Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/117

 everybody read Fathers and Children with a view to increasing their ammunition, not with the object of ascertaining the justice of their cause. The "fathers" were of course angry at Turgenev's diagnosis of their weakness; the "sons" went into a veritable froth of rage at what they regarded as a ridiculous burlesque of their ideas. But that is the penalty that a wise man suffers at a time of strife; for if every one saw the truth clearly, we should never fight each other at all.

Turgenev's subsequent statement, that so far from Bazarov being a burlesque, he was his "favourite child," is hard to understand even to-day. The novelist said that with the exception of Bazarov's views on art, he himself was in agreement with practically all of the ideas expressed by the great iconoclast. Turgenev probably thought he was, but really he was not. Authors are poor judges of their own works, and their statements about their characters are seldom to be trusted. Many writers have confessed that when they start to write a book, with a clear notion in their heads as to how the characters shall develop, the characters often insist on developing quite otherwise, and guide the pen of the author in a manner that constantly awakens his surprise at his own work. Turgenev surely intended originally that we should love Bazarov; as a matter of fact, nobody really