The title of Turgenev's masterpiece Fathers and Sons published in 1862 largely served as a plot spoiler. The title also established one of the most intriguing and enduring themes of Russian literature for the future; in particular, it was a subject that was central to Dostoyevsky's The Devils (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Golovlyov Family (1876), and Andrei Bely's Petersburg (1913; revised in 1922).
At heart, these stories
read like a parenting guidebook gone wrong. And gone wrong with the kinds of
horrifying, louche, salacious, juicy variations that make Russian literature so
sublime.
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| The figurative Father: Ivan Turgenev |
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| The symbolic Son: Andrey Bely |
The
father-and-son theme breaks down into two basic, simplistic categories:
1.
Rebel With A Cause: The son who will do anything to uphold his strongly held
beliefs;
2.
Rebel Without A Clue: The son who will do anything to uphold beliefs that are
bouncing around in his head but which he can’t quite fathom.
To
wit:
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| Fathers and Sons title page |
The
Rebel With A Cause theme was first unveiled in Turgenev's
Fathers and Sons. The father (in this
case, Nikolai Kirsanov) represents the grand old order — the landowning, tsar-following,
Mother Russia-blindered, Slavophile class that needs to be overthrown by the
sons (Arkady Kirsanov and his University friend, Yevgeny Bazarov), who look to
the West and Europe for the latest, enlightened ideas of social change. The son
is a Rebel Without A Clue; he’s under the influence of Bazarov, but only
halfheartedly and his own views are only partially formed. For his part,
Bazarov’s views are at best modern and developed; at worst they’re cynical and,
yes — drumroll, please! — nihilistic.
Not surprisingly, it’s those darn nihilists who become
responsible for the really good stuff down the road.
Dostoyevsky picked up on Turgenev’s theme and naturally twisted
and contorted it in The Devils (aka The Possessed and The Demons) beyond anything Turgenev could likely have foreseen. And
Dostoyevsky wasn’t happy with just one father-son theme: he constructed
multiple variations of the “son” figure, most ending (fittingly) in perdition.
Stepan Verkhovensky is the father figure, a rather silly old
man; he’s the spiritual double of the Jim Backus character in the film Rebel
Without A Cause.
Stepan is a poet, philosopher, lover, and fool — although you can’t help but
secretly root for him.
His son Pyotr is Devil #1, a big fan of influential founding Devil
#2, Nikolai Stavrogin. Their revolutionary followers include Shigalov, who
preaches that millions will need to be murdered before a just society can be
realized (always a good start); the doomed religious figure Shatov; the atheist
Liputin; and Kirillov, who believes suicide will turn him into a god. Great
stuff.
As a former revolutionary himself, Dostoyevsky returned to this
theme in other stories and novels throughout his career. After The Devils, his most interesting look at
the father-son variations came in The Brothers Karamazov, which was a grand slam,
offering a bit of each of our father-son categories.
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| Yul Brynner as that lusty guitar-hero, Dmitri Karamazov |
Father Fyodor Karamazov is a lecherous, drunken, greedy buffoon.
Fyodor has four sons: Dmitri, a Rebel Without A Clue; Ivan the revolutionary
nihilist and Alyosha the saint, both Rebels With A Cause; and the illegitimate
Smerdyakov, another Rebel Without A Clue. Talk about trouble waiting to happen.
The only Russian novel that could truly rival The Brothers
Karamazov in
familial dysfunction was Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Golovlyov Family. Father Vladimir was good for
nothing at best. His sons include Stepan, better known as The Nitwit, and
Pavel, who was a bit of a worthless Oblomov-esque dreamer.
Then there’s Porfiry Golovlyov, affectionately called either
Little Judas or simply, The Bloodsucker. Porfiry is a fine example of
all-consuming greed, back-stabbing jealousy, hypocritical doubletalk, and good
old spiritual vacuity, making him an exemplary Rebel Without A Clue.
There’s also a daughter, Anna, but she’s really only an
embarrassment due to her elopement and not nearly up to the standards set by
the rest of the family.
As discussed in more detail in another post, the Golovlyovs are
like the Snopes but with a funny accent. And rumors that The Golovlyov Family
was the inspiration for TV’s Dallas are deserving of further study. All in all, the doom and gloom
running throughout the novel out-Dostoyevskys Dostoyevsky. Phenomenal.
Which brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation to Andrei
Bely's Petersburg, some thirty years later. (Bely is also sometimes translated as
Biely, the penname of Boris Bugaev.) The father here is Apollon Ableukhov, an official in the Tsarist
government. His son is Nikolai, a revolutionary Rebel With A Cause who has been
ordered to assassinate his own father by planting a bomb in his study as part
of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Dostoyevsky would have given anything to
have dreamed up this plot.
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| The English-speaking world had to wait until 1959 for the first translation of Bely's Petersburg |
And in
many ways, with Petersburg, Bely himself assassinates all of the Russian
writers who came before him. Much like Joyce (whose own Ulysses from several years on followed
its own father-son theme), Bely’s writing style assimilated the writers of the
past, toyed with and even parodied their styles and themes, and created a new
style, chock full of poetry, modernism, symbolism, word play, and — gasp! —
even humor. A fine twist to the father-son theme.
For
more on Petersburg, see the exemplary website http://petersburg.berkeley.edu/bely/bely_content.html
For a discussion of Petersburg translation, see the fine blog http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/translation-translation-translation/
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