Fathers and sons

Turgenev's most famous novel not only plays out the eternal conflict between the old and new generations, who look at each other with horror and contempt. The author brings a new hero to the stage - a nihilist who denies all ideals and values. Bazarov will become a role model for the next generations of revolutionaries and an anti-hero for future conservatives. As always with Turgenev, social analysis is combined with a poetic style. Critic Nikolai Strakhov pointed out that Turgenev does not reproach Bazarov for his indifference to nature, contempt for friendship, romantic love and parental feeling, but only depicts all this (and Bazarov himself) "with all the luxury and insight of poetry." Landscapes traditionally add poetic coloring to prose, but in Turgenev's work, pastoral pictures of the province serve only as a background for heated arguments between "liberal fathers" and "revolutionary children" and for tense relations between landowners and peasants. "The Main Books of Russian Literature" is a joint series by the Alpina. Proza publishing house and the Polka Internet project. The works published in it were chosen by contemporary writers, critics, literary scholars, and teachers. This is both an attempt to determine what the Russian literary canon looks like today and a new look at famous works: each book is accompanied by a preface by the authors of Polka. For all lovers of classical Russian literature and for high school students.