I was fascinated by Bazarov. In the beginning I took a very strong dislike to him. I really, really cannot stand the type. He is brash, he takes pleasure in dismissing things out of hand, without really backing that up with any sort of understanding. His only claim to authority is his lack of authority, and that really is ... bogus. I couldn't agree more with Pavel Petrovich's comment that
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.
I loved that comment as well, but not because of Bazarov. I got the impression that Turgenev was allowing Pavel to be right about some in the movement, but also to make him miss the mark on Bazarov. Even though I do agree that B was awful in the beginning, Turgenev was already teaching us that he was richer than that. (I decided conclusively when Sitnikov and Kukshina showed up - Turgenev gave us perfect examples to show the range.)
Russian Book Club: Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.
- 17/10/2010 01:39:16 AM
995 Views
Bazarov
- 17/10/2010 02:12:03 PM
818 Views
oh, and
- 17/10/2010 06:42:38 PM
706 Views
Re: oh, and
- 18/10/2010 12:09:10 AM
688 Views
Arkady
- 17/10/2010 02:15:54 PM
675 Views
Well, that makes sense
- 17/10/2010 05:12:09 PM
673 Views
Re: Well, that makes sense
- 18/10/2010 12:04:05 AM
687 Views
See, I liked Arkady
- 17/10/2010 06:08:57 PM
617 Views
Oh...Rebekah, I was going to mention that I saw your post only much later because I was very drunk.
- 17/10/2010 05:13:41 PM
697 Views
Good book.
- 17/10/2010 06:37:16 PM
717 Views
I loved it. Great book.
- 18/10/2010 10:49:27 PM
650 Views
I think it's very relevant. It's also unusually un-Russian.
- 18/10/2010 11:54:03 PM
622 Views
Yeah... the Russian nobility at the time seems to have been kind of un-Russian, really.
- 20/10/2010 04:03:34 PM
682 Views
It felt very Russian to me as well
- 20/10/2010 04:12:50 PM
627 Views
There was little of the usual ... histrionics that happen in Russian novels.
- 22/10/2010 07:02:12 PM
683 Views
I really wish I'd bought a properly annotated version.
- 22/10/2010 07:07:16 PM
727 Views
The answer to that is to just read a great book on Nineteenth Century Russian history.
- 22/10/2010 10:55:06 PM
704 Views
Not just Russian, though, there's a lot of mentions of other European history.
- 22/10/2010 11:19:28 PM
641 Views
Nikolai and Pavel - I love them.
- 22/10/2010 07:14:11 PM
803 Views
Perhaps it's Pavel's "The Chap"-ish nature that makes the novel seem less Russian to me.
- 22/10/2010 10:53:56 PM
764 Views

*NM*