Russian Literature of the 19th Century

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Russian Literature of the 19th Century
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Eighth Week

• READ Turgenev
• Your assignment Fathers and Sons
• New Writing Assignment check message and website

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Last Tuesday

• History Alexander II
• Turgenev bio
• Film continued The Idiot (based on novel by
  Dostoevsky)

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The Idiot (so far)

• Dealing with Nastasya Filipovna
• Relationships Totsky and General Epanchin
• Need for marriage plans
• Introduction to Prince Myshkin
• Myshkin meets Rogozhin (flashback)
• Myshkin meets the General and family

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Idiot-2

• Focus on Prince
• Reactions to picture of NF
• Job and lodging with Ganya
• Lunch with Epanchin wife and daughters
• Prince as story-teller

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Realism

• Second half of 19th century
• Prose novels, short stories, essays
• Individualism, supernatural, irrational, exotic
  less important
• Topicality news of the day, ideas of the day
• Critical edge improve society (didacticism not
  obvious)

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Realism-2

• Attention to everyday details (more than
  necessary for story line)
• Hero not so unlike others
• Setting not central
• Real world grounding (supernatural out)
• Emphasis on verisimilitude

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Ivan Turgenev 1818-83

• Notes of a Hunter 1852
• Fathers and Sons 1862
• Bazarov is focus
• Set it in months before Emancipation

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Biography

• Childhood
• Parents
• Education Moscow, Petersburg, Berlin
• Estates
• Travels Germany, Italy, France

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Personal life

• Strong women
• Strong men (ambivalence)
• Pauline Viardot
• Avoidance of conflict
• Reconciliation with enemies toward end of his
  life (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky)

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Turgenev Museums
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Other Novels and Novellas of First Period

• Rudin (1856)
• Nest of Gentlefolk (1859)
• On the Eve (1860)
• First Love (1860)

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Later Work

• Smoke 1867
• Month in the Country, Torrents of Spring 1872
• Virgin Soil 1877
• Poems in Prose 1883

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Fathers and Sons

• Written 1861 published 1862
• Very controversial
• Strong opinions pro and con
• Radicals and liberals vs. conservatives
• Westernizers vs. Slavophiles

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Structure

• Favored patterns
• Opens with arrival
• Followed by biographies of characters
• Complicating actions
• Climax
• Epilogue

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Early Chapters Issues

• Arkadys relationship with father
• Arkadys independence
• State of the estate
• Arkadys relationship with Bazarov
• Bazarovs relationship with NP and PP
• Bazarovs personality

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Structure

• 1 Intro to Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov
• Family, bio up to present
• Detailed chronology
• 2 Arrival of Arkady and Bazarov trip home
• 3 Conversations about past, estate, Fenichka

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Structure 4-6

• 4 Introduction to household
• Servants
• Pavel Petrovich
• Bazarovs reactions
• 5 Arkady meets Fenichka brother
• 6 Bazarovs return interrogation

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Structure 7

• 7 PPs story
• Differences in brothers
• Princess R relationship
• Complexity of her character suggested
• PP madly in love irrational, tormented,
  mysterious
• Death ends it
• Brothers live together then
• Becomes Anglophile
• Bazarovs reaction speech on women and love, 105

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Structure 8-9

• 8 PP visits Fenichka and Mitya
• Detailed description of room
• History of relationship between NP and Fenichka
  spark in eye
• 9 Bazarov meets Fenichka
• Speech on marriage on estate management, on
  workers, on 22, on nature (workshop), on music

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Tensions

• PP and Bazarov
• Arkady and Bazarov and father NP
• Contrasts
• New servants, old servants
• New ways, old ways estate vs. farm
• New spouse, Arkadys mother

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Realistic features

• Psychological subtleties
• Mannerisms
• Reactions
• Feelings concealed by words
• Superfluous detail
• Nature
• Inside the house

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Follow the feelings/emotions

• Arkadys enthusiasm
• Arkadys restraint
• PPs disdain, irony and sarcasm
• Bazarovs disrespect antipathy toward PP
• Will it lead to actual conflict?

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Fathers and Sons Nihilism

• "I share no man's opinions I have my own."
• One who respects nothing
• One who takes nothing on authority
• One who looks critically at everything

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More nihilism