One day in the life of Oblomov's childhood. Antithesis is the main technique in the work
The main character of I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” spends most of his life on the sofa. He is not tired or sick, lying down is his normal condition. Oblomov sees no reason to get up, business or social life does not attract him, he feels sorry for his acquaintances, caught up in the daily bustle. Oblomov is smart, kind, noble, but there is a dark side in his soul, which the hero himself calls “Oblomovism”. This concept includes invincible laziness, apathy, lack of will, gluttony, empty daydreaming, and spoiling. Goncharov sees the origins of “Oblomovism” in the upbringing of a hero. Writer introduces separate chapter , in which he talks about Oblomov’s childhood. Goncharov uses the technique of sleep: Oblomov, who has dozed off, seems to be returning to childhood. Let's try to analyze this chapter and find out how Oblomov's character was formed. Goncharov paints a detailed landscape of the “wonderful land” in which the main character grew up. The author lovingly describes deep Russia. There is “nothing grandiose” here; all elements of the landscape have soft and calm outlines. Nature seems to humble its elemental power in the “blessed corner”, the climate is even, the change of seasons occurs “correctly and calmly”. Against the backdrop of idyllic nature, there is no place for human vanity and passions: “Everything there promises a calm, long-term life until the hair turns yellow and an imperceptible death like sleep.” Goncharov depicts the measured life of the landowner's estate in which Oblomov grew up. The hero's childhood passed during the times of serfdom, but the author deliberately avoids any mention of the horrors of serfdom. In Oblomovka, everyone: both landowners and peasants live in contentment and peace. Time seems to have stood still here. They even rarely die in Oblomovka: “In the last five years, out of several hundred souls, not one has died...” The most common “crime” is the theft of peas, carrots and turnips from vegetable gardens. The inhabitants of Oblomovka know each other and are afraid of strangers. There is a commotion in the manor house when one of the men suddenly brings a letter from the city. Only on the fourth day they open it with fear and are relieved to learn that a landowner they know asks to send him a recipe for brewing beer. Oblomovites believe in omens and often expect trouble after a bad sign. The main concern of the inhabitants of Oblomovka is food. No one suffers from hunger, but people think about food all the time. Rural abundance forces landowners to make “difficult” food choices every day: “The whole house discussed dinner... Everyone offered their dish... “After lunch, a general sleep reigned in the estate, “a true likeness of death.” It is in such a “sleepy state” that Oblomov grows up. Is it any wonder that he turned into a useless couch potato? Oblomov's childhood passed in an atmosphere of carelessness and idleness. Parents and numerous nannies looked after and pampered the child beyond all measure. Adults were only worried about making sure the child was healthy and well-fed. It never occurred to them that Oblomov would grow up unadapted to life. The centuries-old landowner way of life did not require practical skills from the master: after all, everything was always done for him. Oblomov began to live a contemplative life early. He saw that idleness is a common state of adults, and he himself got used to doing nothing. Natural childish liveliness found an outlet in the play of imagination. Oblomov “passionately delved into” his nanny’s fairy tales, and then gave free rein to his own fantasies. All this led to the fact that the adult Oblomov turned into a dreamer: “his fairy tale is mixed with life, and he sometimes unconsciously feels sad, why is a fairy tale not life, and why is life not a fairy tale.” From early childhood, Goncharov moves on to Oblomov’s school years and notes that, perhaps, “Ilyusha would have had time to learn something well if Oblomovka had been five hundred versts from Verkhlev.” But the boarding school where Oblomov studied was located next to his parents’ village, and Ilyusha was constantly taken home so that the child would not be overworked. In addition, the son of a German teacher, Andrei Stolts, often performed tasks for Oblomov and continued to help his school friend in adulthood
Most people have the warmest and Nice memories associated with childhood and adolescence. At this time, a person learns to hold a spoon, tie his shoes, read, write, learns a lot about the world around him, and tries to communicate with others. Parents explain to the child the concepts of good and evil, morality, conscience, blame or praise him. Thus childhood and youth play important role in the development of human personality. It is during this period that spiritual values are laid, the first conscious desires appear, knowledge and communication experience are accumulated, on which a person’s future life depends.
