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Fathers and Sons, part two The Tea Time Debate (review):
What is Turgenev’s response? Look at Nikolai’s response to the squabble. His immediate response is to think of arguments he had with his mother when he had been young: “"Do you know what I was reminded of, brother? I once
quarreled with our mother; she shouted and wouldn't listen to me. At last I
said to her, 'Of course you can't understand me; we belong to two different
generations.' She was terribly offended, but I thought, 'It can't be helped--a
bitter pill, but she has to swallow it.' So now our turn has come, and our
successors can tell us: 'You don't belong to our generation; swallow your
pill.'" (Chapter 10) He goes outside to sit and watch the beautiful sunset. He enjoys the setting and begins to think about his dead wife, recalling the first time they met. He thinks about Fenetchka, and then tears come to his eyes. He thinks to himself how Bazarov would make fun him, sitting and crying under the evening sky. What is your judgment of Nikolai? Bazarov’s and Arkady’s Trip to
Town Turgenev’s cross-section of the other political responses available during the 1860’s. (All discarded.) 1. Matthew Ilich Kolyazin (Chapter 12): the government inspector. Where have we seen this type before? He of the impeccable manners and healthy laugh who is in reality a power crazed tyrant right out of Gogol He delights in humiliating subordinates yet prides himself on having the most modern ideas. He is an ‘enlightened sensualist’. He invites Arkady and Bazarov to the governor’s ball that night. 2. Herr Sitnikov (Chapter 12): the fashionable Slavophile. How is he characterized? His visiting card? French and Slavic print on either side. His father? A tax farmer who has made his fortune profiting from vodka sales. He suggests that all three of them go visit the local feminist, Eudoxie Kukshina 3. Eudoxie Kukshina (Chapter 13): How does she behave at the luncheon she hosts? the champagne addled, cigar smoking feminist. She is like one of those bobble head dolls she describes. “Everything about her seems made up.” She name drops western anarchists, alludes to Emerson, Fourier, Proudhon and Bakunin, and proceeds to get complete smashed (at lunchtime). Drunken Luncheon: Turgenev’s withering parody of radical western ideologies: they only give you permission to act like this. No government! Freedom will solve all! Bazarov’s Response? What does he think of Eudoxie’s
banter and her liberated lifestyle? He mentions at one point that “A whip is a good thing.” His interest, though, does pick
up when Eudoxie starts talking about her acquaintance
with the beauty, Odintsova. Eventually he gets up
and walks out without saying thanks or goodbye. How
can we distinguish Bazarov’s radicalism from Eudoxie’s
brand of utopian socialism? She is into radicalism for
personal reasons: to explore freedom from conventional social roles. Bazarov
would never put up with this nonsense if he and his compatriots were to
actually gain power. (“She’s a bloody freak.”) In opposition to Bakunin’s
libertarian anarchism, Bazarov believes in a strong government authority. He
distrusts individual liberty. Structure will save society. The
Governor’s Ball (Chapter
14) Odintsova’s and Bazarov’s romance dramatizes the crux of Turgenev’s
view about the debate between liberal and radical. Odintsova,
far more effectively than the Kirsanov brothers, represents the sensible and
grounded self-interest of the liberal Russian aristocracy, shorn of its pie
in the sky idealism. Bazarov intrigues her though because of the fresh
strength and charisma associated with his radical demand for social justice.
Imagine the Russia that would have emerged from their successful union!
Turgenev, though, does not believe in happy endings. 1. First impressions of Odintsova (Chapter 14) What about her do Arkady and Bazarov
find so striking? Arkady looked round and saw a tall woman in a black dress
standing near the door. He was struck by her dignified bearing. Her bare arms
lay gracefully across her slim waist; light sprays of fuchsia hung from her
shining hair over her sloping shoulders; her clear eyes looked out from under
a prominent white forehead; their expression was calm and intelligent--calm
but not pensive--and her lips showed a scarcely perceptible smile. A sort of
affectionate and gentle strength emanated from her face…. "What a striking figure," Bazarov said.
"She's not like the other females." Arkady
immediately falls in love with her. She is calm. Elegant, poised, and well
mannered, even if slightly condescending. She comes and sits with Arkady.
Why? He came in with Bazarov. His response? Yowzah!
Look at those shoulders! Like ice cream. 2.
Odintsova’s Biography (Chapter 15) Anna Sergeyevna Odintsova was
the daughter of Sergei Nikolayevich Loktev,
notorious for his personal beauty, speculations and gambling, who after
fifteen years of a stormy and sensational life in Petersburg and Moscow,
ended by ruining himself completely at cards and was obliged to retire to the
country, where soon afterwards he died, leaving a very small property to his
two daughters--Anna, a girl of twenty at that time, and Katya, a child of
twelve. Their mother, who belonged to an impoverished princely family, had
died in Petersburg while her husband was still in his heyday. Anna's position
after her father's death was a very difficult one. The brilliant education
which she had received in Petersburg had not fitted her for the cares of
domestic and household economy--nor for an obscure
life buried in the country. She knew no one in the whole neighborhood, and
there was no one she could consult. Her father had tried to avoid all contact
with his neighbors; he despised them in his way and they despised him in
theirs. However, she did not lose her head, and promptly sent for a sister of
her mother's, Princess Avdotya Stepanovna
X.--a spiteful, arrogant old lady who, on installing herself in her niece's
house, appropriated the best rooms for herself, grumbled and scolded from
morning till night and refused to walk a step, even in the garden, without
being attended by her one and only serf, a surly footman in a threadbare
pea-green livery with light-blue trimming and a three-cornered hat. Anna
patiently put up with all her aunt's caprices, gradually set to work on her
sister's education and, it seemed, was already reconciled to the idea of fading
away in the wilderness . . . But fate had decreed otherwise. She happened to
be seen by a certain Odintsov, a wealthy man of forty-six, an eccentric
hypochondriac, swollen, heavy and sour, but not stupid and quite
good-natured; he fell in love with her and proposed marriage. She agreed to
become his wife, and they lived together for six years; then he died, leaving
her all his property. For nearly a year after his death Anna Sergeyevna
remained in the country; then she went abroad with her sister, but stayed
only in Germany; she soon grew tired of it and came back to live at her
beloved Nikolskoe, nearly thirty miles from the
town of X. Her house was magnificent, luxuriously furnished and had a
beautiful garden with conservatories; her late husband had spared no expense
to gratify his wishes. Anna Sergeyevna rarely visited the town, and as a rule
only on business; even then she did not stay long. She was not popular in the
province; there had been a fearful outcry when she married Odintsov; all
sorts of slanderous stories were invented about her; it was asserted that she
had helped her father in his gambling escapades and even that she had gone
abroad for a special reason to conceal some unfortunate consequences . . .
