it is rewarding that i read this book and think of stoner and some commenter on reddit verbalises the connection well and everyone agrees. i agree too
i feel like i glossed over the dream. but i mean gist is gotten surely. w/r/t themes and such
9/10 ragebait first time we meet agafya
if oblomov didn’t have agafya thisd be living chattel
https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/297815/original/Dobroliubov.pdf
interesting commentary on growing up. maybe has parallels with his son later
An important factor here is the mental development of the Oblomovs, which, of course, is also moulded by their external position. From their earliest years they see life turned inside out, as it were, and until the end of their days they are unable to understand what their relation to the world and to people should reasonably be. Later on much is explained to them and they begin to derstand something ; but the views that were inculcated in them in their childhood remain somewhere in a corner and constantly peep out from there, hinder ing all new conceptions and preventing them from sinking deep into their hearts. . . . As a result, chaos reigns in their heads : sometimes a man makes up his mind to do something, but he does not know how to begin, where to turn. . . . This is not surprising : a normal man always wants to do only what he can do ; that is why he immediately does all that he wants to do. . . . But Oblomov . - . is not accustomed to do anything; consequently, he cannot really determine what he can do and what he cannot do—and consequently, he cannot seriously, actively, want anything. . . . His wishes always assume the form : “how good it would be if this were done,” but how this can be done he does not know. That is why he is so fond of dreaming and dreads the moment when his dreams may come in contact with reality.
He is the slave of his serf Zakhar, and it is hard to say which of them submits more to the power of the other. At all events, if Zakhar does not wish to do a thing, Ilya Ilyich cannot make him do it; and if Zakhar wants to do anything, he will do it, even if his master is opposed to it—and his master submits. This is quite natural: Zakhar, after all, can at least do something.
so fucking fr i was just thinking this is such a waiting for godot dynamic
ok he references onegin, which i know, then he references dead souls, so i gotta check back on that
The main thing here is not Oblomov, but Oblomovshchina.
The feature common to all these men is that nothing in life is a vital necessity for them, a shrine in their hearts, a religion organically merged with their whole being, so that to deprive them of it would mean depriving them of their lives. Everything about them is superficial, nothing is rooted in their natures. They, perhaps, do something when external necessity compels them to, just as Oblomov went visiting the places that Stolz dragged him to; he bought music and books for Olga and read what she compelled him to read, but their hearts do not lie in the things they do merely by force of circumstances. If each of them were offered gratis all the external advantages that they obtain by their work, they would gladly give up working. By virtue of Oblomovshchina, an Oblomov government official would not go to his office every day if he could receive his salary and regular promotion without having to do so. A soldier would vow not to touch a weapon if he were offered the same terms and, in addition, were allowed to keep his splendid uniform, which can be very useful on certain occasions. The professor would stop delivering lectures, the student would give up his studies, the author would give up writing, the actor would never appear on the stage again, and the artist would break his chisel and palette, to put it in high-flown style, if he found a way of obtaining gratis all that he now obtains by working. They only talk about lofty strivings, consciousness of moral duty, and common interests; when put to the test, it all turns out to be words, mere words. Their most sincere and heartfelt striving is the striving for repose, for the dressing-gown, and their very activities are nothing more than an honourable dressing-gown (to use an expression that is not our own) with which they cover up their vapidity and apathy. Even the best-educated people, people with lively natures and warm hearts, are prone in their practical lives to depart from their ideas and plans, very quickly resigning themselves to the realities of life, which, however, they never cease to revile as vulgar and disgusting. This shows that all the things they talk and dream about are really alien to them, superficial; in the depth of their hearts, they cherish only one dream, one ideal—undisturbed repose, quietism, Oblomovshchina.
But what he does and how he manages to do something worthwhile where others can do nothing, remains a mystery to us. He settled the affairs of the Oblomov estate for Ilya Ilyich in a trice—but how? That we do not know.
the book
if one were to dip a pen in the inkwell, a startled fly was as likely as not to come buzzing out of it.
Zakhar!’
Again the same jump and louder growling. Zakhar came in, and Oblomov again sank into thought. Zakhar stood for a couple of minutes looking at his master disapprovingly and slightly sideways, and at last walked towards the door.
‘Where are you off to?’ Oblomov asked suddenly.
‘Sweep up the dirt out of the corners – then there won’t be any,’ Oblomov instructed him.
‘Sweep it up to-day and there’ll be plenty of it to-morrow,’ said Zakhar.
‘No, there won’t,’ his master interrupted him. ‘There shouldn’t be.’
‘There will be,’ the servant insisted; ‘I know, sir.’
‘Well, if there is, you must sweep it up again.’
