Chapter 4: Fathers and Children: Understanding Nature
It can scarcely be doubted that readers of Fathers and Children carry away from the novel a strong sense of the Russian countryside, of scenes set in the open air, and arguments unfolding against an almost idyllic natural background. Yet if this is true, it can only be through the deceptive magic of Turgenev’s art; for any close reading of the text will reveal the ambiguity with which the beauty of these natural settings is presented - at least for those all-important scenes which take place on the Kirsanov estate. Here the negative and positive aspects of nature are presented as stark contrasts in a sort of chiaroscuro effect, and it is a measure of Turgenev’s art that it is the light, rather than the dark, which stays in the reader’s memory.
Turgenev prepares his reader for what is to come even before his protagonists have reached the estate. Arkadii having complained about the lack of shade at Mar’ino, suddenly launches into a eulogy of the quality of the air: ‘In truth, I think that there is nowhere on earth that smells like this, as it does in these regions! Yes and the sky here...’ [8, 202]. This sudden shift from complaint to praise is mirrored at greater length in the mood of despondency erupting into euphoria, which characterises the first long description of natural scenery in the novel, as the party drives into the Kirsanov estate proper:
Nevertheless, the sad impression created by this desolate landscape is immediately reversed by the prevailing mood of spring itself. We are told ‘the spring came into its own’ [8, 205] and as if by some magician’s wand everything becomes ‘golden green’; there is space, air, a warm breeze, growing crops and bird song of every kind:
In similar fashion at the beginning of chapter 5 we are told of the bareness of the estate and its lack of trees, but at the same time we are aware of a more positive face presented by nature: ‘Only a bower of lilac and acacia had really grown up properly; here they would sometimes take tea and dine’ [8, 211]. Nevertheless, it is not here that we actually witness al fresco eating and drinking of tea, and shortly afterwards we become acquainted with the awning (markiza) of which Nikolai Petrovich had spoken, when his son complained of the estate’s lack of shade. It is here that the novel’s tea drinking and the opening debate on nihilism will take place, and if this north facing balcony [8, 202] with its man-made shade hints at the deficiencies of nature, the feeling of a natural setting can still be suggested by the sense of the open air and the large bouquets of lilac on either side of the samovar [8, 212]. One might, perhaps, ask why a north-facing aspect is in need of extra shade, and whether the very word markiza with its suggestion of aristocracy has more the function of a symbolic aegis, shading the values of noblemen owners.
The only natural shade on the estate, the bower, is a stock locus in Turgenev’s novels - a fitting background for declarations of love and overheard confidences.2 A similar function is performed on Odintsova’s estate by the overgrown classical portico (a locus suggesting man’s futile attempt to control nature). These will be examined later as symbolic backdrops for the theme of love. A corresponding locus on the estate of Bazarov’s father is the haystack, The shade provided here is more down to earth, but not without its charm: ‘Arkadii and Bazarov lay in the shade of a small haystack, and had strewn beneath them a couple of armfuls of rustling, dry grass, which was still green and fragrant’ [8, 321]. There is an apparent ambiguity in grass which is ‘rustling and dry’ yet at the same time is ‘green and fragrant’, and the whole scene suggests a chiaroscuro effect; for in stark contrast to the sunny, sweet-smelling environment Bazarov’s mood is dry, black and bitter.
If we return to the novel’s first set piece of natural description, we can see that it is also linked to the mood of a character: ‘"No", Arkadii thought, "This region is poor, it does not impress you either with its prosperity, or its industry; it is impossible, impossible for it to remain like this. Reforms are necessary... but how can they be implemented, how can one set about it?.."’ [8, 205]. Yet once ‘spring has come into its own’ and given nature a smiling face there is sharp change in Arkadii’s mood: ‘Arkadii looked and looked, and gradually losing their force, his musings disappeared... He threw off his greatcoat and looked at his father, like a young boy and so happily, that the latter embraced him once again’ [8, 206].
Yet the double focus is not just that of Arkadii, it is implicit from the outset in the author’s description. He begins with a clear statement: ‘The places through which they were travelling could not be called picturesque’, yet he goes on to say: ‘ravines sparsely dotted with low bushes wound their way, reminding the eye of the way they were depicted on ancient maps of the time of Catherine the Great’. The image is striking – nature’s own graphic self-representation. Its pictorial immediacy seems to undermine the author’s own denial of the picturesque. Yet looked at again, we begin to see the essence of the problem: nature is not a picture, it is a ‘plan’, a map. The landscape evokes in Arkadii razmyshleniia (‘musings’, ‘reflections’) - the need for reforms (and there is even here a hint at something more far-reaching than improvements on his father’s estate). Yet in the next instant the beauty of nature is such that it can disperse such razmyshleniia, and instead of the barrenness of the landscape we witness, not only the proliferation of natural life, but apparently healthy crops - rye which is already beginning to whiten and appear as ‘smoky waves’ [8, 206]. There is a tension between Turgenev’s own natural response to the Russian countryside and the ideological freight he also wants it to bear within the symbolic framework of his novel.
