Fathers and Sons

by

Ivan Turgenev

Vassily is Arina’s husband and Bazarov’s father. He is an emotional, well-read, talkative, and hospitable rural gentleman. Vassily is a retired army doctor who now runs a country farm and doctors peasants on the side. He fiercely loves his son, and his life’s ambition has been for Bazarov to fulfill his potential and become successful and famous. When Bazarov moves back home after years away, Vassily is overjoyed to have his son’s assistance in his medical practice, but is troubled by his apparent unhappiness. He is in denial and heartbroken when Bazarov dies of typhus.

Vassily Ivanych Bazarov Quotes in Fathers and Sons

The Fathers and Sons quotes below are all either spoken by Vassily Ivanych Bazarov or refer to Vassily Ivanych Bazarov. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Tradition and Progress Theme Icon
).
Chapter 20 Quotes

“In the province . . . Of course, you know better, gentlemen; how could we keep up with you? You are here to take our places. When we were young there was a so-called humoralist—one Hoffmann—and a certain Brown with his vitalism. They seemed quite ridiculous to us but they had great reputations in their day. Now with you someone new has taken the place of Rademacher, and you bow down to him, but in another twenty years no doubt it will be his turn to be laughed at.”

“Let me tell you by way of consolation,” said Bazarov, “that nowadays we laugh at medicine in general, and worship no one.”

Related Characters: Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov (speaker), Vassily Ivanych Bazarov (speaker)
Page Number: 197
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“You have made me utterly and completely happy,” he said, still smiling all the while. “I ought to tell you, I . . . worship my son! I won’t even speak of my good wife—we all know what mothers are!—but I dare not show my feelings in front of him, because he doesn’t like it. He is against every kind of demonstration of feeling; many people even find fault with him for such strength of character, and take it for a sign of arrogance or lack of sensibility; but men like him ought not to be judged by any ordinary standards, ought they? […] And I not only worship him, Arkady Nikolayevich, I am proud of him, and the height of my ambition is that some day the following lines will appear in his biography: ‘The son of an ordinary army-doctor, who was able, however, to recognize his talents early in life and spared no pains for his education . . .’” The old man’s voice broke.”

Related Characters: Vassily Ivanych Bazarov (speaker), Arkady Nikolayevich Kirsanov, Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’m thinking what a happy life my parents lead! At the age of sixty my father can still find plenty to do, talks about ‘palliative measures,’ treats patients, plays the bountiful lord of the manor with the peasants - has a gay time of it in fact; and my mother’s happy too: her days are so chockful of all sorts of occupations, sighs and groans, that she doesn’t know where she is; while […] here I lie under a haystack. . . . The tiny bit of space I occupy is so minute in comparison with the rest of the universe, […] And yet here, in this atom which is myself, in this mathematical point, blood circulates, the brain operates and aspires to something too . . . What a monstrous business! What futility!”

Related Characters: Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov (speaker), Arkady Nikolayevich Kirsanov, Vassily Ivanych Bazarov, Arina Vlassyevna Bazarov
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:

“He has gone, left us!” he faltered. “Gone, because he found it dull here with us. I’m a lonely man now, lonely as this finger,” he repeated again and again, and each time he thrust out his hand with his forefinger pointing away from the rest. Then Arina Vlassyevna came to his side and pressing her grey head to his grey head she said: “It can’t be helped, Vasya. A son is an independent person. He’s like a falcon that comes when he wills and flies off when he lists; but you and I are like the funguses growing in a hollow tree: here we sit side by side, not budging an inch. It is only I who will stay with you always, faithful for ever, just as you will stay with me.”

Related Characters: Vassily Ivanych Bazarov (speaker), Arina Vlassyevna Bazarov (speaker), Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Supporting each other, they walk with heavy steps; they go up to the iron railing, fall on their knees and weep long and bitterly, and long and yearningly they gaze at the silent stone beneath which their son is lying; exchanging a brief word, they brush the dust from the stone, set a branch of a fir-tree right, and then resume their prayers, unable to tear themselves away from the place where they feel nearer to their son, to their memories of him.... But are those prayers of theirs, those tears, all fruitless? Is their love, their hallowed selfless love, not omnipotent? Oh yes! However passionate, sinful and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes; they speak to us not only of eternal peace, of the vast repose of ‘indifferent’ nature: they tell us, too, of everlasting reconciliation and of life which has no end.

