I was fascinated by Bazarov. In the beginning I took a very strong dislike to him. I really, really cannot stand the type. He is brash, he takes pleasure in dismissing things out of hand, without really backing that up with any sort of understanding. His only claim to authority is his lack of authority, and that really is ... bogus. I couldn't agree more with Pavel Petrovich's comment that
The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.
I loved that comment as well, but not because of Bazarov. I got the impression that Turgenev was allowing Pavel to be right about some in the movement, but also to make him miss the mark on Bazarov. Even though I do agree that B was awful in the beginning, Turgenev was already teaching us that he was richer than that. (I decided conclusively when Sitnikov and Kukshina showed up - Turgenev gave us perfect examples to show the range.)
While I agree that Sitnikov and Kukshina are a step beyond Bazarov in absurdity, his comments that ``I share no one's opinions'', when it was pointed out that he took the view of Proudhon, and the truly nonsensical comment about families being useless because sometimes they didn't work right ... it points to his being nonsensical in much the same way. Early on. I notice he changes, but in the beginning, he is dreadful. He has more authority in his statements than the other two, but I am not sure he has more understanding (at that point -- and I must stress that).
*MySmiley*
structured procrastinator
structured procrastinator
Russian Book Club: Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.
17/10/2010 01:39:16 AM
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Bazarov
17/10/2010 02:12:03 PM
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oh, and
17/10/2010 06:42:38 PM
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Re: oh, and
18/10/2010 12:09:10 AM
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Arkady
17/10/2010 02:15:54 PM
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Well, that makes sense
17/10/2010 05:12:09 PM
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Re: Well, that makes sense
18/10/2010 12:04:05 AM
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See, I liked Arkady
17/10/2010 06:08:57 PM
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Oh...Rebekah, I was going to mention that I saw your post only much later because I was very drunk.
17/10/2010 05:13:41 PM
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Good book.
17/10/2010 06:37:16 PM
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I loved it. Great book.
18/10/2010 10:49:27 PM
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I think it's very relevant. It's also unusually un-Russian.
18/10/2010 11:54:03 PM
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Yeah... the Russian nobility at the time seems to have been kind of un-Russian, really.
20/10/2010 04:03:34 PM
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It felt very Russian to me as well
20/10/2010 04:12:50 PM
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There was little of the usual ... histrionics that happen in Russian novels.
22/10/2010 07:02:12 PM
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I really wish I'd bought a properly annotated version.
22/10/2010 07:07:16 PM
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The answer to that is to just read a great book on Nineteenth Century Russian history.
22/10/2010 10:55:06 PM
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Not just Russian, though, there's a lot of mentions of other European history.
22/10/2010 11:19:28 PM
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Nikolai and Pavel - I love them.
22/10/2010 07:14:11 PM
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Perhaps it's Pavel's "The Chap"-ish nature that makes the novel seem less Russian to me.
22/10/2010 10:53:56 PM
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