The Kirsanov estate is as it is, because of ‘romantically’ liberal principles. Turgenev prepares the ground in the way he introduces Arkadii’s father at the opening of the novel: ‘He was called Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov. Fifteen versts away from the inn he had a good estate of two hundred souls, or of two thousand dessiatines of land, as he expressed it since the time that he had fixed boundaries with his peasants and set up a "farm"’ [8, 195]. Nikolai Petrovich as a liberal landowner has anticipated the reforms of 1861, and already shared out land with his peasants. He no longer calculates the size of his estate in the old way in numbers of ‘souls’ (i.e. serfs), but in measurements of land. Yet in this modern system of farming, in which peasants are abstracted from the calculation, it is the land that suffers. The ‘gentlemen’ on their way to the estate meet peasants driving in the opposite direction to the town - it is suggested to the pot house (kabak), and when Nikolai Petrovich tells his son of the difficulties he is having with a hired labour force, it is then that Arkadii complains of the lack of shade. This juxtaposition is no mere coincidence; the peasant question and the lack of shade are intimately connected, as we see when Arkadii glimpses his first landmark on the estate:
It is this little interchange between father and son which introduces the ‘unpicturesque’ description of nature examined above.
The bareness of the estate and its lack of shade spring directly from Nikolai Petrovich’s policy towards his peasants, as we learn at the opening of chapter 5. As a consequence of ceding them land, he has had to relocate his own house and grounds on a bare site, but his newly planted saplings have scarcely taken; his two new wells are brackish and the pond he has constructed lacks water [8, 211]. Although Nikolai Petrovich, by substituting land for souls in his material reckonings, has thereby attempted to eliminate peasants from the reckonings of his liberal conscience, they are nevertheless, as we see, still figures in the natural landscape. They raise the important issue of ‘the people’ (See: chapter 6).
At the same time Nikolai Petrovich’s own deficiencies as a landowner come into the equation. Bazarov points out that he has planted the wrong trees: oaks instead of silver poplars, firs and limes [8, 234]. The contrast is with his own father, whom he praises for rearing a vigorous birch grove [8, 313].
Although Bazarov’s comments on the trees planted by Nikolai Petrovich suggest the knowledge of an objective scientist, he nevertheless couches these observations in strangely anthropomorphic phraseology: (‘The acacia and the lilac are good lads’ [8, 234]). Yet, when commenting on human nature itself from the standpoint of a botanist, such anthropomorphism is reversed, and seems more like ‘dendromorphism’: ‘People are like trees in a forest: not a single botanist would start to study each individual birch tree’ [8, 277]. For Bazarov, as we shall see when examining the question of love in the novel, the theme of nature is closely linked to that of ‘human nature’.
Behind the façade of the coldly objective scientist, for whom nature is merely a workshop [8, 236], we sense that trees have a more emotional significance. When Bazarov is confronted with the romantic in himself through his frustrating relations with Odintsova, he vents his annoyance physically, not on people but on trees: ‘Then he would set out for the forest and stride about in it, breaking branches that came across his path and cursing both her and himself beneath his breath, or he would climb up on to the hay inside a barn, and, stubbornly closing his eyes, would force himself to go to sleep, in which of course he did not always succeed’ [8, 287]. This latter locus for his self-contempt, the haystack, will be associated with the nadir of his nihilism, yet it is here that he will tell Arkadii of another tree:
This is the only hint the novel provides of Bazarov’s childhood, indeed of his pre-history, and though the reference to the pit as a talisman may seem ominous, his attitude to the tree somehow makes him seem more human.
Trees take on a further symbolic meaning for him, when he is confronted with the possibility of death. Before the duel with Pavel Petrovich he has disturbed dreams, in which Odintsova and Fenechka also figure (in the guise of his mother followed by a cat): ‘and Pavel Petrovich appeared to him as a large forest, with which, all the same, he had to fight’ [8, 350]. When visited by Odintsova on his death bed the forest again comes to his delirious mind: ‘Russia needs me.. .No, obviously I am not needed. But who is needed? A bootmaker is necessary, a tailor is necessary, a butcher.. he sells meat. ..a butcher, wait a moment, I am confused.. There is a forest here...’ [8, 396].
His grave is marked by two sapling firs, and these, like the talismanic aspen of his childhood (which also marked a pit) again appear to make Bazarov more human. Strangely, the nature that surrounds him in his grave has strong echoes of those contrasts to be found on the Kirsanov estate. Indeed, like the bower it appears as a flourishing natural island amid surrounding neglect and lack of shade:
Natural description in the novel ends, much as it began, with emphasis on chiaroscuro effects.
