Sentence No. 48 · 14 May 2026
At the present time, negation is the most beneficial of all and we deny everything?
Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev — Fathers and Sons (1862) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The sentence pairs a general claim with its concrete application, joined by "and." When you see two independent clauses linked this way, the second ("we deny everything") always follows — it enacts the principle the first clause just stated.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 6 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. Bazarov, the young nihilist, explains his philosophy to his friend's bewildered father. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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