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Which is usually associated with the work "Rudin", published in 1855, a novel in which Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev returned to the structure of this first creation of his.

As in him, in “Fathers and Sons” all the plot threads converged on one center, which was formed by the figure of Bazarov, a commoner democrat. She alarmed all critics and readers. Various critics have written a lot about the novel “Fathers and Sons”, since the work aroused genuine interest and controversy. We will present to you the main positions regarding this novel in this article.

Significance in understanding the work

Bazarov became not only the plot center of the work, but also a problematic one. The assessment of all other aspects of Turgenev’s novel largely depended on the understanding of his fate and personality: author's position, character systems, various artistic techniques, used in the work "Fathers and Sons". Critics examined this novel chapter by chapter and saw in it a new turn in the work of Ivan Sergeevich, although their understanding of the milestone meaning of this work was completely different.

Why was Turgenev scolded?

The author's ambivalent attitude towards his hero led to the censure and reproaches of his contemporaries. Turgenev was severely scolded from all sides. Critics responded mostly negatively to the novel Fathers and Sons. Many readers could not understand the author's thoughts. From the memoirs of Annenkov, as well as Ivan Sergeevich himself, we learn that M.N. Katkov became indignant after reading the manuscript “Fathers and Sons” chapter by chapter. He was outraged that main character the work reigns supreme and does not meet with effective resistance anywhere. Readers and critics of the opposite camp also harshly condemned Ivan Sergeevich for the internal dispute that he waged with Bazarov in his novel “Fathers and Sons.” Its content seemed to them not entirely democratic.

The most notable among many other interpretations are the article by M.A. Antonovich, published in Sovremennik ("Asmodeus of our time"), as well as a number of articles that appeared in the magazine " Russian word"(democratic), written by D.I. Pisarev: " Thinking proletariat", "Realists", "Bazarov". These critics about the novel "Fathers and Sons" presented two opposing opinions.

Pisarev's opinion about the main character

Unlike Antonovich, who assessed Bazarov sharply negatively, Pisarev saw in him a real “hero of the time.” This critic compared this image with the “new people” depicted in N.G. Chernyshevsky.

The theme of “fathers and sons” (the relationship between generations) came to the fore in his articles. The contradictory opinions expressed by representatives of the democratic movement were perceived as a “split among the nihilists” - a fact of internal controversy that existed in the democratic movement.

Antonovich about Bazarov

It is no coincidence that both readers and critics of “Fathers and Sons” were concerned about two questions: about the author’s position and about the prototypes of images of this novel. They are the two poles along which any work is interpreted and perceived. According to Antonovich, Turgenev was malicious. In the interpretation of Bazarov presented by this critic, this image is not at all a face copied “from life”, but “ evil spirit", "Asmodeus", which was released by a writer embittered towards the new generation.

Antonovich's article is written in a feuilleton style. This critic, instead of presenting an objective analysis of the work, created a caricature of the main character, substituting Sitnikov, Bazarov’s “student,” in the place of his teacher. Bazarov, according to Antonovich, is not at all an artistic generalization, not a mirror in which is reflected. The critic believed that the author of the novel had created a biting feuilleton, which should be objected to in the same manner. Antonovich's goal - to "create a quarrel" with Turgenev's younger generation - was achieved.

What could the democrats not forgive Turgenev?

Antonovich, in the subtext of his unfair and rude article, reproached the author for creating a figure that is too “recognizable,” since Dobrolyubov is considered one of its prototypes. Journalists from Sovremennik, moreover, could not forgive the author for breaking with this magazine. The novel "Fathers and Sons" was published in "Russian Messenger", a conservative publication, which for them was a sign of Ivan Sergeevich's final break with democracy.

Bazarov in "real criticism"

Pisarev expressed a different point of view regarding the main character of the work. He viewed him not as a caricature of certain individuals, but as a representative of a new socio-ideological type that was emerging at that time. This critic was least interested in the attitude of the author himself towards his hero, as well as various features artistic embodiment this image. Pisarev interpreted Bazarov in the spirit of the so-called real criticism. He pointed out that the author was biased in his portrayal, but the type himself was highly rated by Pisarev - as a “hero of the time.” The article entitled “Bazarov” said that the main character depicted in the novel, presented as a “tragic face,” is new type, which the literature lacked. In further interpretations of this critic, Bazarov became increasingly detached from the novel itself. For example, in the articles “The Thinking Proletariat” and “Realists” the name “Bazarov” was used to name a type of the era, a commoner-kulturtrager, whose worldview was close to Pisarev himself.

