The hero of which novel is Evgeny Bazarov. Evgeny Bazarov - a new hero or a tragic figure? (Turgenev I.S.). The image of the hero in the work
I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” reflects a typical conflict of the 60s of the 19th century: the state of society after the abolition of serfdom, the clash of generations, the struggle of “fathers” and “children.” It raises a large number of problems, including the question of the role and purpose of the “new man” of that time.
Such a “new man” was Yevgeny Bazarov, a commoner of the 60s, contrasted in the novel with the liberal nobility.
I share the opinion of the critic who said: “Be that as it may, Bazarov is still defeated.” I. S. Turgenev himself does not directly state what point of view he adheres to, but we read the author’s position “between the lines.” Closer to I. S. Turgenev is, most likely, the worldview of Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov, and not Evgeny Bazarov.
Bazarov's defeat is evidenced, first of all, by the denouement of the novel. The main conflict - internal - remains unchanged. The hero cannot abandon his ideology, his principles, but he is also unable to reject the laws of life. For example, Bazarov’s confidence and the correctness of his nihilistic theory were greatly weakened by the hero’s love for Anna Sergeevna Odintsova. “I love you stupidly, madly...” - this feeling does not lend itself to Bazarov’s logic. There is no way out of Bazarov’s internal conflict, which is why the hero dies, seemingly by accident. But I think there could be no other way out.
Also, the fact that Bazarov is still defeated is indicated by the fact that his student and follower Arkady Kirsanov ultimately accepts the ideology of the “fathers.” He moves away from nihilism, convinced of the correctness of the views of Nikolai and Pavel Kirsanov. Arkady marries Katya, begins to live a quiet family life, realizing the value of spiritual ideals, the indisputability of moral principles and the pointlessness of destruction.
In the end, Bazarov was left alone, the hero was defeated. In the gallery of “extra” people, after Onegin A.S. Pushkin, Pechorin M.Yu. Lermontov, there is Turgenev’s Bazarov. A strong, promising personality does not find application in life, the surrounding society does not accept his views and ideology. It is precisely because Evgeny Bazarov is a “superfluous man” for his time that, despite the strength of his character and the struggle he wages, he is defeated.
Updated: 2018-01-28
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That manner of describing life that Russian writers of this era developed under the influence of the prosperity of the natural sciences. Using the techniques of a natural scientist studying various types of plants or animals, Turgenev peers into Russian life, into Russian people, classifies them into groups, characterizes the most typical “individuals”; examines their inner world in detail, without leaving aside their appearance, determining the environment of their life, finding out the causes and consequences of their existence. Of all the writers of his time, Turgenev was the one who mastered the art of “seizing the moment” and understanding life best.
Fathers and Sons. Feature film based on the novel by I. S. Turgenev. 1958
“Bazarov suppresses all the other characters in the novel [“Fathers and Sons”], Turgenev wrote in one letter. – The qualities given to him are not accidental. I wanted to make him a tragic face, and there was no time for tenderness. He is honest, truthful and a democrat to the core. Bazarov, in my opinion, constantly breaks Pavel Petrovich, and not vice versa. My whole story is directed against the nobility, as the advanced class.”
What Turgenev says here about his hero could not be more confirmed when reading the novel. Bazarov in the novel is endowed with a strong, clear mind, extraordinary willpower, and knowledge. “His failure” is explained not only by the falsity of his ideas, but also by the fact that he defended these ideas too passionately. His position in the novel is combative, as was, for example, Chatsky’s position in Moscow society. Bazarov, with his nature, with his worldview, cannot help but wage a struggle (at least verbally) with the life around him; everything in it, according to his conviction, should go down the drain, everything should be destroyed; he is constantly overwhelmed by polemical fervor and in the heat of it reaches the point of ridiculousness in his denial, and in the second half of the novel he makes a directly tragic impression with the inner hell that is revealed to the reader and his soul.
Outstanding pre-revolutionary critic N. N. Strakhov writes:
“The further we go in the novel, the closer to the end of the drama, the darker and more intense the figure of Bazarov becomes, but at the same time, the background of the picture becomes brighter and brighter. The creation of such persons as Bazarov's father and mother is a true triumph of talent. Apparently, what could be more insignificant than these people, who have outlived their time and with all the prejudices of old people, ugly decrepit among the new life? And yet, what a wealth of simple human feelings! What depth and breadth of spiritual phenomena - among the most ordinary life, which does not rise a hair above the lowest level!
When Bazarov falls ill, when he rots alive and adamantly endures a brutal fight against the disease, the life around him becomes more intense and brighter, the gloomier Bazarov himself is. Odintsova comes to say goodbye to Bazarov; She probably has never done anything more generous and will never do anything more generous in her entire life. As for the father and mother, it is difficult to find anything more touching. Their love flashes with some kind of lightning, instantly stunning the reader; From their simple hearts, endlessly plaintive hymns seem to burst forth, some infinitely deep and tender cries that irresistibly grab the soul.
