A Review of 'Fathers and Children,' by Turgenev

 

After a long hiatus, I am back reviewing selections of our Baltimore Book Club. July's choice for our group of five avid readers is "Fathers and Children," by Ivan Turgenev. Our discussion will take place on July 12; I being retired, however, couldn't resist reading the novel the first chance I got.

 

Rereading the novel, that is, I recall having read the novel a half century or so, ago; I remember very little of it except that the title was "Fathers and Sons." One of the themes of the novel is the rapid generational changes that were taking place in Russia at the time, (liberation of the serfs, new political movements, etc.) This classic novel was first published in 1862; the recent translation I read is excellent. I am not sure about the title, which has been known to English-speaking readers as 'Fathers and Sons,’ for generations. It’s a little bit like renaming “War and Peace” “War and The End of Hostilities.” (If the name change was done due to political correctness, I object: it is folly, I think, to try to change the past, rather than learning from it. The novel was written during patriarchal times; among the novel’s main characters, are two fathers and sons, not daughters. But this is a minor point—what’s in a name?)

 

Turgenev is a master of characterization, which he accomplishes with great economy.  One of the main characters is one of the two sons, Bazarov, a young man with charisma and intellectual heft.  I view him as a Rousseau-inspired character. Rousseau believed that human beings were good, even noble, at their core. It is society that is the problem. Once the evils of society are eliminated, human nobility will shine through like sunrise after a pitch-black night. A new and just society will arise. This view is contrasted by the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, who asserted that humanity is  fallen and without strong moral leadership, chaos results. This is a version of one of my favorite proverbs: Homo homini lupus—Man is wolf to man.

 

Bazarov characterizes himself as a nihilist; he denies the worth of everything until a new order is achieved.  We now know the result of this mindless idealism: the catastrophic history of the Soviet Union. (Stalin’s chief of agriculture, Lysenko, for instance, asserted such things as keeping seeds in a cold environment would result in plants resistant to cold.  The suffering caused by such beliefs might pale in comparison to Stalin’s terror, nevertheless a lot of damage was done due to neglect of genetic heredity.)

 

That Bazarov’s rejection of norms might have partially resulted from shame felt due to the ignorance of his parents—his mother was especially superstitious--is likely. But  Turgenev never states this, he shows this, and we must infer our interpretations.

 

That Bazarov is not as independent as he believes is shown by his passionate declaration of love to a very independent and strange woman, who seems more inspired by Eugene Onegin than, say, Schiller’s Maria Stuart.

 

The rejected and very bitter young man cuts his finger during an autopsy. An immediate cauterization would be the emergency procedure that might save his life, but this is not done.  When he tells his father three days later, the panicked old man wants to cauterize the wound immediately. Bazarov replies, “This should have been done sooner. By now, actually, even the caustic is a waste of time. If I’m infected, it is too late.” (page 196).

 

Basarov is of course correct; he is  indeed infected and dies of sepsis a few days later. That he did not seek treatment previously is a strong indication that he desired to end his life. (This is even more certain than the fact that the desperately depressed Tschaikowsky drank unboiled water during a cholera epidemic, which led to his death a few days later. It was common knowledge that such behavior was suicidal.)

 

No mention of suicide! We must infer it; once again, Turgenev shows and does not tell.

 

Nor does the author make any political comments. For instance, the nervous and rather incompetent Kirsanov has difficulties with the peasants and mismanages his estate. (Kirsanov, the father of Arkady, along with his son are the first ‘father and son’ duo of the book; Bazarov and his father being the second.) This wouldn’t have happened in an earlier age, during which hierarchies were unassailable. Once Arkady frees himself from Bazarov’s influence, the estates flourish once again. Management skill is now essential, not ancestral position.

This is one of the greatest novels I’ve ever read. The characters are convincingly and memorably drawn. More important than this, however, is the author’s objectivity; Turgenev doesn’t take sides.  It’s as if the novel had been written by the Zeitgeist, whose Eye in  the Sky had no desire beyond relaying what it sees.  Turgenev, of course, was politically astute; keeping himself out of the picture, I believe, added greatly to the effectiveness of its images. A great read!

A 1977 Met Performance

 

Note: I was searching an old diary for information  on the article, “From Roshen to Vidya” a blog entry from a few days back. I thought I found  one, but couldn’t find it again. Instead, I found an entry from February 21, 1977, which I thought might be of some interest to some readers.        

 (Oh, I was more than a tad arrogant in those days.)

