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I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” was published in 1859 in the journal “Otechestvennye zapiski” and is considered the pinnacle of the writer’s entire work. The idea for the work appeared back in 1849, when the author published one of the chapters of the future novel, “Oblomov’s Dream,” in the “Literary Collection.” Work on the future masterpiece was often interrupted, ending only in 1858.
Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” is part of a trilogy with two other works by Goncharov – “The Cliff” and “An Ordinary Story.” The work is written according to the traditions of the literary movement of realism. In the novel, the author brings out an important problem for that time in Russian society - “Oblomovism”, examines the tragedy of the superfluous person and the problem of the gradual decline of personality, revealing them in all aspects of the hero’s everyday and mental life.
Main characters
Oblomov Ilya Ilyich- a nobleman, a landowner of thirty years old, a lazy, gentle man who spends all his time in idleness. A character with a subtle poetic soul, prone to constant dreams, which replace real life.
Zakhar Trofimovich- Oblomov’s faithful servant, who has served him from an early age. Very similar to the owner in his laziness.
Stolts Andrey Ivanovich- Oblomov’s childhood friend, his peer. A practical, rational and active man who knows what he wants and is constantly developing.
Ilyinskaya Olga Sergeevna- Oblomov’s beloved, an intelligent and gentle girl, not devoid of practicality in life. Then she became Stolz's wife.
Pshenitsyna Agafya Matveevna- the owner of the apartment in which Oblomov lived, a thrifty but weak-willed woman. She sincerely loved Oblomov, who later became his wife.
Other characters
Tarantyev Mikhey Andreevich- cunning and selfish are familiar to Oblomov.
Mukhoyarov Ivan Matveevich- Pshenitsyna’s brother, an official, as cunning and selfish as Tarantyev.
Volkov, official Sudbinsky, writer Penkin, Alekseev Ivan Alekseevich- Oblomov’s acquaintances.
Part 1
Chapter 1
The work “Oblomov” begins with a description of Oblomov’s appearance and his home - the room is a mess, which the owner does not seem to notice, dirt and dust. As the author says, several years ago Ilya Ilyich received a letter from the headman that he needed to restore order in his native estate - Oblomovka, but still did not dare to go there, but only planned and dreamed. Having called their servant Zakhar after morning tea, they discuss the need to move out of the apartment, since the owner of the property has become needed.
Chapter 2
Volkov, Sudbinsky and Penkin come to visit Oblomov in turn. They all talk about their lives and invite them to go somewhere, but Oblomov resists and they leave with nothing.
Then Alekseev comes - an indefinite, spineless man, no one could even say exactly what his name is. He calls Oblomov to Yekateringhof, but Ilya Ilyich does not even want to get out of bed at last. Oblomov shares his problem with Alekseev - a stale letter arrived from the head of his estate, in which Oblomov was informed about serious losses this year (2 thousand), which makes him very upset.
Chapter 3
Tarantiev arrives. The author says that Alekseev and Tarantiev entertain Oblomov in their own way. Tarantiev, making a lot of noise, brought Oblomov out of boredom and immobility, while Alekseev acted as an obedient listener who could quietly remain in the room for hours until Ilya Ilyich paid attention to him.
Chapter 4
Like all visitors, Oblomov covers himself from Tarantiev with a blanket and asks not to come close, since he came in from the cold. Tarantiev invites Ilya Ilyich to move into an apartment with his godfather, which is located in the Vyborg side. Oblomov consults with him about the headman’s letter, Tarantiev asks for money for advice and says that most likely the headman is a fraudster, recommending that he be replaced and write a letter to the governor.
Chapter 5
Next, the author talks about Oblomov’s life; in short, it can be retold as follows: Ilya Ilyich lived in St. Petersburg for 12 years, being a collegiate secretary by rank. After the death of his parents, he became the owner of an estate in a remote province. When he was young, he was more active and strived to achieve a lot, but with age he realized that he was standing still. Oblomov perceived his service as a second family, which did not correspond to reality, where he had to hurry and sometimes work even at night. For more than two years he served somehow, but then he accidentally sent an important paper to the wrong place. Without waiting for punishment from his superiors, Oblomov himself left, sending a medical certificate in which he was ordered to refuse to go to work and soon resigned. Ilya Ilyich never fell in love very much, he soon stopped communicating with friends and dismissed the servants, he became very lazy, but Stoltz still managed to get him out into the world.
Chapter 6
Oblomov considered training as a punishment. Reading tired him, but poetry captivated him. For him there was a whole gulf between study and life. He was easy to deceive; he believed everything and everyone. Long journeys were alien to him: the only trip in his life was from his native estate to Moscow. Spending his life on the couch, he thinks about something all the time, either planning his life, or experiencing emotional moments, or imagining himself as one of the great people, but all this remains only in his thoughts.
Chapter 7
Characterizing Zakhar, the author presents him as a thieving, lazy and clumsy servant and gossip who was not averse to drinking and partying at the master’s expense. It was not out of malice that he came up with gossip about the master, but at the same time he sincerely loved him with special love.
Chapter 8
The author returns to the main narrative. After Tarantyev left, Oblomov lay down and began to think about developing a plan for his estate, how he would have a good time there with his friends and wife. He even felt complete happiness. Having gathered his strength, Oblomov finally got up to have breakfast, deciding to write a letter to the governor, but it turned out awkwardly and Oblomov tore up the letter. Zakhar again talks to the master about moving, so that Oblomov will leave the house for a while and the servants can safely move things, but Ilya Ilyich resists in every possible way and asks Zakhar to settle the issue of moving with the owner so that they can stay in the old apartment. Having quarreled with Zakhar and, thinking about his past, Oblomov falls asleep.
Chapter 9 Oblomov's Dream
Oblomov dreams of his childhood, quiet and pleasant, which slowly passed in Oblomovka - practically heaven on earth. Oblomov remembers his mother, his old nanny, other servants, how they prepared for dinners, baked pies, how he ran on the grass and how his nanny told him fairy tales and retold myths, and Ilya imagined himself as the hero of these myths. Then he dreams of his adolescence - his 13th-14th birthday, when he studied in Verkhlev, at the Stolz boarding school. There he learned almost nothing, because Oblomovka was nearby, and their monotonous life, like a calm river, influenced him. Ilya remembers all his relatives, for whom life was a series of rituals and feasts - births, weddings and funerals. The peculiarity of the estate was that they did not like to spend money and were ready to endure any inconvenience because of this - an old stained sofa, a worn out chair. Days were spent in idleness, sitting silently, yawning or conducting semi-meaningless conversations. The residents of Oblomovka were alien to chance, change, and troubles. Any issue took a long time to be resolved, and sometimes it was not resolved at all, being put on the back burner. His parents understood that Ilya needed to study, they would like to see him educated, but since this was not included in the foundations of Oblomovka, he was often left at home on school days, fulfilling his every whim.
Chapters 10-11
While Oblomov was sleeping, Zakhar went out into the yard to complain about the master to other servants, but when they spoke unkindly about Oblomov, ambition awoke in him and he began to fully praise both the master and himself.
Returning home, Zakhar tries to wake up Oblomov, since he asked to wake him up in the evening, but Ilya Ilyich, cursing at the servant, tries in every possible way to continue sleeping. This scene greatly amuses Stolz, who arrived and stood in the doorway.
Part 2
Chapters 1-2
The second chapter of the story “Oblomov” by Ivan Goncharov begins with a retelling of the fate of Andrei Ivanovich Stolts. His father was German, his mother Russian. His mother saw in Andrey the ideal master, while his father raised him by his own example, taught him agronomy, and took him to factories. From his mother, the young man adopted a love of books and music, and from his father, practicality and the ability to work. He grew up as an active and lively child - he could leave for several days, then return dirty and shabby. His childhood was given life by the frequent visits of the princes, who filled their estate with fun and noise. His father, continuing the family tradition, sent Stolz to university. When Andrei returned after studying, his father did not allow him to stay in Verkhlev, sending him with a hundred rubles in banknotes and a horse to St. Petersburg.
Stolz lived strictly and practically, fearing dreams most of all; he had no idols, but was physically strong and attractive. He stubbornly and accurately walked along the chosen path, everywhere he showed perseverance and a rational approach. For Andrei, Oblomov was not only a school friend, but also a close person with whom he could calm his troubled soul.
Chapter 3
The author returns to Oblomov’s apartment, where Ilya Ilyich complains to Stoltz about problems on the estate. Andrei Ivanovich advises him to open a school there, but Oblomov believes that this is too early for men. Ilya Ilyich also mentions the need to move out of the apartment and the lack of money. Stolz doesn’t see a problem with the move and is surprised at how Oblomov has wallowed in laziness. Andrei Ivanovich forces Zakhar to bring Ilya clothes in order to take him out into the world. Stolz also orders the servant to send Tarantiev out every time he comes, since Mikhei Andreevich constantly asks Oblomov for money and clothes, without intending to return them.
Chapter 4
For a week, Stolz takes Oblomov to various societies. Oblomov is dissatisfied, complaining about the fuss, the need to walk in boots all day and the noisy people. Oblomov blurts out to Stoltz that the ideal of life for him is Oblomovka, but when Andrei Ivanovich asks why he won’t go there, Ilya Ilyich finds many reasons and excuses. Oblomov draws an idyll of life in Oblomovka to Stolz, to which his friend tells him that this is not life, but “Oblomovism.” Stolz reminds him of the dreams of his youth, that he needs to work and not spend his days in laziness. They come to the conclusion that Oblomov finally needs to go abroad, and then to the village.
Chapters 5-6
Stolz’s words “now or never” made a great impression on Oblomov and he decided to live differently - he made a passport, bought everything he needed for a trip to Paris. But Ilya Ilyich did not leave, since Stolz introduced him to Olga Sergeevna - at one of the evenings Oblomov fell in love with her. Ilya Ilyich began to spend a lot of time with the girl, and soon bought a dacha opposite her aunt’s dacha. In the presence of Olga Sergeevna, Oblomov felt awkward, could not lie to her, but admired her, listening with bated breath to the girl singing. After one of the songs, he exclaimed without controlling himself that he felt love. Having come to his senses, Ilya Ilyich ran out of the room.
Oblomov blamed himself for his incontinence, but, meeting with Olga Sergeevna afterwards, he said that it was a momentary passion for music and not true. To which the girl assured him that she had forgiven him for taking liberties and had forgotten everything.
Chapter 7
The changes affected not only Ilya, but his entire house. Zakhar married Anisya, a lively and agile woman who changed the established order in her own way.
While Ilya Ilyich, who had returned from a meeting with Olga Sergeevna, was worried about what had happened, he was invited to dinner with the girl’s aunt. Oblomov is tormented by doubts, he compares himself with Stolz, and wonders if Olga is flirting with him. However, when meeting him, the girl behaves reservedly and seriously with him.
Chapter 8
Oblomov spent the whole day with Aunt Olga - Marya Mikhailovna - a woman who knew how to live and manage life. The relationship between the aunt and their niece had its own special character; Marya Mikhailovna was an authority for Olga.
After waiting all day, bored with Aunt Olga and Baron Langwagen, Oblomov finally waited for the girl. Olga Sergeevna was cheerful and he asked her to sing, but in her voice he did not hear yesterday’s feelings. Disappointed, Ilya Ilyich went home.
Oblomov was tormented by the change in Olga, but the girl’s meeting with Zakhar gave Oblomov a new chance - Olga Sergeevna herself made an appointment in the park. Their conversation turned to the topic of unnecessary, useless existence, to which Ilya Ilyich said that his life is like this, because all the flowers have fallen from it. They touched upon the issue of feelings for each other and the girl shared Oblomov’s love, giving him her hand. Walking with her further, happy Ilya Ilyich kept repeating to himself: “This is all mine! My!".
Chapter 9
The lovers are happy together. For Olga Sergeevna, with love, meaning appeared in everything - in books, in dreams, in every moment. For Oblomov, this time became a time of activity, he lost his previous peace, constantly thinking about Olga, who tried in every possible way and tricks to bring him out of a state of idleness, forced him to read books and go on visits.
When talking about their feelings, Oblomov asks Olga why she doesn’t constantly talk about her love for him, to which the girl replies that she loves him with a special love, when it’s a pity to leave for a short time, but it hurts for a long time. When talking about her feelings, she relied on her imagination and believed it. Oblomov didn’t need anything more than the image with which he was in love.
Chapter 10
The next morning, a change occurred in Oblomov - he began to wonder why he needed a burdensome relationship and why Olga might fall in love with him. Ilya Ilyich doesn’t like that her love is lazy. As a result, Oblomov decides to write a letter to Olga, in which he says that their feelings have gone far and began to influence their life and character. And those “I love, love, love” that Olga told him yesterday were not true - he is not the person she dreamed of. At the end of the letter, he says goodbye to the girl.
Having given the letter to the maid Olga, and knowing that she would be walking through the park, he hid in the shadow of the bushes and decided to wait for her. The girl walked and cried - he saw her tears for the first time. Oblomov could not stand it and caught up with her. The girl is upset and gives him the letter, reproaching him for the fact that yesterday he needed her “love”, and today her “tears”, that in fact he does not love her, and this is just a manifestation of selfishness - Oblomov only talks about feelings and sacrifice in words, but in reality it is not so. In front of Oblomov was an insulted woman.
Ilya Ilyich asks Olga Sergeevna for everything to be as before, but she refuses. Walking next to her, he realizes his mistake and tells the girl that the letter was not needed. Olga Sergeevna gradually calms down and says that in the letter she saw all his tenderness and love for her. She had already moved away from the offense and was thinking about how to soften the situation. Having asked Oblomov for a letter, she pressed his hands to her heart and ran home happy.
Chapters 11-12
Stolz writes to Oblomov to settle matters with the village, but Oblomov, preoccupied with his feelings for Olga Sergeevna, puts off solving the problems. The lovers spend a lot of time together, but Ilya Ilyich begins to feel depressed that they are meeting in secret. He tells Olga about this and the lovers discuss that perhaps they should officially declare their relationship.
