of his parents for his health, for his physical comfort, will irritate
and annoy rather than please him. There is no heart-hunger on earth so
cruel and so terrible as the hunger of father and mother for the
complete sympathy and affection of their growing children. This is why
the pride of so many parents in the development of their children is
mingled with such mute but piercing terror. It is the fear that the
son will grow away from them; that their caresses will deaden rather
than quicken his love for them. They watch him as one watches some
infinitely precious thing that may at any moment disappear forever.
The fear of a mother toward the son she loves is among the deepest
tragedies of earth. She knows he is necessary to her happiness, and
that she is not to his.

Even the cold-hearted Bazarov is shaken by the joy of his mother's
greeting when he returns home, and by her agony at his early
departure. He hates himself for not being able to respond to her
demonstrations of affection. Unlike most sons, he is clever enough to
understand the slavish adoration of his parents; but he realises that
he cannot, especially in the presence of his college friend, relieve
their starving hearts. At the very end, he says "My father will tell
you what a man Russia is losing. . . . That's nonsense, but don't
contradict the old man. Whatever toy will comfort the child . . . you
know. And be kind to mother. People like them aren't to be found in
your great world if you look by daylight with a candle."

The bewildered, helpless anguish of the parents, who cannot understand
why the God they worship takes their son away from them, reaches the
greatest climax of tragedy that I know of anywhere in the whole
history of fiction. Not even the figure of Lear holding the dead body
of Cordelia surpasses in tragic intensity this old pair whose whole