A striking example of the influence of childhood on the development of personality is I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”. The main character of the work is the lazy, apathetic nobleman Ilya Ilyich Oblomov.
He does not get out of bed for a long time in the morning, rarely goes outside, prefers to think a lot, but do little. Soon from the chapter “Oblomov’s Dream” we understand that the origins of his inactivity, laziness, and apathy originate in early childhood. Ilya Ilyich was a curious, intelligent child who wanted to know everything about the world around him, but the measured, calm life of the residents of Oblomovka turned out to be a disastrous environment for the development and spiritual development personality.
“...Perhaps his childish mind decided long ago that he should live this way and not otherwise, as the adults around him live. And how else would you tell him to decide?..”
Andrey Stolts is a close friend of Oblomov. In the novel he is contrasted with Ilya Ilyich. Stolz was brought up in a strict family and went through difficult times. He does not like to dream, thinks in moderation and does a lot, has a strong character, which makes him brave and courageous.
All these qualities were brought up in Stolz by his parents, or rather, by the environment in which he found himself as a child. As a child, Andrei received a “labor, practical” upbringing, began helping his father with his work early, and studied a lot and diligently. “...At the age of fourteen or fifteen, the boy often went alone, in a cart or on horseback, with a bag at the saddle, on errands from his father to the city, and it never happened that he forgot something, changed it, overlooked it, made a mistake... "Although Stolz's childhood was difficult, it was in the best possible way influenced his personality, brought up in him such positive traits as hard work, courage, self-confidence, discipline.
Childhood plays an important role in the development of personality, since a person’s adult life is largely determined by what he has learned in life. early stages of its development. John Amos Komensky said: “Only that in a person is strong and reliable that was absorbed into his nature in the first period of life.”
Updated: 2018-02-02
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1. Image of Oblomovka.
2. Prosaic reality and fairy-tale dreams of Oblomov.
3. Consequences of Oblomov’s upbringing.
In I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov,” the protagonist’s childhood is described quite fully in the ninth chapter. The very technique that the author used to give readers the opportunity to take a virtual journey through time and look at the environment in which a person grew up and developed, who appears as an adult and fully formed in the novel, is already interesting. Not just the hero’s memories, not a narration on behalf of the author about his childhood years, but a dream. This has a special meaning.
What is sleep? It often intertwines images of everyday reality and fantastic images that belong to something other than everyday life - either the unconscious or a parallel world... In Oblomov’s subconscious, a dream, a fairy tale, takes up quite a lot of space. It is not for nothing that Goncharov describes his dream in such a way that you soon forget that this is a dream and not reality.
You should pay attention to how Goncharov describes Oblomov’s native land. The author does not begin with a direct description. First we talk about what is not there, and only then about what is there: “No, really, there is no sea there, high mountains, rocks and precipices, nor dense forests“There is nothing grandiose, wild and gloomy.”
It would seem that everything is simple - the author describes a typical Central Russian landscape, which is truly devoid of sharp romantic contrasts. However, the sea, forest, mountains are not only characteristics of the relief of a particular area, but also symbolic images that are often used in relation to a person’s life path. Of course, all these objects, both in their concrete embodiment and in symbolic reflection, carry a certain threat to humans. However, risk and the need to overcome serious obstacles are also an impetus for personal development.
In Oblomovka this natural tendency to spiritual growth, to movement, to changes is completely absent. Behind the external benevolence manifested in the mild climate, the measured course of life, the absence of serious crimes among the local population, this is somehow not immediately noticeable. But what is alarming is the commotion that arises in the village when they notice nearby stranger, who lay down to rest: “Who knows what he’s like: look, he doesn’t hurt anything; maybe something like this..." And a crowd of grown men armed with axes and pitchforks are talking about this! In this episode, seemingly insignificant, one of the important distinctive features Oblomovites - they unconsciously strive to avoid everything that is different from the outside. The host and hostess demonstrate a similar reaction when they receive a letter: “...Who knows what it’s like there, the letter? Maybe even worse, some kind of trouble. Look what people have become today!”
