Fathers and Children: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

So helpful to read this translation of Turgenev’s great novel— I understand why the translator changed the title to Fathers and Children but will be sorry if it means readers are less likely to find this version. As always, the Norton collection of contemporaneous and later essays on the book and its reception and influence help place the work in important context. Not sure why Norton doesn’t have a Kindle version — perhaps copyright limitations on the essays it includes here — but this version is still worth waiting for (rather than having the more immediate gratification of downloading the e-book).

I read this novella many years ago with a far inferior translation. This translation is very smooth and includes footnotes for many cultural references. The criticism and analysis at the end of the text is quite extensive - makes this book worth the price when compared to others that are text only. You won't be disappointed.

now one of my favorite books. excellent translation. excellent essays in this critical edition

Truly fine translation. Very helpful accompanying articles.

Rereading Turgenev is such a pleasure, especially his keen, intuitive observations. He published "Fathers and Children" in 1862 just after the 1861 liberation of the serfs in Tsarist Russia, close to the same time as the emancipation of the slaves in the US. The actual story takes place a couple years earlier in 1859 just before Tsar Alexander II emancipates the Russian peasants. In the narration one can see the change coming in the generational shift from older autocratic aristocrats to the ostensibly enlightened landowners. The gentry are already anticipating this emancipation and experimenting with shared use of the land, so basically sharecropping. And it has intractable problems, just like in the US. The younger generation is aware that there has been some phenomenal change, although no one is quite sure what it all means. Young Arkady, from the landed gentry, is optimistic. His well-meaning father Nicolai is trying to go with the changes, like trying to abandon the practice of flogging serfs, not totally successfully. The father even contemplates marrying the serf woman who is his mistress and mother of his new baby. Another student, Arkady's friend Bazarov, from the exceptionally thin Russian middle class, is cynical and nihilistic,rejecting all authority, eager to see all structure swept away, interested only in scientific facts. And his parents are also well meaning but confused. Worst of all, Bazarov is unkind to his mother, for a Russian a grave sin. Turgenev absorbs from his changing world a secondary question: If serfs and slaves are no longer chattel what does that mean for women? The early translations distorted the Russian by making the title "Fathers and Sons," so simply patrilineal. The Russian is clearly "Fathers and Children"--women play a key role in the Russian. This edition with the more accurate title and extensive commentaries makes that clear. The emancipated women in the story are not very appetizing, Kukshina is pretty disgusting. Anna is charming, but has no children. The only positive women are Fenechka, his father's peasant-mistress, but so orderly and such a good mother, they at first think she must be German, and Katya, Anna's younger sister, who has combined the best of the old ways with the best of the new. Bazarov is revolutionary but sterile, his cruel logic gets him into a serious conflict with Arkady's uncle, but Bazarov does not die in the duel. The figure of Bazarov is exceptionally ambiguous, attractive and dangerous. Turgenev somehow anticipates by decades the attractive and dangerous revolutionaries of the People's Will. These anarchistic ideas were new on the Russian scene at the time, only taken seriously by a handful of people. Did Turgenev know such goofy ideas would eventually do away with his world, probably he did not. He has Bazarov later succumb to an infectious disease, and his ideas pretty much die with him. Arkady marries Katya and presumably establishes a real Russian family. Order prevails, nihilists fade away. Traditional women carry on the culture. A lovely prediction that did not come true. Instead, in reality the Bazarovs would prevail. Alexander II, the most enlightened Tsar in Russian history, was murdered by revolutionary anarchists from the People's Will in 1881, and Alexander's grandson Nicholas II saw him die and was terrified the rest of his life, distrusting the Russians he ruled. Turgenev was a powerful observer and somehow knew the destructive force of nihilism. Turgenev certainly was onto something happening in the Zeitgeist, but he overestimated the strength of the ruling system and overestimated its ability to reform with time from within with small steps like Arkady's father marrying the serf mother of his child. (Something Turgenev who had a similar situation did not do...as we know from this editions commentaries...) Life in Russia would have been much more rational if Turgenev's passive assumption of reform from within, by small enlightened steps of reconciliation and rationalization, had prevailed. Turgenev's observations are more accurate than he likely realized at the time, like a security camera capturing images of seemingly random actions. But it is all so lovingly described, the countryside, the manners of the peasants and landowners, such a lovely portrait of a lost world on the brink....

The Michael R. Katz translation of "Fathers and Sons" is wonderful. I certainly recommend it.

This has always been published in English as "Fathers and Sons". I betcha that's because the original title in Russian included the word "Sons". This arbitrary change in title signals that the translation printed in this book is so informed by social justice stuff as to be presumptively unreliable.Some indications of that appear elswhere in these reviews. Don't buy.

I loved this book. I think the translation feels fluid, modern, and on point with the historical context. The Norton critical edition provides a number of letters and essays on this, perfect for a scholar. Beautiful novel, interesting, progressive characters that depict a shift in Russian thought in the volatile 1840s.