‘What, sir? Sweep out all the corners every day?’ Zakhar asked. ‘Why, what sort of life would that be? I’d rather be dead!’
‘Pleasant? Why it’s so near to everything,’ Oblomov said. ‘To the shops, the theatre, my friends – it’s the centre of the city, everything – –’
‘Wha-at?’ Tarantyev interrupted him. ‘And how long is it since you went out? Tell me that. How long is it since you went to a theatre? Who are the friends you visit? Why the hell do you want to live in the centre of the city, pray?’
Oblomov grew still more worried when documents inscribed ‘Important’ and ‘Very Important’ began to flash before his eyes, when he was asked to make various inquiries, extracts from official documents, look through papers, write reports two inches thick, which were called, as though in jest, notes, and, what was even worse, everything had to be done in a hurry – everyone seemed to be rushing about without stopping to take breath; as soon as one case was finished, they threw themselves furiously upon another, as though that was the only thing that mattered, and when they had finished that, they forgot it and pounced upon a third – and so it went on and on! Twice he had been roused at night and made to write ‘notes ‘; a few times he was dragged out by a courier from visits to friends – always because of those notes. All this appalled him and bored him terribly. ‘But when am I going to live? When am I to live?’ he kept repeating.
During his early years in Petersburg the tranquil features of his face were more frequently animated, his eyes used to glow for hours with the fire of life, they shone with light, hope, and strength. He was as animated as other people, was full of hope, rejoiced at trifles, and also suffered from the same trifles. But that was long ago, when he was still at the tender age when a man regards every other man as his best friend and falls in love with almost every woman, ready to offer her his hand and heart – which some indeed succeed in doing, often to their profound regret for the rest of their lives. In those blissful days Oblomov, too, had his share of not a few tender, soft, and even passionate glances from the crowd of beauties, a lot of promising smiles, two or three stolen kisses, and many more friendly handshakes, that made him suffer and brought tears to his eyes. Still, he never surrendered entirely to a pretty woman and never became her slave, or even a faithful admirer, if only because intimacy with a woman involves a great deal of trouble. Oblomov confined himself mostly to expressing his admiration from afar, from a respectable distance.
The principal’s signature on his certificate, like his teacher’s nail-mark on his book in the old days, was the line beyond which our hero did not think it necessary to extend the field of his knowledge.
It would also happen that sometimes he would be filled with contempt for human vice, lies, and slanders, for the evil that was rife in the world, and he was consumed by a desire to point out to man his sores, and suddenly thoughts were kindled in him, sweeping through his head like waves of the sea, growing into intentions, setting his blood on fire, flexing his muscles, and swelling his veins; then his intentions turned to strivings; moved by a spiritual force, he would change his position two or three times in one minute, and half-rising on his couch with blazing eyes, stretch forth his hand and look around him like one inspired.… In another moment the striving would turn into an heroic act – and then, heavens! What wonders, what beneficent results might one not expect from such a lofty effort!
But the morning passed, the day was drawing to its close, and with it Oblomov’s exhausted energies were crying out for a rest: the storms and emotions died down, his head recovered from the spell of his reverie, and his blood flowed more slowly in his veins. Oblomov turned on his back quietly and wistfully and, fixing a sorrowful gaze at the window and the sky, mournfully watched the sun setting gorgeously behind a four-storied house. How many times had he watched the sun set like that!
Zakhar loved Oblomovka as a cat loves its attic, a horse its stable, and a dog the kennel in which it has been born and grown up. Within the sphere of this attachment he developed certain personal impressions. For instance, he liked the Oblomov coachman better than the cook, the dairy-maid Varvara better than either of them, and Oblomov himself least of all; but still, the Oblomovka cook was in his eyes better than any other cook in the world, and Oblomov better than all other landowners. He could not stand Taras the butler, but he would not exchange even him for the best man in the world simply because Taras was an Oblomov servant. He treated Oblomov familiarly and rudely just as a medicine-man treats his idol: he dusts it, drops it, sometimes even strikes it in vexation, but nevertheless at heart he is always conscious of the idol’s superiority to himself. The slightest occasion was sufficient to call forth this feeling from the very depths of Zakhar’s soul and make him look at his master with reverence, and sometimes even burst into tears with emotion. He would never dream of regarding any other gentleman as being in any way better than his master – or even equal to his master. And God help any man who dared compare his master to his disadvantage with anyone else!
A fairy godmother lived there, who sometimes took the shape of a pike and who chose for her favourite some quiet and harmless man – in other words, some loafer, ill-treated by everyone, and for no reason in the world, bestowed all sorts of treasures on him, while he did nothing but eat and drink and dressed in costly clothes, and then married some indescribable beauty, Militrissa Kirbityevna.