* * * * * *
Nature plays its own symbolic role in the various love intrigues of the novel. There are three main declarations of love: Bazarov - Odinstova; Bazarov - Fenechka; Arkadii - Katia. Each declaration has thematic importance for the development of the plot, and each is linked to the others through devices of ironic commentary and symbol, but thematically the most important are the love scenes between Bazarov and Odintsova, which put his nihilism to the test and mark its defeat.
From their first encounter in the hotel Bazarov reveals himself to be unusually embarrassed in Odintsova’s presence, even to the point where his ‘nihilism’ is in danger of turning itself into its own parody:
Although we see that here Bazarov is not without a degree of self-knowledge (‘Here’s a pretty pass! I am scared of a woman’), it is self-knowledge which is not in control, either of his emotions, or his behaviour, and it is through Arkadii that the changes in him are registered. Arkadii ‘never ceases to be amazed’ at the new Bazarov he now witnesses - an amazement that marks the beginning of an ever widening gulf between them. Such amazement implies a breakdown of understanding, and it is ‘understanding’ itself which becomes a key word in the later love scenes between Bazarov and Odintsova.
When the two friends first visit Odintsova in her house, Arkadii and Odintsova talk of family matters, whilst Bazarov appears to be looking at various albums. Here, as in the two later scenes between them, the key question of ‘understanding’ springs from the pretext of books. Odintsova claims that Bazarov is merely looking at the pictures in the albums out of politeness. She invites him to draw closer and engage in argument. Bazarov complies by questioning the very nature of Odintsova’s character: he considers that she will have little aptitude for argument as she lacks passion - the ability to be ‘carried away’ (uvlekat’sia), to which Odintsova counters that he does not know her. Thus from the outset the question of mutual understanding is posed. Significantly it is centred on ‘argument’ and addresses the fundamental issue of Odintsova’s ability to be ‘carried away’. Emotionally, of course, this exchange has a subtext in quite a different emotional register, and although, as their relationship develops, this subtext rises more clearly to the surface, the actual ‘text’ and context of this initial skirmish obliquely suggest the eventual outcome.
In this exchange Bazarov goes on to challenge her ‘understanding’ of him, claiming that he has been looking at the illustrations of landscapes from a scientific, rather than an aesthetic, viewpoint, to which Odintsova counters that his lack of an artistic sense is a weakness in a crucial area of human understanding; for how is he able to know and study people without it? The crudely scientific approach of Bazarov’s answer seems merely to reinforce her point. Physically, he says, all people are the same: ‘One human example is all that is required in order to be able to pronounce on all the others’ [8, 277], and he goes on to make his challenging comparison of people to trees, not worthy of individual study by the botanist.
Towards the end of this visit, Bazarov’s decision to leave appears to put pressure on Odintsova to force an ‘understanding’. The pretext for the first of these two, engineered farewell-encounters is again science and books. Odintsova claims that Bazarov cannot leave without teaching her chemistry. He suggests she read Pelouse et Frémy, Notions générales de Chimie. In this scene Bazarov is forced to admit that he does not really know her, and when she reminds him of his views on the essential similarity of all human beings, he makes a significant concession: ‘Perhaps you are right, and it is true that every human being is a riddle’ [8, 299]. The remark is, perhaps, as much about himself as her, and the extent to which he now admits the power of aesthetic feeling is revealed in a reference to Odintsova’s beauty - an admission which she rightly sees as more than a victory at an ideological level: ‘"What? What did you say?" Odintsova took up animatedly, "With my...beauty?"’ [8, 291]. In response Bazarov, mumbles something about not ‘understanding’ why she lives in the country, and she taunts him with the question of her inability to be ‘carried away’, even suggesting that they are both alike. Yet it is another aesthetic experience which suddenly seems to trigger his flight from further ‘understanding’: he leaves the room abruptly at the sound of Katia playing the piano. Such overt aestheticism, it would appear, is for others, and the chapter ends with a further hint at the breach between master and disciple, when Bazarov associates Arkadii in Katia’s piano playing. Although Arkadii denies involvement, this other relationship hinted at here - that between Arkadii and Katia - will turn out to be an emotional ‘duet’ in which both play as equals.
The second and conclusive scene between Bazarov and Odintsova also begins with the pretext of books and science. Odintsova lures him once more into her study for the ostensible reason of consulting him about chemistry books. In reality she seeks to press him about his essential nature and how he sees his future. Again she claims to see a parallel between them, and offers the possibility of ‘understanding’: ‘I might be able to understand you’ [8, 297]. Ultimately Bazarov can bear the pressure no longer. He blurts out that he loves her, but her attitude to ‘understanding’ is now quite different: ‘You have not understood me’ she says [8, 299].
