Nature as a garden in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons

Nature in Fathers and Sons is mostly presented in the form of a garden. The gardens of the novel are intricately woven into the structure of the novel and its character. Almost all events that are crucial to the story happen in the gardens: Nikolai Petrovich is accepted by his garden, which allows him to relax in an arbor after a tumultuous argument between Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich, carefully reflecting on his dear past and the present; Pavel Petrovich wanders in the same garden for a similar purpose, Bazarov kisses Fenichka in the arbor, and Arkady tells Katya about his feeling in the Odintsova's garden twice! Forest is perhaps of equal importance since the duel between Pavel Petrovich and Bazarov happens in a birch grove near Marino. Pavel Petrovich also seems as a kind of “forest” in one of Bazarov's nightmares (Chapter XXIV), that should be conquered. To note, gardens, unlike parks, are a more personal space. Plants there are carefully cultivated, excluding all kinds of nasty weeds. If a park would be a workplace of a person, a garden would be his own bedroom.

Nikolai Petrovich thinking about the past in his garden at Marino (taken from a film adaptation of 1983).

The novel is made up of contrasts, such as Bazarov and Arkady, Pavel Petrovich and Nikolai Petrovich, the town of X. and the nature all around it. Take, for instance, the local town. The people of galanter origin that live there are pretentious, arrogant and pseudo-wise. They are progressive citizens that Progress would hate to see as its activists. It is hard to find any spiritual liberation in the town, so our characters quickly move on to another garden, this time it is Odintsova's one. I have stumbled upon an interesting interpretation of Odintsova as Circe (Fischler 250) and her garden is a charming prison to which visitors are bound to return.

Bazarov and Odintsova in the garden at Nikolskoe.

And Bazarov returns to the garden, leaving his beloved parents for a while. There, the main protagonist is further “weakened” by a feeling of fondness for Odintsova, that can indeed be called “love.”

A walk during the second stay at the same garden.

Why Turgenev picked garden for one of the main settings of action, and why almost any urban areas are absent from the novel? The answer is Bazarov. Being the main character of the novel our attention is focused on his contradictory personality. The gardens of the novel, accompanied by the general rural setting, are able to make Bazarov a dynamic character (Gettmann 405-408) – would there be no gardens, there would be no shifting Bazarov. He experiences stages of emotional development: at the start of the novel he is a more rigid person of materialist beliefs and by the end of it, he “melts,” but not fully. An-aspen-tree-of-a-man rebel will not yield to accepted norms and something similar to “an expression of distaste” (Chapter XXVII) is seen on his face when Father Alexis performs the last rites.

An aspen tree near Bazarov's home. This aspen tree was his talisman in the childhood. In the Russian culture, this tree is a symol of devilish unholy powers, because its leaves do not stop moving even in the windless weather (Poltavec 502-504).

Bazarov is a nature hero, even if we take into account his own statement about Nature being  a human's “workshop.” A man who says that his grandfather did “guide the plough with his own hand” (!!!) (Chapter X) cannot be nothing but a peasant's son and understand Nature around him better than anyone else since his own survival depends on the conditions of land. The inner struggle of Bazarov is between Nature and materialistic values, the struggle which the character cannot win. The presence of the struggle makes the novel a whole lot more cheerful, as Bazarov's rare expressions of “Romanticism,” as he calls it, are ironized over by the author. He – Turgenev – wrote the lines about “the flowers which bloom” on the grave and that “only the birds perch upon it” (Chapter XXVIII) with a kind grin on his face – it is so (un)Bazarian to have them there!

As a last remark, I am compelled to recommend a film adaptation of 1983 (and strongly disapprove of an adaptation of 1958), featuring Vladimir Bogin as Bazarov and Vyacheslav Nikiforov as a director. The adaptation is brilliant!

                                                                                                                         Maksim Kamrõš