Though when he grew up Oblomov discovered that there were no rivers flowing with milk and honey, nor fairy godmothers, and though he smiled at his nurse’s tales, his smile was not sincere, and it was accompanied by a secret sigh: the fairy-tale had become mixed up with real life in his mind, and sometimes he was sorry that fairy-tale was not life and life was not fairy-tale. He could not help dreaming of Militrissa Kirbityevna; he was always drawn to the land where people do nothing but have a good time and where there are no worries or sorrows; he preserved for the rest of his life a predisposition for doing no work, walking about in clothes that had been provided for him, and eating at the fairy godmother’s expense.
Oblomov’s parents were extremely sparing with any article which was not produced at home but had to be bought. They gladly killed an excellent turkey or a dozen chickens to entertain a guest, but they never put an extra raisin in a dish, and turned pale when their guest ventured to pour himself out another glass of wine. Such depravity, however, was a rare occurrence at Oblomovka: that sort of thing would be done only by some desperate character, a social outcast, who would never be invited to the house again. No, they had quite a different code of behaviour there: a visitor would never dream of touching anything before he had been asked at least three times. He knew very well that if he was asked only once to savour some dish or drink some wine, he was really expected to refuse it.
Suddenly Oblomov’s father stopped in the middle of the room, looking dismayed and touching the tip of his nose.
‘Good heavens,’ he said, ‘what can this mean? Someone’s going to die: the tip of my nose keeps itching.’
‘Goodness,’ his wife cried, throwing up her hands, ‘no one’s going to die if it’s the tip of the nose that’s itching. Someone’s going to die when the bridge of the nose is itching. Really, my dear, you never can remember anything! You’ll say something like this when strangers or visitors are in the house, and you will disgrace yourself!’
‘But what does it mean when the tip of your nose is itching?’ Oblomov’s father asked, looking embarrassed.
‘Looking into a wine-glass! How could you say a thing like that! Someone’s going to die, indeed!’
Once he disappeared for a whole week. His mother cried her eyes out; his father did not seem to mind at all – he just walked in the garden smoking his pipe.
‘Now if Oblomov’s son had disappeared,’ he said in reply to his wife’s suggestion to go and look for him, ‘I’d have roused the whole village and the rural police, but Andrey will come back. He’s a good Bursch.’
Next morning Andrey was discovered sleeping peacefully in his bed. Under the bed lay a gun and a pound of powder and shot.
‘Where have you been?’ His mother began firing questions at him. ‘Where did you get the gun? Why don’t you speak?’
‘Oh, nowhere!’ was all he would say.
His father asked whether he had prepared the translation of Cornelius Nepos into German. ‘No,’ he replied.
His father took him by the collar, led him out of the gate, put his cap on his head and gave him such a kick from behind that he fell down.
‘Go back to where you’ve come from,’ he added, ‘and come back with a translation of two chapters instead of one, and learn the part from the French comedy for your mother – don’t show yourself until you have done it.’ Andrey returned in a week, bringing the translation and having learnt the part.
‘Good heavens, Ilya!’ said Stolz, casting a surprised glance at Oblomov. ‘What do you do? You just roll up and lie about like a piece of dough.’
‘That’s true enough, Andrey,’ Oblomov answered sadly, ‘just like a piece of dough.’
‘But to be conscious of something does not excuse it, does it?’
‘No, but I merely answered your question; I’m not justifying myself,’ Oblomov replied with a sigh.
‘Well, I’d get up in the morning,’ began Oblomov, putting his hands behind his neck, and his face assuming an expression of repose (in his thoughts he was already in the country). ‘The weather is lovely, the sky is as blue as blue can be, not a cloud,’ he said. ‘The balcony on one side of the house in my plan faces east towards the garden and the fields, and the other side towards the village. While waiting for my wife to waken, I’d put on my dressing-gown and go for a walk in the garden, for a breath of fresh morning air. There I’d already find the gardener and we’d water the flowers together and prune the bushes and trees. I’d make a bouquet for my wife. Then I’d have my bath or go for a swim in the river. On my return, I’d find the balcony door open. My wife is wearing her morning dress and a light cap which looks as if it might be blown off any moment.… She is waiting for me. “Tea’s ready,” she says. What a kiss! What tea! What an easy-chair! I sit down at the table: rusks, cream, fresh butter.…’
‘Well?’
‘Well, then, having put on a loose coat or some sort of tunic and with my arm round my wife’s waist, we walk down an endless dark avenue of trees; we walk along quietly, dreamily, in silence or thinking aloud, day-dreaming, counting the moments of happiness as the beating of one’s pulse; we listen to the throbbing of our heart, we look for sympathy in nature and – imperceptibly – we come to the river, to the fields.… There is scarcely a ripple on the river, the ears of corn wave in the light breeze – it is hot – we get into a boat, my wife steers, scarcely raising an oar.…’
‘Why, you’re a poet, Ilya!’ Stolz interrupted.
