The real personality of the book is Bazarov. There's a tendency that Turgenev has to make secondary characters very, very superficial. Imagine that they're window dressing. It's a fair statement to make, too, considering that Turgenev has written some of the best descriptions of nature in Russian literature.
Yes.
They are superficial, and some of them are delicious caricatures, but there is some depth to some of them. I mean, both Arkady's father and uncle have more personality than Arkady himself. As do most of the women (although for better or for worse...).
I agree about the descriptions. I wish I could read it in Russian, in fact.
On a side note. I wanted to ask you: what is the tree they are talking about when in the English it is translated as "ash"? They say, in chapter 25, that
``ash'' is very well named, no other tree is so light and glimmers in the air so ``ashenly'' as it does.
*MySmiley*
structured procrastinator
structured procrastinator
Russian Book Club: Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.
- 17/10/2010 01:39:16 AM
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Bazarov
- 17/10/2010 02:12:03 PM
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*NM*
oh, and
- 17/10/2010 06:42:38 PM
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Re: oh, and
- 18/10/2010 12:09:10 AM
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Arkady
- 17/10/2010 02:15:54 PM
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Well, that makes sense
- 17/10/2010 05:12:09 PM
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Re: Well, that makes sense
- 18/10/2010 12:04:05 AM
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See, I liked Arkady
- 17/10/2010 06:08:57 PM
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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
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Good book.
- 17/10/2010 06:37:16 PM
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I loved it. Great book.
- 18/10/2010 10:49:27 PM
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I think it's very relevant. It's also unusually un-Russian.
- 18/10/2010 11:54:03 PM
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Yeah... the Russian nobility at the time seems to have been kind of un-Russian, really.
- 20/10/2010 04:03:34 PM
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It felt very Russian to me as well
- 20/10/2010 04:12:50 PM
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There was little of the usual ... histrionics that happen in Russian novels.
- 22/10/2010 07:02:12 PM
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I really wish I'd bought a properly annotated version.
- 22/10/2010 07:07:16 PM
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The answer to that is to just read a great book on Nineteenth Century Russian history.
- 22/10/2010 10:55:06 PM
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Not just Russian, though, there's a lot of mentions of other European history.
- 22/10/2010 11:19:28 PM
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Nikolai and Pavel - I love them.
- 22/10/2010 07:14:11 PM
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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
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