"The whole ground of the misunderstanding lay in the fact that the type of Bazarov had not time to pass through the usual phases. At the very moment of his appearance the author attacked him. It was a new method as well as a new type I introduced--that of Realizing instead of Idealizing.... The reader is easily thrown into perplexity when the author does not show clear sympathy or antipathy to his own child. The reader readily gets angry.... After all, books exist to entertain." An excellent piece of analysis and a quiet piece of irony this! The character of Bazarov was in fact such an epitome of the depths of a great movement that the mass of commonplace educated minds, the future tools of the movement, looked on it with alarm, dislike and dread. The average man will only recognize his own qualities in his fellows, and endow a man with his own littlenesses. So Bazarov's depth excited the superficiality of the eternally omnipresent average mind. The Idealists in the Younger Generation were mortally grieved to see that Bazarov was not wholly inspired by their dreams; he went deeper, and the average man received a shock of surprise that hurt his vanity. So the hue and cry was raised around Turgenev, and raised only too well. Bazarov is the most dominating of Turgenev's creations, yet it brought upon him secret distrust and calumny, undermined his influence with those he was with at heart, and went far to damage his position as the leading novelist of his day. The lesson is significant. No generation ever understands itself; its members welcome eagerly their portraits drawn by their friends, and the caricatures drawn by their adversaries; but to the new type no mercy is shown, and everybody hastens to misunderstand, to abuse, to destroy. So widely indeed was Bazarov misunderstood that Turgenev once asserted, "At this very moment there are only two people who have understood my intentions--Dostoevsky and Botkin." And Dostoevsky was of the opposite camp--a Slavophil. II What, then, is Bazarov? Time after time Turgenev took the opportunity, now in an article, now in a private or a public letter, to repel the attacks made upon his favourite character. Thus in a letter to a Russian lady[20] he says: "What, you too say that in drawing Bazarov I wished to make a caricature of the young generation. You repeat this--pardon my plain speaking--idiotic reproach. Bazarov, my favourite child, on whose account I quarrelled with Katkoff; Bazarov, on whom I lavished all the colours at my disposal; Bazarov, this man of intellect, this hero, a caricature! But I see it is useless for me to protest." [20] _Souvenirs sur Tourguéneff_, 1887. And in a letter addressed to the Russian students at Heidelberg he reiterates: