Arkady Kirsanov’s nihilist mentor, Yevgeny Bazarov, holds that “Nature is not a temple, but a workshop.” As Bazarov and Arkady wrestle with questions regarding the nature of human life, Bazarov consistently views nature as a mechanistic force—something that can be understood through formulas and controlled through scientific methods. This view has implications for his view of human beings and society, which are, to him, just expressions of mechanical nature. But by portraying nature itself as a character whose vitality suffuses the story—alongside and in spite of humans’ abstract reasonings about it—Turgenev argues that nature cannot be reduced to a mere mechanical force, but must be respected as mysterious and life-giving in its own right.
Bazarov has a mechanistic conception of nature, and this conception of nature extends to his understanding of human beings and society. Visiting Arkady’s father, the two young men discuss the nature of reality while gazing at a sunset. Bazarov asserts, “What is important is that two and two make four, and the rest is just trivial.” When Arkady suggests that nature might have some significance, Bazarov retorts, “Nature, too, is trivial, in the sense you give to it. Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.” Turgenev’s image of the “beautiful” fields in the sunset is intentional. Arkady senses that there is something more to natural beauty than mere math, but for Bazarov, nature can be studied and even mastered according to human whims.
Bazarov’s mechanistic view of nature extends to his understanding of human beings. He tells Anna Sergeyevna that it’s not worth studying human beings individually: “All men are similar […] 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.” In other words, even human beings are reducible to their constituent parts and have no unique, inherent value that’s worth examining. When Anna Sergeyevna asks if there’s no difference, then, between good and bad people, Bazarov explains, “We know more or less what causes physical ailments; and moral diseases are caused by the wrong sort of education, by all the rubbish people’s heads are stuffed with […] Reform society and there will be no diseases.” In other words, Bazarov’s mechanistic view of humanity and society means that, if only people are educated properly, moral disorder will be taken care of; there’s no need to account for differences in human character. Here, as before, nature can be reduced to a mathematical formula or a method.
In contrast to this mechanistic view of nature, throughout the novel, nature is often portrayed as almost a character in itself—a character closely tied to the human yearnings commonly expressed through poetry and art. Nature is so full of inherent life and poetic meaning that it frequently disrupts human attempts to reason in material terms, no matter how one tries to resist its power. This is demonstrated when Nikolai, while admiring his estate’s natural beauty, muses about Arkady’s new principles: “‘But to reject poetry, to have no feeling for art, for nature?’ [...] O Lord, how beautiful it is!’ […] and his favourite verses almost rose to his lips when he remembered [Arkady]—and he restrained himself.” For Nikolai, the beauty of his farm exerts a strong spiritual pull, prompting him to recite poetry, and he has to consciously refrain from indulging that impulse, thinking it pulls him away from his materialistically-minded son.
Even when Pavel challenges Bazarov to a duel one morning, nature carries on as exultantly as it always does: “It was a glorious fresh morning; tiny mottled cloudlets hovered overhead like fleecy lambs in the clear blue sky; fine beads of dew […] sparkled like silver on the spiders’ webs; […] in every quarter of the heavens the larks poured out their song.” Despite Bazarov’s materialistic claims and the foolish antipathy of the two men, nature carries on with irrepressible life and richness. This suggests that, despite flawed human nature, nature remains beautiful and self-sustaining in its own right.
Finally, nature, with all its persistent vitality, has the last word in the novel, outliving Bazarov himself. After Bazarov dies of typhus, his parents regularly visit his grave and weep: “However passionate, sinful and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it […] 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.” Contrary to what Bazarov had maintained during his life, nature is not “indifferent,” Turgenev argues; in fact, it outlasts human lives with their self-importance, hinting at a life that transcends human limitations. In other words, it’s the opposite of the mechanistic force Bazarov tries to master during his own short life—a self-renewing phenomenon that even hints at a spiritual life outlasting the grave.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Nature vs. Materialism ThemeTracker
Nature vs. Materialism 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.”
“And there’s no doubt these good peasants are taking your father in properly: you know the saying – ‘the Russian peasant will get the better of God himself.’”
“I begin to agree with my uncle,” remarked Arkady. “You certainly have a poor opinion of Russians.”
“As if that mattered! The only good thing about a Russian is the poor opinion he has of himself. What is important is that two and two make four, and the rest is just trivial.”
“And is nature trivial?” said Arkady, staring thoughtfully at the parti-coloured fields in the distance, beautiful in the soft light of the setting sun.
“Nature, too, is trivial, in the sense you give to it. Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.”
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.”
Arina Vlassyevna was a true Russian gentlewoman of the old school; she ought to have lived a couple of centuries earlier, in the days of Muscovy. Very devout and emotional, she believed in fortune-telling, charms, dreams and omens of every conceivable kind; she believed in half-crazy visionaries, in house-spirits, in wood-sprites, in unlucky encounters, in the evil eye, in folk remedies, in salt prepared on Maundy Thursday, and the imminent end of the world; […] Arina Vlassyevna was very kindhearted, and in her way far from stupid. She knew that the world is divided into the gentry who were there to give orders and the common people whose duty it was to serve—and so she felt no repugnance against servile behaviour and obsequiousness; but she was always gentle and considerate with subordinates, never let a single beggar go away empty-handed, and though she gossiped at times she never criticized anyone […] Nowadays such women as she have ceased to exist. Heaven only knows whether this should be a matter for rejoicing!
“I’m thinking what a happy life my parents lead! At the age of sixty my father can still find plenty to do, talks about ‘palliative measures,’ treats patients, plays the bountiful lord of the manor with the peasants - has a gay time of it in fact; and my mother’s happy too: her days are so chockful of all sorts of occupations, sighs and groans, that she doesn’t know where she is; while […] here I lie under a haystack. . . . The tiny bit of space I occupy is so minute in comparison with the rest of the universe, […] And yet here, in this atom which is myself, in this mathematical point, blood circulates, the brain operates and aspires to something too . . . What a monstrous business! What futility!”
“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 . . .”
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.