In “The Dream,” as in the entire novel, every now and then the motif of opposition between Oblomov and Oblomov’s way of life is heard. Oblomovka is an “almost impassable” “corner” that lives its own life. Everything that happens in the rest of the world practically does not affect the interests of Oblomovites. And their main interests are a delicious dinner, which is discussed in advance by the whole family, the whole house, and a sound “heroic” sleep. Oblomovites not only don’t think about the fact that it is possible to live somehow differently than they do, no, they don’t even have a shadow of a doubt that they live correctly, and “to live differently is a sin.”
It seems that existence in Oblomovka is monotonous and unpretentious - where did Oblomov’s habit of dreaming for hours, half asleep, come from? Fantastic images fairy tales once told by his mother and nanny made a strong impression on the soul of little Ilya. But it is not the exploits of the heroes that most capture his imagination. Ilya listens with delight to fairy tales about how a kind sorceress generously gifts “some lazy person” for no reason at all. And Oblomov himself, even when he grew up and began to be more skeptical about fairy tales, “always has the inclination to lie on the stove, walk around in a ready-made unearned dress and eat at the expense of the good sorceress.”
Why are the ideas of precisely such fairy tales, and not those in which fearless, active heroes bravely go in search of “that I don’t know what” or to battle a terrible snake, firmly entrenched in Ilya’s subconscious? Probably because the lifestyle of Emelya lying on the stove almost completely corresponded to the standards of behavior that Oblomov learned from his parental family. After all, Ilya Ilyich’s father never cared about how things were going in his domain: it takes a long time to fix the bridge, raise the fence, and even about fixing the collapsed gallery, the master’s lazy thoughts stretch out for an indefinite period of time.
And little Ilya was an observant boy: watching how his father paced the room day after day, not delving into household chores, but getting angry if the handkerchief was not brought soon, and his mother was concerned mainly about plentiful food, the child naturally made a conclusion that this is how you need to live. And why should Ilya think otherwise - after all, children view their parents as an authority, as a model of behavior that should be copied in their adult lives.
The movement of life in Oblomovka was not perceived as something in which a person is obliged to take part, but like a stream of water running past, one can only observe what is happening around and, if possible, avoid personal participation in this bustle: “ Good people understood it (life) as nothing other than an ideal of peace and inaction, disturbed from time to time by various unpleasant accidents, such as illness, losses, quarrels and, among other things, labor.”
Work in Oblomovka was regarded as a painful duty, from which it would not be a sin to shirk if the opportunity presented itself. Meanwhile, it is largely thanks to work that the development of personality, its spiritual formation and social adaptation occur. Oblomov, due to ideals absorbed from childhood, avoids active work, refuses personal growth, the development of those abilities and forces that were inherent in him. Paradoxically, Oblomov, who was cherished and protected in childhood, does not become a confident, successful person in his adult life. What's the matter? Oblomov had happy childhood, he had all the prerequisites for his future life to be successful, but he spent the entire allotted period of his earthly existence lying on the sofa!
The key to understanding the problem lies in a fact that is inconspicuous at first glance: education in Oblomovka was aimed only at the physical well-being of the child, but did not provide direction for spiritual development or goals. And without this little thing, alas, Oblomov, with all his merits, became what Goncharov described.
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 all repeat 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 joyful feeling in the soul: in the barely noticeable fluctuations of the water mass, a person still sees the same immense, albeit dormant force, which sometimes so poisonously mocks his proud will and so deeply buries his brave plans, all his troubles and works.
Mountains and abysses were also not created for human amusement. They are menacing, scary, like claws and teeth released and directed at him. wild beast; 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 row 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 unrest or completely unfamiliar with it asks to hide in this forgotten corner and live an unknown happiness. Everything there promises a peaceful, long-lasting life until the hair turns yellow and an unnoticeable, dream-like death.
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 idle plow with its 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 the 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; but as soon as it stops, the sun again, with a clear smile of love, inspects and dries the fields and hillocks: and the whole country 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 downpour.
Thunderstorms are not terrible, but only beneficial there: they occur constantly at the same set time, almost never forgetting the 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 this was; everyone called it the 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.