Part 3
Chapters 1-2
Tarantiev asks Oblomov for money for his godfather’s house, in which he did not live, and is trying to beg more money from Oblomov. But Ilya Ilyich’s attitude towards him has changed, so the man receives nothing.
Joyful that the relationship with Olga will soon become official, Oblomov goes to the girl. But his beloved does not share his dreams and feelings, but approaches the matter practically. Olga tells him that before telling his aunt about their relationship, he needs to settle things in Oblomovka, rebuild a house there, and in the meantime rent housing in the city.
Oblomov goes to the apartment that Tarantiev advised him, his things are piled up there. He was met by Tarantieva’s godfather, Agafya Matveevna, who asked him to wait for her brother, since she was not in charge of this herself. Not wanting to wait, Oblomov leaves, asking him to tell him that he no longer needs the apartment.
Chapter 3
In Ilya Ilyich’s opinion, the relationship with Olga becomes sluggish and protracted; he is increasingly oppressed by uncertainty. Olga persuades him to go and sort things out with the apartment. He meets with the owner’s brother and he says that while his things were in the apartment, it could not be rented out to anyone, so Ilya Ilyich owes 800 rubles. Oblomov is indignant but then promises to find the money. Having discovered that he only has 300 rubles left, he cannot remember where he spent the money over the summer.
Chapter 4
Oblomov still moves in with Tarantiev’s godfather, the woman worries about his quiet life, everyday life, and is raising Zakhar’s wife Anisya. Ilya Ilyich finally sends a letter to the headman. Their meetings with Olga Sergeevna continue, he was even invited to the Ilyinsky box.
One day Zakhar asks if Oblomov has found an apartment and whether the wedding will happen soon. Ilya is surprised how the servant can know about the relationship with Olga Sergeevna, to which Zakhar replies that the Ilyinsky servants have been talking about this for a long time. Oblomov assures Zakhar that this is not true, explaining how troublesome and expensive it is.
Chapters 5-6
Olga Sergeevna makes an appointment with Oblomov and, putting on a veil, meets him in the park secretly from her aunt. Oblomov is against the fact that she is deceiving her relatives. Olga Sergeevna invites him to open up to his aunt tomorrow, but Oblomov delays this moment, since he wants to first receive a letter from the village. Not wanting to go to visit the girl in the evening and the next day, he conveys through the servants that he is ill.
Chapter 7
Oblomov spent a week at home, communicating with the hostess and her children. On Sunday, Olga Sergeevna persuaded her aunt to go to Smolny, since it was there that they agreed to meet with Oblomov. The Baron tells her that in a month she can return to her estate and Olga dreams of how happy Oblomov will be when he finds out that he doesn’t have to worry about the fate of Oblomovka and immediately goes to live there.
Olga Sergeevna came to visit Oblomov, but immediately noticed that he was not sick. The girl reproaches the man that he deceived her and did nothing all this time. Olga forces Oblomov to go with her and her aunt to the opera. Inspired Oblomov is waiting for this meeting and a letter from the village.
Chapters 8,9,10
A letter arrives in which the owner of a neighboring estate writes that things are bad in Oblomovka, there is almost no profit, and in order for the land to give money again, the owner’s urgent personal presence is needed. Ilya Ilyich is upset that because of this the wedding will have to be postponed for at least a year.
Oblomov shows the letter to the owner’s brother, Ivan Matveevich, and asks him for advice. He recommends his colleague Zatertoy to go and settle matters on the estate instead of Oblomov.
Ivan Matveyevich discusses a “successful deal” with Tarantiev; they consider Oblomov to be a fool from whom they can make good money.
Chapters 11-12
Oblomov comes with a letter to Olga Sergeevna and says that a person has been found who will sort everything out, so they won’t have to part. But the wedding issue will have to wait another year until everything is finally settled. Olga, who hoped that Ilya would ask her aunt for her hand any day now, faints from this news. When the girl comes to her senses, she blames Oblomov for his indecisiveness. Olga Sergeevna tells Ilya Ilyich that even in a year he will not settle his life, continuing to torment her. They break up.
Upset, Oblomov walks unconscious around the city until late at night. Returning home, he sits motionless for a long time, and in the morning the servants find him in a fever.
Part 4
Chapter 1
A year has passed. Oblomov lived there with Agafya Matveevna. The worn-out one settled everything in an ancient manner and sent good proceeds for the bread. Oblomov was glad that everything had been settled and money appeared without the need for his personal presence at the estate. Gradually, Ilya’s grief was forgotten and he unconsciously fell in love with Agafya Matveevna, who also, without realizing it, fell in love with him. The woman surrounded Oblomov with care in every possible way.
Chapter 2
Stolz also came to visit at the magnificent celebration in the house of Agafya Matveevna Ivanov. Andrei Ivanovich tells Ilya Ilyich that Olga went abroad with her aunt, the girl told Stoltz everything and still cannot forget Oblomov. Andrei Ivanovich reproaches Oblomov for living in the “Oblomovka” again and trying to take him with him. Ilya Ilyich agrees again, promising to come later.
Chapter 3
Ivan Matveyevich and Tarantyev are concerned about Stolz’s arrival, since he may find out that the rent from the estate was collected, but they took it for themselves without Oblomov’s knowledge. They decide to blackmail Oblomov by allegedly seeing him go to Agafya Matveevna.
Chapter 4
The author in the story moves back to a year ago, when Stolz accidentally met Olga and her aunt in Paris. Noticing a change in the girl, he became concerned and began to spend a lot of time with her. He offers her interesting books, tells her something that excites him, goes with them to Switzerland, where he realizes that he is in love with a girl. Olga herself also feels great sympathy for him, but is worried about her past love experience. Stolz asks to tell about her unhappy love. Having learned all the details and the fact that she was in love with Oblomov, Stolz discards his worries and calls her to marry. Olga agrees.
Chapter 5
A year and a half after Midsummer and Oblomov’s name day, everything in his life became even more boring and gloomy - he became even more flabby and lazy. Agafya Matveevna’s brother counts the money for him, so Ilya Ilyich doesn’t even understand why he is making losses. When Ivan Matveevich got married, money became very bad and Agafya Matveevna, taking care of Oblomov, even went to pawn her pearls. Oblomov did not notice this, falling further into laziness.
Chapters 6-7
Stolz comes to visit Oblomov. Ilya Ilyich asks him about Olga. Stolz tells him that everything is fine with her and the girl married him. Oblomov congratulates him. They sit down at the table and Oblomov begins to tell that now he has little money and Agafya Matveevna has to manage herself, since there is not enough for servants. Stolz is surprised, because he regularly sends him money. Oblomov talks about the loan debt to the hostess. When Stolz tries to find out the terms of the loan from Agafya Matveevna, she assures that Ilya Ilyich does not owe her anything.
Stolz draws up a paper stating that Oblomov does not owe anything. Ivan Matveich plans to frame Oblomov.
Stolz wanted to take Oblomov with him, but he asked to leave him for only a month. In parting, Stolz warns him to be careful, since his feelings for the hostess are noticeable.
Oblomov quarrels with Tarantiev over deception, Ilya Ilyich beats him and drives him out of the house.
Chapter 8
Stolz did not come to St. Petersburg for several years. They lived with Olga Sergeevna in complete happiness and harmony, enduring all difficulties, coping with sadness and loss. One day, during a conversation, Olga Sergeevna remembers Oblomov. Stolz tells the girl that in fact it was he who introduced her to the Oblomov she loved, but not the one Ilya Ilyich really is. Olga asks not to leave Oblomov, and when they are in St. Petersburg, to take her to him.
Chapter 9
In the Vyborg side everything was quiet and calm. After Stolz arranged everything in Oblomovka, Ilya Ilyich had money, the pantries were bursting with food, Agafya Matvevna had a wardrobe with clothes. Oblomov, out of his habit, lay all day on the sofa, watching Agafya Matveevna’s classes; for him this was a continuation of Oblomov’s life.
However, at one point after a lunch break, Oblomov suffered an apoplexy and the doctor said that he urgently needed to change his lifestyle - move more and follow a diet. Oblomov does not follow instructions. He increasingly falls into oblivion.
Stolz comes to Oblomov to take him with him. Oblomov does not want to leave, but Andrei Ivanovich invites him to visit him, informing him that Olga is waiting in the carriage. Then Oblomov says that Agafya Matveevna is his wife, and the boy Andrei is his son, named after Stoltz, so he does not want to leave this apartment. Andrei Ivanovich leaves upset, telling Olga that “Oblomovism” has now reigned in Ilya Ilyich’s apartment.
Chapters 10-11
Five years have passed. Three years ago, Oblomov had a stroke again and died quietly. Now her brother and his wife are in charge of the house. Stolz took Oblomov’s son Andrei into his care. Agafya greatly misses Oblomov and her son, but does not want to go to Stolz.
One day, while walking, Stolz meets Zakhar, begging on the street. Stolz calls him to his place, but the man does not want to go far from Oblomov’s grave.
When asked by Stolz’s interlocutor who Oblomov is and why he disappeared, Andrei Ivanovich answers: “The reason... what a reason! Oblomovism!
Conclusion
Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” is one of the most detailed and accurate studies of such a Russian phenomenon as “Oblomovism” - a national trait characterized by laziness, fear of change and daydreaming, replacing real activity. The author deeply analyzes the reasons for “Oblomovism,” seeing them in the pure, gentle, uncalculating soul of the hero, seeking peace and quiet, monotonous happiness, bordering on degradation and stagnation. Of course, a brief retelling of “Oblomov” cannot reveal to the reader all the issues considered by the author, so we strongly recommend that you evaluate the masterpiece of literature of the 19th century in full.
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The concept of Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” is so simple and at the same time unique that it even gave rise to the emergence and further use of a whole new concept, derived from the name of the main character and characterizing the main problems raised by the author. The writer himself introduces the term “Oblomovism” into literature, which has become social, harmoniously attributing its use to the character of the novel Stolz. The interest shown by critics in this concept is indisputable proof of the iconicity and significance of “Oblomov” not only in the work of Goncharov himself, but in all Russian literature. This result fully justifies the long period of work on the novel. It is difficult to judge when exactly the author had the corresponding idea, because according to available information, already in 1847 the writer planned the plot of the work. The year 1849 was marked by the release of a separate chapter, “Oblomov’s Dream.” Interestingly, it is the only one in the entire novel that has a name. Then, due to a trip around the world, the creation of the story was interrupted, but the author did not stop reflecting on the work. Goncharov continued writing only in 1857, and readers saw the final version in 1859.
It is not surprising that the writer tried to bring the work to perfection, repeatedly changing and adding, because it is quite difficult to convey the features of an entire era through the fate of specific individuals. The author systematically built the plot, clearly describing all its elements. The authenticity and detail of the depiction of reality in the novel is emphasized by Goncharov’s obvious use of realism methods. Knowing that the characters and relationships conveyed are fairly truthful makes the characters and events more relatable and therefore interesting to readers seeking to understand the realities of the 19th century. The author himself does not set the main goal of sharply condemning the phenomena he describes and does not give direct answers. He only tactfully leads to the corresponding conclusions, contrasting the images of thought and life of Oblomov and Stolz, Ilyinskaya and Pshenitsyna. There is a completely logical opinion that the actions of the characters reflect not just their individual principles, but the characteristic features of certain upper strata of the population, holding different socio-philosophical views. So some (like Ilya Ilyich) cling to the past, resist change, fear novelty, fantasize about a wonderful future consisting of a measured, satisfying existence. A significant event can only briefly disrupt their usual way of life (the main character’s feelings for Olga), and then again inaction, leading to death. Others (like Stolz) are directed forward to new achievements. They require constant action, and there is no time for empty dreams. Both of these characters are flawed. Therefore, Goncharov emphasizes the strong friendship between such different main characters, who complement each other’s images.
At first glance, it seems that Oblomov’s work will be difficult and boring to read. But the vividness of the description, the logic and sequence of events, the simplicity and accessibility of the presentation allow you to really get carried away by the extraordinary story of the main character and his entourage. They increase the desire to find out what the outcome of the plot will be. Of course, you can read the summary of the novel. But this will not give a clear picture of events, an understanding of the reasons for the periodic changes that occurred with the characters, or the opportunity to accurately feel and understand the importance of the questions raised by the author. Therefore, it is better to read the book “Oblomov” in full. The text is available online on our website. The work can also be downloaded freely.
Part one
In Gorokhovaya Street, in one of the large houses, the population of which would be equal to the entire county town, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov was lying in bed in his apartment in the morning.
He was a man about thirty-two or three years old, of average height, pleasant appearance, with dark gray eyes, but with the absence of any definite idea, any concentration in his facial features. The thought walked like a free bird across the face, fluttered in the eyes, sat on half-open lips, hid in the folds of the forehead, then completely disappeared, and then an even light of carelessness glowed throughout the face. From the face, carelessness passed into the poses of the whole body, even into the folds of the dressing gown.
Sometimes his gaze darkened with an expression as if of fatigue or boredom; but neither fatigue nor boredom could for a moment drive away from the face the softness that was the dominant and fundamental expression, not only of the face, but of the whole soul; and the soul shone so openly and clearly in the eyes, in the smile, in every movement of the head and hand. And a superficially observant, cold person, glancing in passing at Oblomov, would say: “He must be a good man, simplicity!” A deeper and prettier man, having peered into his face for a long time, would have walked away in pleasant thought, with a smile.
Ilya Ilyich’s complexion was neither ruddy, nor dark, nor positively pale, but indifferent or seemed so, perhaps because Oblomov was somehow flabby beyond his years: perhaps from lack of exercise or air, or maybe that and another. In general, his body, judging by the matte, too white color of his neck, small plump arms, soft shoulders, seemed too pampered for a man.
His movements, even when he was alarmed, were also restrained by softness and laziness, not without a kind of grace. If a cloud of care from the soul came over the face, the gaze became clouded, folds appeared on the forehead, a game of doubts, sadness, and fear began; but rarely did this anxiety congeal in the form of a definite idea, and even more rarely did it turn into an intention. All anxiety was resolved with a sigh and died away in apathy or dormancy.
