In Fathers and Sons, Bazarov says, “A decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet.” Bazarov’s scientific and nihilistic worldview doesn’t leave any room for the romantic as a genuine or useful phenomenon. His protégé, Arkady, agrees with him at first, but over the course of the novel, the young men’s interactions with the sisters Anna and Katya Sergeyevna begin to challenge their outlooks on love, and they respond differently, with consequences for the future course of their lives. By portraying romance as the thing that finally drives a wedge between Arkady and Bazarov, Turgenev argues that love is far more valuable than Bazarov’s nihilistic, materialistic worldview.
Bazarov refuses to admit that romance is a real phenomenon, reflecting the nihilistic belief that relationships are meaningless, superficial displays. When Arkady tells Bazarov about the romantic heartbreak that has dogged his uncle Pavel’s life, Bazarov retorts, “…[W]hat are these mysterious relations between a man and a woman? […] That’s all romantic rot, mouldy aesthetics. We had much better go and inspect that beetle.” In other words, human relations, including alleged romance, are reducible to scientific observations; any claim to the contrary is “rot,” and one makes better use of one’s time by studying an insect specimen than by speculating about love.
Although spending time with Anna Sergeyevna, an “emancipated” noblewoman, awakens romantic feelings in Bazarov, he fights these emotions, as his feelings for her “at once tortured and maddened him, and […] he would promptly have denied [them] with scornful laughter and cynical abuse.” Because he’s so committed to the belief that relationships are merely physiological phenomena, he refuses to make room in his life for romantic feelings when they emerge naturally.
Anna is also somewhat of a nihilist, even if she doesn’t identify herself as such. She refuses to acknowledge that she loves Bazarov: “The pressure of various vague emotions [had] […] forced her to look behind her—and there she had seen not even an abyss but only a void…chaos without shape.” Even though Anna doesn’t call herself a nihilist, the haunting presence of this shapeless “abyss” hints at the emptiness of a way of life that doesn’t grant love’s reality.
Later, Bazarov speaks to Anna Sergeyevna about their past feelings for one another, agreeing to let that “dream” fade into the past, since love “is a purely imaginary feeling.” Both “believed they were speaking the truth. Was the truth, the whole truth, to be found in their words? They themselves did not know […] each appeared to have complete faith in the other.” This suggests that, despite their shared nihilism and their attempts to deny love on that basis, love is still a natural, inevitable force that affects both Bazarov and Anna regardless.
Arkady’s growing affection for Anna Sergeyevna’s younger sister, Katya, begins to wear down his nihilism rather than reinforce it. Consequently, this challenges his blind devotion to Bazarov. When Arkady grows disenchanted with Bazarov, he finds himself thinking of Katya instead. Just 10 days later, he abandons Bazarov, galloping off to rejoin Anna and Katya. This sudden gesture of independence shows both Arkady’s emergence from his nihilistic mentor’s shadow and the romantic feelings that won’t be repressed, even though he hasn’t yet admitted his love for Katya.
Katya’s loving influence tangibly changes Arkady, both in mindset and appearance—suggesting that love is a transformative influence in people’s lives, even when they’ve erected philosophical barriers against it. As they spend most of their time together at her estate, Katya observes that Arkady is no longer under Bazarov’s influence: “He’s a wild beast, while you and I are domestic animals.” Though Arkady protests, he soon acknowledges that Katya has tamed him, particularly by forcing him to acknowledge the reality of romantic love.
Proposing to Katya, Arkady asserts, “I still want to devote all my energies to the pursuit of truth; but I can no longer seek my ideal where I did before; I perceive it now . . . much closer to hand. […] My eyes have recently been opened, thanks to a certain emotion…” In other words, in his friendship with Bazarov, Arkady’s search for truth was fruitless. “A certain emotion”—love—was necessary in order for him to seek truth rightly, and only by opening himself to love’s existence—at a distance from Bazarov—could he realize this.
Later, when Bazarov learns of the couple’s engagement, he agrees that Arkady has changed: “It strikes me that you have parted from me already. You look so spruce and smart […]A romantic would say, ‘I feel our paths are beginning to diverge,’ but I will simply say that we are tired of each other.” Arkady’s newfound love has even transformed his appearance. But Bazarov doesn’t attribute much importance to this transformation or the resultant parting of ways—the two friends are bored with each other, that’s all. There’s still no room in Bazarov’s outlook for love.
On his deathbed, when Bazarov summons Anna to his bedside, he can’t quite admit that he loves her: “Love is a form, and my particular form is already disintegrating. Better let me say—how lovely you are!” Yet even this could be read as a concession on Bazarov’s part—a person can embody “loveliness” even if love isn’t a self-existent phenomenon. And six months later, two weddings occur at Arkady’s home estate: Arkady’s and Katya’s and his father’s marriage to his longtime lover, Fenichka. The conclusion of the novel with weddings decisively confirms Turgenev’s argument in favor of romance as something real, a more enduring and life-affirming philosophy than nihilism.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Love vs. Nihilism ThemeTracker
Love vs. Nihilism Quotes in Fathers and Sons
“But remember the sort of education he had, the period in which he grew up,” Arkady rejoined.