Bazarov has suffered defeat, and in response to his note asking whether he should stay, Odintsova repeats her explanation, but expands it to include mutual incomprehension: ‘I didn’t understand you. You just didn’t understand me’, but to herself she adds: ‘I didn’t even understand myself’ [8, 299]. This last remark is equally applicable to Bazarov himself; for his relationship with Odintsova has revealed a side of himself, of which, up to then, he seemed scarcely aware. Yet ‘understanding’ cannot be entirely denied to Bazarov. Initially he had been right about her coldness and her inability to be ‘carried away’. This may, perhaps, reveal a fear of her own nature, for which an ‘imperfect understanding’ of something in her past itself yields a clue. Rumour has it that as a young girl she had to go abroad in order ‘to hide the unfortunate consequences.. "You understand - of what?" the indignant tale tellers would add!’ [8, 271].
But if ‘understanding’ for Odintsova is surrounded by questions, she has through her actions brought understanding to Bazarov. What he now has to confront is a new realisation of the self, which undermines his nihilistic philosophy: there is more to human life than its material manifestations:
For her part, Odintsova’s motivation for these conversations appears to he be a twofold attempt at ‘understanding’: ‘It was as though she both wished to test him, and to get to know herself’ [8, 287].
The two crucial scenes of Odintsova’s testing take place indoors, whereas Bazarov’s own efforts at self-understanding - his facing up to the romantic within himself - take place when he is alone and are associated with nature, as he angrily strides through the forest or vainly seeks the consolation of sleep in a haystack [8, 287]. Yet the scenes in the closed space of Odintsova’s study also hint symbolically at the ‘letting in of nature’. Odintsova complains of ‘stuffiness’ and asks him to open a window:
Thus the window into the dark world of nature opens more readily than Bazarov had supposed, and although Odintsova asks him to draw the blind, its disturbing presence can still be felt. At this point Bazarov thinks he should leave:
Odintsova restrains him from leaving, but the ‘mysterious’ (tainstvennyi) whispering of nature, produces in her a ‘secret’ (tainyi) emotion. The symbolism of the opened window refers as much to ‘getting to know herself’ as to ‘testing him’.4 Indeed the ‘disturbing freshness of the night’ in contrast to the ‘fragrant room’ takes up an earlier point of characterisation, when she is confronted with her own form of ‘nihilism’ and her own promptings to be ‘carried away’:
The link between this earlier passage and the scene at the window is strengthened thematically, when Odintsova, looking at the window and not at Bazarov, raises the question of her own ‘pamperedness’ (iznezhennost’) and love of comfort: ‘"So, you consider me a calm, pampered, spoiled being", she said in the same voice, without taking her eyes from the window. "But what I know about myself is that I am very unhappy"’ [8, 292].
When Bazarov leaves, Odintsova, deep in thought, is left alone in her room with its burning lamp,6 and her plait (in the imagery of temptation) curves and falls on her shoulders like a dark snake.7 Yet even more significantly she keeps rubbing her arms ‘nipped by the cold of the night’ [8, 295].
In the second scene of ‘putting him to the test and coming to know herself’, the window again plays a symbolic role. During this scene Bazarov gets up, and blurts out his declaration of love, but he does so, as he goes up to the window, turning his back on Odintsova herself. Odintsova makes an involuntary gesture, but Bazarov, it seems, is more concerned with the confrontation with ‘nature’ which the window represents:
The emotion he feels, we are told is: ‘a passion similar to malice and, perhaps, related to it’, It is passion containing more than a suggestion of anger with himself.
Odintsova has achieved half of her exercise: she has put Bazarov to the test, but has she gained self-knowledge? Later she examines her actions and behaviour, pacing her room and pausing between two symbolic ‘frames of reference’ - the window and the mirror. It is the latter which provides the answer to her self-questioning:
Bazarov’s declaration of love to Fenechka forms an obvious contrast to the scenes with Odintsova, The locus is not a room, but a bower. It is out of doors in the full setting of nature, and takes place, not in the cool of the night, but in the early morning. Nevertheless, it is hot, and in contrast to Odintsova who luxuriates in warm baths and fears the cold, Fenechka has just bathed in the cool pond to escape the effects of heat: a heat which makes her languid and, significantly, appears to give her the characteristics of a lady. Yet she wears her usual white scarf, the platok of the peasant [8, 342], though like the white dress of Odintsova it can reveal tantalising glimpses of her elbows [8, 289].
Fenechka is characterised by natural symbolism and associations with nature.9 She is blossoming like a summer rose and has a bunch of red and white roses by her side. Her voice, according to Bazarov, is like the purling of a little stream (tochno rucheek zhurchit) [8, 344], The bower is the concentration of nature itself on this estate: it is the only place where trees will grow. In contrast to the earlier scenes with Odintsova, therefore, the threat from outside does not come from nature at the window, but from the sterile world beyond the entrance to the bower - a world represented by a human eavesdropper - Pavel Petrovich.