How well Oblomov’s home suit suited his calm facial features and pampered body! He was wearing a robe made of Persian material, a real oriental robe, without the slightest hint of Europe, without tassels, without velvet, without a waist, very roomy, so that Oblomov could wrap himself in it twice. The sleeves, in constant Asian fashion, went wider and wider from the fingers to the shoulder. Although this robe had lost its original freshness and in places replaced its primitive, natural gloss with another, acquired one, it still retained the brightness of the oriental paint and the strength of the fabric.
The robe had in Oblomov’s eyes a darkness of invaluable merits: it is soft, flexible; the body does not feel it on itself; he, like an obedient slave, submits to the slightest movement of the body.
Oblomov always walked around the house without a tie and without a vest, because he loved space and freedom. His shoes were long, soft and wide; when he, without looking, lowered his feet from the bed to the floor, he certainly fell into them immediately.
Lying down for Ilya Ilyich was neither a necessity, like that of a sick person or like a person who wants to sleep, nor an accident, like that of someone who is tired, nor a pleasure, like that of a lazy person: it was his normal state. When he was at home - and he was almost always at home - he kept lying down, and always in the same room where we found him, which served as his bedroom, study and reception room. He had three more rooms, but he rarely looked into them, perhaps in the morning, and then not every day, when a man cleaned his office, which was not done every day. In three rooms the furniture was covered with covers, the curtains were drawn.
The room where Ilya Ilyich was lying seemed at first glance to be beautifully decorated. There was a mahogany bureau, two sofas upholstered in silk, beautiful screens with embroidered birds and fruits unprecedented in nature. There were silk curtains, carpets, several paintings, bronze, porcelain and many beautiful little things.
But the experienced eye of a person with pure taste, with one quick glance at everything that was here, would only read a desire to somehow observe the decorum of inevitable decency, just to get rid of them. Oblomov, of course, only bothered about this when he was cleaning his office. Refined taste would not be satisfied with these heavy, ungraceful mahogany chairs and rickety bookcases. The back of one sofa sank down, the glued wood came loose in places.
The paintings, vases, and small items bore exactly the same character.
The owner himself, however, looked at the decoration of his office so coldly and absent-mindedly, as if he was asking with his eyes: “Who brought and installed all this here?” Because of such a cold view of Oblomov on his property, and perhaps also from an even colder view of the same subject by his servant, Zakhar, the appearance of the office, if you examined it more closely, struck you with the neglect and negligence that prevailed in it.
On the walls, near the paintings, cobwebs, saturated with dust, were molded in the form of festoons; mirrors, instead of reflecting objects, could rather serve as tablets for writing down on them, in the dust, some notes for memory. The carpets were stained. There was a forgotten towel on the sofa; On rare mornings there was not a plate with a salt shaker and a gnawed bone on the table that had not been cleared away from yesterday’s dinner, and there were no bread crumbs lying around.
If it weren’t for this plate, and the freshly smoked pipe leaning against the bed, or the owner himself lying on it, then one would have thought that no one lived here - everything was so dusty, faded and generally devoid of living traces of humanity presence. On the shelves, however, there were two or three open books, a newspaper, and an inkwell with feathers on the bureau; but the pages on which the books were unfolded were covered with dust and turned yellow; it is clear that they were abandoned a long time ago; The issue of the newspaper was last year, and if you dipped a pen into it from the inkwell, a frightened fly would only escape with a buzz.
Ilya Ilyich woke up, contrary to usual, very early, at eight o’clock. He is very concerned about something. His face alternated between fear, melancholy and annoyance. It was clear that he was overcome by an internal struggle, and his mind had not yet come to the rescue.
The fact is that Oblomov the day before received an unpleasant letter from the village, from his village elder. It is known what kind of troubles the headman can write about: crop failure, arrears, decrease in income, etc. Although the headman wrote exactly the same letters to his master last year and in the third year, this last letter had as strong an effect as any an unpleasant surprise.
Is it easy? it was necessary to think about means to take some measures. However, we must give justice to Ilya Ilyich’s care for his affairs. Following the first unpleasant letter from the headman, received several years ago, he had already begun to create in his mind a plan for various changes and improvements in the management of his estate.
PART ONE
OBLOMOV'S DREAM
Where are we? To what blessed corner of the earth did Oblomov’s dream take us? What a wonderful land!
No, really, there are seas there, no high mountains, rocks and abysses, no dense forests - there is nothing grandiose, wild and gloomy.
And why is it so wild and grandiose? The sea, for example? God bless him! It only brings sadness to a person: looking at it, you want to cry. The heart is embarrassed by timidity in front of the vast veil of waters, and there is nothing to rest the gaze, exhausted by the monotony of the endless picture.
The roar and frantic rolls of the waves are not pleasing to the weak of hearing: they keep repeating their own, from the beginning of the world, the same song of gloomy and unsolved content; and you can still hear in her the same groan, the same complaints as if of a monster doomed to torment, and someone’s piercing, ominous voices. Birds don't chirp around; only silent seagulls, like condemned ones, sadly rush along the coast and circle over the water.
The roar of the beast is powerless before these cries of nature, the voice of man is insignificant, and man himself is so small, weak, so imperceptibly disappears into the small details of the broad picture! This may be why it’s so hard for him to look at the sea.
No, God be with him, with the sea! Its very silence and immobility do not give rise to a gratifying feeling in the soul: in the barely noticeable fluctuations of the water mass, a person still sees the same immense, albeit sleeping, force, which sometimes so poisonously mocks his proud will and so deeply buries his brave plans, all his troubles and labors.
Mountains and abysses were also not created for human amusement. They are formidable, terrible, like the claws and teeth of a wild beast released and directed at him; they remind us too vividly of our mortal composition and keep us in fear and longing for life. And the sky there, above the rocks and abysses, seems so distant and inaccessible, as if it had retreated from people.
This is not the peaceful corner where our hero suddenly found himself.
The sky there, on the contrary, seems to be pressing closer to the earth, but not in order to throw arrows more powerfully, but perhaps only to hug it tighter, with love: it spreads out so low above your head, like a parent’s reliable roof, to protect, it seems , a chosen corner from all adversity.
The sun shines there brightly and hotly for about six months and then does not suddenly leave there, as if reluctantly, as if it were turning back to look once or twice at its favorite place and give it a clear, warm day in the fall, amidst bad weather.
The mountains there seem to be just models of those terrible mountains erected somewhere that terrify the imagination. This is a series of gentle hills, from which it is pleasant to roll, frolic, on your back, or, sitting on them, look thoughtfully at the setting sun.
The river runs merrily, frolicking and playing; It either spills into a wide pond, then rushes like a quick thread, or becomes quiet, as if lost in thought, and crawls a little over the pebbles, releasing playful streams on the sides, under the murmur of which it sweetly dozes.
The entire corner of fifteen or twenty miles around was a series of picturesque sketches, cheerful, smiling landscapes. The sandy and sloping banks of a bright river, small bushes creeping up from a hill to the water, a curved ravine with a stream at the bottom and a birch grove - everything seemed to have been deliberately tidied up one by one and masterfully drawn.
A heart exhausted by worries or completely unfamiliar with them asks to hide in this corner forgotten by everyone and live a happiness unknown to anyone. Everything there promises a peaceful, long-lasting life until the hair turns yellow and an imperceptible death, like a dream.
The annual cycle occurs there correctly and calmly.
According to the calendar, spring will come in March, dirty streams will run from the hills, the earth will thaw and smoke with warm steam; the peasant will take off his sheepskin coat, go out into the air in his shirt and, covering his eyes with his hand, admire the sun for a long time, shrugging his shoulders with pleasure; then he will pull the upturned cart by one shaft or the other, or inspect and kick the plow lying idly under the canopy, preparing for ordinary work.
Sudden blizzards do not return in the spring, do not cover fields and break trees with snow.
Winter, like an unapproachable, cold beauty, maintains its character until the legalized time of warmth; does not tease with unexpected thaws and does not bend in three arcs with unheard of frosts; everything goes in the usual, general order prescribed by nature.
In November, snow and frost begin, which intensifies towards Epiphany to the point that a peasant, leaving his hut for a minute, will certainly return with frost on his beard; and in February, a sensitive nose already senses the soft breeze of approaching spring in the air.
But summer, summer is especially delightful in that region. There you need to look for fresh, dry air, filled - not with lemon or laurel, but simply with the smell of wormwood, pine and bird cherry; there to look for clear days, slightly burning, but not scorching rays of the sun and almost three months of cloudless skies.
As the days become clear, they last for three or four weeks; and the evening was warm there, and the night was stuffy. The stars twinkle from the sky so welcomingly, so friendly.
Will it rain - what a beneficial summer rain! It flows briskly, abundantly, jumping merrily, like large and hot tears of a suddenly joyful person; and as soon as it stops, the sun again, with a clear smile of love, inspects and dries the fields and hillocks; and the whole side again smiles with happiness in response to the sun.
The peasant joyfully welcomes the rain: “The rain will soak you, the sun will dry you!” - he says, exposing his face, shoulders and back with pleasure to the warm rain.
Thunderstorms are not terrible, but only beneficial there: they occur constantly at the same set time, almost never forgetting Ilya’s day, as if in order to support a well-known legend among the people. And the number and force of blows seem to be the same every year, just as if a certain amount of electricity was released from the treasury for the entire region for a year.
Neither terrible storms nor destruction can be heard in that region.
No one has ever read anything like this in the newspapers about this God-blessed corner. And nothing would have ever been published, and no one would have heard about this region, if only the peasant widow Marina Kulkova, twenty-eight years old, had not given birth to four babies at once, which was impossible to keep silent about.
The Lord did not punish that side with either Egyptian or simple plagues. None of the residents have seen or remember any terrible heavenly signs, no balls of fire, or sudden darkness; there are no poisonous reptiles there; the locusts do not fly there; there are no roaring lions, no roaring tigers, not even bears and wolves, because there are no forests. There are only plenty of chewing cows, bleating sheep and clucking chickens wandering through the fields and the village.
God knows whether a poet or a dreamer would be content with the nature of a peaceful corner. These gentlemen, as you know, love to look at the moon and listen to the clicking of nightingales. They love the coquette moon, which would dress up in fawn clouds and shine mysteriously through the branches of trees or sprinkle sheaves of silver rays into the eyes of its admirers.
And in this region no one knew what kind of moon it was - everyone called it a month. She somehow good-naturedly looked at the villages and fields with all her eyes and looked very much like a cleaned copper basin.
It would be in vain that the poet would look at her with enthusiastic eyes: she would look at the poet just as innocently as a round-faced village beauty looks in response to the passionate and eloquent glances of the city red tape.
Soloviev is also unheard of in that region, perhaps because there were no shady shelters or roses there; but what an abundance of quails! In the summer, when harvesting grain, the boys catch them with their hands.
Yes, they will not think, however, that quails constitute an object of gastronomic luxury there - no, such corruption has not penetrated the morals of the inhabitants of that region: the quail is a bird not indicated by the regulations as food. There she delights people's ears with her singing: that is why in almost every house a quail hangs under the roof in a thread cage.
The poet and dreamer would not have been satisfied even with the general appearance of this modest and unpretentious area. They would not be able to see some evening there in the Swiss or Scottish style, when all nature - the forest, the water, the walls of the huts, and the sandy hills - everything burns as if with a crimson glow; when, against this crimson background, a cavalcade of men riding along a sandy winding road is sharply shaded, accompanying some lady on walks to a gloomy ruin or hastening to a strong castle, where an episode about the war of the two roses awaits them, told by the grandfather, a wild goat for dinner and sung by the young miss a ballad to the sounds of a lute - the pictures with which the pen of Walter Scott so richly populated our imagination.
No, there was nothing like this in our region.
How quiet everything is, everything is sleepy in the three or four villages that make up this corner! They lay not far from each other and were as if accidentally thrown by a giant hand and scattered in different directions, and have remained that way ever since.
Just as one hut ended up on the cliff of a ravine, it has been hanging there since time immemorial, standing with one half in the air and supported by three poles. Three or four generations lived quietly and happily in it.
It seems that a chicken would be afraid to enter it, but Onisim Suslov lives there with his wife, a respectable man who does not stare at his full height in his home.
Not everyone will be able to enter the hut to Onesimus; unless the visitor begs her stand with your back to the forest and your front towards it.
The porch hung over a ravine, and in order to get onto the porch with your foot, you had to grab the grass with one hand, the roof of the hut with the other, and then step straight onto the porch.
Another hut clung to the hillock like a swallow's nest; there three of them happened to be nearby, and two are standing at the very bottom of the ravine.
Everything in the village is quiet and sleepy: the silent huts are wide open; not a soul in sight; Only flies fly in clouds and buzz in the stuffy atmosphere.
Entering the hut, you will begin to call loudly in vain: dead silence will be the answer: in a rare hut, an old woman living out her days on the stove will respond with a painful groan or dull cough, or a barefoot, long-haired three-year-old child in only a shirt will appear from behind the partition, silently, looking intently at entered and timidly hides again.
The same deep silence and peace lie in the fields; only here and there, like an ant, a plowman, scorched by the heat, crawls in a black field like an ant, leaning on his plow and sweating profusely.
Silence and undisturbed calm reign in the morals of the people in that region. No robberies, no murders, no terrible accidents happened there; neither strong passions nor daring undertakings excited them.
And what passions and enterprises could excite them? Everyone knew himself there. The inhabitants of this region lived far from other people. The nearest villages and the district town were twenty-five and thirty miles away.
At a certain time, the peasants transported grain to the nearest pier to the Volga, which was their Colchis and the pillars of Hercules, and once a year some went to the fair, and had no further relations with anyone.
Their interests were focused on themselves, and did not intersect or come into contact with anyone else.
They knew that eighty miles from them there was a “province,” that is, a provincial city, but few went there; then they knew that further away, there, Saratov or Nizhny; they heard that there were Moscow and St. Petersburg, that beyond St. Petersburg the French or Germans lived, and then a dark world began for them, as for the ancients, unknown countries inhabited by monsters, people with two heads, giants; there followed darkness - and, finally, everything ended with that fish that holds the earth on itself.