“The sort of education he had!” Bazarov exclaimed. “Everyone ought to educate himself—as I’ve done, for instance . . . And as to the times we live in, why should I depend upon them? Much better they should depend upon me. No, my dear fellow, all that is just empty thinking! And what are these mysterious relations between a man and a woman? We physiologists know what they are. You study the anatomy of the eye; and where does that enigmatic look you talk about come in? That’s all romantic rot, mouldy aesthetics. We had much better go and inspect that beetle.”
The rays of the sun on the farther side fell full on the clump of trees and, piercing their foliage, threw such a warm light on the aspen trunks that they looked like pines and their leaves were almost dark blue, while above them rose an azure sky, tinged by the red glow of sunset. Swallows flew high; the wind had quite died down; a few late-homing bees hummed lazily and drowsily among the lilac; swarms of midges hung like a cloud over a single far-projecting branch. “O Lord, how beautiful it is!” thought Nikolai Petrovich, and his favourite verses almost rose to his lips when he remembered Arkady’s Stoff und Kraft - and he restrained himself; but he still sat there, surrendering himself to the mournful consolation of solitary thought.
“And so you have no feeling whatsoever for art?” she said, leaning her elbow on the table, a movement which brought her face closer to Bazarov. “How can you get on without it?”
“Why, what is it needed for, may I ask?”
“Well, at least to help one to know and understand people.”
Bazarov smiled. “In the first place, experience of life does that, and in the second, I assure you the study of separate individuals is not worth the trouble it involves. All men are similar, in soul as well as in body. Each of us has a brain, spleen, heart and lungs of similar construction; and the so-called moral qualities are the same in all of us - the slight variations are of no importance. It is enough to have one single human specimen in order to judge all the others. People are like trees in a forest: no botanist would dream of studying each individual birchtree.”
“I feel particularly sorry for your mother.”
“Why? Has she won your heart with her strawberries and blackcurrants?”
Arkady looked down at his feet. “You don’t understand your mother, Yevgeny. She’s not only a fine woman, she’s very clever really. This morning she talked to me for half an hour, and everything she said was so to the point and interesting.”
“I suppose she was expatiating upon me all the time?’
“We didn’t talk only about you.”
“Maybe as a detached observer you can see more clearly than I do. If a woman can keep up a conversation for half an hour, it’s already a good sign. But I’m going all the same.”
“Let bygones be bygones,” she said, “especially as, to be quite frank, I was also to blame, if not by being coquettish, then in some other fashion. In short, let us be friends as we were before. The other was a dream, was it not? And who ever remembers dreams?”
“Who indeed? And besides, love . . . is a purely imaginary feeling.”
“Really? I am very glad to hear you say that.”
So spoke Anna Sergeyevna, and so spoke Bazarov, and they both believed they were speaking the truth. Was the truth, the whole truth, to be found in their words? They themselves did not know, and still less does the author. But in the conversation that followed each appeared to have complete faith in the other.
“I am now no longer the conceited boy I was when I first arrived here,” Arkady continued. “I have not reached the age of twenty-two for nothing; I still have every wish to lead a useful life, I still want to devote all my energies to the pursuit of truth; but I can no longer seek my ideal where I did before; I perceive it now . . . much closer to hand. Up till now I did not understand myself, I set myself tasks beyond my capacity… My eyes have recently been opened, thanks to a certain emotion … I am not expressing myself very clearly but I hope you will understand me . . .”
“You see what I’m doing: there happened to be an empty space in my trunk, and I’m stuffing it with hay; it’s the same with the trunk which is our life: we fill it with anything that comes to hand rather than leave a void […] And now, in parting, let me repeat . . . because there is no point in deceiving ourselves—we are parting for good, and you know that yourself . . . you have acted sensibly: you were not made for our bitter, harsh, lonely existence. There’s no audacity in you, no venom: you’ve the fire and energy of youth but that’s not enough for our business. Your sort, the gentry, can never go farther than well-bred resignation or well-bred indignation, and that’s futile.”
Supporting each other, they walk with heavy steps; they go up to the iron railing, fall on their knees and weep long and bitterly, and long and yearningly they gaze at the silent stone beneath which their son is lying; exchanging a brief word, they brush the dust from the stone, set a branch of a fir-tree right, and then resume their prayers, unable to tear themselves away from the place where they feel nearer to their son, to their memories of him.... But are those prayers of theirs, those tears, all fruitless? Is their love, their hallowed selfless love, not omnipotent? Oh yes! However passionate, sinful and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes; they speak to us not only of eternal peace, of the vast repose of ‘indifferent’ nature: they tell us, too, of everlasting reconciliation and of life which has no end.
