1080 Turgenev, Ivan
When Bazarov returns home, his parents are
delighted and do their best to support him in his
scientific research. However, he is still affected
by the gloom of Odintsova’s rejection and allows
himself to be overcome by melancholy like a hope-
less romantic. It appears that his encounter with
Odintsova has challenged his nihilist philosophy
more than he is willing to admit. After a few days,
out of sheer boredom, Bazarov decides to assist his
father in reviving his medical practice. During his
earlier visit, his father had tried to impress his son
by relating his attempts at reform on the farm and
by expressing an interest in the latest scientific and
medical discoveries. He had explained that he no
longer practiced medicine but did give free advice
and often administered to the peasants. The elderly
father is now delighted by his son’s offer of help and
envisions a successful future.
However, the physical reality of illness is soon
to catch up with Bazarov, as Turgenev comments
on the crude and unhygienic conditions of rural
medical practice during his time. One day, while
helping to perform an autopsy on a mouzhik, or
peasant patient, who has died of typhus, he cuts
his finger. The district doctor whom he is assisting
has no “lunar caustic,” or antiseptic, to cauterize the
cut. Hence, Bazarov diagnoses himself as a strong
probability to contract the disease in a few days. His
distressed father exclaims against the district doc-
tor: “My God, how could that be? A doctor—and
he doesn’t have such an indispensable thing?” Three
days later, Bazarov comes down with fever and is
anxiously attended by his father, who continues to
delude himself that it is only a slight chill that will
pass, although Bazarov himself states directly that
he has “pyemia.” The same under-prepared district
doctor arrives and suggests “a few words about the
possibility of recovery.” Bazarov is not deluded and
reminds the doctor that they have never seen a
patient recovering from his condition.
Himself a doctor, Bazarov has displayed an
alarming carelessness in performing the autopsy
without caring whether he catches the disease or
not. When he does discover that he has the disease,
he merely offers a satirical comment that it really
is unpleasant to die so soon. Instead of using his
updated scientific training to try to arrest the spread
of his illness, as his old-fashioned father is trying
to do, he acts like a foolish romantic and sends a
message to Odintsova that he is dying. In doing so,
he denies both his responsibility as a medical prac-
titioner to keep others away from his infection and
his emotional dependence on her presence by his
deathbed. Having negated everything in life, he tries
at the very end to negate death as well.
The last aspect of illness that Bazarov has to
encounter is the spiritual one. As he grows steadily
worse, he refuses to allow his father to arrange for a
priest to administer the last rites to him. To comfort
his father, he reminds him that an unconscious man
can receive them, too. When Odintsova arrives,
bringing a German doctor with her, Bazarov’s father
hails her as a heaven-sent benefactress and prays
that the doctor will save his son. However, since his
intervention comes too late, all the German can do
is to inform Odintsova in whisper that “it was use-
less even to think of the patient’s recovery.”
In Bazarov’s final moments of consciousness,
Odintsova yields to his appeal and kisses his fore-
head. Does she acknowledge the physical attraction
between them, or is it merely an act of compassion
toward a dying man? Bazarov’s disease-ridden mind
can no longer be certain. Turgenev shows how, in
succumbing to the typhus infection, Bazarov sur-
renders also to the nihilism that has infected his
thinking for so long. Refusing to again admit his
love for Odintsova, he asks her to forget him as soon
as he is dead, but to look after his parents in their
grief. Through his use of the theme of illness in its
different aspects, Turgenev comments sharply not
only on the intellectual radicals of his time but also
on the old-fashioned methods of medical practice.
Divya SaksenaparentHood in Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev’s novel is, as its title suggests, an
exploration of the differences between generations.
The fathers and sons in the novel represent opposi-
tional philosophies as well as contrasting perspec-
tives on life, politics, and love. Still, the concept
of parenthood—its responsibilities, successes, and
failures—remains an important theme. At the very
onset, Turgenev introduces his main protagonists,
Arkady Kirsanov and Yevgeny Bazarov, two students