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Summary: The Russians know how to write
Review: The way this story is told and the characters drawn is like watching a movie with a camera moving in and out of focus. We are allowed inside a character's thoughts for a certain period of time, then he moves us up and out of them and onto another scene. The transitions smoothly lead the reader through the story. I didn't want it to end. The story is relevant to issues people face even today. It's a great book.
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Summary: Fathers and Sons
Review: I recently read the novel Fathers and Sons (underlined title) by Ivan Turgenev. Turgenev uses vivid imagery to accurately portray life in 19th century Russia, pre-emancipation of the serfs. At this time, people were tired of the tsarist rule and were demanding reform. As society was on the brink of change, many different political theories were emerging such as nihilism. The main character of the novel, Bazarov, is a nihilist who doesn't accept any principals or believes. Bazarov is just one example of many nihilists who existed in his time. They denied and wanted to destroy the government, yet offered no way to rebuild anything. It makes sense that Turgenev kills Bazarov at the end of the novel.Turgenev didn't see Bazarov as having any plans for the future so he had to be killed at the end.
Turgenev shows the eternal conflict between the older generation (Bazarov's and Arkady's dad) and the younger generation (Bazarov and Arkady) and their clashing views on reform. Yet this book can be applied to any time period because there will always be different views between the older and younger generations. The famous Russian critic, Pisarev wrote, "Turgenev's novel, in addition to its artistic beauty, is remarkable for the fact that it stirs the mind, leads to reflection." Turgenev does not assume a critical attitude and let's the reader come up with their own opinions and judgements. I recommend this novel to anyone who has their doubts about buying it.
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Summary: Of Family, Love, and Nihilism
Review: This book is known mostly, perhaps, for the character of Bazarov, widely considered the vanguard of nihilism in literature, especially in Russia. Bazarov is a significant fact of fiction, a sketch of the young middle class intellegentsia developing in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Brash, self-confident, iconoclastic, educated young men like Bazarov were popping up all over Russia. Turgenev finds a way to tie this into a rich tapestry of love, familial relationships, and simplicity that Arkady and Bazarov, the young men, succumb to. Even in his determination to change the world by destroying it so it can be rebuilt, Bazarov does not overcome the strong bonds of family. Love and family has the sort of redemptive power found so often in War and Peace, and indeed, Turgenev writes from a similar perspective and on a similar wavelength as Tolstoy. This book, while not big on plot, is to be appreciated for blending its simple prose with a poetic passion in showing how love between fathers and sons is ageless, and love between men and women occurs. I found the last passage very moving.
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Summary: A work of art
Review: Upon completion of this novel I have found that this piece of art by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev uses not only flawless story lines, comprehensive translation, but an awsome use of beutiful phraseology, that masterfuly paints not only a picture but a 207 page tale in your mind. a true masterpiece.
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Summary: Another Russian Masterpiece
Review: Fathers and Sons is an extraordinary tale of generational conflict, but it is also a book of ideas. It explores not only the conflict of old versus new, but it also explores the conflict between rationalism and science and emotion, the arts, and the humanities. Don't let the big names scare you.
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Summary: A great re-read
Review: I finally reread Fathers and Sons, and would like to add a few words to the praise already bestowed upon it here. Fathers and Sons covers several themes, including nihilism, intergenerational conflict, love, and politics. The most famous character is of course the notorious Bazarov, a charismatic student of medicine who renounces all convention. A true nihilist, Bazarov claims that 'a good chemist is worth more than twenty poets', sacrificing art and emotion for science and reason. The first time I read this book, I was rather impressed by Bazarov, because he seemed to be a principled and enlightened man. A few years later, my perspective must have changed, since I now am inclined to say that Bazarov proposes a way of life empty not just of illusion, but also of meaning and fulfillment. He may be principled and intelligent, but nonetheless he is a pigheaded fool, and he treats both his parents and his friends in a disgraceful way. After the second reading, I see more clearly that Bazarov is a comic Don Quixote character as much as a tragic hero.I would say more about the book, but there are already several excellent reviews on this page. Instead, I venture to say a few words about Turgenev himself. The first Russian author to become famous abroad, he was one of the most astute observers of human behavior to have ever lived. He seems to have been a fair, tolerant person, he makes us see the value of arguments or lifestyles we might not otherwise comprehend, and he proposes that happiness derives from love, humanity, and respect for others. Harold Bloom seems to assume that all great writers are basically immoral people who worship their own divinity. This is not true of Ivan Turgenev, a moderate liberal with a peculiar ability to describe us the way we really are.