It is Bazarov who takes the initiative in this declaration of love, which is expressed through actions (kissing) rather than words. Moreover, in contrast to the two prolonged scenes with Odintsova, it is over in one short episode. At the same time there are also parallels: Fenechka, like Odintsova before her, asks Bazarov about a scientific book, and he is keen to have her read it, even though she says she will not be able to understand it. Nevertheless, the ‘foreplay’ of reading is even less serious here, and ‘understanding’ itself has become a pretext, as Bazarov makes clear: ‘I didn’t intend you to understand. I wanted to look at you and see you reading. When you read, the tip of your nose moves very engagingly’ [8, 343].
In spite of this, the concept of ‘understanding’, particularly ‘self-understanding’ is just as relevant for Bazarov in this short scene, as it was in the earlier ones with Odintsova. If this is merely the same cynical Bazarov, who had earlier claimed that in relations with women one must ‘get some sense out of it’, he is, nevertheless, resorting to the devices of romanticism, as is clear from his flattery of Fenechka, his appeal to her to have pity on him, and above all in his exploitation of that romantic symbol of love - the rose, which he archly claims as a reward, and whose fragrance, he insists, they should jointly admire. Bazarov, who through his treatment at the hands of Odintsova had come face to face with the romantic within himself, has become embittered by his defeat. Angry, both with himself and with Odintsova, he seeks consolation in Fenechka, only to be frustrated by the irruption of another hostile force - Pavel Petrovich, but the relationship of this to the earlier encounter with Odintsova is clearly in his mind:
Arkadii’s declaration of love for Katia reworks elements of the scenes examined above. As in the Bazarov/Odintsova relationship, it unfolds in two main scenes, but the settings are out of doors, in nature. Like all Bazarov's amorous encounters the first scene begins with ‘reading’, yet its matter is not science but art - the works of Heine. Nor is such reading presented as pretext: it leads to ‘understanding’ and discussion.
Before her encounter with Bazarov, Fenechka had complained of lack of shade, but in the first of the scenes between Arkadii and Katia, the shade provided by nature takes on a different symbolic role. It is not the ‘dark night of nature’ of Bazarov’s first scene with Odintsova - it is the shelter of an ash tree surrounding both Arkadii and Katia with its ‘equal’ shade, and, moreover, it is the issue of equality which marks out this successful relationship from the earlier failures experienced by Bazarov.
Yet the symbolism of shade also hints at another issue central to those earlier scenes - the question of ‘understanding’. The mood of these two young people in itself suggests a ‘penumbra of understanding’:
Yet for all that the shade is presented as ‘equal’, it is not uniformly dark. It is broken from time to time by patches of pale golden light, and the very tree which provides it is associated with clarity - the Russian word for ‘ash’ (iasen’) derives from iasnyi, meaning ‘clear’. Arkadii breaks this silence of mute understanding to point this out:
Katia’s monosyllabic assent not only confirms an equality of understanding, but suggests an invidious comparison – Arkadii’s relationship to Bazarov: ‘She doesn’t reproach me for eloquent expressions’ [8, 364].
Earlier Bazarov had pointed to a difference between them in matters of love, and characterised Arkadii’s attitude as one not even appropriate to domesticated birds:
Katia appears to carry on this theme when she describes Bazarov as ‘predatatory’ (khishchnyi - an adjective associated with a bird of prey), whereas she and Arkadii, she claims, are ruchnye – ‘tame’.
The ambiguity of this bird imagery plays its part in the scene enacted between them. She is feeding crumbs to a small family of sparrows: ‘which with their characteristic timid boldness were hopping and chirping at her very feet’ [8, 364]. The oxymoronic ‘timid boldness’ of the sparrows suggests a chiaroscuro effect, and at the climax of this scene, Arkadii raises to the light a question which so far has remained in shadow: ‘You, I am sure, would not be the first, cost what may, to reveal your feelings, however strong and sacred they might be’ [8, 367]. Katia agrees, but is unhappy that at the same time he is comparing her to her sister. Arkadii, however, suggests that he has not expressed himself strongly enough, and Katia in her confusion makes a gesture which proves to be too strong: she throws crumbs to the sparrows so vigorously that they fly away. Their premature departure is echoed in the behaviour of Arkadii, who, blurts out that he would not swap Katia for her sister, then makes good his escape: ‘as though having become frightened at the words pouring from his lips’ [8, 368]. It would seem as though Bazarov’s earlier characterisation of Arkadii’s attitude to love through bird imagery has been vindicated. Yet the analogy does not entirely hold; for the birds which provide the real commentary to Arkadii’s actions are not domesticated fowl, but free creatures whose ‘timid boldness’ is that of Arkadii himself, and although at the last moment he, like them, has taken flight, he has, nevertheless, shed light not only on his relationship to Bazarov and Odintsova, but also on his attitude to Katia.
