Fathers and Sons (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

By Ivan Turgenev and David Goldfarb

Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
• Comments by other famous authors
• Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations
• Bibliographies for further reading
• Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.   Youth rebels. It’s true today and it was true in Russia, in 1862, when Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons first appeared.  At the novel’s center stands Evgeny Bazarov, medical student, doctor’s son, and self-proclaimed nihilist. Bazarov rejects all authority, all so-called truths that are based on faith rather than science and experience. His ideas bring him into conflict with his best friend, recent graduate Arkady Kirsanov, with Arkady’s family, with his own parents, and eventually with his emotions, when he falls helplessly in love with the beautiful Madame Odintsova.
 
Turgenev’s earlier A Sportsman’s Sketches had helped hasten the liberation of the serfs in 1861. But the complex portrait of Bazarov, whose goals he admired but whose rejection of art and embrace of violence he could not accept, enraged both right and left. The right saw Fathers and Sons as a glorification of radical extremists; the left saw it as a denunciation of progress. Even today, readers argue over Turgenev’s attitude towards Bazarov. But they can’t resist the novel’s power to grip the heart while engaging the mind.   David Goldfarb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages at Barnard College. He has published numerous scholarly articles as well as the Introduction and Notes to the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
• Release date: Jun 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411432185

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev was born on 9th November 1818 to noble and wealthy parents in Oryol, Russia. His father a Colonel in the Russian Cavalry and his mother came from the nobel Lutovinov house of the Oryol Governorate. Turgenev spent the majority of his younger life in Moscow with his two younger brothers, where he was brought up having a proper education. Turgenev started out university life at the university of Moscow in 1833, before moving to the University of St Petersburg to study Classic Russian Literature and philology between 1834 to 1837, it was during this time Turgenev started to write poetry. Whilst he was studying there he would lose his father to kidney stoney disease and his youngest brother to epilepsy.From 1838 to 1841, Turgenev studied philosophy and history at the university of Berlin before finishing his master in St Petersburg. Unable to get a professorship at St Petersburg University, Turgenev ventured into the world of politics and government where he spent two years between 1843 and 1845 at the Russian Ministry of Interior. Here he would continue to write poetry before venturing into play writing with 'The Rash Thing To Do', in 1843. Though he never married, Turgenev did have a love with the well renowned Spanish singer Pauline Viardot. Though this relationship would only be a platonic one, the two would become close friends exchanging letters with Viardot helping Turgenev later on in life. Turgenev was known to have many love affairs with his family servants, with one of these love affairs in 1842 leading to the birth of his illegitimate daughter Paulinette. Turgenev would later entrust his dear friend Viardot to bring-up his daughter Paulinette. Turgenev's writing career began in the 1840's, writing long poems before transitioning into plays, novels and short stories. Unlike a lot of writers of the time Turgenev's works shied away from the religious influences of the time and preferred to revolve his work around the political and social issues of Russia during the 1800's. This would come and haunt him when he wrote his greatest novel 'Father and Sons' in 1862, where it was given a hostile reaction by the Russian audience leading him to go into self-exile. This self-exile first sent Turgenev to Germany but at the outbreak of the Franco-German war in 1870, he moved to London and then Paris, where he would settle. Turgenev's final piece of word was a short story called 'The Mysterious tales' in 1883, later that year he would die at the age of 64 on the 3rd September 1883 in Bougival, France. His body was then transported back to St Petersburg where he was buried in Volkovo Cemetery.

Book preview

I

WELL, PIOTR, NOT IN sight yet? was the question asked on May the 20th, 1859,¹ by a gentleman of a little over forty, in a dusty coat and checked trousers, who came out without his hat on to the low steps of the posting station at S—. He was addressing his servant, a chubby young fellow, with whitish down on his chin, and little, lacklustre eyes.

The servant, in whom everything—the turquoise ring in his ear, the streaky hair plastered with grease, and the civility of his movements—indicated a man of the new, improved generation, glanced with an air of indulgence along the road, and made answer:

No, sir; not in sight.

Not in sight? repeated his master.

