Russia: Its People and Its LiteraturePardo Bazán, Emilia, condesa de
History
Russia: Its People and Its Literature
Pardo Bazán, Emilia, condesa de
Russia -- Civilization; Russian literature -- History and criticism
especially, are the perfection of art in the way of novel-writing. It is
said that "The Nobles' Nest" produced in Russia an effect comparable
only to that of "Paul and Virginia" in France.
Then came the great change in Russia: serfdom was no more! and
Turguenief, leaving these touching love-stories, threw himself into the
new turmoil, and gave himself up to the study of the struggle between
the new state of society and the old, which resulted in the novel,
"Fathers and Sons." This book contains the pictures of two generations,
and each one, says Mérimée, shrewdly, found the portrait of the other
well drawn, but called Heaven to witness that that of himself was a
caricature; and the cry of the fathers was exceeded by that of the sons,
personified in the character of the positivist, Bazarof.
Two old country gentlefolk, a physician and his wife, represent the
elder generation, the society of yesterday, and two students the society
and generation of to-day. Bazarof is the leader, the ruling spirit of
the two latter; the novelist has given him so much vivacity that we seem
to hear him, to see his long, withered face, his broad brows, his great
greenish eyes, and the prominent bulges on his heavy skull. I have seen
such types as this many a time in the streets and alleys of the Latin
Quarter, which is the lurking-place of Russian refugees in Paris, and I
have said to myself, "There goes a Bazarof, exiled and half dead with
hunger, and yet perhaps more eager to set off a few pounds of dynamite
under the Grand Opera-House than to breakfast!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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