Accusations of bias

Turgenev's objective, calm tone in his portrayal of the main character was contradicted by accusations of bias. “Fathers and Sons” is a kind of Turgenev’s “duel” with nihilists and nihilism, but the author complied with all the requirements of the “code of honor”: he treated the enemy with respect, “killing” him in a fair fight. Bazarov, as a symbol of dangerous delusions, according to Ivan Sergeevich, is a worthy opponent. The mockery and caricature of the image, which some critics accused the author of, were not used by him, since they could give a completely opposite result, namely, an underestimation of the power of nihilism, which is destructive. The nihilists sought to place their false idols in the place of the “eternals.” Turgenev, recalling his work on the image of Yevgeny Bazarov, wrote to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in 1876 about the novel “Fathers and Sons”, the history of the creation of which was of interest to many, that it does not surprise him why this hero remained a mystery for the majority of readers, because the author himself cannot fully imagine how he wrote it. Turgenev said that he knew only one thing: there was no tendency in him then, no preconception of thought.

The position of Turgenev himself

Critics responded mostly one-sidedly to the novel "Fathers and Sons" and gave harsh assessments. Meanwhile, Turgenev, as in his previous novels, avoids comments, does not draw conclusions, deliberately hides inner world your hero in order not to put pressure on readers. The conflict in the novel "Fathers and Sons" is by no means on the surface. So straightforwardly interpreted by the critic Antonovich and completely ignored by Pisarev, it is manifested in the composition of the plot, in the nature of the conflicts. It is in them that the concept of Bazarov’s fate is realized, presented by the author of the work “Fathers and Sons,” the images of which still cause controversy among various researchers.

Evgeniy is unshakable in disputes with Pavel Petrovich, but after a difficult “test of love” he is internally broken. The author emphasizes the “cruelty”, thoughtfulness of this hero’s beliefs, as well as the interconnection of all the components that make up his worldview. Bazarov is a maximalist, according to whom any belief has value if it does not conflict with others. As soon as this character lost one “link” in the “chain” of worldview, all the others were re-evaluated and doubted. In the finale, this is already the “new” Bazarov, who is the “Hamlet” among the nihilists.

As soon as it was published, the novel caused a real flurry of critical articles. None of the public camps accepted the new creation Turgenev.

The editor of the conservative “Russian Messenger” M. N. Katkov in the articles “Roman Turgenev and his critics” and “About our nihilism(regarding Turgenev’s novel)” argued that nihilism is a social disease that must be fought by strengthening protective conservative principles; and Fathers and Sons is no different from a whole series of anti-nihilistic novels by other writers. He took a unique position in assessing Turgenev’s novel and the image of its main character. F. M. Dostoevsky.

According to Dostoevsky, Bazarov is a “theorist” who is at odds with “life”; he is a victim of his own, dry and abstract theory. In other words, this is a hero close to Raskolnikov. However, Dostoevsky avoids a specific consideration of Bazarov's theory. He correctly asserts that any abstract, rational theory breaks down in life and brings suffering and torment to a person. According to Soviet critics, Dostoevsky reduced the entire problematic of the novel to an ethical-psychological complex, overshadowing the social with the universal, instead of revealing the specifics of both.

Liberal criticism, on the contrary, has become too interested in the social aspect. She could not forgive the writer for his ridicule of representatives of the aristocracy, hereditary nobles, and his irony regarding the “moderate noble liberalism” of the 1840s. The unsympathetic, rude “plebeian” Bazarov constantly mocks his ideological opponents and turns out to be morally superior to them.

In contrast to the conservative-liberal camp, democratic magazines differed in their assessment of the problems of Turgenev’s novel: Sovremennik and Iskra saw in it a slander against common democrats, whose aspirations are deeply alien and incomprehensible to the author; “Russkoe Slovo” and “Delo” took the opposite position.

The critic of Sovremennik, A. Antonovich, in an article with the expressive title “Asmodeus of our time” (that is, “the devil of our time”) noted that Turgenev “despises and hates the main character and his friends with all his heart.” Antonovich's article is full of harsh attacks and unsubstantiated accusations against the author of Fathers and Sons. The critic suspected Turgenev of colluding with the reactionaries, who allegedly “ordered” the writer a deliberately slanderous, accusatory novel, accused him of moving away from realism, and pointed out the grossly schematic, even caricatured nature of the images of the main characters. However, Antonovich’s article is quite consistent with the general tone that Sovremennik employees took after the departure of a number of leading writers from the editorial office. It became almost the duty of the Nekrasov magazine to personally criticize Turgenev and his works.

DI. Pisarev, editor of the Russian Word, on the contrary, saw the truth of life in the novel Fathers and Sons, taking the position of a consistent apologist for the image of Bazarov. In the article “Bazarov” he wrote: “Turgenev does not like merciless denial, and yet the personality of a merciless denier emerges as a strong personality and inspires respect in the reader”; “...No one in the novel can compare with Bazarov either in strength of mind or strength of character.”

Pisarev was one of the first to clear Bazarov of the charge of caricature leveled at him by Antonovich, explained the positive meaning of the main character of Fathers and Sons, emphasizing the vital importance and innovation of such a character. As a representative of the generation of “children,” he accepted everything in Bazarov: and disdain to art, and a simplified view of human spiritual life, and an attempt to comprehend love through the prism of natural science views. Negative traits Bazarov, under the pen of a critic, unexpectedly for readers (and for the author of the novel) acquired a positive assessment: open rudeness towards the inhabitants of Maryino was passed off as an independent position, ignorance and shortcomings in education - as a critical view of things, excessive conceit - as manifestations of strong nature etc.

