Bazarov and Arkady have gone to a ball and met Odintsova,
another female face, the most majestic yet:
p. 77
Arkady turned and saw
a tall woman in a black gown standing in the doorway of the hall. He was struck
by the stateliness of her carriage. Her bare arms hung gracefully down the
sides of her slender body; a sprig of fuschia drooped prettily from her
gleaming hair on to her sloping shoulders; a pair of limpid eyes looked out
intelligently and placidly—yes placidly, not pensively—from under a slightly
overhanging clear brow, and her lips were touched by an almost imperceptible
smile. Her face seemed to emanate a soft and gentle force.
And at her estate, which is orderly and luxurious, the
opposite of Nikolai’s crumbling one, they meet her sister, yet another sweet
young thing:
p. 88
When Katya spoke, she
smiled with a charming, shy candor and had a habit of looking upward in an
amusing, stern way. Everything about her was delightfully fresh and
unsophisticated: her voice, the tender down on her face, her pink hands with
the pale rings on the palms, and the slightly contracted shoulders. She was
constantly changing color and taking breath.
Bazarov proclaims Katya the better pick, because she could
be molded to meet one’s desires, but it is Odinstova he hangs out with. She
turns him into a “meek lamb.” Arkady is
in love with Odinstova, but hangs out with Katya. I’m trying to pay attention
to the role of women in this book, obviously. They seem to be outside of the
struggle between the old romantics/aristocrats versus young nihilists, but they’re not all just innocent faces. Both Odintsova and
Yevdoxia are well-read and interested in science, art, politics: all of it.
Odinstova argues with Bazarov but doesn’t get all hot under the collar and
offended as Pavel does.
Bazarov claims to have no artistic feeling. It’s a pretty
weird thing to say but also typical and familiar, a quirk of the young
intellectual. I knew people in college who claimed to feel no sense of shame or
embarrassment. I never quite believed them. I’m beginning to believe Bazarov,
though, in a way. Having artistic feeling, according to him, would make him
consider the individual thing: the beauty of a mountain or a scene, or a piece
of music. He thinks in species. All people are the same, he says, because they
all have the same organs. Know one, know them all. He can look at photographs
of Switzerland and learn about geology, but he isn’t moved by their beauty.
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