Narayoni, 7 months ago

When I read about Nikolai contemplating with sadness and agitation the rift between him and his son, Arkady, these lines broke my heart. A simple matter of a generation gap, when told from the POV of the father, was especially poignant considering that Nikolai put in considerable effort to make himself "up to date" to get closer to his son, and then had to overhear Bazarov call him "out of date" without Arkady disagreeing with him.
#fathersandsons by #turgenev
@bookstodon #bookquotes #reading

For the first time he was clearly aware of the rift between him and his son. He had a foreboding that with each passing day it would become greater and greater. It turned out that he'd spent days on end one winter in St Petersburg reading away at the latest works of fiction all for nothing; all for nothing had he listened to the conversations of the young men; all for nothing had he been overjoyed when he'd succeeded in inserting his own word into their bubbling talk. - a quotation from Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.