Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
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| Fathers and sons |
This quality of what may be called the seer in Turgenev is nowhere so clearly manifest as in Fathers and Sons. When the novel was first published in 1862, the character of Bazarov, the hero, and the ideas and tendencies he represented, were no more a part of the conscious knowledge of Russian educated society than the name "nihilist" with which he christened him.
Yet so well did Turgenev hit the mark, that, as he himself relates, within a short time after its publication, a nihilist was on the lips of thousands. So ready and universal a response to a novel of the character of Fathers and Sons would be unthinkable unless it reflected the realities.
There is no doubt of it—Bazarov and the movement he stood for was of the very flesh and bone of the then New Russia. At least one representative of the New Generation, Pisarev, the leading literary critic of that day, accepted Turgenev's portrayal of Bazarov and Bazarovism as typical of the youth of the age.
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator, and populariser of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, was a milestone in Russian realism.
, Translated by C. J Hogarth