FATHERS AND SONSIvan Turgenev
The Turf Bench by Ilya Repin
Discussion Questions:
1. Turgenev's goal seems to be the juxtaposition of the 'old' and the 'new' in a changing Russia. Compare:
- the female characters: Eudoxia Kukshin, Madame Odintzov and Arina Vlassyevna (Barazov's mother).
" ... my observations lead me to suppose that free-thinking women are monstrosities." (Bazarov)
- the male characters: Pavel Petrovich and the two fathers & sons.
"We break things up because we are a force." (Arkady)
" A force! The wild Kalmuk and the Mongolian have force ... We value civilization ..." (Pavel)
2. 'The Generation Gap': is it fact or fiction?
3. Compare the economic conditions in the Old and New Russia (feudalism vs. the Emancipation of the Serfs). Was it an economic or philosophic change which eventually led to the Communist Revolution?
4. Discuss the German influence on the New Russian character (romanticism vs. practicality; morality vs. nihilism; religion vs. atheism).
"A good chemist is more useful than a score of poets" (Bazarov)
5. Turgenev wrote: "If the reader doesn't come to love Bazarov, with all his coarseness, callousness, pitiless dryness and harshness, then I have missed the mark. I imagined a gloomy, wild, large figure, half grown out of the soil, strong, spiteful, honest - doomed to perish because still in the anteroom of the future."
Does the reader come to love Bazarov? How does Bazarov change over the course of the story and to what do we attribute these changes? Does he become more human, and therefore more lovable?
6. "... the Future is, of all things, the least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future ... we want a man hag-ridden by the Future - haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth - ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other ..." (C.S.Lewis, The Screwtape Letters).
Turgenev does an admirable job of portraying this temptation in the character of Bazarov. Which scenes in the story illustrate this idea of the Present vs. the Future?
"Vassily Ivanich removed his hands from his face and embraced his wife, his constant companion, with a warmth greater than he had ever shown her in his youth; she had consoled him in his grief."
7. Is Bazarov's fate ironic? Tragic? What about the fate of Russia?
Of Related Interest:
- D.B.Wyndham-Lewis' delightful spoof of Russian Literature: 'A Bouquet for Moscow'.
- P.G.Wodehouse's spoof of Russian authors and suburban literary societies: 'The Clicking of Cuthbert'.
1. Turgenev's goal seems to be the juxtaposition of the 'old' and the 'new' in a changing Russia. Compare:
- the female characters: Eudoxia Kukshin, Madame Odintzov and Arina Vlassyevna (Barazov's mother).
" ... my observations lead me to suppose that free-thinking women are monstrosities." (Bazarov)
- the male characters: Pavel Petrovich and the two fathers & sons.
"We break things up because we are a force." (Arkady)
" A force! The wild Kalmuk and the Mongolian have force ... We value civilization ..." (Pavel)
2. 'The Generation Gap': is it fact or fiction?
3. Compare the economic conditions in the Old and New Russia (feudalism vs. the Emancipation of the Serfs). Was it an economic or philosophic change which eventually led to the Communist Revolution?
4. Discuss the German influence on the New Russian character (romanticism vs. practicality; morality vs. nihilism; religion vs. atheism).
"A good chemist is more useful than a score of poets" (Bazarov)
5. Turgenev wrote: "If the reader doesn't come to love Bazarov, with all his coarseness, callousness, pitiless dryness and harshness, then I have missed the mark. I imagined a gloomy, wild, large figure, half grown out of the soil, strong, spiteful, honest - doomed to perish because still in the anteroom of the future."
Does the reader come to love Bazarov? How does Bazarov change over the course of the story and to what do we attribute these changes? Does he become more human, and therefore more lovable?
6. "... the Future is, of all things, the least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future ... we want a man hag-ridden by the Future - haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth - ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other ..." (C.S.Lewis, The Screwtape Letters).
Turgenev does an admirable job of portraying this temptation in the character of Bazarov. Which scenes in the story illustrate this idea of the Present vs. the Future?
"Vassily Ivanich removed his hands from his face and embraced his wife, his constant companion, with a warmth greater than he had ever shown her in his youth; she had consoled him in his grief."
7. Is Bazarov's fate ironic? Tragic? What about the fate of Russia?
Of Related Interest:
- D.B.Wyndham-Lewis' delightful spoof of Russian Literature: 'A Bouquet for Moscow'.
- P.G.Wodehouse's spoof of Russian authors and suburban literary societies: 'The Clicking of Cuthbert'.