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Summary: Death and the Doctor
Review: In so much of Turgenev's finest fiction, love fades, slips away, vanishes before it can even flower; the mood of these stories is melancholy, nostalgic; the writing, delicate, precise, almost translucent. Turgenev was to be the only Russian writer with avowedly European outlook and sympathies. The objectivity of Turgenev as a chronicler of the Russian intelligentsia is apparent in his early novels. Unsympathetic though he may have been to some of the trends in the thinking of the younger, radical generation that emerged after the Crimean War, he endeavoured to portray the positive aspirations of these young men and women with scrupulous candour. Their attitude to him, particularly that of such leading figures as the radical critics Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Nikolay Dobrolyubov, was generally cold when it was not actively hostile. His own rather self-indulgent nature was challenged by the forcefulness of these younger contemporaries. He moved away from an emphasis on the fallibility of his heroes, who had been attacked as a type by Chernyshevsky. Instead, Turgenev focused on their youthful ardour and their sense of moral purpose. These attributes had obvious revolutionary implications that were not shared by Turgenev, whose liberalism could accept gradual change but opposed anything more radical, especially the idea of an insurgent peasantry. Turgenev's greatest novel, Fathers and Sons, grew from this sense of involvement and yet succeeded in illustrating, with remarkable balance and profundity, the issues that divided the generations. The hero, Bazarov, is the most powerful of Turgenev's creations. A nihilist, denying all laws save those of the natural sciences, uncouth and forthright in his opinions, he is nonetheless susceptible to love and by that token doomed to unhappiness. In sociopolitical terms he represents the victory of the nongentry revolutionary intelligentsia over the gentry intelligentsia to which Turgenev belonged. In artistic terms he is a triumphant example of objective portraiture, and in the poignancy of his death he approaches tragic stature. The miracle of the novel as a whole is Turgenev's superb mastery of his theme, despite his personal hostility toward Bazarov's anti-aestheticism, and his success in endowing all the characters with a quality of spontaneous life. Yet at the novel's first appearance the radical younger generation attacked it bitterly as a slander, and the conservatives condemned it as too lenient in its exposure of nihilism. Turgenev's novels are "months in the country," which contain balanced contrasts such as those between youth and age, between the tragic ephemerality of love and the comic transience of ideas, between Hamlet's concern with self and the ineptitudes of the quixotic pursuit of altruism. Always touchy about his literary reputation, Turgenev reacted to the almost unanimously hostile reception given to Fathers and Sons by leaving Russia. He took up residence in Baden-Baden in southern Germany. Quarrels with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and his general estrangement from the Russian literary scene made him an exile in a very real sense. This book will give you the climate of Russia at the time, it's like a keg of powder waiting to explode!
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Summary: what's the deal Ivan?
Review: I can't believe this is the best Turgenev could do for a nihilist character: a grumpy geek who loves frogs. Compared to the extremism of characters in Nabokov, Mailer, Rushdie etc. this Bazorov guy couldn't possibly be more boring.
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Summary: This book has present day relevance.
Review: This was a wonderful, albeit wordy, book. While is presents a slice of life in Russia in the 1800s, the theme of the older generation's impatience and lack of understandng of that of the younger generation is timeless. It is peculiarly Russian, with much of the heated exchanges between the main characters being about the need for social change in the Russian aristocracy of the time. And, as is typical of youthful views, (or of change and revolution perhaps), the two positions are at extreme odds with each other. If you enjoy social and political history, families, and intellectual debate, this is a fine piece of literature.
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Summary: A Masterpiece of Russian Literature
Review: This is the first fiction book I've read in a long time, and I have to say I'm not too disappointed. Fathers and Sons relates not only the generation gap in 19th century Russia, but also shows how fragile and fake the entire Russian system was in that time period. Every character symbolizes an important facet of Russian society. Paul Petrovich is the old slavophile nobility, convinced that Russians and their ways are the best in the world while they wear English clothing and speak and read in French. His brother Nicholas is the bridge between the old world and the new world, trying to fit in with the new ways while he only understands the old customs. Arcady, who represents those in society who outwardly follow the latest trendy beliefs but can't shake their emotions or their humanity. And Barazov, who represents youth, with its eternal promise of new ideas and ways, but who are blind to their own naive hypocrisy. Certainly there are other characters, but these major figures shape the plot of the book. Turgenev manages to leave no stone unturned, casting withering attacks on peasants, psuedo-intellectualism, government officials, corruption, and conventions. The book mentions that Turgenev alienated and angered many in Russia with this book, and the reader will quickly see why. Turgenev recognized the backwardness of Russia, and that it must change if it were to survive in a new world. The big question was how, and Turgenev shows that while idealists like Bazarov may have new ideas (Bazarov's idea was nihilism, a belief in nothing), those ideas mean nothing if not backed up with solutions to the problems. An excellent book, and very readable. The price is low enough that most people really don't have an excuse to give this one a shot.
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