Then Pisarev draws the genealogical tree of Bazarov: the Onegins and Pechorins begot the Rudins and the Beltovs,6 the Rudins and the Beltovs begot Bazarov. (Whether the Decembrists are omitted intentionally or unintentionally, I do not know.) The tired and the bored are succeeded by men who strive to act ; life rejects them both as worthless and incomplete. 'It is sometimes their lot to suffer, but they never succeed in getting anything done. Society is deaf and inexorable to them. They are incapable of adapting themselves to its conditions, not one of them has ever risen so high as head-clerk of a government office.
Some are consoled by becoming professors and working for a future generation.' Their negative usefulness is incontestable.
5 The prophecy has now been fulfilled. This mutual interaction of men on books, and books on men, is a curious thing. A book takes its whole stamp from the society in which it is conceived; it generalises, it makes it more vivid and sharp, and afterwards is outdone by reality. The originals caricature their sharply shaded portraits, and actual persons grow into their literary shadows. At the end of the last century all young Germans were a little after the style of \Verther, while all their young ladies resembled Charlotte; at the beginning of the present century the university Werthers had begun to change into 'Robbers,' not real ones but Schilleresque robbers. The young Russians who have come on the scene since 1 862 are almost all derived from Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? with the addition of a few Bazarov features.
6 The hero of Herzen's novel, Who Is at Fault? (Tr.)
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
632
They increase the numbers of men incapable of practical activity, in consequence of which practical activity itself, or more precisely the forms in which it usually finds expression now, slowly but steadily sink lower in public esteem.
'It seemed (after the Crimean War) that Rudinism was over, that the period of fruitless ideals and yearnings was being succeeded by a period of seething and useful activity. But the mirage was dissipated. The Rudins did not become practical workers, and a new generation has come forward from behind them and taken up a reproachful and mocking attitude towards its predecessors. "What are you whining about, what are you seeking, what are you asking from life? You want happiness, I suppose? I daresay you do! Happiness has to be conquered. If you are strong, take it. If you are weak, hold your tongue; we feel sick enough without your whining! " A sombre, concentrated energy was expressed in this unfriendly attitude of the younger generation to their Mentors. In their conceptions of good and evil the young generation and the best men of the preceding one were alike, the sympathies and antipathies of both are the same; they desired the same thing, but the men of the past generation fussed and fretted. The men of to-day are not in a fuss, they are not trying to find anything, they will not submit to any compromise and they hope for nothing. They are as powerless as the Rudins, but they recognise their impotence.
' "I cannot act now," each of these new men thinks, "and I am not going to try. I despise everything that surrounds me, and I shan't trj to conceal my contempt. I shall enter on the battle with evil when I feel myself strong." Having no possibility of acting, men begin to reflect and investigate. Superstitions and authorities are torn to shreds, and the philosophy of life is completely cleared of all sorts of fantastic conceptions. It is nothing to them whether the public is following in their footsteps. They are full of themselves, of their own inner l ife. In short, the Pechorins had will without knowledge, the Rudins knowledge without will, the Bazarovs both knowledge and will.
Thought and action are blended in one firm whole.'
As you see there is everything here (if there is no mistake), both character-drawing and classification. All is brief and clear, the sum is added up, the bill is presented, and perfectly correctly from the point of view from which the author attacked the question.
But we do not accept this bill, and we protest against it from our premature coffins which have not yet arrived. We are not Charles V, and have no desire to be buried alive.
The Later Years
633
How strange has been the fate of Fathers and Sons! That Turgenev brought out Bazarov with no idea of patting him on the head is clear; that he meant to do something for the 'Fathers'
is clear too. But when he came to deal with such pitiful and worthless 'Fathers' as the Kirsanovs, Turgenev was carried away by Bazarov in spite of his harshness, and instead of thrashing the sons he chastised the fathers.
And so it has come to pass that some of the younger generation have recognised themselves in Bazarov. But we entirely fail to recognise ourselves in the Kirsanovs, just as we did not recognise ourselves in the Manilovs nor the Sobakeviches, although Manilovs and Sobakeviches existed all over the place in the days of our youth, and exist now.
Whole herds of moral abortions live at the same time in different layers of society and in its different currents ; undoubtedly they represent more or less general types, but they do not represent the most striking and characteristic side of their generation, the side which most fully expresses its force.
Pisarev's Bazarov is, in a one-sided sense, to a certain extent the extreme type of what Turgenev called the 'Sons' ; while the Kirsanovs are the most trite and trivial representatives of the
'Fathers.'
Turgenev was more of an artist in his novel than it is thought, and that is why he turned out of his course, and to my thinking he did well in so doing-he meant to go into one room, and he found himself in another and a better one.
He might just as well have sent his Bazarov to London. That nasty fellow, Pisemsky, was not afraid of the travelling expenses for his sorely tried freaks. We could perhaps have proved to him on the banks of the Thames that, without rising to the post of head-clerk of an office, one might do quite as much good as any head of a department; that society is not always deaf and inexorable when the protest finds a response; that action does sometimes succeed; that the Rudins and the Beltovs sometimes have will and perseverance; and that, seeing the impossibility of carrying on the activity to which they were urged by their inner impulse, they have abandoned many things, gone abroad, and without 'fussing and fretting' have set up a Russian printingpress, and are carrying on Russian propaganda. The influence of the London press from 1 856 to the end of 1863 is not merely a practical fact but a fact of history. It cannot be effaced, it has to be accepted. In London Bazarov would have seen that it was only from a distance that we seemed to be merely brandishing our arms, and that in reality we were keeping our hands at