If the episode with the sparrows appears as a symbolic restatement of the opposing categories of ‘predatory’ and ‘tame’ of their earlier conversation, the ambiguous nature of their own relationship had been brought out in the way in which that exchange, characterised by its silences, had developed: Arkadii and Katia are using the pretext of Bazarov and Odintsova to talk about themselves. Katia says that her sister treasures her independence, and although Arkadii replies with the rhetorical question: ‘Who does not treasure it?’, they both, nevertheless, think to themselves: ‘what is the use of it?’ [‘na chto ona?’]. In Russian the abstract noun ‘independence’ (nezavisimost’) is grammatically feminine, so that when Akadii goes on to say: ‘Admit it, you are a little bit frightened of her’ [8, 365], the sense, for all the stressing of the feminine pronoun, is not entirely clear: is Arkadii referring to Odintsova or to ‘independence’? The verbal play is extended when Katia seeks clarification and Arkadii teasingly suggests equality in their fear of her in his reply: ‘I too’ [8, 366]. This phrase, in itself, is an echo of an earlier exchange on the question of independence from Bazarov, when Katia had said: ‘My sister was then under his influence, just as you were’. To which Arkadii had replied: ‘As I too! Do you really notice that I have freed myself from his influence’ [8, 364-5]. The end of the chapter provides a further echo of this motif, through an inversion in which it is now Bazarov and Odintsova who discuss their own relationship by reference to Arkadii. Bazarov points to Arkadii’s timidity in Odintsova’s presence and says it is no secret that he is in love with her:
The oblique statements which characterise the scene under the ash tree are a form of verbal fencing, in which Arkadii proclaims his freedom from the influence of both Bazarov and Odintsova. Yet independence, given the growing understanding between him and Katia, has no real appeal as such. This new relationship must not be based on the sort of inequality that existed in his relationship with Bazarov or with Odintsova, or indeed in that between Odintsova and Katia. When Arkadii raises the hypothetical question of Katia’s marriage to a rich man, she reminds him of the song about the unequal bride (nerovniushka) and she states: ‘I am prepared to submit, only inequality is hard to bear. Yet to have respect for oneself and to submit, I understand that; that is happiness; but as regards a subjugated existence. ..No. I am all right as I am’ [8, 367].
This is Katia’s understanding of love, in which the ‘tamed’ creature is not totally subjugated. Yet she senses she has a rival in her sister, who is not only interested in this tête-à-tête, but sends her off to try on new shoes, while she herself takes a stroll with Arkadii. In ironically repeating her sister’s words, Katia reveals that there are elements of the ‘predatory’ even in those who are ‘tame’: ‘"Charming little feet, you say.. Well, and he will be at these feet". But immediately she felt ashamed, and she ran agilely upstairs’ [8, 369].
The second and definitive rendezvous between Arkadii and Katia invites a contrast with Bazarov’s declaration of love to Fenechka. It, too, takes place against a stage-like background - not, however, the romantic bower, but the classical portico. It, too, is interrupted by eavesdropping, but whereas Pavel Petrovich’s witnessing of the scene between Bazarov and Fenechka effectively quashes their romance, the eavesdropping in the portico has the reverse effect - it confirms the love of Arkadii and Katia.
On the other hand, like the venue for the two rendezvous of Bazarov and Odintsova, the portico is enclosed space, yet at the same time it is one open to the lush growth of nature:
This is obviously no place for one who so shuns the cold. Yet in avoiding it, this cold temptress with the snake-like hair [8, 295] could well be recoiling from something in herself. Katia is another matter, she frequently comes here to read and work. She is surrounded by coolness, and (a motif which, like reading, links this venue with the earlier rendezvous) she is covered in shade. More importantly it is a place where she can surrender herself to the life forces of nature both outside herself and within:
The portico was designed for classical statues, but the only one to be delivered was the allegorical figure of ‘Silence’, which was soon removed when it was damaged by peasant lads. In view of the silences which up to now have been a feature of the relationship of Arkadii and Katia, there is perhaps further allegory to be seen in the removal of this figure from the setting in which Arkadii will finally declare his love.
As he broaches this subject, and the vexed question of ‘understanding’, the bird imagery so prominent in their first rendezvous, is now reworked in more optimistic fashion:
Arkadii finds it increasingly difficult ‘to sing his song’ in carefree fashion, and as he is floundering, as though in a bog, his words: ‘If I could hope’ seem to find their echoing response: ‘If I could be convinced of what you say’ [8, 376]. But it is not the reply of Katia to his own words: it is that of Odintsova to the words of Bazarov.
Arkadii and Katia fall mute as they overhear Odintsova and Bazarov discuss their own relationship, with Odintsova once more pointing to their failure at ‘understanding’: ‘There was too much that was similar in us. We did not understand this at first’ [8, 376],11 and as though further to disconcert Bazarov, she goes on to suggest that Arkadii will be her next victim. They move away from the portico, but the involuntary eavesdroppers are left with two snatches of their conversation not borne away by the wind - statements on independence: Odintsova claims that they are not in control (‘my ne vlastny’) and Bazarov replies that she is free [8, 377].