Among this light and this warmth, Bazarov dies. For a minute, a storm boils in his father’s soul, nothing more terrible than which can be. But it quickly calms down, and everything becomes light again. Bazarov’s very grave is illuminated with light and peace. Birds sing over her and tears fall on her.
So, here it is, here is the mysterious moral teaching that Turgenev put into his work. Bazarov turns away from nature - Turgenev does not reproach him for this, but only paints nature in all its beauty. Bazarov does not value friendship and renounces romantic love; The author does not discredit him for this, but only depicts Arkady’s friendship for Bazarov himself and his happy love for Katya. Bazarov denies close ties between parents and children; The author does not reproach him for this, but only unfolds before us a picture of parental love. Bazarov shuns life; The author does not make him a villain for this, but only shows us life in all its beauty. Bazarov rejects poetry; Turgenev does not make him a fool for this, but only portrays him himself with all the luxury and insight of poetry.
In a word, Turgenev stands for the eternal principles of human life, for those basic elements that can endlessly change their forms, but in essence always remain unchanged. What did we say? It turns out that Turgenev stands for the same thing that all poets stand for, for which every true poet necessarily stands. And, therefore, Turgenev in the present case placed himself above any reproach for second thoughts; whatever the particular phenomena that he chose for his work, he considers them from the most general and highest point of view.
The general forces of life are where all his attention is directed. He showed us how these forces are embodied in Bazarov, in the very Bazarov who denies them; he showed us, if not a more powerful, then a more open, more clear embodiment of them in those ordinary people who surround Bazarov. Bazarov is a titan who rebelled against his mother earth; no matter how great his strength, it only testifies to the greatness of the force that gave birth to and nourishes him, but is not equal to his mother’s strength.
Be that as it may, Bazarov is still defeated; defeated not by the faces and not by the accidents of life, but by the very idea of this life. Such an ideal victory over him was possible only on the condition that all possible justice was given to him, so that he was exalted to the extent that greatness was inherent in him. Otherwise, there would be no power or meaning in the victory itself.
Gogol said about his “The Inspector General” that it has one honest face - laughter; so exactly about “Fathers and Sons” we can say that in them there is a face that stands above all faces and even above Bazarov - life.”
I hasten to answer your letter, for which I am very grateful to you1, dear S<лучевский>.
The opinion of young people cannot but be valued; in any case, I would very much like there to be no misunderstandings about my intentions. I answer point by point.
1) The first reproach is reminiscent of the accusation made to Gogol and others, why good people are not brought out among others. - Bazarov still suppresses all the other characters in the novel (Katkov thought that in it I presented the apotheosis of Sovremennik)2. The qualities given to him are not accidental. I wanted to make him a tragic face - there was no time for tenderness. He is honest, truthful and a democrat through and through - but you don’t find any good sides in him? He recommends “Stoff und Kraft” precisely as a popular, that is, empty, book3; duel with P<авлом>P<етровичем>it was precisely introduced for visual proof of the emptiness of elegant noble chivalry, presented in an almost exaggerated comic manner; and how he would refuse her; after all P<авел>P<етрович>I would have beaten him.
Bazarov, in my opinion, constantly breaks P<авла>P<етровича>, and not vice versa; and if he is called a nihilist, then it should be read: revolutionary.
2) What is said about Arkady, about the rehabilitation of fathers, etc., only shows that he is guilty! - that they didn’t understand me. My whole story is directed against the nobility as an advanced class. Take a look at the faces<икола>I P<етрович>a, P<авл>a P<етрович>ah, Arcadia. Weakness and lethargy or limitation. An aesthetic feeling forced me to take specifically good representatives of the nobility in order to prove my theme all the more accurately: if cream is bad, what about milk? To take officials, generals, robbers, etc. would be rude, le pont aux ânes - and wrong. All the true deniers I knew - without exception (Belinsky, Bakunin, Herzen, Dobrolyubov, Speshnev, etc.) came from relatively kind and honest parents. And this is the great meaning: it takes away from the activists, from the deniers, every shadow of personal indignation, personal irritability. They follow their own path only because they are more sensitive to the demands of people's life. Countess Salyas is wrong when she says that people like N<икола>Yu P<етрович>y and p<авл>y P<етрович>y, - our grandfathers 4: N<иколай>P<етрович>- this is me, Ogarev and thousands of others; P<авел>P<етрович>- Stolypin, Esakov, Rosset are also our contemporaries. They are the best of the nobles - and that is why I have chosen them to prove their inconsistency.