February 21, 1977

We attended a performance of Le Prophète (an opera by Meyerbeer) today at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

 

It was the cheapest production I  ever saw there. Since Meyerbeer’s music needs lavish productions to carry it across, the sets of this evening’s performance were doubly disappointing. The basic set remained fixed during the performance—some details  were changed to suggest a new scene. The background looked like some crazy Art-nouveau aqueduct, a semicircular wooden scaffold with several ladders.  One would have to have read  the libretto to know what was going on; for instance, when Berthe is taken into the castle—in this staging, she went through one of the openings in the scaffolding, followed by some soldiers, while others went through another opening in a different direction—who could guess where? The frozen pond for the skating scene looked like a a giant Dr. Scholl footpad. In the last scene, a red canopy suggested the pomp of the palace! As a few ribbons fell from it, people screamed—thus suggesting the collapsing castle! A really awful production, perhaps the worst I ever saw at the Met.

The singing was a lot better. Although Marilyn Horne was in poor form for her—it was announced that she was suffering from “an extremely bad cold.” It still was a pleasure to hear her. James McCracken (God! he’s still singing about a conflict with Mother—one would think Carmen would have cured him of that!) sang superbly. He acted as of he couldn’t skate, as if  the whole pond were really made of ice.  Ruth Shane was all right, albeit a little shrill.

The music is another matter. The opera contains many nice melodies, without any being truly memorable. The best parts have to do with theatrical effects—the skating scene, the coronation scene, etc. I believe the opera should be heard now and then, but not in cheap productions like this one was. A shoddy production of a grand opera can only succeed if the music is of a high order. This is unfortunately not the case with Meyerbeer, although he was certainly competent. The Met should have known this.

From Roshen to Vidya

This is the story of a life saved that turned out to be a life well lived. Roshen was born, sixty years ago today, with a serious heart defect and was not expected  to survive. Without the intervention of my wife Nirmala and me, two young doctors at the time, she would definitely not have survived. It was perhaps the best thing we have done in our lives. Now, as Vidya celebrates her sixtieth birthday, it is time to tell the tale of Vidya's amazing metamorphosis, from a sickly blue kid to a healthy woman still in the pink.

First let's travel back in time, sixty years ago, to the time of Roshen's birth. Vimala, Roshen's mother, was pregnant for the third time and quite worried, since the child of her first pregnancy didn't survive for long. She wanted to give birth at home. The midwife, however, didn't arrive in time. My wife, a medical student at the time, delivered the baby.  Vimala, delighted with the results, chose Nirmala as the one to name the newborn infant. She chose the name Roshen; why I am not sure.

Everything was not pink and rosy, however, for when Roshen cried her lips turned blue, an indication of a serious birth defect.

Blue lips is a sign that blood is not being oxygenated properly; this condition is called cyanosis. There are two birth defects that often cause this condition, Tetrology of Fallot and Transposition of the Great Vessels. In America, and now in India as well, surgery is performed soon after birth.

Not so in Roshen's case. A study, in which an iodine-rich dye is injected in order to document the flow of blood in the heart, was done. Roshen, however, reacted to the iodine and nearly died. The test was stopped and remained incomplete.

The partial study indicated to several doctors that Roshen had Transposition, a much more serious condition. 

The study was reviewed by the famous cardiologist, Dr. Bakey, who concurred. If surgery is not performed in time, the condition becomes inoperable and the patient is doomed. No wonder that Vimala was worried! Her baby would never marry, never become a mother, and was well on her way to an early death. Ir didn't turn our that way, however.

Let us now fast forward to 1976: Nirmala and I, recently married, came to India for the first time as a couple. Vimala greeted us with a Hindu ceremony I will never forget. I was welcomed into the family and was quite pleased.

At that time, the Arjun family lived in the R.B.I. Colony, that is, the Reserve Bank of India Colony, where Vimala's husband, Krishnarjun worked.

One day, Roshen, a thin kid of about 11, wanted to show off her bike riding skills to us. After riding around the R.B.I. track several times, she paused to catch her breath. She was gasping for air. Her face had turned blue as an overcast  sky in Provence. Vimala was at the door begging her to stop. That image stayed fixed in my mind.

When we returned to New York, we wanted to do something to help  Roshen, but what?

Serendipity, that Hindu goddess, intervened. Nirmala was working as a pediatrician at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn at the time. Over lunch one day, Nirmala explained her concerns regarding her niece to a colleague. Her friend informe her of a newly arrived cardiac surgeon by the name of Dr. Griepp. 