‘Yes, a poet in life, because life is poetry. People are free to distort it, if they like!… Then we might go into a hot-house,’ Oblomov went on, carried away by the ideal of happiness he was depicting.
He was extracting from his imagination ready-made scenes, which he had drawn long ago, and that was why he spoke with such animation and without stopping.
‘.… to have a look at the peaches and grapes, to tell them what we want for the table, then to go back, have a light lunch and wait for visitors.… Meanwhile there would be a note for my wife from Maria Petrovna, with a book and music, or somebody would send us a pineapple as a present, or a huge watermelon would ripen in my hot-house and I would send it to a dear friend for next day’s dinner, and go there myself.… In the meantime things are humming in the kitchen, the chef, in a snow-white cap and apron, is terribly busy, putting one saucepan on the stove, taking off another, stirring something in a third, making pastry, throwing away some water.… A clatter of knives – the vegetables are being chopped – ice-cream is being made.… I like to look into the kitchen before dinner, take the lid off a saucepan and have a sniff, to see them rolling up pasties, whipping cream. Then lie down on the sofa; my wife is reading something new aloud – we stop and discuss it.… But the visitors arrive, you and your wife, for instance.’
‘Oh, so you’ve married me, too, have you?’
‘Certainly! Two or three friends more, all familiar faces. We resume the conversation where we had left off the day before – we crack jokes or there is an interval of eloquent silence – of reverie, not because we are worried by some High Court case, but because all our desires have been fully satisfied and we are plunged into a mood of thoughtful enjoyment.… You will not hear someone delivering a violent philippic against an absent friend, you will not catch a glance that promises the same to you the moment you leave the house. You will not sit down to dinner with anyone you do not like. The eyes of your companions are full of sympathy, their jokes are full of sincere and kindly laughter.… Everything is sincere! Everyone looks and says what he feels! After dinner there is mocha coffee, a Havana cigar on the verandah.…’
‘You are describing to me the same sort of thing our fathers and grandfathers used to do.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Oblomov replied, almost offended. ‘How can you say it’s the same thing? Would my wife be making jams or pickling mushrooms? Would she be measuring yarn and sorting out home-spun linen? Would she box her maids’ ears? You heard what I said, didn’t you? Music, books, piano, elegant furniture?’
‘Well, and you?’
‘I should not be reading last year’s papers, travelling in an unwieldy old carriage, or eating noodle soup and roast goose, but I should have trained my chef in the English Club or at a foreign embassy,’
‘And then?’
‘Then, when the heat abated, I’d send a cart with the samovar and dessert to the birch copse or else to the hay-field, spread rugs on the newly mown grass between the ricks, and be blissfully happy there till it was time for the cold soup and beefsteak. The peasants are returning from the fields with scythes on their shoulders, a hay-cart crawls past loaded so high that it conceals the cart and the horse from view, a peasant’s cap with flowers and a child’s head sticking out from the hay on top; and there comes a crowd of women, barefoot and with sickles, singing at the top of their voices.… Suddenly they catch sight of their master and his guests, grow quiet, and bow low. One of them, a young girl with a sunburnt neck, bare arms, and timidly lowered, sly eyes, pretends to avoid her master’s caress, but is really happy – hush! my wife mustn’t see it!’
All life is work and thought,” you used to repeat then, “obscure, unknown but incessant work – to die in the consciousness that you have performed your task.
It all died there, and was never repeated again! And where did it all disappear to? Why has it become extinguished? I can’t understand it! There were no storms or shocks in my life; I never lost anything; there is no load on my conscience: it is clear as glass; no blow has killed ambition in me, and goodness only knows why everything has been utterly wasted!
‘How do you like that?’ Stolz interrupted. ‘He seems offended! I recommend him to you as a decent chap and he hastens to disillusion you.’
In her clever, pretty little head she had devised a detailed plan of how she would break Oblomov of his habit of sleeping after dinner – and not only of sleeping but also of lying down on the sofa in the daytime; she would make him promise her. She dreamed of how she would ‘tell him’ to read the books Stolz had left behind, to read the newspapers every day and tell her the news, to write letters to his estate, to finish his plan of estate management, to get ready to go abroad – in a word, she would not let him drowse; she would show him his aim in life, make him love once more the things he cared for no longer, and Stolz, when he returned, would not recognize him. And she – the silent, shy Olga – would perform this miracle, she, who had not yet begun to live and whom no one had even obeyed so far! She would be the cause of this transformation! It had begun already; the moment she began singing, Oblomov was a different person.… He would live, work, and bless life and her. To restore a man to life – why, think of the glory a doctor won when he restored a hopeless invalid to health! And what about saving a man whose mind and soul were facing moral ruin? The very thought of it made her tremble with pride and joy; she looked upon it as a task assigned to her from above. In her mind she made him her secretary, her librarian. And suddenly all that had come to an end! She did not know what she ought to do and that was why she was silent when she met Oblomov.