And since their corner was almost impassable, there was nowhere to get the latest news about what was happening in this world: the transporters with wooden utensils lived only twenty miles away and knew no more than them. They didn’t even have anything to compare their life with; Do they live well? whether they are rich or poor; Could there be anything more you could wish for that others have?
Happy people lived thinking that it shouldn’t and couldn’t be any other way, confident that everyone else lived exactly the same way and that living differently was a sin.
They wouldn’t even believe it if they were told that others plow, sow, reap, and sell differently. What passions and worries could they have?
They, like all people, had worries and weaknesses, contributions of taxes or rent, laziness and sleep; but all this cost them cheap, without worrying about blood.
In the last five years, out of several hundred souls, not one has died, let alone a violent, or even a natural death.
And if someone, from old age or from some long-standing illness, fell into eternal sleep, then for a long time after that they could not marvel at such an extraordinary event.
Meanwhile, it did not seem at all surprising to them that, for example, the blacksmith Taras almost steamed himself to death in a dugout, to the point that it was necessary to pour water on him.
One of the crimes, namely the theft of peas, carrots and turnips from vegetable gardens, was in great circulation, and one day two pigs and a chicken suddenly disappeared - an incident that outraged the entire neighborhood and was unanimously attributed to a convoy with wooden utensils passing to the fair the day before. Otherwise, accidents of any kind were very rare.
Once, however, a man was found lying behind the outskirts, in a ditch, near the bridge, apparently a man who had lagged behind the artel that was passing into the city.
The boys were the first to notice him and ran to the village in horror with the news of some terrible snake or werewolf lying in a ditch, adding that he chased them and almost ate Kuzka.
Where is it taking you? - the old people calmed down. - Is your neck strong? What do you want? Don't worry: you are not being persecuted.
But the men went and fifty yards away began to call out to the monster in different voices: there was no answer; they stopped; then they moved again.
A man was lying in a ditch, leaning his head on a hillock; near him lay a bag and a stick on which two pairs of bast shoes were hung.
The men did not dare to come close or touch.
Hey! You, brother! - they shouted in turn, scratching the back of their heads and their backs. - How are you? Hey, you! What do you want here?
The passer-by made a movement to raise his head, but could not: he was apparently unwell or very tired.
One decided to touch him with a pitchfork.
Don't hesitate! Don't hesitate! - many shouted. - Who knows what he’s like: look, he doesn’t give a damn: maybe he’s like that... Don’t cover him up, guys!
Let's go, - some said, - really, let's go: what is he to us, uncle, or what? Only trouble with him!
And everyone went back to the village, telling the old people that a stranger was lying there, not harming anything, and God knows he was there...
Stranger, don't bother! - the old men said, sitting on the rubble and putting their elbows on their knees. - Let him have it! And you had nothing to walk on!
This was the corner where Oblomov was suddenly transported in a dream.
Of the three or four villages scattered there, one was Sosnovka, the other was Vavilovka, one mile from each other.
Sosnovka and Vavilovka were the hereditary homeland of the Oblomov family and therefore were known under the common name Oblomovka.
There was a master's estate and residence in Sosnovka. About five versts from Sosnovka lay the village of Verkhlevo, which also once belonged to the Oblomov family and had long ago passed into other hands, and several more scattered huts belonging to the same village.
The village belonged to a wealthy landowner who never went to his estate: it was managed by a German manager.
That's the whole geography of this corner.
Ilya Ilyich woke up in the morning in his small bed. He is only seven years old. It's easy and fun for him.
How cute, red and plump he is! The cheeks are so round that some naughty people would pout on purpose, but they wouldn’t do something like that.
The nanny is waiting for him to wake up. She begins to pull on his stockings; he doesn’t give in, plays pranks, dangles his legs; the nanny catches him, and they both laugh.
Finally she managed to get him to his feet; she washes him, combs his head and takes him to his mother.
Oblomov, seeing his long-dead mother, trembled in his sleep with joy, with ardent love for her: in his sleepy state, two warm tears slowly floated out from under his eyelashes and became motionless.
His mother showered him with passionate kisses, then examined him with greedy, caring eyes to see if his eyes were cloudy, asked if anything hurt, asked the nanny if he slept peacefully, if he woke up at night, if he tossed about in his sleep, if he does he have a fever? Then she took him by the hand and led him to the image.
There, kneeling down and hugging him with one hand, she suggested to him the words of prayer.
The boy repeated them absentmindedly, looking out the window, from where coolness and the smell of lilac poured into the room.
Mama, shall we go for a walk today? - he suddenly asked in the middle of prayer.
Let’s go, darling,” she said hastily, without taking her eyes off the icon and hastening to finish the holy words.
The boy repeated them listlessly, but the mother put her whole soul into them.
Then they went to their father, then to tea.
Near the tea table, Oblomov saw an elderly aunt living with them, eighty years old, constantly grumbling at her little girl, who, shaking her head from old age, served her, standing behind her chair. There are three elderly girls, distant relatives of his father, and his mother’s slightly crazy brother-in-law, and the landowner of seven souls, Chekmenev, who was visiting them, and some other old women and old men.
This entire staff and retinue of the Oblomov house picked up Ilya Ilyich in their arms and began to shower him with affection and praise; he barely had time to wipe away the traces of uninvited kisses.
After that, they began feeding him buns, crackers, and cream.
Then the mother, having petted him some more, let him go for a walk in the garden, around the yard, in the meadow, with a strict confirmation to the nanny not to leave the child alone, not to let him near horses, dogs, a goat, not to go far from the house, and most importantly, not to let him into the ravine, as the most terrible place in the area, which enjoyed a bad reputation.
There they once found a dog, recognized as rabid only because it rushed away from people when they attacked it with pitchforks and axes, and disappeared somewhere over the mountain; carrion was taken into the ravine; in the ravine there were supposed to be robbers, wolves, and various other creatures that either did not exist in that region or did not exist at all.
The child did not wait for his mother’s warnings: he had been out in the yard for a long time.
With joyful amazement, as if for the first time, he looked and ran around his parents’ house with a gate crooked to one side, with a wooden roof sagging in the middle, on which delicate green moss grew, with a wobbly porch, various extensions and settings, and a neglected garden.
He passionately wants to run up to the hanging gallery that goes around the whole house to look at the river from there; but the gallery is dilapidated, barely holds up, and only “people” are allowed to walk along it, but gentlemen do not walk.
He did not heed his mother’s prohibitions and was about to head towards the seductive steps, but the nanny appeared on the porch and somehow caught him.
He rushed from her to the hayloft, with the intention of climbing up the steep stairs, and as soon as she had time to reach the hayloft, she had to rush to destroy his plans to climb into the dovecote, enter the barnyard and, God forbid! - into the ravine.
Oh, Lord, what a child, what a spinning top! Will you sit still, sir? Ashamed! - said the nanny.
And the whole day, and all the days and nights of the nanny were filled with turmoil, running around: now torture, now living joy for the child, now fear that he will fall and break his nose, now tenderness from his unfeigned childish affection or vague longing for his distant future: This was the only thing that kept her heart beating, these emotions warmed the old woman’s blood, and somehow they supported her sleepy life, which without it, perhaps, would have died out a long time ago.
The child is not always playful, however: sometimes he suddenly becomes quiet, sitting next to the nanny, and looks at everything so intently. His childish mind observes all the phenomena taking place in front of him; they sink deep into his soul, then grow and mature with him.
The morning is magnificent; the air is cool; the sun is still low. From the house, from the trees, and from the dovecote, and from the gallery - long shadows ran far away from everything. Cool corners have formed in the garden and yard, inviting thoughtfulness and sleep. Only in the distance the field with rye seems to be burning with fire, and the river glitters and sparkles so much in the sun that it hurts your eyes.
Why is it, nanny, that it’s dark here and light there, and why will it be light there too? - asked the child.
Because, father, the sun goes towards the month and does not see it, it frowns; and as soon as he sees it from afar, he will brighten up.
The child becomes thoughtful and looks around: he sees how Antip went to fetch water, and on the ground, next to him, another Antip walked, ten times larger than the real one, and the barrel seemed as big as a house, and the horse’s shadow covered the entire meadow, the shadow only stepped twice across the meadow and suddenly moved over the mountain, and Antip had not yet managed to leave the yard.
The child also took a step or two, another step - and he would go over the mountain.
He would like to go to the mountain to see where the horse went. He was heading towards the gate, but his mother’s voice was heard from the window:
Nanny! Don't you see that the child ran out into the sun? Take him into the cold; if it gets on his head, he will get sick, feel nauseous, and won’t eat. He'll go into your ravine like that!
Uh! darling! - the nanny quietly grumbles, dragging him out onto the porch.
The child looks and observes with a sharp and perceptive gaze, how and what adults do, what they devote their morning to.
Not a single detail, not a single feature escapes the child’s inquisitive attention; the picture of home life is indelibly etched into the soul; the soft mind is fed with living examples and unconsciously draws a program for his life based on the life around him.
It cannot be said that the morning was wasted in the Oblomovs’ house. The sound of knives chopping cutlets and herbs in the kitchen even reached the village.
From the people's room one could hear the hiss of a spindle and the quiet, thin voice of a woman: it was difficult to discern whether she was crying or improvising a mournful song without words.
In the yard, as soon as Antip returned with the barrel, women and coachmen crawled towards her from different corners with buckets, troughs and jugs.
And there the old woman will carry a cup of flour and a bunch of eggs from the barn into the kitchen; there the cook will suddenly throw water out of the window and pour it on Little Arapka, who, all morning, without taking her eyes off, looks out the window, affectionately wagging her tail and licking her lips.
Oblomov the old man himself is also not without activities. He sits by the window all morning and strictly watches everything that is happening in the yard.
Hey, Ignashka? What are you talking about, fool? - he will ask a man walking in the yard.
“I’m taking the knives to the servants’ room to sharpen,” he answers without looking at the master.
Well, bring it, carry it, and get it right, look, sharpen it!
Then he stops the woman:
Hey grandma! Woman! Where did you go?
“To the cellar, father,” she said, stopping and, covering her eyes with her hand, looking at the window, “to get milk for the table.”
Well, go, go! - answered the master. - Be careful not to spill the milk. - And you, Zakharka, little shooter, where are you running again? - he shouted later. - Here I will let you run! I already see that this is the third time you are running. I went back to the hallway!
And Zakharka went into the hallway again to doze.
When the cows come from the field, the old man will be the first to make sure they are given water; If he sees from the window that a mongrel is chasing a chicken, he will immediately take strict measures against the riots.
And his wife is very busy: she spends three hours talking with Averka, the tailor, about how to alter Ilyusha’s jacket from her husband’s sweatshirt, she herself draws with chalk and watches so that Averka doesn’t steal the cloth; then he will go to the girls' room, ask each girl how much lace to weave on the day; then he will invite Nastasya Ivanovna, or Stepanida Agapovna, or another of his retinue to walk around the garden with a practical purpose: to see how the apple is pouring, to see if yesterday’s apple, which is already ripe, has fallen; graft there, prune there, etc.
But the main concern was the kitchen and dinner. The whole house discussed dinner; and the elderly aunt was invited to the council. Everyone offered their own dish: some soup with giblets, some noodles or gizzard, some tripe, some red, some white gravy for the sauce.
Any advice was taken into account, discussed in detail and then accepted or rejected according to the final verdict of the hostess.
Nastasya Petrovna and Stepanida Ivanovna were constantly sent to the kitchen to remind them whether to add this or cancel that, to bring sugar, honey, and wine for the meal and to see if the cook would put in everything that had been set aside.
Taking care of food was the first and main concern of life in Oblomovka. What calves grew fat there for the annual holidays! What a bird was raised! How many subtle considerations, how much knowledge and care there is in courting her! Turkeys and chickens assigned to name days and other special days were fattened with nuts; The geese were deprived of exercise and forced to hang motionless in a bag several days before the holiday, so that they would swim with fat. What stocks there were of jams, pickles, and cookies! What honeys, what kvass were brewed, what pies were baked in Oblomovka!
And so until noon everything was fussing and worrying, everything lived such a full, ant-like, such a noticeable life.
On Sundays and holidays, these hardworking ants also did not stop: then the knocking of knives in the kitchen was heard more often and louder; the woman made the journey from the barn to the kitchen several times with double the amount of flour and eggs; there was more groaning and bloodshed in the poultry yard. They baked a gigantic pie, which the gentlemen themselves ate the next day; on the third and fourth days, the leftovers went to the maiden room; the pie lived until Friday, so that one completely stale end, without any filling, went, as a special favor, to Antipus, who, crossing himself, undauntedly destroyed this curious fossil with a crash, enjoying more the knowledge that this was the master's pie than the pie itself, like an archaeologist who enjoys drinking crappy wine from a shard of some thousand-year-old pottery.
And the child looked and observed everything with his childish mind, which did not miss anything. He saw how, after a useful and troublesome morning spent, noon and lunch came.
The afternoon is sultry; the sky is clear. The sun stands motionless overhead and burns the grass. The air has stopped flowing and hangs motionless. Neither the tree nor the water moves; There is an imperturbable silence over the village and the field - everything seems to have died out. A human voice is heard loudly and far away in the void. Twenty fathoms away you can hear a beetle flying and buzzing, and in the thick grass someone is still snoring, as if someone has fallen in there and is sleeping in a sweet dream.
And dead silence reigned in the house. The time for everyone's afternoon nap has arrived.
The child sees that his father, his mother, his old aunt, and his retinue have all scattered to their own corners; and whoever didn’t have one went to the hayloft, another to the garden, a third sought coolness in the hallway, and another, covering his face with a handkerchief from the flies, fell asleep where the heat overpowered him and the bulky dinner fell on him. And the gardener stretched out under a bush in the garden, next to his pick, and the coachman slept in the stable.
Ilya Ilyich looked into the people's room: in the people's room everyone lay down, on the benches, on the floor and in the hallway, leaving the children to their own devices; children crawl around the yard and dig in the sand. And the dogs climbed far into their kennels, fortunately there was no one to bark at.