Let them not think, however, that quails constitute an object of gastronomic luxury there; no, such corruption has not penetrated into the morals of the inhabitants of that region: the quail is a bird not specified in 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 and 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 ballad to the sounds of a lute 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 life on the stove will respond with a painful groan or a muffled cough, or a barefoot, long-haired three-year-old child, in only a shirt, will appear from behind the partition, silently, look intently at the newcomer and timidly hide 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 enterprises worried them.
And what passions and enterprises could excite them? Everyone knew himself there. The inhabitants of this region lived far from other people. Nearby villages and county town they were twenty-five and thirty miles away.
Peasants in known time they 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, provincial town, but few people 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 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 lives with: whether they were living well or not; 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.
The men, further away, armed themselves with pitchforks and axes and went in a crowd to the ditch.
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 turns, 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 people shouted. Who knows what he is like: look, he doesn’t hurt anything; maybe something like this... Don't ask it, guys!
“Let’s go,” some said, “let’s really 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.
Non-local, don’t forget it! - the old men said, sitting on the rubble with their elbows on their knees. Let it be! 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 his 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.
Shall we, Mama, 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 and began showering 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 the gate crooked on one side, with the wooden roof sagging in the middle, on which delicate green moss grew, with the shaky porch, various extensions and superstructures, and with the neglected garden.
He passionately wants to run up to the hanging gallery that goes around the whole house in order 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, my God, 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 would fall and break his nose, now tenderness from his unfeigned childish affection or vague longing for his distant future: this Only her heart was 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 all 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 not high yet. 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 on fire and the river sparkles and sparkles so much in the sun that it hurts your eyes.
Why is it, nanny, that it is dark here and light there, and then it will 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, walked another Antip, 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, one more 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; it will hurt his head; he will hurt, feel nauseous, and won’t eat. He'll go into your ravine like that!
Uh! Darling! The nanny grumbles quietly, 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 himself, an old man, 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, bring it; yes, look, sharpen it well!
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, looked 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? shouted then. 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 of 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 many activities and worries go into 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 Sunday 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 the father, and the mother, and the old aunt, and the 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 ice 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, on 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 top will climb into the gallery,” she thought almost in a dream, “or else... as if into a ravine...”
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 tiptoed away from the nanny; looked at everyone who was sleeping where; will stop and look closely at how someone wakes up, spit and mutter something in their 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 was already running to the edge, closed his eyes, wanted to look like into the crater of a volcano... but suddenly all the rumors and legends about this ravine rose before him: he was seized by 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; 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 God; 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; the other will sit by the window and catch with his eyes every fleeting phenomenon: whether a cat runs across the yard, or a jackdaw flies by, the observer pursues both with his eyes and the tip of his nose, turning his head first to the right, then 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 Nastasya Ivanovna and Stepanida Tikhonovna admire it, and talk to them about Ilyusha’s future, making him the hero of some brilliant epic she 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 in gold. Then the rays went out one after another; the last ray remained for a long time; he's like fine needle, stuck into a 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 cruel soul The seed of a criminal thought ripens more calmly and powerfully, and when... in Oblomovka everyone rests so soundly and peacefully.
“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, your legs will catch a cold; and it’s scary: a goblin is now walking in the forest, he’s carrying away little children.
Where does it take you? 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.
So 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: he was in an endless winter evening timidly presses close to the nanny, and she whispers to him about some unknown side, where there are neither nights nor cold, where miracles happen, where rivers of honey and milk flow, where no one does anything all year round, and day after day only they know that all the good fellows are walking, such as Ilya Ilyich, and beauties, which cannot be said in a fairy tale or described with a pen.
There is also a good sorceress, who sometimes appears to us in the form of a pike, who chooses some favorite, quiet, harmless in other words, some lazy person whom everyone offends and showers him with all sorts of things for no reason at all. good, but he just eats 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 Oblomov and grandfather listened in childhood to the same fairy tales that passed down in the stereotypical edition of antiquity, in the mouths of nannies and uncles, through centuries and generations.