He spent a month in this blissful state: the rooms were clean, his master did not grumble, or use ‘pathetic words’, and he, Zakhar, had nothing to do. But the state of bliss came to an end – and for the following reason. As soon as he and Anisya began to look after Oblomov’s rooms together, everything Zakhar did turned out to be stupid. Whatever he did was wrong. For fifty-five years he had lived in the world in the conviction that whatever he did could not be done better or differently. And now, suddenly, Anisya proved to him that he was a wash-out, and she did it with such an offensive condescension, so quietly, as though he were a child or a perfect fool, and to make matters worse, she could not help smiling as she looked at him.
‘When you don’t know what to live for, you live anyhow – from one day to another. You are glad the day is over, that the night has come, and in your sleep you can expunge from your mind the wearisome question why you have lived this day and are going to live the next.’
She went to the French theatre, but the play seemed to have some sort of connexion with her life; she read a book, and there were invariably lines in it which struck sparks in her own mind, passages which blazed with her own feelings, words which she had uttered the day before, as though the author had overheard her heart beating. There were the same trees in the woods, but their rustle had a special meaning for her; there was a living concord between her and them. The birds were not just chirping and twittering, but saying something to one another; and everything around her was speaking, everything responded to her mood; if a flower opened, she seemed to hear it breathe. Her dreams, too, had a life of their own: they were filled with visions and images to which she sometimes spoke aloud – they seemed to be telling her something, but so indistinctly that she could not understand; she made an effort to speak to them and ask them some question, but she, too, said something incomprehensible.
She was ready for love, her heart was waiting for it eagerly, and she met me accidentally, by chance.… Let another man appear – and she will recognize her mistake with horror! How she will look at me then! How she will turn away! Awful! I’m taking what doesn’t belong to me! I’m a thief! What am I doing? How blind I have been – my God!’
I don’t count time by hours and minutes, I know nothing of sunrise and sunset, but only by whether I have seen you or have not seen you, whether I shall or shall not see you, whether you have been or not, whether you will come.…
‘I am comforted a little in my deep anguish by the thought that this brief episode of our lives will for ever leave so pure and fragrant a memory in my mind that it alone will be sufficient to prevent me from sinking into my former state of torpor, and without harming you, will serve you as a guiding principle for your normal life in future. Good-bye, my angel; make haste and fly away as a frightened bird flies from a branch on which it has alighted by mistake, and do it as lightly, cheerfully, and gaily!’ very much like stoner bit
Nature carried on with her never-ceasing work: all around him unseen, tiny creatures were busy while everything seemed to be enjoying a solemn rest. In the grass everything was moving, creeping, bustling. Ants were running in different directions, looking very busy and engrossed in their work, running into one another, scampering about, hurrying – it was just like looking from a height at a busy marketplace: the same small crowds, the same crush, the same bustle. Here a bumble-bee was buzzing about a flower and crawling into its calyx; here hundreds of flies were clustering round a drop of resin running out of a small crack in a lime-tree; and somewhere in the thicket a bird had long been repeating one and the same note, perhaps calling to its mate. Two butterflies, flying round and round one another, danced off precipitately as in a waltz among the tree trunks. The grass exuded a strong fragrance; an unceasing din rose from it.
‘Why is it impossible?’ she asked, ‘You say that I am mistaken, that I will fall in love with somebody else, and I can’t help feeling sometimes that you will simply fall out of love with me. And what then? How shall I justify myself for what I am doing now? What shall I say to myself, let alone to other people or society? I, too, sometimes spend sleepless nights because of this, but I do not torture you with conjectures about the future because I believe that everything will be for the best. With me happiness overcomes fear. I think it is something if your eyes begin to shine because of me, when you climb hills in search of me, when you forget your indolence and rush off in the heat to town for some flowers or a book for me, when I see that I make you smile and wish to live.… I am waiting and searching for one thing – happiness, and I believe I have found it. If I am making a mistake, if it is true that I shall weep over it, at any rate I feel here’ (she put her hand to her heart) ‘that I am not to blame for it; it will mean that it was not to be, that it was not God’s will. But I am not afraid of having to shed tears in the future; I shall not be weeping for nothing: I still have bought something for them.… I was so happy – till now!’ she added.
