Turgenev’s Fathers and Children comes from that lush mid-19th century literary period in Russian literature that also includes the authors Gogol (Dead Souls) and my favorite, Goncharov (Oblomov, in which we spend 500 pages with the world’s laziest man). There are more famous authors in this period, but they don’t appeal to me the way these three do.
There is something soothing about the slow pace of life in these books that really appeals to me. The protagonists are members of the lesser aristocracy, but landowners and thus with a complement of serfs to their name. They have been educated in university, and thus have had a taste of the big city life, but have returned to their families’ estates, and one golden day stretches out after another. Both of the men are only children, and their families are overjoyed to have them back home, simply because they have been missed so, fervently hoping they don’t want to return to town.
What struck me more reading this now, rather than as my 20-something-self many decades ago, is how much genuine love and acceptance there is between these young men and their fathers. They don’t agree on many issues, and yet both sides are willing to hear out the other and consider that pint of view. There is a kindness that doesn’t often figure in novels featuring generational conflict. Alas, it goes better for one young man that the other, but that was certainly the way of the world back then.
Remember playing Oregon Trail, and you got so close and then. . . Surprise dysentery! Yeah, like that.