The nanny, meanwhile, is already painting 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 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 surrounding 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 there were so many incomprehensible things going on with the man himself: a man lives and lives long and well, but suddenly he starts talking inappropriately, or starts shouting in a voice that is not his own, or wanders sleepy at night; the other one, 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 maybe 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 of 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 invigorated, imagining himself a hero of the feat, and goosebumps ran down his spine, or 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 hair of the child 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 became 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 leave the gate alone after ten o'clock in the evening for baptism; 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 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 to doubt 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, but he barely knows what kind there are, and at every step everyone expects and is afraid of something terrible. 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.
Next, Ilya Ilyich suddenly saw himself as a boy of thirteen or fourteen years old.
He already studied in the village of Verkhlevo, about five versts from Oblomovka, with the local manager, the German Stoltz, 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?
Perhaps, when the child was still barely pronouncing words, or perhaps he was not even pronouncing words at all, he was not even walking, but was only looking at everything with that intent, dumb childish gaze that adults call dull, 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 to recover for the omission, but give 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 at all: 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 other 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 issues; that’s why they always blossomed with health and joy, 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 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 done with such precision, so important and solemn.
He even imagined familiar faces and their expressions when different 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, will the signs 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.
With their hearts beating with excitement, they 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 occasion - name day, wedding, etc. P.
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 who is also healthier, more rosy.
Again the era of rituals, feasts, and finally the wedding begins; 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, get married, produce others 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, twirling 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 gotten it too, who sat down under the gallery with the Donets, 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, look, they would 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 is necessary,” Ilya Ivanovich answered carefully and immediately went to inspect the porch.
“Really, 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 noticed.
So, what was loose? - answered Oblomov. But it didn’t fall apart, even though it’s been standing for sixteen years without correction. What Luke did then was glorious!.. Here was a carpenter, so the carpenter... died - the kingdom of heaven be his! 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 in one place 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 diligence of Oblomov, the fence stood like that all summer, and only in 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 had already been 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 barkan in stains, 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 are sitting next to her and, with their noses buried in their work, they 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.
One tallow candle burns dimly in the room, and even then this was only allowed in 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.
That’s why the sofa in the living room was covered in stains a long time ago, that’s why Ilya Ivanovich’s leather chair is only called leather, but in fact it’s either a washcloth or a rope: there’s 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.
Having heard... 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, in a tongue twister, that “such a fine fellow needs put in 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. They, in the simplicity of their souls, understood and implemented the only use of capital - to keep them in a chest.
On the chairs in the living room, in different positions, the inhabitants sit and snore regular visitors Houses.
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 heavy steps are heard, homework Ilya Ivanovich’s boot, the wall clock in its case is dully tapping with a pendulum, and a thread torn from time to time by the hand or teeth of 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 yawns 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 some 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 delighted that 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 will start taking the candle off and suddenly extinguish 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! And to matins and to mass together... But where can I get it! It’s a gift that I’m younger, but I can’t withstand this much!
And when, I mean, did she leave us? asked Ilya Ivanovich. It seems after Ilya’s day?
What are you doing, Ilya Ivanovich! You'll always get it wrong! “She didn’t even wait until the seventh week,” my wife corrected.
“It seems she was here in Petrovka,” Ilya Ivanovich objects.
You are always like this! 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 Elijah’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, except for Oblomov himself, everyone else confused 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, “here is Marya Onisimovna’s husband, the deceased Vasily Fomich, who was, God bless him, healthy, but he died! And he didn’t live sixty years; someone like that would 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 Andreevna gave birth again this is the sixth one.
Is Anna Andreevna alone? - 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, and it’s all money...
What are you saying? asked Ilya Ivanovich, approaching those who were 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 are all getting old: not just year by year, day by 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, but 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.
“It’s true, it’s 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; The only thing that creaks is the threads being threaded back and forth with the needle. Sometimes the hostess will break the silence.
“Yes, it’s dark outside,” she will say. Now, God willing, as soon as we wait for Christmas, they will come to visit their people, it will be more fun, and it’s not clear how the evenings will pass. 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! noted one of the interlocutors. 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 one... 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. In vain he tried to tell the story of his fall: laughter spread throughout the whole society, penetrated to the entrance and to the maid's room, enveloped the whole house, everyone remembered Funny case, everyone laughs for a long time, together, unspeakably like the Olympian gods. As soon as they start to fall silent, someone will pick it up again and off to write.
