Oblomov.

I’ve just finished reading Goncharov’s Oblomov in Russian, something I’ve been looking forward to since I read it in English (in Magarshack’s translation) decades ago. It’s a different book than I had remembered — less jolly, more divided. Oblomov the character is one of the great creations of world literature; the novel to which he gives life is something of a mess. I’ll start by quoting Richard Freeborn’s description in The Cambridge History of Russian Literature (warning: spoilers from here on out):

[T]he novel as a whole divides into two appreciably different segments, the first being theatrical in form, with Oblomov presented to us scenically in the squalor of his St. Petersburg apartment leading a “dressing-gown existence.” The second is a more conventional novel form of the love-story type which tells of the hero’s relations with Olga, their eventual parting and Oblomov’s return to his former state of near-hibernation in the company of the peasant woman Pshenitsyna who becomes his wife.

Unfortunately, the first segment is by far the best, and it makes up only a quarter of the novel (the first of four parts). Oblomov and his lazy, incompetent, but loyal servant Zakhar (who’s looked after him since childhood, pulling off and putting on his boots and brushing his coat) are magnificent characters, straight out of Gogol (like so much of Russian literature); a couple of minor characters are also Gogolian, like the one introduced here (Magarshack’s translation):

A man of indefinite age and of an indefinite appearance came into the room; he had reached the age when it was difficult to say how old he was; he was neither ugly nor handsome, neither tall nor short, neither fair nor dark; nature had not bestowed on him a single striking or outstanding characteristic, neither good nor bad. Some called him Ivan Ivanich, others Ivan Vassilyevich, and still others Ivan Mikhaylovich. People were also uncertain about his surname: some said it was Ivanov, some called him Vassilyev or Andreyev, and others thought he was Alexeyev. A stranger, meeting him for the first time and being told his name, immediately forgot it, as he forgot his face, and never noticed what he said.

Alexeyev (his conventional name in the novel) is a surprisingly useful character, showing up and providing a sympathetic ear just when one is needed, and of course demanding nothing for himself. Another such is the maid Anisya, whose dominant feature could not be more Gogolesque: “Her eyes had grown even brighter, and her nose, that speaking nose of hers, was thrust forward, glowing with cares, thoughts, and intentions, seeming to speak though her tongue was silent.”

But alas, the main characters apart from Oblomov are his childhood friend Stolz (whose father was German and mother Russian) and his great love Olga, and they are both straight from the prop room. They are of the finest cardboard and lovingly decorated, but still, he is the active Role Model (to set against Oblomov’s passive Bad Example), and she is the Angelic Woman, and as soon as they enter the picture the novel goes dead as a work of art. They take turns sternly telling Oblomov he must pull himself out of his sloth and Do Something (though what exactly is never clear, any more than it is clear what Stolz is up to in all his travels and feverish activities), and eventually give up and marry each other (and live a tediously virtuous and active idyll in Crimea which for some reason Goncharov feels he has to describe in detail). There are wonderful moments and descriptions throughout, but basically the book turns into one of those sad realist works in which the characters illustrate life principles that it hopes to inculcate into the reader and society at large (Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done being the locus classicus). The last section should have been cut altogether, and the previous two should have been much shorter and funnier. But then I always seem to want novels to be shorter (the locus classicus, where I see I quoted a nice passage from Goncharov).

I’m making it sound worse than it is — I should probably have waited until the irritation wore off. Everyone should read at least the first part, and having done so you will want to know what becomes of the characters and will probably read on, and you may very well be more tolerant of the plottiness and the cardboard than this hardened old aesthete. But at least you have been warned to lower your expectations.

Comments

  1. “The most critical reader of all, [the author], now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.”

  2. Unfortunately, the first segment is by far the best, and it makes up only a quarter of the novel …

    Yes. Everybody I know who’s started on the novel has given up before half-way. I assumed they’d been infected with ‘Oblomovitis’. Perhaps some novels (even classics or Booker winners) just should not be finished.

    I persisted to the end with The Luminaries, because of the New Zealand connection. (Most NZ’ers gave up after 50~70 pages.) But the characters never became less cardboard; and the astrological by-play was just too show-offy-clever in a particularly Bookerish way.

  3. Some witty Russian critics considered Oblomov not as a person, but as a natural feature, like rain or summer. It is pretty hard to write the whole novel about rain.

  4. You may make it sound worse than it is, but everything you say is accurate. The Rousseau-like section, the pedagogical idyll, is brutal.

  5. Some witty Russian critics considered Oblomov not as a person, but as a natural feature, like rain or summer. It is pretty hard to write the whole novel about rain.

    That’s actually quite perceptive, and what’s changed in literature since Goncharov’s day is that we can now write whole novels about rain (see: Beckett, Sebald, Gaddis, Nicholson Baker, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Michel Butor, etc. etc.).

