Arcadia, Void and Equilibrium: Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and the Writing of Contemporary Ukrainian-Canadians

Abstract

<p>Russian realist writer Ivan Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons in 1861, the middle of the politically, socially and ideologically eventful nineteenth century. While the turbulent historical moment is certainly reflected in the imagined landscape of the novel, Turgenev's text is first and foremost a literary work with implications that extend beyond the moment of its conception. Through allusions to the classical pastoral and juxtaposition of social and economic hardship, Turgenev creates a disconcerting ironic pastoral, or Russian Arcadia, that is marked by tension between a discordant ideal and reality. Resolution can be achieved in two ways that mirror nature's duality: one may become brutal, nihilistic and destructive, or one may strive for harmony and endure with the earth. By contemplation of one's own nature and the limits imposed by culture and nature itself, Turgenev demonstrates that the individual can come to this harmony, or an adaptive equilibrium that is characterized by balance, stability, and enjoyment of sensory experience. </p> <p>Turgenev's ironic pastoral, his concern with human brutality and the madness attendant upon it, the recognition of boundaries, and the sensory as an enduring mode of experience and communication are revisited and reworked by Ukrainian-Canadians in the twentieth century. The 1987 anthology, Yarmarok: Ukrainian writing in Canada since the Second World War, represents one of the most comprehensive collections of Ukrainian-Canadian writing in English and brings together both accomplished and previously unpublished writers that include: Mykola Ponedilok, Ruth Andrishak, Wasyl Sofroniw Levytsky, Stefania Hurko, Oleh Zujewskyj, Dennis Gruending, Maara Haas, and Bob Wakulich. These writers draw upon personal and family history and memory, which are haunted by the revolution Turgenev anticipated in Fathers and Sons, to relate their Arcadias, and the equilibriums they envision for individuals striving for balance within the limits imposed by the Canadianizing environment.</p>