‘Do go on being happy!’ Oblomov besought her.
‘And you see nothing but gloom ahead; happiness is nothing to you. This,’ she went on, ‘is ingratitude. It isn’t love, it is – –’
‘– egoism!’ Oblomov finished the sentence for her, not daring to look at Olga or to speak or to ask her forgiveness.
‘Olga,’ he said, barely touching her waist with two fingers (she stopped), ‘you’re wiser than I am.’
She shook her head.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m simpler and more courageous.
A kind of secret relationship, invisible to others, had been established between Olga and Oblomov: every look, every insignificant word uttered in the presence of others, had a special meaning for them. They saw in everything a reference to love. Olga sometimes flushed crimson, in spite of her self-confidence, if someone told at table a love-story that was similar to her own; and as all love-stories are very much alike, she often had to blush.
Olga did not stir from her place, dreaming of the happiness that was so near, but she decided not to tell Oblomov her news and her plans for the future. She intended to watch to the end the change love wrought in Oblomov’s lazy soul, to see how the great weight would lift from him, how he would not be able finally to resist the prospect of happiness, how he would receive a favourable reply from the country and, radiant with joy, would rush to her and put it at her feet, and how both of them would run to her aunt, and then – – Then she would suddenly tell him that she too had an estate, a garden, a pavilion, a view of the river and a house that was ready to live in, that they must go there first and then to Oblomovka. ‘No,’ she thought, ‘I don’t want a favourable reply, for he will put on airs and won’t even feel glad that I have an estate of my own, a house, a garden. No, I’d rather he came looking upset by a disagreeable letter with the news that his estate was in a bad way and that he had to go there himself. He’d rush headlong off to Oblomovka, hastily make all the necessary arrangements, forget to see to a great many things, be unable to do many others, do everything just anyhow, rush back, and suddenly discover that it had not been necessary for him to go at all – that she had a house, a garden, and a pavilion with a view, that they had a place where they could live without bothering about his Oblomovka…. No, no, she was not going to tell him; she would hold out to the end. Let him go to his estate, let him bestir himself, let him come to life – for her alone, in the name of their future happiness. Oh – no! Why should she send him to his estate? Why should they part? No – when, all dressed for the journey, he – pale and woebegone – came to say good-bye to her, she would tell him suddenly that there was no need for him to go till summer, that they would go together then….
‘You slept after dinner,’ she said in so positive a tone of voice that after a moment’s hesitation, he replied softly:
‘Yes.’
‘But why?’
‘So as not to notice the time: you were not with me, Olga, and life without you is dull and unbearable.’
All you have to do is to sign your name. If you know how things are done in a Government office…’
‘I don’t know how things are done in a Government office,’ Oblomov declared monotonously.
Ivan Matveyevich threw his enigmatic glance at Oblomov and was silent.
‘I expect, sir, you did nothing but read books,’ he observed with the same obsequious smile.
‘Books!’ Oblomov retorted bitterly and stopped short.
He had not enough courage to bare his soul before a low-grade civil servant, and, besides, there was no need for him to do so.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea of books, either,’ he thought uneasily, but he would not bring himself to utter the words and merely sighed mournfully.
‘But you did do something, sir, didn’t you?’ Ivan Matveyevich added humbly, as though divining Oblomov’s answer about the books. ‘It’s impossible not to – –’
‘It is possible, sir, and I am the living proof of it. Who am I? What am I? Go and ask Zakhar, and he will tell you that I am a “gentleman”. Yes, I am a gentleman and I can’t do anything! Please do it for me, if you know how, and help me, if you can. Take anything you like for your trouble – that is what knowledge is for!’
‘No, let me cry! I am not crying about the future, but about the past,’ she brought out with difficulty. ‘It has “faded away”, it has “gone”…. It isn’t I who am crying, but my memories! The summer – the park – do you remember? I’m sorry for our avenue, the lilac…. It has all grown into my heart: it hurts me to tear it out!’ She shook her head in despair and sobbed, repeating: ‘Oh, how it hurts – how it hurts!’
‘What if you should die?’ he suddenly cried in horror. ‘Think, Olga – –’
‘No,’ she interrupted, raising her head and trying to look at him through her tears; ‘I have only lately realized that I loved in you what I wanted you to have, what Stolz pointed out to me, what we both invented. I loved the Oblomov that might have been! You are gentle and honest – you are tender like – a dove; you hide your head under your wing – and you want nothing more; you are ready to spend all your life cooing under the roof…. Well, I am not like that; that isn’t enough for me; I want something else, but what it is I don’t know! You cannot tell me, you cannot teach me what it is that I want, give it all to me so that I – – and as for tenderness – you can find it anywhere!’