Finally, with some 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 the mountain a fast? “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 barely said 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, my God! 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? Look! he said. To be dead: the tip of my nose is itching...
Oh, my God! “The wife said, clasping her hands. What kind of dead man is this if the tip itches? Dead man when the bridge of the nose itches. Well, Ilya Ivanovich, what are you, God bless you, unconscious! You’ll say something like that in public someday or in front of guests and you’ll 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 confuse everything! said Ilya Ivanovich. Where do you remember: 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 it’s about to rain, lips kiss, mustache there are gifts, elbow in a new place to sleep, soles road...
Well, Pelageya Ivanovna, well done! said Ilya Ivanovich. And even when the oil is cheap, the back of your head, or something, itches...
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 would not have wanted or loved any other life. 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 scary, everyone thought about it, they were seriously afraid; if the 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 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 family life, V behind the scenes life, but into the innermost thoughts and intentions of everyone, they will get into the soul, scold, discuss unworthy, most of all unfaithful husbands, then they will count various occasions: name days, christenings, homelands, who treated them to what, who they called, who they didn’t.
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? the other one will ask in alarm.
Oh, sad, my dear! the guest answers with a heavy sigh. We have angered the Lord God, the accursed 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, they give you holy water to drink or they whisper and everything will go away.
But fumes happened often. Then everyone lies side by side in bed; 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 letting 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.” It was impossible to lay your hands on any of the beds or the stove: just behold, 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 curiosity! 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, do you hear,” the man answered, “the post office came twice to ask if there were Oblomov’s men: there is a letter, hear, 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. Suddenly a line came. 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. Why, they say, we don’t need a letter. They supposedly weren’t telling us to take letters; I don’t dare: screw you 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, looking at 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 fearfully stated, “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!
Ah! 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?
Oblomov began to read aloud. It turned out that Philip Matveevich was asking to send him a recipe for beer, which was brewed especially well in Oblomovka.
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?
Where is he? - answered the wife. Still need to be found. 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!” “They all spoke in that timidly respectful voice that they use 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 there is no recipe, she said. We also need to look in the closet in the bedroom. But how to send a letter?
“We need the mail,” answered Ilya Ivanovich.
What is 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 is not known whether Philip Matveevich waited for the recipe.
Ilya Ivanovich will sometimes pick up a book - he doesn’t care, just any book. He didn’t even suspect that there was a significant need for reading, but considered it a luxury, something that you can easily do without, just as you can have a picture on the wall, you don’t have to have it, you can go for a walk, you don’t have to go: from this he doesn’t care what kind of book it is; he looked at it as if it were 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 change the phrase: “Let me read a book,” he will say, or just in passing, he accidentally sees a small pile of books that he inherited from his brother and takes 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:
See what you 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. Or: In Vienna, such and such an envoy presented his letters of credit.
“And here they write,” he also read, “that the works of Mrs. 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 do not feed on fat.
“You won’t eat there,” the Oblomovites said, “for lunch they’ll give you soup, roast meat, and potatoes, butter for tea, and for dinner you’ll have Morgen fries,” 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 won’t go today; There's a big holiday on Thursday: is it worth traveling back and forth for three days?
Or sometimes she will suddenly announce 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 look stale 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 then whatever God wills.”
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 for the whole week.
Is it only sometimes that a servant or a girl who gets it for the little bark will grumble:
Uh, 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 Ilyusha stays at home for three weeks, 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 during Fomina’s week; There are two weeks left until summer; there’s no point in traveling, and in the summer the German himself rests, 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 go away, but you can’t buy health; health is more valuable than anything in life. Look, he comes back from his studies as if he were coming back from the hospital: all his fat has disappeared, he’s so thin... and he’s also a naughty boy: he should just run around!
Yes, the father will notice, the 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.
The Oblomovs tried, however, 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 front and behind the eyes Donnerwetters for such pampering.