No, sir, responded the man a second time.

His master sighed, and sat down on a little bench. We will introduce him to the reader while he sits, his feet tucked under him, gazing thoughtfully round.

His name was Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov. He had twelve miles from the posting station, a fine property of two hundred souls, or, as he expressed it—since he had arranged the division of his land with the peasants, and started a farm—of nearly five thousand acres. His father, a general in the army, who served in 1812,² a coarse, half-educated, but not ill-natured man, a typical Russian, had been in harness all his life, first in command of a brigade, and then of a division, and lived constantly in the provinces, where, by virtue of his rank, he played a fairly important part. Nikolai Petrovich was born in the south of Russia like his elder brother, Pavel, of whom more hereafter. He was educated at home till he was fourteen, surrounded by cheap tutors, free-and-easy but toadying adjutants, and all the usual regimental and staff set. His mother, one of the Kolyazin family, as a girl called Agathe, but as a general’s wife Agathokleia Kuzminishna Kirsanov, was one of those military ladies who take their full share of the duties and dignities of office. She wore gorgeous caps and rustling silk dresses; in church she was the first to advance to the cross; she talked a great deal in a loud voice, let her children kiss her hand in the morning, and gave them her blessing at night—in fact, she got everything out of life she could. Nikolai Petrovich, as a general’s son—though so far from being distinguished by courage that he even deserved to be called a chicken—was intended, like his brother Pavel, to enter the army; but he broke his leg on the very day when the news of his commission came, and, after being two months in bed, retained a slight limp to the end of his day. His father gave him up as a bad job, and let him go into the civil service. He took him to Petersburg directly he was eighteen, and placed him in the university. His brother happened about the same time to be made an officer in the Guards. The young men started living together in one set of rooms, under the remote supervision of a cousin on their mother’s side, Ilya Kolyazin, an official of high rank. Their father returned to his division and his wife, and only rarely sent his sons large sheets of grey paper, scrawled over in a bold clerkly hand. At the bottom of these sheets stood in letters, enclosed carefully in scroll-work, the words, Piotr Kirsanov, General-Major. In 1835 Nikolai Petrovich left the university, a graduate, and in the same year General Kirsanov was put on the retired list after an unsuccessful review, and came to Petersburg with his wife to live. He was about to take a house in the Tavrichesky Gardens, and had joined the English club,³ but he died suddenly of an apoplectic fit. Agathokleia Kuzminishna soon followed him; she could not accustom herself to a dull life in the capital; she was consumed by the ennui of existence away from the regiment. Meanwhile Nikolai Petrovich had already, in his parents’ lifetime and to their no slight chagrin, had time to fall in love with the daughter of his landlord, a petty official, Prepolovensky. She was pretty, and, as it is called, an advanced girl; she used to read the serious articles in the Science column of the journals. He married her directly the term of mourning was over; and leaving the civil service in which his father had by favour procured him a post, was perfectly blissful with his Masha, first in a country villa near the Lyesny Institute, afterwards in town in a pretty little flat with a clean staircase and a draughty drawing-room, and then in the country, where he settled finally, and where in a short time a son, Arkady, was born to him. The young couple lived very happily and peacefully; they were scarcely ever apart; they read together, sang and played duets together on the piano; she tended her flowers and looked after the poultry-yard; he sometimes went hunting, and busied himself with the estate, while Arkady grew and grew in the same happy and peaceful way. Ten years passed like a dream. In 1847 Kirsanov’s wife died. He almost succumbed to this blow; in a few weeks his hair was grey; he was getting ready to go abroad, if possible to distract his mind ... but then came the year 1848. He returned unwillingly to the country, and, after a rather prolonged period of inactivity, began to take an interest in improvements in the management of his land. In 1855 he brought his son to the university; he spent three winters with him in Petersburg, hardly going out anywhere, and trying to make acquaintance with Arkady’s young companions. The last winter he had not been able to go, and here we have seen him in the May of 1859, already quite grey, stoutish, and rather bent, waiting for his son, who had just taken his degree, as once he had taken it