The effect of this conversation on Arkadii is dramatic. In his first rendezvous with Katia, they had both broached the nature of their own relationship obliquely -through their views on Bazarov and Odintsova. Now the device of eavesdropping on the older couple has reversed this situation, and Arkadii, who earlier would have given anything to learn of Odintsova’s attraction to him, now sees exactly where his own affections lie. He makes a firm declaration to Katia. Yet, although she says ‘yes’, he cannot quite bring himself to understand what she means. It is only after her second ‘yes’ that the scene ends with that ‘understanding’ denied to Bazarov and Odintsova: ‘"Yes", Katia repeated, and this time he understood her’ [8, 378].
After this declaration the symbolism of birds reaches a new stage, but one which develops an idea latent in that ‘little family of sparrows’ prominent in the young lovers’ first rendezvous. As Bazarov takes his leave of Arkadii, he comments: ‘So you have thought of making a nest for yourself?’ [8, 380] and appears to approve his decision: ‘You get married as soon as possible, and set up your own nest, and have as many children as possible’ [8, 381],12 urging him to take a lesson from a pair of jackdaws sitting on the stable roof; for, as he explains: ‘A jackdaw is a most respectable family bird. An example to you!..’ [8, 381]. Later, on his deathbed he will refer to Arkadii in similar vein: ‘He has now ended up as a jackdaw’ [8, 390].
If Bazarov’s reaction to the happiness of Arkadii and Katia seems almost like positive endorsement, Odintsova can only allow herself to respond ironically - with words that recall her own ‘conquest’ of Bazarov:
In addressing them as ‘children’ she is emphasising that gulf between the generations proclaimed in the novel’s title, but in the younger generation’s failure to comprehend, the irony of ‘understanding’ in love is redirected back at her.
Other less prominent amorous relationships and attitudes in the novel yield further insights. Before Bazarov’s closer contact with Odintsova we have an example of his no-nonsense attitude to women in his dealings with Kukshina.13 She, as a femme émancipée with intellectual pretensions, is a coarse caricature of Odintsova herself, but her attempts to ingratiate herself with Bazarov elicit a more than corresponding coarseness of response. At the same time Kukshina initiates a motif which is important for the theme of love throughout the novel - books as a pretext for amorous designs. She recommends her male guests to read Michelet’s De l'amour with the words ‘It’s marvellous! Gentlemen, let us talk about love’. But when it comes to love, Bazarov has something else in mind: ‘"No, why talk about love", said Bazarov, "But you have just mentioned Odintsova. I think that’s what you called her? Who is this lady?"’ [8, 263]. Given subsequent events, the intrusion of Odintsova into Bazarov’s thoughts in this particular context has its own irony, and similar ‘narrative irony’ is to be found in Turgenev’s presentation of the other minor amorous relationships.
In Chapter 11 we have a brief sketch of Nikolai Petrovich’s courtship of his first wife, which seems to have proceeded without any of the complications surrounding love affairs in the novel proper. Yet for Nikolai Petrovich such complications are there in the present, as Fenechka’s intrusion into his musings about his dead wife makes plain:
Her voice reminds him of his age and his grey hairs (he is 44), yet at the same time it evokes self-rebuke (the keeping of a ‘peasant’ mistress is reminiscent of old, un-liberal ways): ‘"These are traces of the landowning gentry", flashed through his mind’. His relationship with Fenechka is a source of embarrassment to him in his dealings with his son, and he feels the unspoken censure of his brother. Both these apparent difficulties are resolved at the end of the novel, when both Pavel Petrovich and Arkadii urge him to legitimise the union, and family happiness seems complete in the double wedding of father and son.
At the end of Chapter 4 an earlier ironic juxtaposition had seemed to link Fenechka with the reveries of Pavel Petrovich:
Here is the first oblique hint that there might be some mysterious relationship between Pavel Petrovich and Fenechka:14 she reminds him of the love of his life Princess R. [8, 357], Yet he is awkward in her presence and his occasional visits fill her with dread. Nevertheless, unlike Bazarov, he makes no compromising move. He is true to the image of his long-lost love.
His romance with Princess R. is recounted in Chapter 7 [8, 221-5]. Like Bazarov he had first met this femme fatale at a ball, and his treatment at the hands of this emancipated ‘sphynx’ has marked him for the rest of his life;15 for, as he tells Fenechka when encouraging her to love and be faithful to his brother: ‘Just think, what can be more terrible than to love and not be loved!’ [8, 361] - a phrase that has resonance for Bazarov himself, who with contemptuous incredulity dismisses the tale of Pavel Petrovich’s ill-fated love, yet it is a romantic story, full of narrative irony for his own later relationship with Odintsova.
