Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev’s most famous work, the celebrated novel Fathers and Sons, is timeless in that its vivid illustration of the inevitability of intergenerational friction is poignantly familiar even today. Despite trying his hardest to catch up with his son Arkady Nikolaevich, Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, the patriarch of a countryside Russian estate, feels hopelessly behind the times in his ideology and lifestyle, as if he has been discarded by history. Nikolai Petrovich and his brother Pavel Petrovich, committed liberals who believe firmly in Enlightenment values, struggle to understand the “nihilist” (revolutionary) beliefs espoused by Arkady and his friend Evgeni Vasilyich (Vasilyevich) Bazarov. Arkady’s father and uncle are genuine in a way he and Bazarov do not appreciate in their youthful arrogance and cynicism, and thus the gaps in understanding between every generation are evidenced. But aside from just merely emphasizing how it is futile for fathers to try to cross the rift of time and understand their sons’ generation, Fathers and Sons shows the futility of fighting against fate in general. Arkady ends up following in the footsteps of his father regardless of their incomprehensibility to each other, and Bazarov comes to an unexpected and yet seemingly inescapable end. The question of whether Turgenev’s novel falls into the genre of tragedy is, in truth, impossible to answer in an objective manner. Certainly tragic elements are found in the plot, and Bazarov’s story thread is, on a surface level, left unfinished. And yet every plot thread appears to end as it is meant to. Fate is not tragic in this novel any more than it is kind, and Bazarov’s death is not purely sorrowful.
The cyclical nature of fate in Fathers and Sons manifests in the growth of the formerly rebellious Arkady to a man who is more similar than different to his father in spite of their continuing disagreements. Arkady is drawn to the lifestyle of his father and there are numerous parallels between the two. The Kirsanov father and son are both drawn to younger women with similar personalities. The middle-aged widower Nikolai Petrovich brings into his home and has a son with a quiet woman named Fenichka, who is in her early twenties. Arkady, a less extreme version of his father, unexpectedly falls in love with and proposes to a young woman, Katya. Despite being only a few years younger than him, Katya is very reserved and in that way is similar to Fenichka. They share a number of other traits in common, as well. Both Fenichka and Katya are referred to by their Russian-language diminutives (their full forenames are Fedoysa Nikolaevna and Katerina Sergeyevna, respectively), which along the age gap between them and their lovers serves to emphasize their girlishness. Additionally, both Fenichka and Katya were “alternative” choices for the father and son, with Fenichka being Nikolai Petrovich’s second partner after the death of Arkady’s mother, Nikolai Petrovich’s first wife and love with whom “ten years passed like a dream” (Turgenev 3) and Katya being the younger sister of the woman who Arkady initially fell in love with over the course of the novel’s events, Anna Sergeyevna. However, there is an initial element to the relationship of Nikolai Petrovich and Fedosya Nikolaevna that is revealed upon closer examination of their patronymics. Fenichka’s father was evidently named Nikolai, and this coupled with Fenichka’s age and his delicate youth places her relationship with Nikolai Petrovich in a strange light and places Fenichka firmly on the “son” or child side of the titular fathers/sons dichotomy. It also works to show that in spite of Nikolai Petrovich’s liberalism and egalitarianism, he still holds on to patriarchal traditions of the past such as marrying a much younger woman. After Nikolai Petrovich and Fenichka are urged to wed by Arkady, they represent the one major case of an intergenerational marriage in the novel, and are for that reason interesting to compare to more “typical” relationships throughout the novel. In contrast to Nikolai Petrovich and Fenichka, Katya and Arkady belong to the same generation and Katya’s patronymic indicates that her father is not named Arkady, removing that peculiar element from the mix. While Arkady represents the science-minded and semi-revolutionary youth of the 1860s in Russia and eschews the patriarchal intergenerational marriage or the liberalism of Nikolai Petrovich, he is many ways a milder version of his father, and his portrayal in the last chapter of the novel evidences this. Within the same week, both Nikolai Petrovich and Arkady get married in “the little village church, quietly and with almost no witness” (Turgenev 206). The intersection of Arkady and Nikolai Petrovich’s lives in the same church with women of a similar age and disposition, and their subsequent raising up of households in the same home, with both “father and son, settl[ing] at Maryino” (Turgenev 208) hints that maybe for some families, the gulf between fathers and sons is not so insurmountable as to prevent sons from following in their fathers’ footsteps. Indeed one can concede that Arkady is even at the comfortable estate different in politically attitudes from his father, as he becomes “a zealous landowner” (Turgenev 209) with perhaps a more nihilistic or “scientific” view of peasant management than his staunchly liberal father, who deals “with the emancipation of the serfs, and devotes himself tirelessly to his work” (Turgenev 209) and yet, as a member of the outdated generation of fathers who are far behind the rest of the world in their political action, “no one is really satisfied with him” and his attempts at emancipatory reform. While Arkady seems to have lost his regard for “nihilistic” or revolutionary ideals, he still maintains the same sort of cynicism and elitism that Bazarov paradoxically maintained alongside his dislike of nobility and feudalism; Arkady manages to reconcile his cynicism with existing within the estate system, and his unabashed ability to recognize the truth of the system probably aids him in managing the serfs more fruitfully. Ultimately, Arkady retained some individuality while his fate made his life begin to resemble his father’s.
