Fathers and Sons is a novel by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, first published in 1862. It portrays the conflict between generations in Russia, centering on Bazarov, a young nihilist, and his encounters with the Kirsanov family. The book offers a vivid study of ideas, love, and change, and remains a key work of Russian realism.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
FATHERS AND SONS
BY
IVAN S. TURGENEV
Translated from the Russian by C.J. Hogarth
LONDON & TORONTO
PUBLISHED BY J.M. DENT & SONS LTD & IN NEW YORK
BY E.P. DUTTON & CO
1921
INTRODUCTION
In this masterly unromantic novel, Turgenev drew a character,
Bazarov, who served to express what he taught us to call Nihilism, and made a movement into a man. In Russia itself the effect of the story was astonishing. The portrait of Bazarov was immediately and angrily resented as a cold travesty. The portraits of the
"backwoodsmen," or retired aristocrats, fared no better. Turgenev had indeed roused the ire of both sides, only too surely.
The Petrovitchs, typical figures as he designed them of the Russian nobility, were intended he confessed to breathe "feebleness, nonchalance, narrowness of mind." His sense of fitness made him paint with extreme care these choice representatives of their class.
They were the pick, and if they were humanly ineffective, what of their weaker kind? "Si la crême est mauvaise, que sera le lait?" as he put it. The bitterest criticism came, however, from the side of the
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