Erma's comments
(member since Jun 04, 2009)
Erma's comments from the Russian Readers Club group.
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Tom wrote: "This is off the topic a bit, but I thought you Turgenev fans might enjoy his essay, "The Execution of Tropmann," a searing account of mob attending beheading of convicted murderer in Paris. It's i..."
essay sounds intriguing, so does the whole collection. Put it on my to-read list.
Maybe because Fathers and Sons is a Russian novel and Russian novels, no matter from which period, are always filled with social/political struggle and suffering. It is through Bazarov that we get a glimpse of the bloody future just years away in the Russian Revolution; afterall, Bazarov is in many ways literature's first Bolshevik.
Wuthering Heights and some English novels of the same period tended to concentrate on love (sometimes obsessive) and romance. I believe they were largely read by women (especially the Brontes).
I also prefer Turgenev to the Brontes.
A really good review, Greg. Made me take a copy down from my bookshelf and re-read it. Though a 19th centuray Russian novel, the social, political and emotional gaps between fathers and sons still hold true. "Universality" really does make it the classic that it is.
