilism's philosophical principle of negation. The structure of this paper follows the train of thought by which its ideas emerged. Upon studying Byron's earlier work, particularly an oriental tale like "The Giaour," Byron's personal letters, and "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," I noticed distinct correlation between Byron's dark, biting, incriminating criticism of societal cant and the nihilism of Turgenev's Bazarov in Fathers and Sons. I followed up on this possibility by searching for a direct correlation between the concepts of Byronism and those of Russian nihilism, a search that proved relatively unsuccessful because of the connection of Byronism to Romanticism and nihilism to realism, two literary movements often diametrically opposed to one another. In this study I traced Turgenev's influences in creating the literary nihilist Bazarov and found the connection that I had sought in Turgenev's inspirational roots in Byron, European Byronism, and Russian Romanticism. return to top of page