Related Characters: Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov, Vassily Ivanych Bazarov, Arina Vlassyevna Bazarov
Related Symbols: Nature
Page Number: 295
Explanation and Analysis:
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Vassily Ivanych Bazarov Quotes in Fathers and Sons

The Fathers and Sons quotes below are all either spoken by Vassily Ivanych Bazarov or refer to Vassily Ivanych Bazarov. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Tradition and Progress Theme Icon
).
Chapter 20 Quotes

“In the province . . . Of course, you know better, gentlemen; how could we keep up with you? You are here to take our places. When we were young there was a so-called humoralist—one Hoffmann—and a certain Brown with his vitalism. They seemed quite ridiculous to us but they had great reputations in their day. Now with you someone new has taken the place of Rademacher, and you bow down to him, but in another twenty years no doubt it will be his turn to be laughed at.”

“Let me tell you by way of consolation,” said Bazarov, “that nowadays we laugh at medicine in general, and worship no one.”

Related Characters: Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov (speaker), Vassily Ivanych Bazarov (speaker)
Page Number: 197
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“You have made me utterly and completely happy,” he said, still smiling all the while. “I ought to tell you, I . . . worship my son! I won’t even speak of my good wife—we all know what mothers are!—but I dare not show my feelings in front of him, because he doesn’t like it. He is against every kind of demonstration of feeling; many people even find fault with him for such strength of character, and take it for a sign of arrogance or lack of sensibility; but men like him ought not to be judged by any ordinary standards, ought they? […] And I not only worship him, Arkady Nikolayevich, I am proud of him, and the height of my ambition is that some day the following lines will appear in his biography: ‘The son of an ordinary army-doctor, who was able, however, to recognize his talents early in life and spared no pains for his education . . .’” The old man’s voice broke.”

Related Characters: Vassily Ivanych Bazarov (speaker), Arkady Nikolayevich Kirsanov, Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’m thinking what a happy life my parents lead! At the age of sixty my father can still find plenty to do, talks about ‘palliative measures,’ treats patients, plays the bountiful lord of the manor with the peasants - has a gay time of it in fact; and my mother’s happy too: her days are so chockful of all sorts of occupations, sighs and groans, that she doesn’t know where she is; while […] here I lie under a haystack. . . . The tiny bit of space I occupy is so minute in comparison with the rest of the universe, […] And yet here, in this atom which is myself, in this mathematical point, blood circulates, the brain operates and aspires to something too . . . What a monstrous business! What futility!”

Related Characters: Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov (speaker), Arkady Nikolayevich Kirsanov, Vassily Ivanych Bazarov, Arina Vlassyevna Bazarov
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:

“He has gone, left us!” he faltered. “Gone, because he found it dull here with us. I’m a lonely man now, lonely as this finger,” he repeated again and again, and each time he thrust out his hand with his forefinger pointing away from the rest. Then Arina Vlassyevna came to his side and pressing her grey head to his grey head she said: “It can’t be helped, Vasya. A son is an independent person. He’s like a falcon that comes when he wills and flies off when he lists; but you and I are like the funguses growing in a hollow tree: here we sit side by side, not budging an inch. It is only I who will stay with you always, faithful for ever, just as you will stay with me.”

Related Characters: Vassily Ivanych Bazarov (speaker), Arina Vlassyevna Bazarov (speaker), Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Supporting each other, they walk with heavy steps; they go up to the iron railing, fall on their knees and weep long and bitterly, and long and yearningly they gaze at the silent stone beneath which their son is lying; exchanging a brief word, they brush the dust from the stone, set a branch of a fir-tree right, and then resume their prayers, unable to tear themselves away from the place where they feel nearer to their son, to their memories of him.... But are those prayers of theirs, those tears, all fruitless? Is their love, their hallowed selfless love, not omnipotent? Oh yes! However passionate, sinful and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep at us serenely with their innocent eyes; they speak to us not only of eternal peace, of the vast repose of ‘indifferent’ nature: they tell us, too, of everlasting reconciliation and of life which has no end.

Related Characters: Yevgeny Vassilyich Bazarov, Vassily Ivanych Bazarov, Arina Vlassyevna Bazarov
Related Symbols: Nature
Page Number: 295
Explanation and Analysis: