1078 Turgenev, Ivan
about themselves, and their philosophies undergo
dramatic changes.
Through these characters and their dualities,
Turgenev investigates the themes of guilt, ill-
ness, and parenthood, among others. Fathers and
Sons is often called the first truly modern Russian
novel, looking forward to Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky.
Divya Saksena
GuILt in Fathers and Sons
In Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev uses the complex
interplay and changing roles of the novel’s two main
characters, Arkady Kirsanov and Yevgeny Bazarov,
to explore aspects of guilt and responsibility
throughout the novel. Guilt, in some form, affects
most of the major characters who interact with the
two protagonists against the background of social
upheaval that was taking place in Russia just prior
to Alexander II’s historic 1861 emancipation of
the serfs—Russian slaves who were owned by the
landed aristocracy. Guilt permeates the novel, origi-
nating in generational conflicts between Arkady and
his father as well as the older and younger Bazarovs.
It also derives from cultural conflicts in the minds
and psyches of individual characters as they find
themselves caught in the reality of being rooted in
Russian traditions while training themselves to
think and behave like western Europeans.
Arkady sees for himself the suffering of the
peasants even on an estate as comparatively liberal
as his father’s and realizes the helplessness of young
would-be reformers like himself:
As if intentionally, the humble mouzhiks they
came across were all raggedly, driving the
wretchedest of little nags; . . . No, it occurred
to Arkady, this is not so rich a region . . . it
can’t remain like this—it simply can’t; radical
changes are imperative—but how is one to
put them through, what approach can one
make?Pavel Kirsanov protests Bazarov’s demand for
sweeping away old Russian traditions, saying, “No,
the Russian people is not such as you imagine it.
It considers its traditions sacred; it is patriarchal, it
cannot live without faith.” He accuses Bazarov of
using the tenets of nihilism in disdaining Russian
traditions that have upheld the culture of his coun-
try for generations, asking him: “Aren’t you going
in for the same sort of blather as everybody else?”
Bazarov responds sharply: “Whatever else we may
be guilty of, this is one sin of which we’re innocent.”
At the close of the discussion, when Bazarov angrily
flies out of the room followed by Arkady, Pavel
Kirsanov sadly reminds his brother that they are
both guilty of aging and becoming distanced from
the younger generation: “The pill is a bitter one to
swallow, yet it must be swallowed. Well, our turn
has come now . . .”
Love in the novel is also tinged with feelings of
guilt. Nikolai feels guilty in hiding his feelings for
his mistress, Fenechka, from Arkady, who actually
considers her a good influence on his father. Arkady
himself, experiencing the pangs of unrequited love
for Odintsova, turns to Katya for support and
friendship, then guiltily realizes he is in love with
Katya.
Meanwhile, Bazarov and Odintsova skirt around
their true feelings for each other, not being “falsely
modest” but confident in their own cleverness.
He finally confesses to her, “Know, then, that I
love you—foolishly, madly. There, you’ve succeeded
in getting that out of me.” Odintsova intuitively
responds to “the passion struggling within him,
potent and painful—passion that resembled wrath
and which was, perhaps, akin to it. Odintsova
became both afraid of him and sorry for him.” She
does some soul searching to assuage her surrepti-
tious guilt at egging Bazarov on to declare himself
to her; she even indulges in some private daydream-
ing about how their relationship might develop
if she gives in to his demand that she return his
love. It is the closest she comes to admitting the
significantly physical and sensual nature of their
mutual attraction. Then she draws her imaginary
cocoon of assumed “tranquility” around her again,
deciding “God knows where this might have led
to; one mustn’t play around with a thing like that.”
There remains in her mind the nagging presence of
“sundry vague emotions, the consciousness of life
slipping away, a desire for something new . . . or an
amorphous hideousness.”