Fathers and Sons

It’s been a while since I tackled any Russian literature, other than Gogol’s super short The Nose.  I love the stuff; I just haven’t been in the mood for it.  I have to be in a certain mindset to cope with the gravity and philosophising that crops up in all the Russian literature I’ve had experiences with.  It might not be in all of it, there may be some light-hearted modern Russian culture (if the memes are to be believed, Putin clearly has a sense of humour), but it’s not so much in the classics.  Dostoyevsky wasn’t really one for a pun.

Anyway, finally being in the mood for misery and the philosophy of ethics, I embarked up Fathers and Sons.  It’s not bad either.  Essentially, it tells the story of a son Akardy who has recently graduated from university and his visit to his father Nikolai and uncle Pavel, and various other visits the pair make .  Arkady brings with him his friend Evgeny Vasilev Bazarov nihilist and buzzkill extraordinaire.  The book focuses on the difference in morals and beliefs between the two generations, while featuring quite a lot of Bazarov going around and spoiling everyone’s fun.  He’s spoilt and worshipped by his parents and is unfathomably ungrateful to them.  At one point he and Pavel have a duel simply because they hate one another.  He’s fairly awful to Arkady, who hero-worships him. And yet, despite all this, he’s oddly likeable.  Or at least good to read about.

It’s tricky to say why I enjoyed this book.  The plot is fairly simple, and the ending inevitable; and the philosophy isn’t what appealed to me.  I did enjoy the difference between the generations.  Nikolai and Pavel discuss an argument with their mother when they were young, Nikolai explaining to her that she could never understand his position as they were simply of different generations and she needed to make way for the young.  Naturally, these two are less than happy to make way for the young when they are the elder generation.  Of course, this is problematic when it becomes clear that Bazrov’s way is deeply flawed to the extent that even Arkady grows sick of it and turns back to something that more closely resembles his father’s morality. 

Fathers and Sons is also a fascinatingly important book.  It’s widely regarded as being responsible for popularising the term “nihilism” long before The Big Lebowski.  It was also one of the first Russian novels to become properly popular in the Western world.  It’s not hard to see why this book did travel; it provides a quick and easy to understand tale of what was going on in Russian culture and politics at the time of the novel and over the thirty or so years prior to its publication.  Without this book, there may have not been an audience for what came after- this would mean no Anna Karenina, no Crime and Punishment.  The influence of Ivan Turgenov is too far reaching to measure.

So that’s Fathers and Sons: important and entertaining.  I’m still not entirely sure why I like it.  All the bits I marked to look back at so I could write this just seem to involve Bazarov being a jerk to various characters.  It’s humourless jerkery too.  It really shouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable as I found it. 

I’m now back to Hanif Kureishi and more parent-child relationships with Gabriel’s Gift.