You could walk through the entire house and not meet a soul; it was easy to rob everything around and take it out of the yard on carts: no one would have interfered, if only there were thieves in that region.
It was some kind of all-consuming, invincible dream, a true likeness of death. Everything is dead, only from all corners comes a variety of snoring in all tones and modes.
Occasionally, someone will suddenly raise his head from sleep, look senselessly, with surprise, at both sides and roll over to the other side, or, without opening his eyes, he will spit in his sleep and, chewing his lips or muttering something under his breath, will fall asleep again.
And the other quickly, without any preliminary preparations, will jump with both feet from his bed, as if afraid to lose precious minutes, grab a mug of kvass and, blowing on the flies floating there, so that they are carried to the other edge, causing the flies, until motionless, begin to move violently, in the hope of improving their situation, wet their throat and then fall back onto the bed as if shot.
And the child watched and watched.
After dinner, he and the nanny went out into the air again. But the nanny, despite all the severity of the lady’s orders and her own will, could not resist the charm of sleep. She also became infected with this epidemic disease that prevailed in Oblomovka.
At first she cheerfully looked after the child, did not let him go far from her, sternly grumbled about his playfulness, then, feeling the symptoms of an approaching infection, she began to beg him not to go beyond the gate, not to touch the goat, not to climb into the dovecote or gallery.
She herself sat down somewhere in the cold: on the porch, on the threshold of the cellar, or simply on the grass, apparently in order to knit a stocking and look after the child. But soon she lazily calmed him down, nodding her head.
“Oh, just behold, this spinning top will climb into the gallery,” she thought almost in a dream, “or else... into a ravine, as it were...”
Here the old woman’s head bowed to her knees, the stocking fell out of her hands; she lost sight of the child and, opening her mouth a little, let out a light snore.
And he was looking forward to this moment with which his independent life began.
It was as if he was alone in the whole world; he ran away from the nanny on tiptoe, looking at everyone who was sleeping where; stops and watches intently as someone wakes up, spits or mutters something in his sleep; then, with a sinking heart, he ran up to the gallery, ran around on the creaking boards, climbed the dovecote, climbed into the wilderness of the garden, listened to the buzzing of the beetle, and with his eyes followed its flight in the air far away; listened to someone chirping in the grass, looked for and caught the violators of this silence; catches a dragonfly, tears off its wings and sees what becomes of it, or pokes a straw through it and watches how it flies with this addition; with pleasure, fearing to die, he watches the spider, how he sucks the blood of a caught fly, how the poor victim beats and buzzes in his paws. The child will end up killing both the victim and the tormentor.
Then he climbs into the ditch, digs around, looks for some roots, peels off the bark and eats to his heart's content, preferring the apples and jam that his mother gives him.
He will run out of the gate: he would like to go into the birch forest; it seems so close to him that he could get to it in five minutes, not around along the road, but straight through the ditch, hedges and holes; but he is afraid: there, they say, there are goblins, and robbers, and terrible beasts.
He wants to run into the ravine: it is only fifty yards from the garden; the child had already run to the edge, closed his eyes, wanted to look, as into the crater of a volcano... but suddenly all the rumors and legends about this ravine rose before him: he was seized with horror, and he, neither alive nor dead, rushes back and, trembling from out of fear, rushed to the nanny and woke up the old woman.
She woke up from her sleep, straightened the scarf on her head, picked up scraps of gray hair under it with her finger and, pretending that she had not slept at all, glances suspiciously at Ilyusha, then at the master's windows and begins with trembling fingers to poke the needles of the stocking that lay with her one into the other on the knees.
Meanwhile, the heat began to subside little by little; everything in nature has become more lively; the sun has already moved towards the forest.
And little by little the silence in the house was broken: in one corner a door creaked somewhere; someone's footsteps were heard in the yard; someone sneezed in the hayloft.
Soon a man hurriedly carried a huge samovar from the kitchen, bending over from the weight. They began to get ready for tea: some of their faces were wrinkled and their eyes were swollen with tears; he left a red spot on his cheek and temples; the third speaks from sleep in a voice that is not his own. All this sniffles, groans, yawns, scratches his head and stretches, barely coming to his senses.
Lunch and sleep gave rise to an unquenchable thirst. Thirst burns my throat; twelve cups of tea are drunk, but this does not help: groaning and groaning can be heard; they resort to lingonberry water, pear water, kvass, and others even to medical aid, just to relieve the drought in their throat.
Everyone was looking for liberation from thirst, as from some kind of punishment from the Lord; everyone is rushing about, everyone is languishing, like a caravan of travelers in the Arabian steppe, not finding a spring of water anywhere.
The child is here, next to his mother: he peers into the strange faces surrounding him, listens to their sleepy and sluggish conversation. It’s fun for him to look at them, and every nonsense they say seems curious to him.
After tea, everyone will do something: some will go to the river and quietly wander along the bank, pushing pebbles into the water with their feet; another will sit by the window and catch with his eyes every fleeting phenomenon: whether a cat runs across the yard, whether a jackdaw flies by, the observer pursues both with his eyes and the tip of his nose, turning his head now to the right, now to the left. So sometimes dogs like to sit for whole days on the window, exposing their heads to the sun and carefully looking at every passerby.
The mother will take Ilyusha’s head, put it on her lap and slowly comb his hair, admiring its softness and making both Nastasya Ivanovna and Stepanida Tikhonovna admire, and talks with them about Ilyusha’s future, making him the hero of some brilliant epic she has created. They promise him mountains of gold.
But now it begins to get dark. The fire is crackling in the kitchen again, the rattling sound of knives is heard again: dinner is being prepared.
The servants have gathered at the gate: a balalaika and laughter can be heard there. People play burners.
And the sun was already setting behind the forest; it cast several slightly warm rays, which cut a fiery stripe through the entire forest, brightly bathing the tops of the pines with gold. Then the rays went out one after another; the last ray remained for a long time; he, like a thin needle, pierced the thicket of branches; but that too went out.
Objects lost their shape; everything merged first into a gray, then into a dark mass. The singing of the birds gradually weakened; soon they became completely silent, except for one stubborn one, who, as if in defiance of everyone, in the midst of the general silence, chirped monotonously at intervals, but less and less, and she finally whistled weakly, silently, for the last time, perked up, slightly moving the leaves around me... and fell asleep.
Everything fell silent. Some grasshoppers made louder noises when they started. White vapors rose from the ground and spread across the meadow and river. The river also calmed down; a little later, someone suddenly splashed inside her one last time, and she became motionless.
It smelled damp. It got darker and darker. The trees were grouped into some kind of monsters; It became scary in the forest: there, someone would suddenly creak, as if one of the monsters was moving from its place to another, and a dry twig seemed to crunch under his foot.
The first star sparkled brightly in the sky, like a living eye, and lights flickered in the windows of the house.
These are the moments of general, solemn silence of nature, those moments when the creative mind works stronger, poetic thoughts boil hotter, when passion flares up more vividly in the heart or melancholy aches more painfully, when in a cruel soul the seed of a criminal thought ripens more calmly and strongly, and when... in Everyone rests so soundly and peacefully in Oblomovka.
Let’s go for a walk, mom,” says Ilyusha.
What are you, God bless you! Now go for a walk,” she replies, “it’s damp, you’ll catch cold in your legs; and it’s scary: a goblin is now walking in the forest, he’s carrying away little children.
Where is it going? What is it like? Where does he live? - asks the child.
And the mother gave free rein to her unbridled imagination.
The child listened to her, opening and closing his eyes, until finally sleep overcame him completely. The nanny came and, taking him from his mother’s lap, carried him sleepy, with his head hanging over her shoulder, to bed.
The day has passed, and thank God! - said the Oblomovites, lying in bed, groaning and making the sign of the cross. - Lived well; God willing it will be the same tomorrow! Glory to you, Lord! Glory to you, Lord!
Then Oblomov dreamed of another time: on an endless winter evening he timidly clings to his nanny, and she whispers to him about some unknown side, where there is neither night nor cold, where miracles happen, where rivers of honey and milk flow, where no one knows anything. he doesn’t do it all year round, but every day they only know that all the good fellows, such as Ilya Ilyich, and beauties are walking, no matter what a fairy tale can describe.
There is also a kind sorceress, who sometimes appears to us in the form of a pike, who will choose some favorite, quiet, harmless, in other words, some lazy person, whom everyone offends, and even showers on him, for no reason at all, all sorts of good things, and he just eats for himself and dresses up in a ready-made dress, and then marries some unheard-of beauty Militrisa Kirbityevna.
The child, with his ears and eyes pricked up, passionately absorbed the story.
The nurse or the legend so skillfully avoided in the story everything that actually exists that the imagination and mind, imbued with fiction, remained in his slavery until old age. The nanny with good nature told the tale of Emel the Fool, this evil and insidious satire on our great-grandfathers, and perhaps even on ourselves.
The adult Ilya Ilyich, although he later learns that there are no honey and milk rivers, no good sorceresses, although he jokes with a smile at the nanny’s stories, but this smile is not sincere, it is accompanied by a secret sigh: his fairy tale is mixed with life, and he unconsciously Sometimes I feel sad, why is a fairy tale not life, and why is life not a fairy tale?
He involuntarily dreams of Militris Kirbityevna; he is constantly drawn in the direction where they only know that they are walking, where there are no worries and sorrows; he always has the disposition to lie on the stove, walk around in a ready-made, unearned dress and eat at the expense of the good sorceress.
Both old man Oblomov and grandfather listened to the same fairy tales in childhood, passed down in the stereotypical edition of antiquity, in the mouths of nannies and uncles, through centuries and generations.
The nanny, meanwhile, paints a different picture for the child’s imagination.
She tells him about the exploits of our Achilles and Ulysses, about the prowess Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, about Polkan the hero, about Kolechiche the passerby, about how they wandered around Rus', beat countless hordes of infidels, how they competed to see who could drink a glass of green wine in one breath and not grunt; then she spoke about evil robbers, about sleeping princesses, petrified cities and people; finally, she moved on to our demonology, to the dead, to monsters and werewolves.
With the simplicity and good nature of Homer, with the same lively fidelity to the details and relief of the pictures, she put into the children's memory and imagination the iliad of Russian life, created by our Homerids of those foggy times, when man was not yet comfortable with the dangers and mysteries of nature and life, when he trembled and before the werewolf, and before the goblin, and with Alyosha Popovich, he sought protection from the troubles that surrounded him, when miracles reigned in the air, and in the water, and in the forest, and in the field.
The life of the man of that time was terrible and unfaithful; It was dangerous for him to go beyond the threshold of the house: just behold, he would be whipped by an animal, stabbed to death by a robber, an evil Tatar would take everything away from him, or the man would disappear without a trace, without any trace.
And then suddenly heavenly signs will appear, pillars of fire and balls; and there, over a fresh grave, a light will flash, or someone is walking in the forest, as if with a lantern, laughing terribly and sparkling his eyes in the darkness.
And so many incomprehensible things were happening to the man himself: a person lives and lives long and well - nothing, but suddenly he starts talking in such an unworthy way, or starts shouting in a voice that is not his own, or wanders sleepy at night; the other, for no apparent reason, will begin to warp and hit the ground. And before this happened, a hen had just crowed a rooster and a raven cawed over the roof.
The weak man was lost, looking around in horror at life, and looked in his imagination for the key to the mysteries of the surrounding nature and his own.
Or perhaps sleep, the eternal silence of a sluggish life and the absence of movement and any real fears, adventures and dangers forced a person to create another, unrealizable world in the natural world and in it to seek revelry and fun for the idle imagination or the solution to ordinary combinations of circumstances and causes of the phenomenon outside itself phenomena.
Our poor ancestors lived gropingly; They did not inspire or restrain their will, and then they naively marveled or were horrified by the inconvenience, evil and interrogated the reasons from the silent, unclear hieroglyphs of nature.
For them, death occurred from the dead person who had previously been carried out of the house with his head, and not with his feet from the gate; fire - because a dog howled under the window for three nights; and they took pains to ensure that the deceased was carried out of the gate with their feet, and ate the same things, and slept the same as before on the bare grass; the howling dog was beaten or driven out of the yard, but the sparks from the splinter were still thrown into a crack in the rotten floor.
And to this day, in the midst of the strict, devoid of fiction reality that surrounds him, Russian people love to believe the seductive legends of antiquity, and it may be a long time before he renounces this faith.
Listening to stories from the nanny about our golden rune - Firebird, about the obstacles and secret places of the magic castle, the boy was either cheerful, imagining himself a hero of the feat, and goosebumps ran down his spine, or he suffered for the failures of the brave man.
Story after story flowed. The nanny told the story with fervor, picturesquely, with enthusiasm, and in places with inspiration, because she herself half believed the stories. The old woman's eyes sparkled with fire; my head was shaking with excitement; the voice rose to unusual notes.
The child, overwhelmed by unknown horror, huddled close to her with tears in his eyes.
Whether the conversation was about the dead rising from their graves at midnight, or about victims languishing in captivity with a monster, or about a bear with a wooden leg who goes through villages and villages to look for the natural leg that was cut off from him, the child’s hair cracked on his head with horror. ; the children's imagination either froze or boiled; he experienced a painful, sweetly painful process; my nerves were tense like strings.
When the nanny gloomily repeated the bear’s words: “Creak, creak, your leg is fake; I walked through the villages, walked through the village, all the women were sleeping, one woman was not sleeping, sitting on my skin, cooking my meat, spinning my wool,” etc.; when the bear finally entered the hut and was preparing to grab the kidnapper of his leg, the child could not stand it: with trepidation and a squeal, he threw himself into the nanny’s arms; Tears of fright begin to flow from his eyes, and at the same time he laughs with joy that he is not in the claws of the beast, but on a couch, next to the nanny.
The boy's imagination was filled with strange ghosts; fear and melancholy settled into the soul for a long time, perhaps forever. He sadly looks around and sees everything in life as harm, misfortune, everything dreams of that magical side, where there is no evil, troubles, sorrows, where Militrisa Kirbityevna lives, where they feed and clothe so well for nothing...
