‘I’m thinking life is a happy thing for my parents. My father at sixty is fussing around, talking about “palliative” measures, doctoring people, playing the bountiful master with the peasants—having a festive time, in fact; and my mother’s happy too; her day’s so chock full of duties of all sorts, and sighs and groans that she’s no time to even think of herself; while I…’ ‘While you?’ ‘I think here I lie under a haystack…The tiny space I occupy is so infinitely small in comparison with the rest of space, in which I am not, and which has nothing to do with me; and the period of time in which it is my lot to live is so petty beside the eternity in which I have not been, and shall not be…And in this atom, this mathematical point, the blood is circulating, the brain is working and wanting something…Isn’t it loathsome? Isn’t it petty?’ ‘Allow me to remark that what you are saying applies to men in general.’ ‘You are right,’ Bazarov cut in. ‘I was going to say that they now—my parents, I mean—are absorbed and don’t trouble themselves about their own nothingness; it doesn’t sicken them…while I…I feel nothing but weariness and anger.’ Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 22:55:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015