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PARTISAN REVI
with me at the time a Russian who was endowed with excellent
and a remarkable "nose" for everything which the late Apollon
goryev called "the ideas" of an epoch. I told him what I was
ing of and what interested me so much and was astonished to
the following remark: "Haven't you created such a character
ready in-Rudin?" I said nothing. Rudin and Bazarov-{me and
same character!
Those words produced such
an
effect on me that for
weeks I tried not to think of the work I had in mind. However,
my return to Paris, I sat down to it again-the
plot
gradually
tured in my head; in the course of the winter I wrote the first
ters, but I finished the novel in Russia, on my estate, in July [
In
the autumn I read it to a few friends, revised something,
something, and in March, 1862,
Fathers and Sons
was published
T he Russian Herald.
I shall not enlarge on the impression this novel has created.
shall merely say that when I returned to Petersburg, on the very
of the notorious fires in the Apraksin Palace, the word "nihilist"
been caught up by thousands of people, and the first
that escaped from the lips of the first acquaintance I met on
Avenue was: "Look, what
your
nihilists are doing! They are
Petersburg on fire!" My impressions at that time, though
in kind, were equally painful. I became conscious of a
coldne~
dering on indignation among many friends whose ideas I
I received congratulations, and almost kisses, from people
U<;IIJU';'"
to a camp I loathed, from enemies.
It
embarrassed and-grieved
But my conscience was clear; I knew very well that my attitude
wards the character I had created was honest and that far
being prejudiced against him, I even sympathized with him. I
too great a respect for the vocation of an artist, a writer, to act
my conscience in such a matter. The word "respect" is hardly
right one here; I simply could not, and knew not how to, work
wise; and, after all, there was no reason why I should do that.
critics described my novel as a "lampoon" and spoke of my
asperated" and "wounded" vanity; but why should I write a
poon on Dobrolyubov, whom I had hardly met, but whom I
highly of as a man and as a talented writer? However little I
think of my own talent as a writer, I always have been, and still