The fairy tale retains its power not only over children in Oblomovka, but also over adults until the end of their lives. Everyone in the house and in the village, from the master, his wife to the burly blacksmith Taras, everyone trembles for something on a dark evening: every tree then turns into a giant, every bush into a den of robbers.
The knocking of the shutters and the howling of the wind in the chimney made men, women and children turn pale. No one will go out of the gate alone after ten o'clock in the evening at Epiphany; Everyone on Easter night will be afraid to go to the stable, for fear of finding a brownie there.
In Oblomovka they believed everything: werewolves and the dead. If they are told that a haystack was walking across the field, they will not think twice and will believe it; If anyone hears a rumor that this is not a ram, but something else, or that such and such a Marfa or Stepanida is a witch, they will be afraid of both the ram and Martha: it will not even occur to them to ask why the ram became so a ram, and Martha became a witch, and they would even attack anyone who thought of doubting this - so strong is the faith in the miraculous in Oblomovka!
Ilya Ilyich will see later that the world is simply structured, that the dead do not rise from their graves, that giants, as soon as they get started, are immediately put in a booth, and robbers in prison; but if the very belief in ghosts disappears, then some kind of residue of fear and unaccountable melancholy remains.
Ilya Ilyich learned that there are no troubles from monsters, and he barely knows what kind there are, and at every step he is still waiting for something terrible and is afraid. And now, when left in a dark room or seeing a dead person, he trembles from the ominous melancholy implanted in his soul in childhood; laughing at his fears in the morning, he turns pale again in the evening.
He is already studying in the village of Verkhlevo, about five versts from Oblomovka, with the local manager, the German Stolz, who started a small boarding school for the children of the surrounding nobles.
He had his own son, Andrei, almost the same age as Oblomov, and they also gave him one boy, who almost never studied, but suffered more from scrofula, spent his entire childhood constantly blindfolded or blindfolded, and kept crying in secret about the fact that he lived not at his grandmother’s, but in someone else’s house, among the villains, that there was no one to caress him and no one would bake him his favorite pie.
Apart from these children, there were no others in the boarding house yet.
There is nothing to do, father and mother put the spoiled one Ilyusha in front of a book. It was worth the tears, the screams, the whims. Finally they took me away.
The German was a practical and strict man, like almost all Germans. Maybe Ilyusha would have had time to learn something well from him, if Oblomovka had been five hundred versts from Verkhlev. And then how to learn? The charm of Oblomov’s atmosphere, lifestyle and habits extended to Verlevo; after all, it, too, was once Oblomovka; there, except for Stolz’s house, everything breathed the same primitive laziness, simplicity of morals, silence and stillness.
The child's mind and heart were filled with all the pictures, scenes and customs of this life before he saw the first book. Who knows how early the development of the mental seed in a child’s brain begins? How to follow the birth of the first concepts and impressions in the infant soul?
Maybe, when the child was still barely pronouncing words, or maybe he wasn’t pronouncing them at all, didn’t even walk, but only looked at everything with that intent, dumb child’s gaze, which adults call stupid, he already saw and guessed the meaning and connection of the phenomena around him sphere, but he just didn’t admit it to himself or others.
Maybe Ilyusha has long noticed and understands what they say and do in front of him: like his father, in corduroy trousers, in a brown woolen woolen jacket, all he knows all day is that he walks from corner to corner, with his hands behind him, sniffing tobacco and blows his nose, and mother goes from coffee to tea, from tea to dinner; that the parent would never even think of believing how many kopecks were mowed or compressed, and recovering for the omission, and if you don’t hand him a handkerchief soon enough, he will scream about the riots and turn the whole house upside down.
Perhaps his childish mind had long ago decided that this is how he should live, and not otherwise, the way the adults around him live. And how else would you tell him to decide? How did the adults live in Oblomovka?
Did they ask themselves: why was life given? God knows. And how did they answer it? Probably not; it seemed very simple and clear to them.
They had not heard of the so-called difficult life, of people who carry languid worries in their chests, scurrying for some reason from corner to corner across the face of the earth, or devoting their lives to eternal, never-ending work.
The Oblomovites had little faith in spiritual anxieties; they did not mistake for life the cycle of eternal aspirations somewhere, for something; they were afraid, like fire, of passions; and just as in another place people’s bodies quickly burned out from the volcanic work of internal, spiritual fire, so the soul of Oblomov’s people sank peacefully, without interference, into a soft body.
Life did not brand them like others, neither with premature wrinkles, nor with morally destructive blows and illnesses.
Good people understood it only as an ideal of peace and inaction, disrupted from time to time by various unpleasant accidents, such as illness, losses, quarrels and, among other things, labor.
They endured labor as a punishment imposed on our forefathers, but they could not love, and where there was a chance, they always got rid of it, finding it possible and necessary.
They never embarrassed themselves with any vague mental or moral questions: that’s why they always blossomed with health and fun, that’s why they lived there for a long time; men at forty looked like youths; the old people did not struggle with a difficult, painful death, but, having lived to the point of impossibility, they died as if on the sly, quietly freezing and imperceptibly breathing their last breath. That is why they say that the people were stronger before.
Yes, in fact, stronger: before, they were in no hurry to explain to the child the meaning of life and prepare him for it, as for something sophisticated and serious; did not torment him over books that give birth to a darkness of questions in his head, and questions gnaw at the mind and heart and shorten his life.
The standard of life was ready and taught to them by their parents, and they accepted it, also ready, from their grandfather, and grandfather from their great-grandfather, with a covenant to guard its integrity and inviolability, like the fire of Vesta. Just as what was done under our grandfathers and fathers, so it was done under Ilya Ilyich’s father, so, perhaps, is still being done now in Oblomovka.
What did they have to think about and what to worry about, what to learn, what goals to achieve?
Nothing is needed: life, like a calm river, flowed past them; they could only sit on the bank of this river and observe the inevitable phenomena that, in turn, without calling, appeared before each of them.
And so the sleeping Ilya Ilyich’s imagination began to reveal itself, one by one, like living pictures, the three main acts of life that played out both in his family and among relatives and acquaintances: homeland, wedding, funeral.
Then a motley procession of its cheerful and sad divisions stretched out: christenings, name days, family holidays, fasting, breaking the fast, noisy dinners, family gatherings, greetings, congratulations, official tears and smiles.
Everything was sent with such precision, so important and solemn.
He even imagined familiar faces and their expressions during various rituals, their care and bustle. Give them whatever delicate matchmaking you want, whatever kind of solemn wedding or name day you want - they will celebrate it according to all the rules, without the slightest omission. Who should be planted where, what should be served and how, who should go with whom in the ceremony, whether the rules should be observed - in all this no one has ever made the slightest mistake in Oblomovka.
Will they not be able to leave the child there? One has only to look at the pink and weighty cupids the mothers there wear and lead around. They insist that the children be plump, white and healthy.
They will retreat from spring, they will not want to know it, if they do not bake it at the beginning of its lark. How can they not know and not do this?
Here is their whole life and science, here are all their sorrows and joys: that is why they drive away from themselves all other worries and sorrows and do not know other joys; their life was teeming exclusively with these fundamental and inevitable events, which provided endless food for their minds and hearts.
They, with their hearts beating with excitement, awaited a ritual, a feast, a ceremony, and then, having baptized, married or buried a person, they forgot the person himself and his fate and plunged into the usual apathy, from which they were brought out by a new similar event - a name day, a wedding and etc.
As soon as a child was born, the first concern of the parents was to perform all the rituals required by decency as accurately as possible, without the slightest omissions, that is, to organize a feast after the christening; then the caring care for him began.
The mother set herself and the nanny the task of raising a healthy child, protecting him from colds, eyes and other hostile circumstances. They worked hard to ensure that the child was always happy and ate a lot.
As soon as they put the young man on his feet, that is, when he no longer needs a nanny, a secret desire creeps into the mother’s heart to find him a girlfriend - also healthier, more rosy.
The era of rituals and feasts is coming again; finally, the wedding; The whole pathos of life was focused on this.
Then repetitions began: the birth of children, rituals, feasts, until the funeral changed the scenery; but not for long: some people give way to others, children become young men and at the same time grooms, they get married, produce people like themselves - and so life according to this program stretches on in an uninterrupted monotonous fabric, imperceptibly breaking off at the very grave.
True, sometimes other worries were imposed on them, but Oblomov’s people met them for the most part with stoic immobility, and worries, circling over their heads, rushed past, like birds that fly to a smooth wall and, not finding a place to shelter, flutter their wings in vain near a solid stone and fly further.
So, for example, one day part of the gallery on one side of the house suddenly collapsed and buried a hen and her chickens under its ruins; Aksinya, Antip’s wife, would have gone too, who sat down under the gallery with the bottom, but at that time, fortunately for her, went for the lobes.
There was a hubbub in the house: everyone came running, young and old, and were horrified, imagining that instead of a hen with chickens, the lady herself could be walking here with Ilya Ilyich.
Everyone gasped and began to reproach each other for how it had not occurred to them for a long time: to remind one, to tell another to correct, to a third to correct.
Everyone was amazed that the gallery had collapsed, and the day before they wondered how it had held up for so long!
Concerns and discussions began about how to improve the matter; they regretted the mother hen with the chicks and slowly went to their places, strictly forbidding them to bring Ilya Ilyich to the gallery.
Then, three weeks later, Andryushka, Petrushka, and Vaska were ordered to drag the fallen boards and railings to the sheds so that they would not lie on the road. They lay there until spring.
Every time Old Man Oblomov sees them from the window, he will be preoccupied with the thought of amendment: he will call the carpenter, begin to consult on how best to do it, whether to build a new gallery or tear down the remains; then he will let him go home, saying: “Go ahead, and I’ll think about it.”
This continued until Vaska or Motka informed the master that when he, Motka, climbed the remains of the gallery this morning, the corners were completely behind the walls and were about to collapse again.
Then the carpenter was called to a final meeting, as a result of which it was decided to support the rest of the surviving gallery with old debris, which was done by the end of the same month.
Eh! Yes, the gallery will start again! - the old man said to his wife. - Look how Fedot beautifully arranged the logs, like columns in the leader’s house! Now it’s good: again for a long time!
Someone reminded him that it would be a good time to fix the gate and repair the porch, otherwise, they say, not only cats and pigs crawl into the basement through the steps.
Yes, yes, it’s necessary,” Ilya Ivanovich answered carefully and immediately went to inspect the porch.
In fact, you see how it’s completely shaken,” he said, rocking the porch with his feet like a cradle.
“Yes, it was wobbly even then, just like it was made,” someone remarked.
So what was wobbly? - answered Oblomov. - Yes, it didn’t fall apart, even though it’s been standing for sixteen years without correction. Luke did a great job then!.. Here was a carpenter, so a carpenter... died - the kingdom of heaven to him! Nowadays they are spoiled: they won’t do that.
And he turned his eyes in the other direction, and the porch, they say, is wobbly and has not yet fallen apart.
Apparently, this Luka was a really nice carpenter.
We must, however, give the owners justice: sometimes in trouble or inconvenience they will become very worried, even get excited and angry.
How, they say, can you start or leave both? We need to take action now. And they only talk about how to repair a bridge, perhaps, across a ditch, or fence off a garden in one place so that cattle don’t spoil the trees, because part of the fence was completely lying on the ground.
Ilya Ivanovich even extended his thoughtfulness to the point that one day, while walking in the garden, he lifted up the fence with his own hands, groaning and groaning, and ordered the gardener to quickly put up two poles: thanks to this goodwill of Oblomov, the fence stood like that all summer, and only in the winter it was covered with snow again.
Finally, it even got to the point that three new planks were laid on the bridge, immediately as Antip fell off it, with his horse and barrel, into the ditch. He had not yet recovered from the injury, and the bridge was almost completely refinished.
The cows and goats also took a little after the fence fell again in the garden: they ate only the currant bushes and began to peel off the tenth linden tree, but they didn’t even get to the apple trees, when the order was given to dig the fence properly and even dig in a ditch.
The two cows and the goat who were caught in the act also suffered: their sides swelled nicely!
Ilya Ilyich also dreams of a large dark living room in his parents’ house with antique ash armchairs, always covered with covers, with a huge, awkward and hard sofa, upholstered in faded blue barracks in spots, and one large leather chair.
A long winter evening is approaching.
The mother sits on the sofa, her legs tucked under her, and lazily knits a child's stocking, yawning and occasionally scratching her head with a knitting needle.
Nastasya Ivanovna and Pelageya Ignatievna sit next to her and, with their noses buried in their work, are diligently sewing something for the holiday for Ilyusha, or for his father, or for themselves.
The father, with his hands behind him, walks back and forth around the room, in complete pleasure, or sits down in a chair and, after sitting for a while, begins to walk again, carefully listening to the sound of his own steps. Then he sniffs the tobacco, blows his nose, and sniffs again.
There was one tallow candle burning dimly in the room, and this was only allowed on winter and autumn evenings. In the summer months, everyone tried to go to bed and get up without candles, in daylight.
This was done partly out of habit, partly out of economy. For any item that was not produced at home, but was purchased by purchase, the Oblomovites were extremely stingy.
They will cordially slaughter an excellent turkey or a dozen chickens for the arrival of a guest, but they will not add extra zest to the dish and will turn pale, just as the same guest willfully decides to pour himself a glass of wine.
However, such debauchery almost never happened there: only some tomboy, a person who was lost in the general opinion, would do this; such a guest will not even be allowed into the yard.
No, those were not the customs there: a guest there would not touch anything before eating three times. He knows very well that a single meal more often includes a request to refuse the offered dish or wine than to taste it.
Not even two candles can be lit for everyone: the candle was bought in the city with money and was taken care of, like all purchased items, under the owner’s own key. The cinders were carefully counted and hidden.
In general, they didn’t like to spend money there, and no matter how necessary the thing was, money for it was always given with great sympathy, and only if the cost was insignificant. Significant spending was accompanied by groans, screams and curses.
The Oblomovites agreed to endure all kinds of inconveniences better, they even got used to not considering them as inconveniences, rather than spending money.
Because of this, the sofa in the living room was covered in stains a long time ago, because of this, Ilya Ivanovich’s leather chair is only called leather, but in fact it is either a washcloth or a rope: there is only one scrap of leather left on the back, and the rest had already fallen into pieces and peeled off for five years; That may be why the gates are all crooked and the porch is wobbly. But suddenly paying two hundred, three hundred, five hundred rubles for something, even the most necessary, seemed almost suicide to them.
Hearing that one of the neighboring young landowners went to Moscow and paid three hundred rubles for a dozen shirts, twenty-five rubles for boots and forty rubles for a vest for a wedding, old man Oblomov crossed himself and said with an expression of horror, a patter that “such a fellow should be imprisoned to prison."
In general, they were deaf to political and economic truths about the need for rapid and active circulation of capital, about increased productivity and the exchange of products. In the simplicity of their souls, they understood and implemented the only use of capital - to keep it in a chest.
On the chairs in the living room, in different positions, the inhabitants or ordinary visitors of the house sit and snore.
For the most part, deep silence reigns between the interlocutors: everyone sees each other every day; mental treasures are mutually exhausted and exhausted, and there is little news from outside.
Quiet; Only the footsteps of Ilya Ivanovich’s heavy, homemade boots are heard, the wall clock in its case is still dully tapping with a pendulum, and from time to time a thread torn by hand or teeth from Pelageya Ignatievna or Nastasya Ivanovna breaks the deep silence.
So sometimes half an hour will pass, unless someone yawns out loud and crosses his mouth, saying: “Lord have mercy!”
A neighbor will yawn behind him, then the next one, slowly, as if on command, opens his mouth, and so on, the infectious play of air in the lungs will bypass everyone, and another will burst into tears.
Or Ilya Ivanovich will go to the window, look there and say with some surprise: “It’s only five o’clock, and how dark it is outside!”
Yes, someone will answer, it’s always dark at this time; long evenings are coming.
And in the spring they will be surprised and happy that the long days are coming. But ask why they need these long days, they themselves don’t know.
And they will be silent again.
And then someone starts taking the candle off and suddenly extinguishes it - everyone will start up: “Unexpected guest!” - someone will certainly say.
Sometimes this will start a conversation.
Who would this guest be? - the hostess will say. - Isn’t it Nastasya Faddeevna? Oh, God forbid! Not really; it won't be closer than the holiday. That would be a joy! We should have hugged and cried together with her! Both for matins and for mass together... But where can I go for it! It’s a gift that I’m younger, but I can’t withstand this much!
When did she leave us? - asked Ilya Ivanovich. - It seems after Ilyin’s day?
What are you doing, Ilya Ivanovich! You'll always get it wrong! “She didn’t even wait until the seventh semester,” my wife corrected.
It seems she was here in Petrovka,” Ilya Ivanovich objects.
You always do! - the wife will say reproachfully. - If you argue, you will only embarrass yourself...
Well, how come you weren’t in Petrovka? Even back then, everyone baked pies with mushrooms: she loves...
So this is Marya Onisimovna: she loves mushroom pies - how can you remember! And Marya Onisimovna was visiting not until Ilya’s day, but before Prokhor and Nikanor.
They kept track of time by holidays, by seasons, by various family and home occasions, never referring to months or numbers. Perhaps this was partly due to the fact that, besides Oblomov himself, others kept confusing both the names of the months and the order of numbers.
The defeated Ilya Ivanovich will fall silent, and again the whole society will fall into slumber. Ilyusha, slumped behind his mother, also dozes, and sometimes even sleeps completely.
Yes,” one of the guests will later say with a deep sigh, “that’s Marya Onisimovna’s husband, the deceased Vasily Fomich, who was, God bless him, healthy, but he died! And he didn’t live sixty years, but someone like that could live a hundred years!
We will all die, no matter when - God's will! - Pelageya Ignatievna objects with a sigh. - Those who die, but the Khlopovs don’t have time to baptize: they say Anna Andrevna gave birth again - this is the sixth.
Is it only Anna Andreevna? - said the hostess. - Just like her brother is getting married and having children - how much more trouble will there be! And the younger ones grow up and also look to be grooms; Marry your daughters there, but where are the suitors here? Nowadays, you see, everyone wants a dowry, but it’s all money...
What are you saying? - asked Ilya Ivanovich, approaching those talking.
Yes, we say that...
And the story is repeated to him.
This is human life! - Ilya Ivanovich said instructively. - One dies, another is born, a third gets married, but we keep getting older: let alone year after year, day after day! Why is this so? What would it be like if every day were like yesterday, yesterday like tomorrow!.. It’s sad, when you think about it...
The old grows old, and the young grows! - someone said from the corner in a sleepy voice.
We need to pray to God more and not think about anything! - the hostess remarked sternly.
True, true,” Ilya Ivanovich responded cowardly and quickly, having decided to philosophize, and began to walk back and forth again.
They are silent again for a long time; Only the threads threaded back and forth with the needle hiss. Sometimes the hostess will break the silence.
Yes, it’s dark outside, she’ll say. - Now, God willing, as soon as we wait for Christmas, they will come to visit their people, it will be more fun, and you won’t see how the evenings will go. Now, if Malanya Petrovna had come, there would have been some mischief here! What won't she do? And pour tin, and melt wax, and run through the gates; All my girls will be led astray. He will start different games... like that, really!
Yes, society lady! - one of the interlocutors noted. - In the third year, she even decided to ride from the mountains, that’s how Luka Savich broke his eyebrow...
Suddenly everyone perked up, looked at Luka Savich and burst into laughter.
How are you, Luka Savic? Come on, come on, tell me! - says Ilya Ivanovich and dies with laughter.
And everyone continues to laugh, and Ilyusha woke up, and he laughs.
Well, what can I tell you! - says embarrassed Luka Savic. - Alexey Naumych made it all up: nothing happened at all.
Eh! - everyone picked it up in unison. - How come nothing happened? Are we really dead?.. And the forehead, the forehead, there, the scar is still visible...
And they laughed.
Why are you laughing? - Luka Savic tries to say in between laughter. - I would... and not that... but that’s all Vaska, the robber... I slipped the old sled... they moved apart under me... I and that...
General laughter covered his voice. It was in vain that he tried to tell the story of his fall: laughter spread throughout the whole society, penetrated to the hall and to the maid's room, enveloped the whole house, everyone remembered the funny incident, everyone laughed for a long time, in unison, unspeakably like the Olympian gods. As soon as they start to fall silent, someone will pick it up again - and off to write.
Finally, somehow, with difficulty, we calmed down.
Are you going to talk about Christmas time today, Luka Savich? - Ilya Ivanovich asked after a pause.
Again a general burst of laughter that lasted about ten minutes.
Shouldn't we tell Antipka to make a mountain a post? - Oblomov will suddenly say again. - Luka Savich, they say, is a big hunter, he can’t wait...
The laughter of the whole company did not allow him to finish.
Are those... sleds intact? - one of the interlocutors said barely out of laughter.
Laughter again.
Everyone laughed for a long time, and finally they began to calm down little by little: one was wiping away tears, another was blowing his nose, a third was coughing furiously and spitting, with difficulty pronouncing:
Oh, Lord! The phlegm completely suffocated me... I made him laugh then, by God! Such a sin! How his back is up, and the tails of his caftan are apart...
Here came the final, longest peal of laughter, and then everything fell silent. One sighed, the other yawned loudly, with a sentence, and everything fell into silence.
As before, only the swing of the pendulum, the knock of Oblomov’s boots, and the light crack of a bitten thread could be heard.
Suddenly Ilya Ivanovich stopped in the middle of the room with an alarmed look, holding the tip of his nose.
What kind of trouble is this? Check this out! - he said. - To be dead: the tip of my nose is itching...
Oh, Lord! - the wife said, clasping her hands. - What kind of dead man is this if the tip itches? Dead - when the bridge of the nose itches. Well, Ilya Ivanovich, what are you, God bless you, unconscious! If you ever say something like that in public or in front of guests, you will be ashamed.
What does this mean, the tip itches? - asked the confused Ilya Ivanovich.
Look into the glass. And how is this possible: dead!
I'm confusing everything! - said Ilya Ivanovich. - Where should I mention: sometimes the side of the nose itches, sometimes the end, sometimes the eyebrows...
On the side,” Pelageya Ivanovna picked up, “means to lead; eyebrows itch - tears; forehead - bow; it itches on the right side for a man, on the left for a woman; ears itch - it means rain, lips - kissing, mustache - there are gifts, elbow - in a new place to sleep, soles - the road...
Well, Pelageya Ivanovna, well done! - said Ilya Ivanovich. - Otherwise, when the oil is cheap, the back of your head will itch...
The ladies began to laugh and whisper; some of the men were smiling; an outburst of laughter was preparing again, but at that moment there was heard in the room at the same time, as if the grumbling of a dog and the hissing of a cat, when they were about to rush at each other. The clock buzzed.
Eh! It's nine o'clock! - Ilya Ivanovich said with joyful amazement. - Look, you probably won’t even see how time has passed. Hey Vaska! Vanka! Motka!
Three sleepy faces appeared.
Why don't you set the table? - Oblomov asked with surprise and annoyance. - No, to think about the gentlemen? Well, what are you worth? Hurry, vodka!
That's why the tip of my nose itched! - Pelageya Ivanovna said vividly. - You will drink vodka and look into the glass.
After dinner, having smacked their lips and crossed each other, everyone goes to their beds, and sleep reigns over their careless heads.
Ilya Ilyich sees in his dreams not just one, not two such evenings, but whole weeks, months and years of days and evenings spent like this.
Nothing disturbed the monotony of this life, and the Oblomovites themselves were not burdened by it, because they could not imagine another life; and even if they could imagine it, they would turn away from him in horror.
They didn’t want any other life, and they wouldn’t love it. They would be sorry if circumstances brought any changes to their life. They will be gnawed by melancholy if tomorrow is not like today, and the day after tomorrow is not like tomorrow.
Why do they need variety, change, chance, which others ask for? Let others clear up this cup, but they, the Oblomovites, don’t care about anything. Let others live as they want.
After all, accidents, even if there are some benefits, are restless: they require trouble, worries, running around, don’t sit still, trade or write - in a word, turn around, it’s no joke!
They continued to sniffle, doze and yawn for decades, or burst into good-natured laughter from village humor, or, gathering in a circle, they told what they saw in their dreams at night.
If the dream was terrible, everyone thought about it, they were seriously afraid; if prophetic, everyone was unfeignedly happy or sad, depending on whether the dream was sad or comforting. If the dream required the observance of any sign, active measures were immediately taken for this.
That’s not it, this is how fools play their trump cards, but on holidays they go to Boston with guests or play grand solitaire, tell fortunes about the king of hearts and the queen of clubs, predicting margins.
Sometimes some Natalya Faddeevna will come to stay for a week or two. First, the old women will go through the entire neighborhood, who lives how, who does what; they will penetrate not only into family life, into behind-the-scenes life, but into the innermost thoughts and intentions of everyone, they will get into the soul, they will scold, they will discuss unworthy, most of all unfaithful husbands, then they will count various occasions: name days, christenings, homelands, who treated whom with what called who was not there.
Tired of this, they will begin to show new clothes, dresses, coats, even skirts and stockings. The hostess will boast of some homemade linen, thread, or lace.
But this too will be exhausted. Then they add coffee, tea, and jam. Then they switch to silence.
They sit for a long time, looking at each other, from time to time sighing heavily about something. Sometimes someone will cry.
What are you, my mother? - another will ask in alarm.
Oh, sad, my dear! - the guest answers with a heavy sigh. - We have angered the Lord God, wretched ones. No good will happen.
Oh, don’t frighten, don’t frighten, dear! - the hostess interrupts.
Yes, yes,” she continues. - The last days have come: language will rise against language, kingdom against kingdom... the end of the world will come! - Natalya Faddeevna finally reprimands, and both cry bitterly.
There was no basis for such a conclusion on Natalya Faddeevna’s part, no one rebelled against anyone, there wasn’t even a comet that year, but old women sometimes have dark premonitions.
Occasionally, this passing of time will be interrupted by some unexpected incident, when, for example, everyone burns the whole house, from young to old.
There were almost no other diseases heard in the house and village; Unless someone runs into some kind of stake in the dark, or rolls out of the hayloft, or a board falls from the roof and hits him on the head.
But all this happened rarely, and against such accidents, tried and tested home remedies were used: they rub the bruised area with a body of water or dawn, give them holy water to drink or whisper - and everything will go away.
But fumes happened often. Then everyone lies side by side on their beds: groans and groans are heard; one will cover his head with cucumbers and tie himself with a towel, another will put cranberries in his ears and sniff horseradish, a third will go out into the cold in his shirt, the fourth will simply lie unconscious on the floor.
This happened periodically once or twice a month, because they didn’t like to let heat go down the drain for nothing and they closed the stoves when there were still such lights running in them as in “Robert the Devil.” Not to any couch,
It was impossible to put your hands on any stove: just look, a bubble would pop up.
One day, the monotony of their life was broken by a truly unexpected incident.
When, having rested after a difficult lunch, everyone gathered for tea, Oblomov’s peasant suddenly came back from the city, and he was already reaching out from his bosom, finally forcibly taking out a crumpled letter addressed to Ilya Ivanovich Oblomov.
Everyone was stunned; the hostess even changed a little in her face; Everyone's eyes turned and their noses stretched towards the letter.
What a wonder! Who is this from? - the lady finally said, having come to her senses.
Oblomov took the letter and turned it over in his hands in bewilderment, not knowing what to do with it.
Where did you get it? - he asked the man. - Who gave it to you?
And in the yard where I stopped in the city, you hear,” the man answered, “the post office came twice to ask if there were Oblomov’s men: listen, there is a letter for the master.
Well, first of all, I hid: the soldier left with the letter. Yes, the Verkhlevsky sexton saw me, that’s what he said. They suddenly came in a row. When they suddenly came in a row, they began to swear and gave away the letter, and took another nickel. I asked what should I do with it, where should I put it? So they told your honor to give it.