Oblomov’s legs gave way under him; he sat down in an armchair and wiped his hands and forehead with his handkerchief. It was a cruel thing to say, and it hurt him deeply: it seemed to have scorched him inwardly, while outwardly it was like the breath of ice-cold air. He smiled pitifully and painfully shamefacedly in reply, like a beggar reproached for his nakedness. He sat there with that helpless smile, weak with agitation and resentment; his eyes, from which the light seemed to have gone, said clearly: ‘Yes, I am poor, pitiful, abject – hit me, hit me!…’
Olga suddenly realized how harsh her words were; she rushed to him impetuously.
‘Forgive me, my friend!’ she said tenderly, with tears in her voice. ‘I don’t know what I am saying. I am mad! Forget everything. Let us be as before – let everything remain as it was….’
‘No,’ he said, getting up suddenly and rejecting her impulsive offer with a resolute gesture. ‘It cannot remain as it was! Don’t be upset because you’ve spoken the truth: I deserve it,’ he added dejectedly.
‘I am a dreamer, a visionary! ‘she said; ‘I’m an awful character. Why are other women, why is Sonia so happy?’ She wept. ‘Go away!’ she said, making up her mind and twisting her wet handkerchief again. ‘I can’t stand it. The past is too dear to me.’ She again buried her face in her handkerchief, trying to stifle her sobs. ‘Why has it all been ruined?’ she asked suddenly, raising her head. ‘Who laid a curse on you, Ilya? What have you done? You are kind, intelligent, tender, honourable, and – you are going to wrack and ruin! What has ruined you? There is no name for that evil….’
‘There is,’ he said in a hardly audible whisper.
She looked at him questioningly with her eyes full of tears.
‘Oblomovitis!’ he whispered; then he took her hand, wanted to kiss it and could not; he just pressed it tightly to his lips and hot tears fell on her fingers. He turned round without raising his head or showing her his face, and walked out of the room.
Though at the house of the widow Pshenitzyn, in Vyborg, days and nights passed peacefully without any sudden violent changes in its monotonous existence, and though the four seasons followed each other as regularly as ever, life did not stand still, but was constantly undergoing a change; but the change was slow and gradual as are the geological changes of our planet: in one place a mountain slowly crumbled away, in another the sea was washing up silt or receding from the shores and forming new land.
i like how they extend this metaphor
Oblomov sighed. ‘Life!’ he said.
‘What about life?’
‘It keeps disturbing you. Gives you no peace! I wish I could lie down and go to sleep – for ever!’
‘What you mean is that you would like to put out the light and remain in darkness! Fine sort of life! Oh, Ilya, why don’t you at least indulge in a little philosophy? Life will flash by like an instant, and you’d like to lie down and go to sleep! Let the flame go on burning! Oh, if only I could live for two or three hundred years!’ he concluded. ‘How much one could do then!’
‘You are quite a different matter, Andrey!’ replied Oblomov. ‘You have wings: you don’t live, you fly. You have gifts, ambition. You’re not fat. You don’t suffer from styes. You’re not overcome by constant doubts. You’re differently made, somehow.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish! Man has been created to arrange his own life and even to change his own nature, and you’ve grown a big belly and think that nature has sent you this burden! You had wings once, but you took them off.’
‘Wings? Where are they?’ Oblomov said gloomily. ‘I don’t know how to do anything.’
‘You mean you don’t want to know,’ Stolz interrupted. ‘A man who can’t do something doesn’t exist, I assure you.’
‘Olga invites you to stay at her house in the country. Your love has cooled down, so there is no danger: you won’t be jealous. Let’s go.’
Oblomov sighed. ‘No, Andrey,’ he said; ‘it isn’t love or jealousy I’m afraid of, but I won’t go with you all the same.’
‘What are you afraid of then?’
‘I’m afraid of envying you: your happiness will be like a mirror in which I shall see my bitter and wasted life; for, you see, I won’t live differently any more – I can’t.’
‘Come along, sir,’ said Zakhar, pointing to the icon and the door; ‘here’s God and there’s the door.’
He contemplated with a smile, blushing and frowning in turn, the endless row of heroes and heroines of love: Don Quixotes in steel gauntlets, and the ladies of their dreams, remaining faithful to one another after fifty years of separation; the shepherds with their rosy faces and artless, bulging eyes, and their Chloes with lambs. Before his mind’s eye marquesses appeared in powdered wigs and lace, with eyes twinkling with intelligence and dissolute smiles; they were followed by the Werthers who had shot, strangled, or hanged themselves; then by faded lovelorn maidens shedding endless tears and retiring into convents, and their mustachioed heroes with wild ardour in their eyes; by naive and self-conscious Don Juans, the clever fellows who tremble at the least suspicion of love and secretly adore their housekeepers – all, all of them.