"You understand?" the indignant gossips would conclude. "She
has been through fire and water," they said of her, to which a noted
provincial wit added "And through the brass instruments." All this
talk reached her, but she turned a deaf ear to it; she had an independent and
sufficiently determined character. Gambling
parents, brilliant education, orphaned and forced to find her way on her own
while supporting a younger sister. How? She
marries an older landowner who dies and leaves her independently wealthy, but
the experience leaves her with no interest in romance. She no longer has any
illusions about life- in short, she is the perfect
match for the radical materialist Bazarov who would like to deny the
existence of love: all that transpires between the sexes is purley chemical sex appeal. Bazarov
at first looks at Odintsova as nothing more than an
attractive sex object, but later when she he visits her in her hotel room and
then at her manor Nikolskoe, he develops a
surprising, powerful passion for her which, annoying enough as it is for a
man who scoffs at love, becomes absolutely unbearable for Bazarov when it is
unrequited. What is it about Odintsova that Bazarov finds so attractive? (Chapter 16) Describe
the routine of life at Nikolskoe: tidiness, order,
clockwork routine, profit. Everything is run on rails there. How is this farm run differently than the
Kirsanov’s farm? She has a crazy aunt who is
treated with respect. She has a charming younger sister who plays Mozart on
the piano. A jolly, card playing neighbor drops by to check in on them. She
has a beautiful Borzoi dog. And Odintsova prefers
this company to fashionable society. Her life is based around the civilized
routines of aristocratic life: art, music, and good manners. "Yes,"
answered Bazarov, "a female with brains; and she's seen life too." Bazarov
did not care for this measured and rather formal regularity in daily life,
like "gliding along rails" he called it (Chapter 17) What is it about Bazarov that Odintsova finds so attractive? (Chapter 16) His
intelligence, clarity of thought, and radical materialism. His ideas are so
radical! People are like trees in a forest. No personal distinctions between
them are important. Cure their diseases (by cutting out the sick) and you
cure the whole forest. It is the same with people. The lungs of a consumptive person
are not in the same condition as yours or mine, although their construction
is the same. We know more or less what causes physical ailments; but moral
diseases are caused by bad education, by all the rubbish with which people's
heads are stuffed from childhood onwards, in short, by the disordered state
of society. Reform society, and there will be no diseases. The radical determinist believes that the environment alone
is the cause of illness in society, not moral weakness in people. Why does
their relationship fizzle instead of leaping to flame? (Compare these two with Arkady and Katya, the best we can
expect from life.) Bazarov’s understanding of love is purely ideological: the
romantic ideal is rubbish, unforgivable stupidity, pitiable, and he condemns
himself as weak and unworthy of respect because he too is susceptible to
emotion. Yet he cannot deny his passion for her. Bazarov was very fond of women and
of feminine beauty, but love in the ideal, or as he called it romantic,
sense, he described as idiocy, unpardonable folly; he regarded chivalrous
feelings as a kind of deformity or disease… [Yet] his blood was on fire
directly he thought about her; he could easily have mastered bis blood, but something else was taking possession of
him, something he had never allowed, at which he had always scoffed and at
which his pride revolted. (Chapter 17) Odintsova urges Bazarov to stay with him. She says that she’d be
bored without him. She’s intrigued by his ambition and his potential. She
flirts with the idea of happiness but she falls back on security. She liked Bazarov for his absence
of flattery and for his definite downright views. She found in him something
new, which she had not met before, and she was curious… Had she not been rich
and independent, she would probably have thrown herself into the struggle and
experienced passion . . . But life ran easily for her, although she was
sometimes bored, and she went on from day to day without hurrying and only
rarely feeling disturbed. Rainbow-colored visions sometimes glowed before her
eyes, but she breathed more peacefully when they faded away, and she did not
hanker after them. (Chapter 16) "This doctor is a strange
man," she repeated to herself. She stretched, smiled, clasped her hands
behind her head, ran her eyes over two pages of a stupid French novel,
dropped the book--and fell asleep, pure and cold in her clean and fragrant
linen. (Chapter 16) She sees potential in him and
flirts with the idea of linking her wealth with his ambition: "Listen, I have long wanted to have a frank talk with
you. There is no need to tell you--for you know it yourself--that you are not
an ordinary person; you are still young--your whole life lies before you. For
what are you preparing yourself? What future awaits you? I mean to say, what
purpose are you aiming at, in what direction are you moving, what is in your
heart? In short, who and what are you?" (Chapter 18) No," she decided at last. "God alone knows what
it would lead to; he couldn't be trifled with; after all, peace is better
than anything else in the world." (Chapter 18)
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