Dr. Griepp reviewed the partial study and said he could help. He thought that the condition was Tetralogy of Fallot, rather than the fatal diagnosis of Transposition. Not only could he help, but he agreed to do the operation for free! Those were the days; it is doubtful that this would happen today.

We brought over Vimala and Roshen as quickly as possible. I'll never forget our conversation before Roshen was wheeled into surgery. She was so serene!

Needless to say, the surgery was a resounding success,  Roshen went on to marry and had a lovely daughter, Shrada,  a psychologist.

Oh, and what about the name change? Vimala was a very religious person and had contacted a guru in order, she thought, to save her daughter's life. The guru told her that Roshen would survive and thrive if her name were changed to Vidya. Roshen became Vidya, and has remained Vidya ever since.

Vimala credited the guru for saving Vidya's life. I do think, however, that Dr. Griepp had something to do with it. And so did we.

Happy Birthday, Vidya! May you continue to thrive.

Note: This was read aloud to the family group on a Zoom meeting. Vidya looked beautiful!

Demon Copperhead, a Novel by Barbara Kingsolver, a Review

 

Demon Copperhead, a 2022 novel by the prolific author Barbara Kingsolver, is well worth the read. That is, if you have patience; it is over 500  pages in length—(In my case, I had gotten very ill on vacation, and  for a while had very limited mobility. So I just sat in a corner and read.)

It has been written that Kingsolver visited a house where Dickins lived. She apparently felt like writing a novel that not only updated Dickins but would take place in a section of the country she loves and in which she lives, Appalachia. She apparently ‘channeled Dickens', who informed her to let the title character speak for himself. I doubt if there are many novels written Holden Caulfield-like, in the first person singular in which an adolescent male is the main character, let alone one written by a woman; in this case, the novel is a truly resounding success. Writing in Dickens’s footsteps, is, however, a tough act to follow.

As I see it, her purpose in writing this novel was first and foremost to entertain, but, that said, she was apparently interested in bringing her beloved and besieged Appalachia to life, basing the characters very loosely on Dickens’s great novel. She certainly succeeded.

She is a staunch defender of her ‘neck of the woods,’ a large swath of the country that has been devastated by big business whose exploitations of the area is and was criminal, followed by the push of oxycontin by Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which has left so many families in the area in ruins. One would think that  there would  be powerful Anna Sewells for every beaten down horse in existence, but not so. Almost  beaten down Appalachia was beaten down even further by shameless persons whose only god is the almighty dollar.  Kingsolver has, in fact, a very non-Dickensian character by the name of Kent, a pharmaceutical rep paid by Purdue, who did his very best to make a lot of money--which he of course did--; if, as he knew, he was ruining lives in  the meantime, so what? I love the expression, homo homini lupus, man is wolf to man; it has been the modus operandi of nearly everyone everywhere, since time immemorial. Some wolves are more ravenous than others, no doubt about that.

I think it’s safe to say that the author and I have similar political views. In the book, especially at the beginning she hints at these views in Damon’s voice at a time when a kid would hardly be politically aware. But she brilliantly succeeds in asserting politics later in the novel, when Damon is a student in middle school. One of his teachers is Mr. Armstrong, an African American who loves the area as well, and even plays the banjo in a Blue Grass band. If this combination seems unlikely to you, do recall that the world is a strange place; besides,  the character is very convincingly drawn. Kingsolver takes the racism of the area—and alas! of just about all areas of the world—head-on, Mr. Armstrong, confronted in the class, some members of which support the Confederate flag and conflate that support with patriotism, says the following:

“All right, let’s start with the obvious here,” Mr. Armstrong said. The Confederacy and the United States were opposite sides of a war.”

Still quiet. Among our kind there is stuff not talked about. And stuff not done, including insulting people straight to their faces.

We know words that were not proper noun capital Black being said; we definitely heard those, from older guys or parents or whoever, people ticked off over something they never met firsthand and knew nothing about. No real person…

“People,” Mr. Armstrong finally kind of yelled, like he did whenever we   were ignorant in class. "Are you following me here? A war. Opposite sides. Flying these flags at once makes no sense. It’s like rooting for the Generals and Abingdon Falcons (two local and very much opposing football teams) in the same game.” 

                                                        --page 266

Kudos to Barbara Kingsolver for having written that! Although, as a member of a mixed-race family  that includes prominent Black members, I would have been more critical of the racist views common in all areas of my country; but the author, extremely sensitive to criticism of Appalachian lives, has her heart in the right place.

