Fathers and Sons, the Ziyalan Way

Ivan Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” does more than stage a conflict between political and intellectual outlooks. It also exposes the love-bound tension between fathers and sons, a tension that often remains difficult to express.

In the novel, the fathers represent inherited values, habits and emotional attachments. The sons bring change, resistance and the desire for independence. Yet Turgenev does not reduce the conflict to a simple battle between the old and the new. Sons try to move away from their fathers while still needing their love. Fathers, shaken by a world they do not understand, repeatedly try to keep from losing their children.

Two father-son relationships stand at the center. Nikolai and his son Arkady have a bond that leaves more room for reconciliation. Nikolai eagerly awaits Arkady’s return from university and does not withdraw his affection when he sees that his son has changed. Arkady, meanwhile, looks down on his father’s way of life, romantic tendencies and old-generation values. By criticizing his father, he is also trying to become independent.

The relationship between Bazarov and his father, Vasily Ivanovich, is far more tragic. Vasily is almost awestruck by his son, proud of his intelligence and knowledge and convinced that he has a great future. But he fears that openly showing his love will burden Bazarov. He cannot relax around him and constantly tries to please him, keep him at home and feel close to him.

Bazarov loves his parents, but their affection unsettles him. He experiences it as a threat to his independence because the nihilism he espouses requires him to dismiss not only political and social institutions, but emotional attachments as well. The article then connects this tension to writers who followed literary fathers, discussing Samuel Coleridge and Hartley Coleridge in English poetry. It also points to Nihat Ziyalan’s poem “My Son” as one of Turkish literature’s notable father-son poems.