Player Alexander Ustyugov as Yevgeny Bazarov in 'Fathers and Sons' film directed by Avdotya Smirnova
Alexander Ryumin/TASS
Ivan Turgenev is 1 of the greatest Russian writers, author of possibly the all-time novel nearly the generational separate between parents and children. In 2018, Russian federation celebrates the 200th anniversary of his nativity.
On one side are the noble and bourgeois 'Fathers' who effortlessly live their onetime age in lavish estates. On the other side nosotros run across the future-looking and progressive 'Sons' who choose hard work and don't depend on the era. "Let it rather depend on me!" is their ideology. This is the reality of 19th century Russia, which is full of contradictions and which Ivan Turgenev depicts in his novel, Fathers and Sons.
While thisis Turgenev's most famous book, in fact by the 1860s he had already gained a reputation every bit a leading writer of his time. His stories such every bit The Hunting Sketches (1952), Mumu (1854), Asya (1857) and others were already very popular, widely read and critically acclaimed. Only Fathers and Sons (1862) ultimately put Turgenev's name on par with the greatest 19th century Russian writers, such as Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolai Gogol. Why is that then?
Captured the trend for rejecting authority
Turgenev felt that the face of the Russian gentry was rapidly irresolute, and obviously his principal character fifty-fifty predicted the rise of the socialist movement. Ane of the literary innovations of Fathers and Sons was the advent of a new blazon of character: a nihilist, a person who rejects all authority. The embodiment of this idea was the protagonist, Eugene Bazarov, who is a medical student with a pragmatic approach to everything.
A screenshot from 'Fathers and Sons' film by Avdotya Smirnova
Avdotya Smirnova/Rekun-Cinema, 2008
Previously, no one like Bazarov e'er appeared in Russian literature: he rejected all accepted ideas about politics, family unit values, social bureaucracy, Orthodoxy and about every attribute of 19th century life. He even tried to reject the concept of dear, but it inexorably prevailed on him.
In the early 1860s Russian nihilism was on the rising, and Turgenev's Fathers and Sons was one of the works that stimulated this intellectual move, along with the works of Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Dmitry Pisarev and others. In 1862, after the novel's publication, Turgenev came to a St. Petersburg that was devastated by fire. Historians think that radical movements might have set fires across the urban center. Turgenev recalled the first thing he heard from his friend: "Look at your nihilists: they are called-for Petersburg!"
Raised the event of generational conflict
Ivan Turgenev was as well the first writer in Russian literature who openly raised the topic of the generational split up. "Aristocracy, liberalism, principles… Just think what a lot of foreign and useless words! To a Russian, they're no good for anything!" This is what the young nihilist Bazarov thinks about the older generation and its conservative way of living. The novel's title in Russian is " Otsy i dety ," which has become a catchphrase still widely used today.
Ivan Turgenev
Getty Images
The book is not only most common tensions betwixt parents and children, but also near the ii types of 19th century Russian intelligentsia: the noble and very conservative "fathers" wearing starched shirts; and the revolutionary-minded "sons" who are no longer ready to alive like their well-to-do parents who know piffling about hard work and who cling to archaic values.
Turgenev basically defenseless and summed up the turbulent spirit of his time, which not every critic agreed with. Most were impressed with Fathers and Sons' innovative arroyo and honest eye on 19th century Russia, merely many critics accused Turgenev of slandering the younger generation and raving well-nigh the older one.
The novel engendered controversial and heated responses, to the extent that Turgenev issued his own statement to clear the air with his critics. He explained that his main goal was to write nearly reality, without taking anyone'due south side. Turgenev thought that negative feedback was acquired past the nature of his main character, Bazarov, who was completely new for Russian literature. The audience expected the author either to justify the revolutionary or to judge him – and nothing in between. But Turgenev rejected both of these paths, and instead he only portrayed his nihilist as realistically and objectively as possible.
A screenshot from 'Fathers and Sons' film by Avdotya Smirnova
Avdotya Smirnova/Rekun-Cinema, 2008
There'southward a legend that one of Turgenev'due south acquaintances suggested changing the novel'due south title to "Neither Fathers, nor Sons" – which was straight to the point. Turgenev does non justify the crusade of any generation; he but shows the changes that ripened in bourgeois 19th century Russia. Negation became a revolutionary trend that non everyone in Tsarist Russia was ready to have, then Turgenev portrayed all the possible angles of denial in the person of Bazarov: "We human action by virtue of what nosotros recognize as beneficial. At the present time, negation is the most benign of all – and we deny… Everything."
Read more than: Why today'south feminists would hate Lermontov'due south 'A Hero of Our Time'
If using whatever of Russia Across's content, partly or in full, always provide an agile hyperlink to the original material.
Become the calendar week's best stories straight to your inbox
0 Response to "Common Sense Comes From Your Fathers Side of the Family"
Post a Comment