“You wouldn’t take it,” the lady remarked angrily.
I didn't take even that. What, they say, do we need a letter for? We don’t need it. They supposedly didn’t tell us to take letters - I don’t dare: go away with the letter! Yes, the soldier went to swear painfully: he wanted to complain to the authorities; I took it.
Fool! - said the lady.
Who would it be from? - Oblomov said thoughtfully, examining the address. - The hand seems familiar, really!
And the letter began to pass from hand to hand. Speculation and speculation began: from whom and what could it be about? Everyone was finally at a standstill.
Ilya Ivanovich ordered to find the glasses: it took an hour and a half to find them. He put them on and was already thinking about opening the letter.
Come on, don’t open it, Ilya Ivanovich,” his wife stopped him with fear, “who knows what kind of letter it is?” maybe something even worse, some kind of misfortune. Look what people have become today! Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow you will have time - it will not leave you.
And the letter with the glasses was hidden under lock and key. Everyone started drinking tea. It would have lain there for years if it had not been too unusual a phenomenon and did not excite the minds of the Oblomovites. At tea and the next day, all anyone could talk about was the letter.
Finally, they couldn’t bear it anymore, and on the fourth day, a crowd gathered and unsealed it with embarrassment. Oblomov looked at the signature.
“Radishchev,” he read. - Eh! Yes, this is from Philip Matveich!
A! Eh! That's who! - rose from all sides. - How is he still alive today? Come on, you're not dead yet! Well, thank God! What is he writing?
Send, send to him! - everyone started talking. - I need to write a letter.
So two weeks passed.
I must, I must write! - Ilya Ivanovich repeated to his wife. - Where is the recipe?
And where he? - answered the wife. - We still need to find it. Wait, what's the rush? Now, God willing, we’ll wait for the holiday, break our fast, and then you’ll write; won't leave yet...
In fact, I’d rather write about the holiday,” said Ilya Ivanovich.
At the celebration, the topic of writing came up again. Ilya Ivanovich was about to write. He retired to the office, put on his glasses and sat down at the table.
A deep silence reigned in the house; people were not ordered to stomp and make noise. “The master is writing!” - everyone said in such a timidly respectful voice, as they say when there is a dead person in the house.
He had just written: “Dear Sir,” slowly, crookedly, with a trembling hand and with such caution, as if he was doing some dangerous work, when his wife appeared to him.
“I searched and searched, but there was no recipe,” she said. - We need to look in the closet in the bedroom. But how to send a letter?
“We need the mail,” answered Ilya Ivanovich.
What's going on there?
Oblomov took out an old calendar.
“Forty kopecks,” he said.
Here, throw forty kopecks on trifles! - she remarked. - It’s better to wait to see if there is an opportunity from the city to go there. You told the men to find out.
And in fact, it’s better by chance,” answered Ilya Ivanovich and, clicking the pen on the table, stuck it into the inkwell and took off his glasses.
Really, it’s better,” he concluded, “he won’t leave yet: we’ll have time to send it.”
It is not known whether Philip Matveevich waited for the recipe.
Ilya Ivanovich will sometimes pick up a book - he doesn’t care if it’s any kind. He did not even suspect a significant need for reading, but considered it a luxury, something that one could easily do without, just as one can have a picture on the wall, one may not have it, one may go for a walk, one may not go: from this he doesn’t care what kind of book it is; he looked at it as a thing intended for entertainment, out of boredom and having nothing to do.
“I haven’t read a book for a long time,” he will say, or sometimes he will change the phrase: “Let me read a book,” he will say, or simply, in passing, he will accidentally see a small pile of books that he inherited from his brother and take it out, without choosing what he comes across. Will he get Golikov? Newest whether Dream Interpretation, Kheraskova Russiaada, or Sumarokov’s tragedies, or, finally, third-year reports - he reads everything with equal pleasure, saying from time to time:
You see what I made up! What a robber! Oh, may you be empty!
These exclamations referred to the authors - a title that in his eyes did not enjoy any respect; he even internalized the half-contempt for writers that people of the old days had for them. He, like many then, revered the writer as nothing more than a merry fellow, a reveler, a drunkard and a fun person, like a dancer.
Sometimes he reads from third-year newspapers out loud, for everyone, or so informs them of the news.
They write from Gaga, he will say, that His Majesty the King deigned to return safely from a short trip to the palace, and at the same time he will look through his glasses at all the listeners.
In Vienna, such and such an envoy presented his letters of credit.
And here they write,” he was still reading, “that the works of Madame Zhanlis were translated into Russian.
This is all tea, they translate it for this reason,” notes one of the listeners, a small landowner, “so that they can lure money out of our brother, a nobleman.”
And poor Ilyusha goes and goes to study with Stolz. As soon as he wakes up on Monday, he is already overwhelmed with melancholy. He hears Vaska’s sharp voice shouting from the porch:
Antipka! Lay down the pinto: take the little baron to the German!
His heart will tremble. He comes to his mother sadly. She knows why and begins to gild the pill, secretly sighing herself about being separated from him for a whole week.
They don’t know what to feed him that morning, they bake him buns and pretzels, send him pickles, cookies, jams, various pastries and all sorts of other dry and wet delicacies and even food supplies. All this was sold in the forms that the Germans feed on a low-fat basis.
You won’t eat there,” the Oblomovites said, “for lunch they’ll give you soup, and roast, and potatoes, butter for tea, and for dinner Morgen Free- wipe your nose.
However, Ilya Ilyich dreams more of Mondays like this, when he doesn’t hear Vaska’s voice ordering him to lay down the pawn, and when his mother meets him at tea with a smile and good news:
You can't go today; There's a big holiday on Thursday: is it worth traveling back and forth for three days?
Or sometimes she suddenly announces to him: “Today is parent’s week, there’s no time for studying: we’ll bake pancakes.”
Otherwise his mother will look at him intently on Monday morning and say:
Your eyes aren't fresh today. Are you healthy? - and shakes his head.
The crafty boy is healthy, but silent.
“Just sit at home this week,” she will say, “and see what God gives.”
And everyone in the house was imbued with the conviction that schooling and parental Saturday should in no way coincide together, or that the holiday on Thursday was an insurmountable obstacle to learning throughout the week.
Is it only sometimes that a servant or a girl who gets it for the little bark will grumble:
Ooh, darling! Will you soon fall in love with your German?
Another time, Antipka will suddenly appear to the German on a familiar pegasus, in the middle or at the beginning of the week, for Ilya Ilyich.
Marya Savishna or Natalya Faddeevna came to visit, they say, or the Kuzovkovs came with their children, so welcome home!
And for three weeks Ilyusha stays at home, and then, you see, it’s not far from Holy Week, and then there’s a holiday, and then someone in the family for some reason decides that they don’t study on St. Thomas’s Week; There are two weeks left before summer - there’s no point in traveling, and in the summer the German himself is on vacation, so it’s better to put it off until the fall.
Look, Ilya Ilyich will take six months off, and how he will grow in that time! How fat he will get! How nice he sleeps! They can’t stop looking at him in the house, noticing, on the contrary, that, having returned from the German on Saturday, the child is thin and pale.
How long before sin? - said father and mother. - Learning won't take you away, but you can't buy health; health is more valuable than anything in life. See, he comes back from his studies as if from the hospital: all the fat has disappeared, he’s so thin... and he’s also a naughty boy: he should just run around!
Yes, - the father will note, - teaching is not his brother: he will turn anyone into a ram’s horn!
And the tender parents continued to look for excuses to keep their son at home. There were no excuses, other than holidays. In winter it seemed cold to them, in summer it was also not good to travel in the heat, and sometimes it would rain, and in the fall the slush was a hindrance. Sometimes Antipka will seem doubtful about something: he is not drunk, but somehow looks wildly: if there is no trouble, he will get stuck or break off somewhere.
Oblomov’s followers, however, tried to give as much legitimacy as possible to these pretexts in their own eyes and especially in the eyes of Stolz, who did not spare both in the eyes and behind the eyes Donnerwetters for such pampering.
The times of the Prostakovs and Skotinins are long gone. Proverb: Learning is light and ignorance is darkness- she was already wandering through villages and hamlets along with books delivered by second-hand book dealers.
The old people understood the benefits of enlightenment, but only its external benefits. They saw that everyone had already begun to go out into the world, that is, to acquire ranks, crosses and money only through study; that the old clerks, busy businessmen in the service, grown old in old habits, quotes and hooks, had a bad time.
Ominous rumors began to circulate about the need not only for knowledge of literacy, but also for other sciences, hitherto unheard of in that everyday life. An abyss opened up between the titular adviser and the collegiate assessor, and some kind of diploma served as a bridge across it.
Old servants, children of habit and pets of bribes, began to disappear. Many who did not have time to die were expelled for unreliability, others were put on trial; The happiest were those who, having given up on the new order of things, retreated as best they could into their newly acquired corners.
The Oblomovs realized this and understood the benefits of education, but only this obvious benefit. They still had a vague and distant concept of the inner need for learning, and that is why they wanted to grasp for their Ilyusha some brilliant advantages.
They also dreamed of an embroidered uniform for him, imagined him as a councilor in the chamber, and even his mother as a governor; but they would like to achieve all this somehow cheaper, with various tricks, to secretly bypass the stones and obstacles scattered along the path of enlightenment and honor, without bothering to jump over them, that is, for example, to study lightly, not to the point of exhaustion of soul and body, not until the loss of the blessed fullness acquired in childhood, and so that only to comply with the prescribed form and somehow obtain a certificate in which it would be said that Ilyusha passed all sciences and arts.
This entire Oblomov education system met with strong opposition in Stolz’s system. The fight was stubborn on both sides. Stolz directly, openly and persistently struck his opponents, and they evaded the blows with the above and other tricks.
Victory was not decided in any way; Perhaps German perseverance would have overcome the stubbornness and rigidity of the Oblomovites, but the German encountered difficulties on his own side, and victory was not destined to be decided on either side. The fact is that Stolz’s son spoiled Oblomov, either giving him lessons or doing translations for him.
Ilya Ilyich clearly sees both his home life and his life with Stolz.
He had just woken up at home when Zakharka, later his famous valet Zakhar Trofimych, was already standing at his bedside.
Zakhar, as he used to be a nanny, pulls on his stockings and puts on his shoes, and Ilyusha, already a fourteen-year-old boy, only knows that he is lying on one leg or the other; and if anything seems wrong to him, he will kick Zakharka in the nose.
If the dissatisfied Zakharka decides to complain, he will also receive a mallet from his elders.
Then Zakharka scratches his head, pulls on his jacket, carefully threading Ilya Ilyich’s hands into the sleeves so as not to disturb him too much, and reminds Ilya Ilyich that he needs to do this and that: get up in the morning, wash, etc.
If Ilya Ilyich wants anything, he only has to blink - three or four servants rush to fulfill his desire; will he drop something, does he need to get something, but can’t get it, should he bring something, should he run for something: sometimes, like a playful boy, he just wants to rush in and redo everything himself, and then suddenly his father and mother and three the aunts in five voices and shout:
For what? Where? What about Vaska, and Vanka, and Zakharka? Hey! Vaska! Vanka! Zakharka! What are you looking at, dumbass? Here I am!..
And Ilya Ilyich will never be able to do anything for himself.
Afterwards he found that it was much calmer, and he himself learned to shout: “Hey, Vaska! Vanka! give me this, give me something else! I don't want this, I want that! Run and get it!”
Sometimes the tender care of his parents bothered him.
Whether he runs down the stairs or across the yard, suddenly ten desperate voices will be heard after him: “Ah, ah! Support, stop! He’ll fall and hurt himself... stop, stop!”
Whether he thinks of jumping out into the hallway in winter or opening the window - again the shouts: “Oh, where? How is it possible? Don’t run, don’t walk, don’t open the door: you’ll kill yourself, catch a cold...”
And Ilyusha remained at home with sadness, cherished like an exotic flower in a greenhouse, and, just like the last one under glass, he grew slowly and sluggishly. Those seeking manifestations of power turned inward and sank, withering away.
And sometimes he wakes up so cheerful, fresh, cheerful; he feels: something is playing in him, seething, as if some kind of imp has taken up residence, who is teasing him to either climb onto the roof, or sit on the Savraska and gallop into the meadows where hay is being cut, or sit on the fence astride, or tease village dogs; or suddenly you want to run around the village, then into the field, along the gullies, into the birch forest and throw yourself to the bottom of the ravine in three leaps, or tag along with the boys to play snowballs, try your hand.
The imp just keeps washing him away: he holds on, holds on, finally can’t stand it, and suddenly, without a cap, in winter, he jumps from the porch into the yard, from there through the gate, grabs a lump of snow in both hands and rushes towards a bunch of boys.
The fresh wind cuts his face, the frost stings his ears, his mouth and throat smell of cold, and his chest is filled with joy - he rushes where his legs came from, he himself squeals and laughs.
Here come the boys: he bangs the snow - he misses: there is no skill; Just wanted to grab another snowball, when a whole block of snow covered his whole face: he fell; and it hurts him out of habit, and he is happy, and he laughs, and there are tears in his eyes...
And there is a hubbub in the house: Ilyusha is gone! Scream, noise. Zakharka jumped out into the yard, followed by Vaska, Mitka, Vanka - everyone was running, confused, around the yard.
Two dogs rushed after them, grabbing their heels, which, as you know, cannot indifferently see a running person.
People screaming, screaming, dogs barking rush through the village.
Finally they ran at the boys and began to inflict justice: some by the hair, some by the ears, another on the back of the head; They also threatened their fathers.
Then they took possession of the little boy, wrapped him in a captured sheepskin coat, then in his father’s fur coat, then in two blankets and solemnly carried him home in his arms.
At home they despaired of seeing him, considering him dead; but at the sight of him, alive and unharmed, the parents’ joy was indescribable. They thanked the Lord God, then they gave him mint, some elderberry, and in the evening some raspberries to drink and kept him in bed for three days, but one thing could be useful for him: playing snowballs again...
A novel in four parts
