Turgenev's wonderful talent; the clearness of ideas, the masterly
skill in sketching types, the simplicity of plot and of movement of
the action, and moderation and evenness of the work as a whole; the
dramatic element which comes up naturally from the most ordinary
situations; there is nothing superfluous, nothing retarding, nothing
extraneous. But in addition to these general merits, we are also
interested in Turgenev's novel because in it is caught and held a
current, fleeting moment of a passing phenomenon, and in which a
momentary phase of our life is typically drawn and arrested not only
for the time being but forever."

These prophetically true words constitute a great exception to the
prevailing contemporary criticism, which, as has been seen, was
passionately unjust. Twenty years later, a Russian writer, Boorenin,
was able to view the novel as we see it to-day:--

"We can say with assurance that since the time of "Dead Souls" not a
single Russian novel made such an impression as "Fathers and Children"
has made. A deep mind, a no less deep observation, an incomparable
ability for a bold and true analysis of the phenomena of life, and for
their broadest relations to each other,--all these have shown
themselves in the fundamental thought of this positively historical
creation. Turgenev has explained with lifelike images of 'fathers' and
'children' the essence of that life struggle between the dying period
of the nobility which found its strength in the possession of peasants
and the new period of reforms whose essence made up the principal
element of our 'resurrection' and for which, however, none had found a
real, true (BRIGHT) definition. Turgenev not only gave such a
definition, not only illumined the inner sense of the new movement in
the life of that time, but he also has pointed out its principal