he point of honour means. He is a cynic in his love affairs, and
indifferent in his friendships. He has no respect even for paternal
tenderness, but he is full of contradictions, even to the extent of
fighting a duel about nothing at all, and sacrificing his life for the
first peasant he meets. And in this the resemblance is true, much more
general, indeed, than the model selected would lead one to imagine; so
general, in fact, that, apart from the question of art, Turgenev--he
has admitted it himself--felt as if he were drawing his own portrait;
and therefore it is, no doubt, that he has made his hero so
sympathetic.--From "A History of Russian Literature" (1900).

IV
BY RICHARD H. P. CURLE

But for the best expression of the bewilderment of life we have to turn
to the portrait of a man, to the famous Bazarov of "Fathers and
Children." Turgenev raises through him the eternal problem--Has
personality any hold, has life any meaning at all? The reality of this
figure, his contempt for nature, his egoism, his strength, his mothlike
weakness are so convincing that before his philosophy all other
philosophies seem to pale. He is the one who sees the life-illusion,
and yet, knowing that it is the mask of night, grasps at it, loathing
himself. You can hate Bazarov, you cannot have contempt for him. He is
a man of genius, rid of sentiment and hope, believing in nothing but
himself, to whom come, as from the darkness, all the violent questions
of life and death. "Fathers and Children" is simply an exposure of our
power to mould our own lives. Bazarov is a man of astonishing
intellect--he is the pawn of an emotion he despises; he is a man of
gigantic will--he can do nothing but destroy his own beliefs; he is a
man of intense life--he cannot avoid the first, brainless touch of
death. It is the hopeless fight of mind against instinct, of
determination against fate, of personality against impersonality.
Bazarov disdaining everyone, sick of all smallness, is roused to fury
by the obvious irritations of Pavel Petrovitch. Savagely announcing the
creed of nihilism and the end of romance, he has only to feel the calm,
aristocratic smile of Madame Odintsov fixed on him and he suffers all
the agony of first love. Determining to live and create, he has only to
play with death for a moment, and he is caught. But though he is the
most positive of all Turgenev's male portraits, there are others
linking up the chain of delusion. There