Imagine bribe takers on the one hand, and an ideal young man on the other - let others paint this picture... I wanted more. Bazarov in one place said to me (I threw it out for censorship) - to Arkady, the same Arkady in whom your Heidelberg comrades see a more successful type: “Your father is an honest fellow; but even if he is a giveaway, you are still beyond noble humility or It wouldn’t come to a boil, because you’re a nobleman.”5.
3) Lord! Kukshina, this caricature, in your opinion, is the most successful of all! This cannot be answered.
Odintsova falls just as little in love with Arkady as she does with Bazarov, as you can’t see! - this is the same representative of our idle, dreaming, curious and cold epicurean ladies, our noblewomen. Countess Salyas understood this face quite clearly. She would like to first stroke the wolf's (Bazarov's) fur, so long as he doesn't bite - then the boy through his curls - and continue to lie washed on the velvet.
4) Death of Bazarov (which<рафин>I call Salyas heroic and therefore criticize) should, in my opinion, put the last line on his tragic figure. And your young people find her random too! I end with the following remark: if the reader does not love Bazarov with all his rudeness, heartlessness, ruthless dryness and harshness - if he does not love him, I repeat - I am guilty and have not achieved my goal. But I didn’t want to “fall apart,” to use his words: although through this I would probably immediately have young people on my side. I didn’t want to buy into popularity with this kind of concession. It's better to lose a battle (and I think I lost it) than to win it with a trick. I dreamed of a gloomy, wild, large figure, half grown out of the soil, strong, evil, honest - and yet doomed to destruction - because it still stands on the threshold of the future - I dreamed of some strange pendant Pugachev, etc. - and my young contemporaries tell me, shaking their heads: “you, brother, have goneoft and even offended us: your Arkady came out cleaner - it’s in vain that you haven’t worked on him yet.” in a gypsy song: “take off your hat and bow lower.” Until now, only two people have completely understood Bazarov, that is, understood my intentions - Dostoevsky and Botkin7. I will try to send you a copy of my story. And now basta about it.
Your poems, unfortunately, were rejected by the Russian Messenger. It's not fair; Your poems, in any case, are ten times better than those of Messrs. Shcherbina and others, placed in "R<усском>V<естнике>". If you allow, I will take them and place them in “Time.”8. Write me two words about it. Don’t worry about your name - it will not be printed.
From N<атальи>N<иколаевны>I haven’t received the letter yet, but I have news about her through Annenkov, whom she met. I won’t go through Heidelberg - but I would look at the young Russians there. Bow to them from me, although they consider me backward... Tell them that I ask them to wait a little longer before they pronounce the final verdict. - You can tell this letter to anyone you want.
I shake your hand tightly and wish you all the best. Work, work - and don’t rush to draw conclusions. Devoted to you, Iv. Turgenev.
I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” was written in 1860, during the abolition of serfdom, at the junction of two eras: the era of liberal nobles and the era of commoner democrats. These changes led to the emergence of a “new” hero in Russian society and literature in the second half of the 19th century.
In Turgenev's novel, such a hero is Yevgeny Bazarov.
For the first time we meet Bazarov at the Kirsanov estate. “Eugene,” says Arkady about Bazarov, “is a nihilist - a person who does not bow to any authority and does not take a single principle on faith.” Bazarov really believes that only natural sciences can lead to progress, and art and human feelings only hinder the development of society. In my opinion, Bazarov at first glance does not evoke sympathy.
As for love, Bazarov says that this is unforgivable nonsense and rubbish. He treats women with cynicism, therefore, meeting Anna Sergeevna Odintsova for the first time, Bazarov says about her: “What a figure! She’s not like other women!” However, gradually, unexpectedly for the hero himself, tender feelings towards this woman, not yet familiar to him, begin to awaken in his soul. Love breaks Bazarov, who is confident in his convictions, but even Odintsova’s non-reciprocity does not deprive the hero of pride. “... I won’t ask for alms,” he says to Anna Sergeevna.
As a result of these events, Bazarov has an internal conflict. His life ceases to succumb to his own theory, love contradicts the views of Bazarov, but he does not betray his theory, even feeling the approach of death.
I. S. Turgenev does not accept the concept of his hero, but respects his strength of spirit and desire for a goal.
Thus, Bazarov is actually a vulnerable and loving nature, which is corroded by realism and cynicism. The author does not show us Bazarov's life, but very vividly describes how he dies, and this is enough to understand what power the hero had. “To die the way Bazarov died is already a feat,” critic Pisarev said about the hero.
Updated: 2018-06-27
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Evgeny Bazarov is the main character of I. S. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons,” the “Russian Hamlet,” an exponent of the new and very strong beliefs of intelligentsia Russia in the mid-19th century—a nihilist. He denies the high spiritual principle, and with it poetry, music, love, but preaches knowledge and, on its basis, the reconstruction of the world. Bazarov is a commoner, a medical student, although he is already about 30 years old. He is the so-called an “eternal student” who studies for years, always preparing for real activity, but never gets around to it.
Evgeniy came on vacation with his friend Arkady Kirsanov to his estate. The first meeting with Evgeniy takes place at the station, where Arkady's father meets the young men. The portrait of Bazarov at this moment is eloquent and immediately gives the attentive reader some idea of the hero: red hands - he conducts a lot of biological experiments, is intensively engaged in practice; a robe with tassels - everyday freedom and neglect of the external, and also poverty, alas. Bazarov speaks a little arrogantly (“lazy”), on his face there is an ironic smile of superiority and condescension towards everyone.
The first impression is not deceiving: Bazarov really considers everyone he meets with us on the pages of the novel to be beneath himself. They are sentimental - he is a practitioner and a rationalist, they love beautiful words and pompous statements, they attach loftiness to everything - he speaks the truth and sees the true reason everywhere, often low and “physiological”.
All this is especially evident in disputes with Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, the “Russian Englishman,” Arkady’s uncle. Pavel Petrovich speaks about the high spirit of the Russian people, Evgeny counters with a reminder of daughter-in-law, drunkenness, and laziness. For Kirsanov, art is divine, but for Bazarov, “Raphael is not worth a penny,” because he is useless in a world where some have hunger and infection, others have snow-white cuffs and morning coffee. His summary of art: “A decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet.”
But the hero’s beliefs are literally destroyed by life itself. At the provincial ball, Bazarov meets Anna Odintsova, a rich and beautiful widow, whom he first characterizes in his own manner: “She’s not like other women.” It seems to him (Evgeny wants it to be so) that he has an exclusively carnal attraction to Odintsova, “the call of nature.” But it turns out that an intelligent and beautiful woman has become a necessity for Bazarov: he wants not only to kiss her, but to talk to her, to look at her...
Bazarov turns out to be “infected” with romanticism - something that he vehemently denied. Alas, for Odintsova, Evgeny became something like those frogs that he himself cut for experiments.
Running away from feelings, from himself, Bazarov goes to his parents in the village, where he treats peasants. While opening a typhoid corpse, he wounds himself with a scalpel, but does not cauterize the cut and becomes infected. Soon Bazarov dies.
Characteristics of the hero
The death of a hero is the death of his ideas, beliefs, the death of everything that gave him superiority over others, in which he believed so much. Life gave Evgeniy, as if in a fairy tale, three tests of increasing complexity - a duel, love, death... He - or rather, his beliefs (and this is what he is, for he “made himself”) - cannot withstand any of them.
What is a duel if not a product of romanticism, and certainly not of a healthy life? And yet Bazarov agrees to it - why? After all, this is utter stupidity. But something prevents Evgeniy from refusing Pavel Petrovich’s challenge. Probably honor, which he mocks as much as art.
("Bazarov and Odintsova", artist Ratnikov)
The second defeat is love. She rules over Bazarov, and the chemist, biologist and nihilist cannot do anything with her: “His blood caught fire as soon as he remembered her... something else took possession of him, which he had never allowed...”
The third defeat is death. After all, she came not by the will of old age or chance, but almost intentionally: Bazarov knew perfectly well what the danger of a cut on a typhus corpse would be. But he didn’t cauterize the wound. Why? Because at that moment he was controlled by the lowest of “romantic” desires - to end everything at once, to give up, to admit defeat. Eugene suffered so much from mental torment that reason and critical calculation were powerless.
Bazarov's victory is that he has the intelligence and strength to admit the collapse of his beliefs. This is the greatness of the hero, the tragedy of the image.
The image of the hero in the work
At the end of the novel, we see all the characters somehow arranged: Odintsova got married for convenience, Arkady is happy in a bourgeois way, Pavel Petrovich leaves for Dresden. And only Bazarov’s “passionate, sinful, rebellious heart” hid under the cold ground, in a rural cemetery overgrown with grass...
But he was the most honest of them, the most sincere and strong. Its “scale” is many times larger, its capabilities are greater, its strengths are immeasurable. But such people do not live long. Or a lot, if they shrink to the size of Arkady.
(V. Perov illustration for Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons")
Bazarov's death is also a consequence of his false beliefs: he was simply not ready for the “blow” of love and romance. He did not have the strength to resist what he considered fiction.
Turgenev creates a portrait of another “hero of the time”, over whose death many readers cry. But the “heroes of the time” - Onegin, Pechorin, and others - are always superfluous and heroes only because they express the imperfection of this time. Bazarov, according to Turgenev, “stands on the threshold of the future,” his time has not come. But it seems that it has not come for such people even now, and it is unknown whether it will be...