The amorous trials of Bazarov and Odintsova are presented against a background of other emotional entanglements, which cast their own ironic reflection on the would-be amorous relationship of the two central figures. This relationship is an erotic duel, but it is also an attempt at understanding their own basic nature, and nature itself, which is the touchstone for understanding the relationship of ‘fathers’ and ‘children’, also figures in the love plot, not merely as a romantic backdrop, but as a telling symbolic presence.
Notes
1 David Lowe commenting on the two views of the Kirsanov estate, sees the first negative description as related to Arkadii’s nihilism. See: David Lowe, Turgenev’s ‘Fathers and Sons’, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1983, p.107.
2 Fischler calls this ‘the romantic version of the locus amoenus’: See: Alexander Fischler, ‘The Garden Motif and the Structure of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons’, Ivan Turgenev: ‘Fathers and Sons’: The Author on the Novel; Contemporary Reactions; Essays in Criticism (ed. and trans. Ralph E. Matlaw), 2nd. Edition, Norton, New York, London, 1989, p.317.
3 Ripp sees here the astuteness of Nikolai Petrovich , in having sold off timber from land shortly to pass to peasants. See: V. Ripp, Turgenev’s Russia: From’Notes of a Hunter’ to ‘Fathers and Sons’, Ithaca, N.Y., London, 1980, p.192.
4 Woodward interprets the window as a ‘barricade against "nature"’. See: James Woodward, Turgenev’s ‘Fathers and Sons’, Bristol Classical Press (Duckworth), London, 1996, p.77. He also sees Bazarov’s throwing open of Odintsova’s window as a metaphor for his desire to rape her, as well as of his own political desires (ibid. p.29).
5 The love of baths will be taken up by Chernyshevsky in his novel What is to be done? as a characteristic of Vera Pavlovna, but she will be characterised by ‘ boldness’ and ‘noble striving’ (‘smelost’’ and ‘blagorodnoe stremlenie’). See: N.G. Chernyshevsky, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, Moscow, 1974, Vol. 1, pp.354-5 (cf. also Vera Pavlovna’s pampering of her self pp.182, 233).
6 The image of the flame is developed in the novel. See: Lowe, pp.78-9 and Woodward, pp.52, 101
7 Costlow interprets this serpent imagery as ‘the sensuality she fears’. See: Jane Costlow, Worlds within Worlds:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev, Princeton, 1990, p.131. Woodward sees the imagery carried on into the next chapter in ‘the gentle hiss and rustle of her silk dress’ (Woodward, p.79) (cf. also p.97).
8 Costlow sees the window and the mirror as emblems of Odintsova’s self-revelation and of ‘what she has repressed’ (Costlow p.132). Woodward (p.76) argues: ‘Between herself and nature she too has erected a barrier of ‘order’, behind which she demonstrates the same ‘confidence’ and the self-sufficiency to which her name (derived from odin ‘one’) alludes.
9 In his notes for the proposed novel (Podgotovitel’nye materialy k romanu ‘Ottsy i deti’) Turgenev likened the prototype of Fenechka (Fedos’ia Ivanovna) to his own daughter. See: I. S. Turgenev, Ottsy i deti, (Podgotovka tekstov I.S. Turgeneva, stat’ia i kommentarii A. I. Batiuto), St Petersburg, 2000, p.231.
10 There is a linguistic irony in the phrase ia ne takov (‘I am not like that’) with its suggestion of taking flight. Cf. i byl takov – ‘and that was the last we saw of him’. The chicken watched by a cat in the opening chapter [8, 198] is seen by Lowe as foreshadowing the drama between the self-important Pavel Petrovich and the much bespattered Bazarov. (Lowe, p.52). Justus points to the presence of birds on Bazarov’s grave: See: James H Justus, ‘Fathers and Sons: The Novel as Idyll’, in Matlaw, p.301.
11 Seeley (p.224) points to several similarities between Odintsova and Bazarov.
12 Cf. Bazarov’s earlier remark to Arkadii: ‘You still ascribe meaning to marriage; I did not expect that of you’ [8, 236].
13 There is a clear prototype for this polemical portrait. In his preparatory material for the novel Turgenev writes: ‘Slavishly copy Mme. Kittary – and go ahead’ . See: Ottsy i deti, St P. 2000, p.233 and commentary pp.424-5.
14 Lowe ( p.31) calls such juxtapositions a montage technique,which he likens to one of Eisenstein’s most influential film discoveries.
15 In the preparatory material for his novel Turgenev wrote: ‘This love penetrated the whole of his life. – He followed her abroad, took retirement, lived all the time close to her skirt, received her favours at the spar town of Kissingen -–then she left him – he grew close to her again as a friend’. Ottsy i deti, St P., 2000, p.229. There is more than a hint here of Turgenev’s own relationship with Pauline Viardot. See: A.I. Batiuto, Turgenev-romanist, Leningrad, 1972, pp.261-3, 267.