How Fathers and Sons drew on Eugene Onegin
A documented line of influence: Ivan Turgenev demonstrably engaged Alexander Pushkin’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Eugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin · 1833
RomanticismThe influenced
Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev · 1862
The Age of the NovelRelevance
6/10
On Fathers and Sons’s page
- Bazarov and Odintsova descend from the "superfluous man" Pushkin first drew in Onegin — gifted figures who can't quite fit the life around them
- Pushkin was Turgenev's inescapable idol; read Eugene Onegin first and the archetype behind Fathers and Sons comes into focus
On Eugene Onegin’s page
- Pushkin was an inescapable idol for Turgenev — who helped unveil the poet's statue in 1880, alongside Dostoevsky
- The "superfluous man" Pushkin created in Onegin is the type Turgenev reworks in Bazarov and Odintsova: gifted, modern, and quietly stranded