For Pisarev, Bazarov is a man of action, a naturalist, a materialist, an experimenter. He “recognizes only what can be felt with the hands, seen with the eyes, put on the tongue, in a word, only what can be witnessed by one of the five senses.” The experience was made for Bazarov the only source knowledge. It was in this that Pisarev saw the difference between the new man Bazarov and “ extra people» Rudins, Onegins, Pechorins. He wrote: “...the Pechorins have will without knowledge, the Rudins have knowledge without will; The Bazarovs have both knowledge and will, thought and deed merge into one solid whole.” This interpretation of the image of the main character was to the taste of revolutionary-democratic youth, who made their idol the “new man” with his reasonable egoism, contempt for authorities, traditions, and the established world order.

...Turgenev now looks at the present from the heights of the past. He doesn't follow us; he calmly looks after us, describes our gait, tells us how we speed up our steps, how we jump over potholes, how we sometimes stumble on uneven places on the road.

There is no irritation in the tone of his description; he was just tired of walking; the development of his personal worldview ended, but the ability to observe the movement of someone else's thought, to understand and reproduce all its bends remained in all its freshness and completeness. Turgenev himself will never be Bazarov, but he thought about this type and understood him as correctly as none of our young realists will understand...

N.N. Strakhov, in his article about “Fathers and Sons,” continues Pisarev’s thought, discussing the realism and even “typicality” of Bazarov as a hero of his time, a man of the 1860s:

“Bazarov does not arouse disgust in us at all and does not seem to us either mal eleve or mauvais ton. Everyone seems to agree with us characters novel. Bazarov’s simplicity of address and figure do not arouse disgust in them, but rather inspire respect for him. He was cordially received in Anna Sergeevna’s living room, where even some bad princess was sitting...”

Pisarev’s opinions about the novel “Fathers and Sons” were shared by Herzen. About the article “Bazarov” he wrote: “This article confirms my point of view. In its one-sidedness it is truer and more remarkable than its opponents thought.” Here Herzen notes that Pisarev “recognized himself and his friends in Bazarov and added what was missing in the book,” that Bazarov “for Pisarev is more than his own,” that the critic “knows his Bazarov’s heart to the core, he confesses for him.”

Turgenev's novel shook up all layers of Russian society. The controversy about nihilism, about the image of the natural scientist, the democrat Bazarov, continued for a whole decade on the pages of almost all magazines of that time. And if in the 19th century there were still opponents of apologetic assessments of this image, then by the 20th century there were none left at all. Bazarov was raised on a shield as a harbinger of the coming storm, as a banner of everyone who wanted to destroy, without giving anything in return (“...it’s no longer our business... First we need to clear the place.”)

At the end of the 1950s, in the wake of Khrushchev’s “thaw,” a discussion unexpectedly unfolded, caused by V. A. Arkhipov’s article “To creative history novel by I.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons". In this article, the author tried to develop the previously criticized point of view of M. Antonovich. V.A. Arkhipov wrote that the novel appeared as a result of a conspiracy between Turgenev and Katkov, the editor of the Russian Messenger (“the conspiracy was obvious”) and a deal between the same Katkov and Turgenev’s adviser P.V. Annenkov (“In Katkov’s office in Leontyevsky Lane, as one would expect , a deal between a liberal and a reactionary took place."

Turgenev himself strongly objected to such a vulgar and unfair interpretation of the history of the novel “Fathers and Sons” back in 1869 in his essay “About “Fathers and Sons”: “I remember that one critic (Turgenev meant M. Antonovich) in strong and eloquent expressions, directly addressed to me, presented me, together with Mr. Katkov, in the form of two conspirators, in the silence of a secluded office, plotting their vile plot, their slander against young Russian forces... The picture came out spectacular!”

Attempt V.A. Arkhipov to revive the point of view, ridiculed and refuted by Turgenev himself, caused a lively discussion, which included the magazines “Russian Literature”, “Questions of Literature”, “ New world", "Rise", "Neva", "Literature at school", as well as " Literary newspaper" The results of the discussion were summed up in the article by G. Friedlander “On the debate about “Fathers and Sons”” and in the editorial “Literary Studies and Modernity” in “Questions of Literature”. They note the universal human significance of the novel and its main character.

Of course, there could be no “conspiracy” between the liberal Turgenev and the guards. In the novel “Fathers and Sons” the writer expressed what he thought. It so happened that at that moment his point of view partly coincided with the position of the conservative camp. You can't please everyone! But by what “conspiracy” Pisarev and other zealous apologists of Bazarov launched a campaign to glorify this quite unambiguous “hero” is still unclear...