The closest thing to a truly tragic occurrence in Fathers and Sons is how Bazarov meets his death, but it feels strangely purposeful. Bazarov, for all his talk of scientific evidence and the necessity of empirical proof to believe anything concrete, practices his father’s antiquated surgical techniques. When his father, Vasily Ivanovich, is “dressing a peasant’s injured leg” Bazarov helps him, and “from then on took a hand in the old man’s practice” (Turgenev 194). In a strange analogue to Arkady’s fruitful mimicry of his own father, Bazarov’s imitation of his father’s behavior does not work out well for him, but ultimately brings him to his reward (death). Bazarov, in his hubris (and practicing his father’s surgical techniques), visits a village in which a man with typhus has died, and helps autopsy him because he hadn’t “had any practice of that sort for ages” (Turgenev 196). In the process, Bazarov cuts himself. Despite knowing he could likely be infected, he lazily seeks his father to cauterize his wound and then casually remarks that “by now, actually, even the caustic is a waste of time” (Turgenev 196). His lax attitude to his own mortality could either show extreme arrogance or perhaps that he deliberately slipped up when opening the dead typhus patient’s body, perhaps because of his sense of defeat over losing the affections of Anna Sergeyevna. His plotline with her initially seems to be cut off but is ultimately resolved satisfactorily. Ultimately, fate proves not to favor Bazarov, and he soon falls deathly ill. This is not the same comfortable outcome Arkady received when he followed in his father’s footsteps, and underscores the theme that fate is impossible to dodge. Bazarov almost appears to be destined to die and it feels somehow right that he contracts typhus from the dying man and is seemingly deliberately slow to treat it. One cannot be sure if it was truly an accident with Bazarov and his contrarian, individualistic philosophy and fiery stubborn nature. Maybe he condemned himself to die or maybe he was predestined to die, but either way the facts of his sickness and failing health are presented in a manner that is anything but tragic. In a comedic fashion, the normally arrogant know-it-all Bazarov remarks that dying is “a most unpleasant thing to happen” while quipping that his father and “mother must make the best of [their] strong religious fate—this’ll be a chance to test it out” (Turgenev 199). As he deteriorates, Anna Sergeyevna visits him, and Bazarov makes more uncharacteristic statements that are inadvertently funny while revealing how fate has struck him. He claims to be a “giant, after all” (Turgenev 205), arguing that his death will remove someone of great importance from the world. And yet he goes on to waver “Russia needs me … No, evidently it doesn’t” (Turgenev 205). He places stock in the hand of fate, agreeing to some degree he was destined to die and that there’s no use lamenting over how Russia needed him and that if he had survived, the world would’ve been a better place. Also in his final conversation with Anna Sergeyevna, he steels himself, saying “Never mind, I won’t try to duck out of it” (Turgenev 205), displaying dignity in the face of death. The two’s relation to each other is closed when Anna Sergeyevna gives Bazarov a parting kiss. After this occurs he sinks back into his deathbed, proclaims “Now … darkness …” and falls asleep for the last time. His actual death is described soberly, with the simple phrase “he died the next day”. The narrator casts no judgment on the death being tragic but instead merely states the fact that Bazarov died, and even goes on to downplay this bitter truth by detailing that “sweet sleep comes to the weary and the grieving” (Turgenev 206), emphasizing the temporary relief mourners get with sleep and suggesting that this cessation of negative feeling is a necessity.
Despite Bazarov’s various story threads ending with his death, the very end of the book truly wraps them up with one sentence that ties together the whole philosophy of Fathers and Sons. The final sentence that Turgenev chooses to leave us with is unambiguous in its message. Bazarov’s demise is not a cruel tragedy, but a necessary part of the natural cycle of life, death, and in the views of the narrator “eternal reconciliation and life everlasting” (Turgenev 211). This declaration is decidedly against the purported views of Bazarov, and yet it affirms his humanity much more than it would if it touted his cold and detached ideology. Nihilism does not triumph in this novel. There is a sense that everything panned out as it should have done, and this is what fate is. There is no alternative to the loss of generational understanding and compassion to time. There is no alternative to death. All that can be done is accept it and not despair over fate.