Beyond all the commentary on generational relationships, what struck me from the beginning is the presentation of a "science nerd" at the center of this novel. There is some rather convincing details of medicine, heck, even more than any Chekhov I have read.
The medical student Bazarov, sitting in an awkward social position between aristocrats and peasants, is surprisingly modern. He could be a computer geek, a silicon valley dude, or a climate change scientist in today's novels: smart and blunt and egocentric, probably somewhere "on the spectrum." His wholesale rejection of "romanticism" and his cold rationality stood alone among the poetic and heroic characters of the time. The irony vibrating beneath the clashes between Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich sometimes threatens to become overt satire. Of course, Turgenev isn't necessarily endorsing a lack of all delicate feelings and social grace, but it is obvious that he feels, like Bazarov, an impatience with the sentimentality and histrionics in Russian literature.
I don't know whether Turgenev was aware of The Origin of Species, the book that shocked the world in 1859, but I have a suspicion that he had at least heard about it. He was fluent in English, German, and French and chose to stay out of Russia for many years. He was known to be skeptical toward religion, which was uncommon for his generation. Beyond the sympathetic portrayal of Bazarov, the novel is permeated with an attitude of mild distain for the traditional Russian culture and social conventions. Turgenev is looking at his motherland with the eye of an expatriate who has digested and excreted much of the nationalistic cool-aid.
It was said that Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy did not get along with Turgenev in real life. Who would have guessed?!
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