  6. I’m afraid you didn’t like the first part enough to engage the whole novel on its own terms. Like most novels, Oblomov would benefit from a skilled editor’s scissors but cutting out part four – the story of the protagonist’s slide into a numb, drowsy, half-conscious happiness in Agafia’s soothing arms – would disfigure the novel, destroying the sombre symmetry between its beginning and ending. “Shorter” is almost always sound advice; “funnier,” not necessarily – Oblomov is one of the saddest books I’ve read.

    I’ve just looked through the last part. The Crimea episode is probably unnecessary (although the literary cutouts contrast nicely with Oblomov’s humanity) but some other bits have almost moved me to tears. Goncharov himself makes an appearance towards the end: “an author – plump, with an apathetic face and contemplative, seemingly sleepy eyes.”

    On a side note, I don’t understand why Freeborn calls Oblomov’s wife a “peasant woman.” She is a widow of a civil servant and hardly qualifies as a peasant in any sense of the word. A petty-bourgeois woman, perhaps.

  7. I’m afraid you didn’t like the first part enough to engage the whole novel on its own terms.

    No, I liked the first part a great deal; the problem is that the rest of the novel was written much later and Goncharov changed the terms, and the later terms are not my terms. But remember that I said “there are wonderful moments and descriptions throughout”; I wasn’t dismissing the rest out of hand, just saying it didn’t live up to the brilliant beginning. (And the other comments prove that it’s not just my personal idiosyncrasy.)

    On a side note, I don’t understand why Freeborn calls Oblomov’s wife a “peasant woman.” She is a widow of a civil servant and hardly qualifies as a peasant in any sense of the word. A petty-bourgeois woman, perhaps.

    You’re quite right; that was an odd term to use.

  8. Endings are tough! I wonder that writers can leap in without a clear view of where they want to end up. Not that they have to end up there, but flying blind is necessarily a risky business. My sympathies are with the writers.

    I’m put in mind of Huckleberry Finn. Great idea, great characters, great beginning, half finished manuscript shoved in a drawer for a number of years, limp ending. But oh, so worth it.

    It’s been years since I’ve read Oblomov. I think I gave up after the first section. Now I feel less guilty. Still, perhaps it is time to put it back on the hopper.

  9. I’m put in mind of Huckleberry Finn.

    Yes, an excellent comparison.

  10. It’s been more than a decade since I read it (for the first and only time) in Russian, so my memories aren’t fresh, but I don’t recall sharing any of your impatience. Yes, the set-up is the most engaging part, but most of your gripes seem to me to amount to wishing the novel were a conventional, plot-driven Bildungsroman instead of the unconventional antiBildungsroman Goncharov intended. It would be odd if a novel whose primary theme is inertia didn’t involve repetition and longueurs. Olga and Stolz are “types,” I suppose, but since they’re there primarily as foils that didn’t bother me.

  11. most of your gripes seem to me to amount to wishing the novel were a conventional, plot-driven Bildungsroman instead of the unconventional antiBildungsroman Goncharov intended

    My gripe is not that at all; I have no desire for a conventional, plot-driven Bildungsroman. My complaint is that the novel lost most of its interest once it devolved into a love story, whether or not it was an antiBildungsroman. I don’t give a damn about categories and genres, I just want good writing that grips you and carries you on. If you enjoyed it, great, more power to you, but don’t tell me I didn’t get what Goncharov was up to. I get it, I just don’t like it.

  12. I mean, I’m reading Dostoevsky’s Дядюшкин сон now, and I have no idea what the plot’s going to be — there’s a Napoleonic lady, an old man who squandered his money and then inherited some more, and a garrulous narrator — but I’m hanging on every word, because the narration is irresistible.

  13. I didn’t really intend to imply that you don’t “get it.” I’m sure you do. Rather, your criticism of the novel’s shortcomings struck me as out of sync with the novelist’s own vision for the novel. This is not to say you, or anyone else, has to endorse that vision. Heaven forfend…or, as the kids today say, YMMV. (But, yes, Dostoevsky > Goncharov. Who’d argue?)

  14. I’m sure you do. Rather, your criticism of the novel’s shortcomings struck me as out of sync with the novelist’s own vision for the novel.

    Oh, sure! No argument there.

  15. I just got to this description of the mysterious prince in the Dostoevsky story:

    Ведь это полукомпозиция, а не человек. Вы его видели шесть лет назад, а я час тому назад его видел. Ведь это полупокойник! Ведь это только воспоминание о человеке; ведь его забыли похоронить! Ведь у него глаза вставные, ноги пробочные, он весь на пружинах и говорит на пружинах!

    He’s half composition, not a person. You saw him six years ago, but I saw him an hour ago. He’s half a corpse! He’s just a memory of a person; they forgot to bury him! He’s got glass eyes and cork legs, he’s all on springs and uses springs to talk!

    Irresistible.

  16. I finished the Dostoevsky story, and although it’s not worth making a post of it (it’s very silly, and D. himself disliked it even while he was writing it), I want to record here that the scene between the mother (who is trying to get her daughter Zina to marry the half-dead prince) and Zina (who thinks the whole idea is vile and repulsive) is masterly, and a clear template for the more consequential struggles in later works. It’s worth reading even the minor works of great writers!

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