‘No!’ Olga replied in good earnest, thoughtfully, as though looking into the past. ‘I don’t love him still, but there is something in him that I love, something to which, I believe, I have remained faithful, and shall not change as other people do….’
‘Oh? Who are those other people? You aren’t thinking of me, are you? But you are mistaken. And if you want to know the truth, it is I who taught you to love him and nearly got you into trouble. But for me you would have passed him by without noticing him. It was I made you realize that he possessed no less intelligence than other people, only it was buried under a rubbish-heap and asleep in idleness. Shall I tell you why he is dear to you and what you still love in him?’
She nodded assent.
‘Because he possesses something that is worth more than any amount of intelligence – an honest and faithful heart! It is the matchless treasure that he has carried through his life unharmed. People knocked him down, he grew indifferent and, at last, dropped asleep, crushed, disappointed, having lost the strength to live; but he has not lost his honesty and his faithfulness. His heart has never struck a single false note; there is no stain on his character. No well-dressed-up lie has ever deceived him and nothing will lure him from the true path. A regular ocean of evil and baseness may be surging round him, the entire world may be poisoned and turned upside down – Oblomov will never bow down to the idol of falsehood, and his soul will always be pure, noble, honest…. His soul is translucent, clear as crystal. Such people are rare; there aren’t many of them; they are like pearls in a crowd! His heart cannot be bribed; he can be relied on always and anywhere. It is to this you have remained faithful, and that is why nothing I do for him will ever be a burden to me. I have known lots of people possessing high qualities, but never have I met a heart more pure, more noble, and more simple. I have loved many people, but no one so warmly and so firmly as Oblomov. Once you know him, you cannot stop loving him. Isn’t that so? Am I right?’
Oblomov was the complete and natural reflection and expression of that repose, contentment, and serene calm that reigned all around him. Thinking about his way of living, subjecting it to a close scrutiny, and getting more and more used to it, he decided at last that he had nothing more to strive for, nothing more to seek, that he had attained the ideal of his life, though it were shorn of poetry and bereft of the brilliance with which his imagination had once endowed the plentiful and care-free life of a country squire on his own estate, among his peasants and house-serfs. He looked upon his present way of life as a continuation of the same Oblomov-like existence, except that he lived in a different place, and the times, too, were to a certain extent different. Here, too, as at Oblomovka, he managed to strike a good bargain with life, having obtained from it a guarantee of undisturbed peace. He triumphed inwardly at having escaped its annoying and agonizing demands and storms, which break from that part of the horizon where the lightnings of great joys flash and the sudden thunderclaps of great sorrows resound; where false hopes and magnificent phantoms of happiness are at play; where a man’s own thought gnaws at his vitals and finally consumes him and passion kills; where man is engaged in a never-ceasing battle and leaves the battlefield shattered but still insatiate and discontented. Not having experienced the joys obtained by struggle, he mentally renounced them, and felt at peace with himself only in his forgotten corner of the world, where there was no struggle, no movement, and no life. And if his imagination caught fire again, if forgotten memories and unfulfilled dreams rose up before him, if his conscience began to prick him for having spent his life in one way and not in another – he slept badly, woke up, jumped out of bed, and sometimes wept disconsolate tears for his bright ideal of life that had now vanished for good, as one weeps for the dear departed with the bitter consciousness that one had not done enough for them while they were alive. Then he looked at his surroundings, tasted the ephemeral good things of life, and calmed down, gazing dreamily at the evening sun going down slowly and quietly in the fiery conflagration of the sunset; at last he decided that his life had not just turned out to be so simple and uncomplicated, but had been created and meant to be so in order to show that the ideally reposeful aspect of human existence was possible. It fell to the lot of other people, he reflected, to express its troubled aspects and set in motion the creative and destructive forces: everyone had his own fixed purpose in life! Such was the philosophy that the Plato of Oblomovka had worked out and that lulled him to sleep amidst the stern demands of duty and the problems of human existence! He was not born and educated to be a gladiator for the arena, but a peaceful spectator of the battle; his timid and indolent spirit could not have endured either the anxieties of happiness or the blows inflicted by life – therefore he merely gave expression to one particular aspect of it, and it was no use being sorry or trying to change it or to get more out of it. As years passed, he was less and less disturbed by remorse and agitation, and settled quietly and gradually into the plain and spacious coffin he had made for his remaining span of life, like old hermits who, turning away from life, dig their own graves in the desert.