What's going on here, Ivan?

Not all of Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev, features fathers and sons. Certainly the sparks of intergenerational conflict fly but less so between a father and son than between a university graduate's aristocratic uncle (Pavel Petrovich) and his friend from university (Bazarov). Meanwhile, from the start, there is tension between the two university friends, Arkady and Bazarov, who are presumably of the same generation. Paralleling this tension are two markedly different romances, between Arkady and Katia (relatively light), and between Bazarov and Mme. Odintsov (not remotely light).

At first, it seems that a rift has occurred between Nikolai Petrovich and his son Arkady, who has just graduated from the University of St. Petersburg. On the one hand, Arkady says, "...it's not for a son to sit in judgment on his father..." (Turgenev 91), but, on the other, he feels he is "being magnanimous" toward his father (91) who really has the less "emancipated outlook." (82) Undoubtedly there has been a shift but, it soon turns out, not a shift that creates a damaging rift between father and son.

The intergenerational conflict happens between Arkady's friend, Bazarov, and Arkady's uncle, Pavel Petrovich. After Arkady informs his uncle Pavel that Bazarov is a Nihilist, "a person who does not take any principles for granted, however much that principle may be revered," Pavel has this to say: "We of the older generation think that without principles...taken as you say on trust one cannot move an inch or draw a single breath." (94) These are fighting words (of a polite sort), and this is only the beginning of a fight between Pavel and Bazarov, which ends in a duel without any specific cause and with only one (reluctant) witness. Long before this duel, Bazarov tells Arkady that his father, Nikolai, is "a good man...but he's old-fashioned, he's had his day" (118), a comment that Arkady does not refute--but does not endorse, either. Bazarov, not Arkady, is the rebellious, potentially parricidal "son" here. Meantime, Nikolai, saying to Pavel that Bazarov may be right, is hardly "Cronos" defending his realm against the "Zeus" Bazarov. Pavel takes on that role, of the powerful, wrathful father, upon declaring to his brother, "Well, I shall not give up so quickly.... I have got a skirmish with that [Bazarov]...I feel sure of that." (121) In the end, neither "father" nor "son" wins.

A primary conflict in Fathers and Sons takes place not between father and son but between friend and friend, i.e., Arkady and Bazarov. Tension between the friends emerges slightly on the matter of Arkady's father's estate--

The friends walked on a few steps in silence.
"I've been all round your father's establishment," Bazarov began again. "The cattle are inferior, the horses mere hacks. The buildings aren't up to much and the labourers look like a set of inveterate loafers...."
"You are pretty censorious today, Yevgeny Vassilyich." (115-116)

Tension between the two simmers until (the Nihilist) Bazarov declares that Arkady is talking like his aristocratic uncle (211), a retort that nearly escalates into a wrestling match. Finally, upon leaving Mme. Odintsov, Bazarov also tells Arkady in an unmistakably friendship-severing diatribe:

"There's no audacity in you, no venom: you've the fire and energy of youth but that's not enough for our business. Your sort, the gentry, can never go farther than well-bred resignation or well-bred indignation, and that's futile. The likes of you, for instance, won't stand up and fight...."
(271)

And so on and so forth. Meantime, just as Arkady is a relatively light-hearted man, so is Arkady's courtship of Katia--during which he praises the Russian name for the ash-tree--relatively light-hearted. A short while afterward, Arkady's proposal to Katia initially veers between eloquence and nervousness but then gets to the point with a final emphatic "I love you...do believe me!" that is met with "Yes." from Katia. (268) And so, Arkady's romance with Katia ends in an engagement. On the other hand, just as Bazarov is a relatively heavy-hearted man, so Bazarov's romance with Mme. Odintsov becomes fraught with "unceasing awareness of unceasing danger." (264) It ends in separation.

Fathers and Sons also features a difficult relationship between Bazarov and his father, Vassily Ivanych, who, at one point, compares himself to the Ancient Roman hero Cincinnatus, as well as a lengthy characterization of Bazarov's mother, Arina Vlassyevna, "who ought to have lived a couple centuries earlier, in the days of Muscovy." (202) But what makes Fathers and Sons of especial interest is Turgenev's ability to capture the many kinds of relationships people may engage in with each other, of which father and son is only one.