Fathers and Sons

by Ivan Turgenev

This was Maryino, also known as New–Wick, or, as the peasants had nicknamed it, Poverty Farm.

The whole person of Arkady's uncle, with its aristocratic elegance, had preserved the gracefulness of youth and that air of striving upwards, away from earth, which for the most part is lost after the twenties are past.

Besides, I am sure you could not make a bad choice; if you have allowed her to live under the same roof with you, she must be worthy of it; in any case, a son cannot judge his father,—least of all, I, and least of all such a father who, like you, has never hampered my liberty in anything.'

'He's a nihilist.' 'Eh?' inquired Nikolai Petrovitch, while Pavel Petrovitch lilted a knife in the air with a small piece of butter on its tip, and remained motionless.

'A nihilist,' said Nikolai Petrovitch. 'That's from the Latin, nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who … who accepts nothing?'

'Say, "who respects nothing,"' put in Pavel Petrovitch, and he set to wor...

A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.'

Nowhere does time fly past as in Russia; in prison they say it flies even faster.

Pavel, on the contrary, a solitary bachelor, was entering upon that indefinite twilight period of regrets that are akin to hopes, and hopes that are akin to regrets, when youth is over, while old age has not yet come.

'Still, I must say that a fellow who stakes his whole life on one card—a woman's love—and when that card fails, turns sour, and lets himself go till he's fit for nothing, is not a man, but a male.

'I begin to agree with my uncle,' remarked Arkady; 'you certainly have a poor opinion of Russians.' 'As though that mattered! The only good point in a Russian is his having the lowest possible opinion of himself. What does matter is that two and two make four, and the rest is all foolery.'

Bazarov used to get up very early and go out for two or three miles, not for a walk—he couldn't bear walking without an object—but to collect specimens of plants and insects.

'The day before yesterday I saw him reading Pushkin,' Bazarov was continuing meanwhile. 'Explain to him, please, that that's no earthly use. He's not a boy, you know; it's time to throw up that rubbish. And what an idea to be a romantic at this time of day! Give him something sensible to read.'

'Upon my word! What book did he give you?' 'This one here.' And Nikolai Petrovitch pulled the famous treatise of Büchner, in the ninth edition, out of his coat–tail pocket. Pavel Petrovitch turned it over in his hands. 'Hm!' he growled. 'Arkady Nikolaevitch is taking your education in hand. Well, did you try reading it?' 'Yes, I tried it.' 'Well, what did you think of it?' 'Either I'm stupid, or it's all—nonsense. I must be stupid, I suppose.' 'Haven't you forgotten your German?' queried Pavel Petrovitch. 'Oh, I understand the German.'

'Let me ask you, Pavel Petrovitch,' commented Bazarov; 'you respect yourself, and sit with your hands folded; what sort of benefit does that do to the bien public? If you didn't respect yourself, you'd do just the same.'

'What is good for something according to you? If we listen to you, we shall find ourselves outside humanity, outside its laws.

You insult the Russian people. I don't understand how it's possible not to acknowledge principles, rules! By virtue of what do you act then?' 'I've told you already, uncle, that we don't accept any authorities,' put in Arkady. 'We act by virtue of what we recognise as beneficial,' observed Bazarov. 'At the present time, negation is the most beneficial of all—and we deny―' 'Everything?' 'Everything!'

In old days, young men had to study; they didn't want to be called dunces, so they had to work hard whether they liked it or not. But now, they need only say, "Everything in the world is foolery!" and the trick's done. Young men are delighted. And, to be sure, they were simply geese before, and now they have suddenly turned nihilists.'

In his heart he was highly delighted with his friend's suggestion, but he thought it a duty to conceal his feeling. He was not a nihilist for nothing!

All people are like one another, in soul as in body; each of us has brain, spleen, heart, and lungs made alike; and the so–called moral qualities are the same in all; the slight variations are of no importance. A single human specimen is sufficient to judge of all by. People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch–tree.'

We know approximately what physical diseases come from; moral diseases come from bad education, from all the nonsense people's heads are stuffed with from childhood up, from the defective state of society; in short, reform society, and there will be no diseases.'

Time, it is well known, sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a worm; but man is wont to be particularly happy when he does not even notice whether it passes quickly or slowly.

'Let me tell you then that I love you like a fool, like a madman…. There, you've forced it out of me.'

Every man hangs on a thread, the abyss may open under his feet any minute, and yet he must go and invent all sorts of discomforts for himself, and spoil his life.'

Bazarov paused. 'When I meet a man who can hold his own beside me,' he said, dwelling on every syllable, 'then I'll change my opinion of myself. Yes, hatred! You said, for instance, to–day as we passed our bailiff Philip's cottage—it's the one that's so nice and clean—well, you said, Russia will come to perfection when the poorest peasant has a house like that, and every one of us ought to work to bring it about…. And I felt such a hatred for this poorest peasant, this Philip or Sidor, for whom I'm to be ready to jump out of my skin, and who won't even thank me for it … and why should he thank me? Why, suppose he does live in a clean house, while the nettles are growing out of me,—well what do I gain by it?' 'Hush, Yevgeny … if one listened to you to–day one would be driven to agreeing with those who reproach us for want of principles.' 'You talk like your uncle. There are no general principles—you've not made out that even yet! There are feelings. Everything depends on them.'

'Children,' she said aloud, 'what do you say, is love a purely imaginary feeling?' But neither Katya nor Arkady even understood her. They were shy with her; the fragment of conversation they had involuntarily overheard haunted their minds. But Anna Sergyevna soon set their minds at rest; and it was not difficult for her—she had set her own mind at rest.

And, you see, I thought too: I'd break down so many things, I wouldn't die, why should I! there were problems to solve, and I was a giant! And now all the problem for the giant is how to die decently, though that makes no difference to any one either….

Can it be that their prayers, their tears are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred, devoted love, is not all–powerful? Oh, no! However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of 'indifferent' nature; tell us too of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.