The times of the Prostakovs and Skotinins are long gone. Proverb learning is light, but the unlearned darkness was already wandering through the villages and hamlets along with the books being 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 waved their hand from 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 a nanny, pulls on his stockings and puts on his shoes, and Ilyusha, already a fourteen-year-old boy, only knows that he is offering him 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:
Why? 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 are heard after him: “Ah, ah! Support, stop! He’ll fall and hurt himself... stop, stop!”
Will he think about jumping out into the canopy in winter or opening the window - again 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 through the village, then into the field, along the gullies, into the birch forest, and in three leaps rush to the bottom of the ravine, or tag along with the boys to play snowballs, try your hand.
The imp just keeps trying to wash him away: he holds on and on, finally he 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 bam with snow by: 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 raspberries and kept him in bed for three days, but one thing could be useful for him: playing snowballs again...
Psychologists rightly claim that all qualities, both good and bad, are inherent in a person from childhood. From the environment in which a person grew up, what he saw and absorbed into himself early age, depends on the formation of his personality in the future. A brilliant confirmation of this is the novel by A.I. Goncharov "Oblomov". Describing childhood and then adult life Oblomov, A.I. Goncharov, long before the appearance of multi-volume psychological opuses, so vividly and convincingly reveals the reasons for the emergence of laziness, indifference, and empty dreams in a person, that his book can rightfully be called a classic textbook on social psychology. Little Ilyusha lives in Oblomovka, lives serenely and happily, just like everyone else around him. Oblomovka – unique place . “Oblomovka is an almost impassable” “corner” that lives its own special life. What is this “feature”? Oblomovka lives as if frozen: life in her is sleepy, leisurely and surprisingly monotonous. As they say, “nothing happens in the village.” “In the last 5 years, none of the several hundred serf souls have died,” the only events that excite the minds and souls of the inhabitants are the thefts of turnips from other people’s gardens. Goncharov writes about the village: “No, really, there is a sea there, no high mountains, rocks and abysses, no dense forests - there is nothing grandiose, wild and gloomy.” But there is no life there either. Oblomovka is sleeping. The appearance of a stranger outside the outskirts plunges its inhabitants into wild horror. Separately, I would like to touch on Ilyusha’s parents. Both his father and mother are sure that they live correctly, “to live otherwise is a sin.” All their lives they do nothing - neither good nor bad. The father creates the appearance that he manages the estate, although the serfs steal from under his nose for their own pleasure. Checking the accounts, monitoring the manager is too lazy. Well-fed, dressed - and okay. And fixing a fence or building is something completely unthinkable, and things don’t go beyond talking and lamenting. Oblomov’s mother is seriously concerned only with food: discussing lunches and dinners is the meaning of her existence. And in these conditions Oblomov’s entire childhood proceeds. Little Ilyusha is protected from everything: he can’t go into the garden, he can’t go into the forest, and even more so into a terrible ravine. The boy was used to having serfs do everything for him. He’s too lazy to even put on his stockings: all he can do is trip the servant’s foot, while also trying to hit him on the nose with his heel. Studying at a boarding school is a completely different story. There Ilyusha Oblomov is a volunteer student: he wanted to, came to class, he wanted to, he skipped school with the permission of his parents. Especially if there are pancakes in the house. “Perhaps,” writes Goncharov, “Ilyusha would have learned something good if Oblomovka had been 500 miles from Verkhlev.” The only thing that evokes any emotion in the boy is his nanny’s fairy tales. Moreover, fairy tales about monsters and the fight against them plunge him into horror. But Ilyusha really likes stories about couch potatoes and klutzes gifted by sorceresses for some unknown reason. Wow, the boy thinks, he lay there, lay there, and got wealth and a beauty into the bargain. Great! What inevitably happened was that “... Oblomov’s fairy tale mixed with life, and he is unconsciously sad, why is a fairy tale not life, and why is life not a fairy tale?” Movement, action, development - all this is alien to Oblomov. What gradually happens is that, in general, a kind and intelligent person, instead of doing something, living an active life, moves away even from friends, lies down on the sofa, and indulges in boredom and meaningless dreams. It’s sad that Oblomov will most likely never get up from this symbolic sofa for the rest of his life.
