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new book or met a person who interested him or exhibited
some characteristic of a political or social nature,
he criticised him in this diary according to Bazárof’s
manner of thought.
As is well known, it was not so much by the genius
which was displayed in the delineation of the principal
character as it was from the effect the work created, the
ill will, the misunderstandings, the passionate attacks, it
provoked on the part of the radical leaders, that “Fathers
and Sons” was an event in the history of Russian literature
and in the author’s own life. The book is a masterpiece
without a blemish, besides being the original
prototype of all the modern novels in different countries
which treat of an older and younger generation in their
reciprocal relations and conflicts; but in the beginning
nothing else was seen in it than the depreciation of the
younger generation to the advantage of the culture of
the older.
In the face of this stupidity, Turgenief’s own utterances
about the hero have an increased interest. A
certain Slutchevski had upbraided him that Bazárof
had made so unfavorable an impression. He answers
(1862): “Nevertheless, Bazárof drives all the other
persons of the novel into the background.... He is honest,
upright, and a democrat of the purest water. And you
find in him no good quality! He commends ‘Force and
Matter’ by name as a popular, that is a worthless book.
The duel with Pavel Petróvitch is introduced to
represent the intellectual vacuity of the elegant, noble
knighthood; it is even then almost overdrawn, ridiculously
represented.... According to my view, Bazárof is
constantly Pavel Petróvitch wholly superior and unconverted.
When he calls himself a ‘nihilist,’ we must read
revolutionist.... On the one side a venal official, on the
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