Kingsolver apparently wrote a letter to the author of Hillbilly Elegies," and chided him for his condescending views. My view is this: Who am I to judge? People of Appalachia are not different from anyone else. Members of this relatively poor and extensively exploited area, deserve not only our sympathy, but admiration. (What would I be able to learn from so many Appalachians? A lot, a whole lot.)

Still, I wish she had written something about class. The prejudice against Appalachians has more to do with class than anything else. So-called ‘trailer trash” has its equivalents in the so-called White, Black and Brown trash in the rest of America. Everyone is a child of God; that we have forgotten this is our tragedy as well as the tragedy of the world.

Although her Dickens-based characters come short of the comic genius of the original, Demon Copperhead is still a miraculous achievement. Besides, where is MacBird, a play from the sixties based on Shakespeare, now?

I am convinced that Demon Copperhead will still be widely read by future generations. And if they don’t, it will be their loss!

A Harrowing Experience

I will never get sick; I will never get old. Yeah. Right.

Overall, we had a very pleasant river cruise up the Rhine, from Basel to Amsterdam, with extensions on either side, (Lake Como on one, Amsterdam on the other.)

We were very lucky to be able to travel with friends, Jerry and Barb, from Berkeley, Ca. We were together for a three week stay at Aix en Provence. Followed a year or so later by a three week stay in Madrid. At each city we took language lessons, French in one, Spanish at the other.  All four of us get along very well together.

At the airport, for our plane ride over, I was asked if I needed wheelchair assistance. I might be old, but I’m spry, I thought. By the end of the journey, however, I was completely dependent on wheelchair assistance. I had become very ill.

I had noticed that I couldn’t keep up at the Kinderdijk windmill tour The tour guide, a 74 year old man, hovered about at the end of the tour, expecting a tip. But I didn’t have the strength to pull out my wallet. Besides, one would think he would have noticed my difficulty keeping up. I hobbled on board the Viking cruise ship—I made it, although with great difficulty.

It was downhill from there.

The journey home was terrible At the airport, I was offered a wheelchair without having to request one. I looked that bad.

The flight from Amsterdam to London went well, but we missed the connecting flight to Charlotte. (We had paid extra to get a direct flight, which we had for a while. Then British Airways bumped us off the flight—I assume they had overbooked, and when push came to shove, we were unceremoniously shoved.

By this time I had a fever, was coughing like mad, and had  bilateral pink eye, with copious discharge from each eye. What’s worse, I couldn’t stand or walk.

The assistance crew at Heathrow was dominated by Southeast Asians, who, I might add, really treated me well. (For example, “Do you need water, Sir? Let me get some for you.” This would not happen in New York.)

They were in fact so solicitous, and I apparently looked so bad, that we missed our connecting flight to Charlotte,

I was given a voucher to stay at an airport hotel, dinner included. W were put on a flight the next day to Washington, D.C. But we live in Baltimore, where our car is parked, my wife complained. “Take a taxi.” was the indifferent reply. A fifty mile taxi ride! But I was in no condition to complain; I couldn’t even kvetch.

Since I appeared quite ill at this point, we were advised to call an ambulance. I resisted, recalling the wait we had when my wife was struck by a car in France. I couldn’t bear waiting in a hospital, I felt too ill for that. I actually thought that I might die.

The next day we were ferreted though security and customs by wheelchair. Thank God for that; we couldn’t’ have managed on our own.

After waiting hours in an Assistance Room, we were finally wheelchaired onto a huge airbus.

It was what I’d call a pleasant flight if I had felt better. I coughed throughout the flight. People who began the flight seating near us changed their seats.

At the end of the flight, I couldn’t stand. Supported by my wife on the left and a flight attendant on the right, I was eventually  led off the plane. “Now you see a doctor right away,” I was told.

Nirmala’s mother met us at the airport. I was glad about that until I recalled she had been dead for over twenty years. She disappeared before I had a chance to thank her.

I was actively hallucinating at this point, I will spare you the details.

It was Nirmala’s sister and brother-in-law who met us as the airport. They are both very much alive; to keep it that way, Nirmala didn’t want to stay at their place, since I was so ill.

We stayed at Nirmala’s nephew’s house, where I could be isolated. My wonderful son, Philip, picked us up the next day.

Back in Baltimore, my hallucinations dissipated along with my cough. I am on a rather bumpy road to recovery. I am apparently not going to die.

What a harrowing experience!