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A review by hadeanstars
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
4.0
“That’s it! I’ll start tomorrow. Today I don’t have time; I’m too busy thinking about it.”
So goes the entire life philosophy of Ilyich Oblomov, taking with it all his hopes, dreams, and time. And the love of Olga, who cannot abide his worldview, though she cares for him deeply.
This is a remarkable novel by an author I’d not even heard of until I decided to read more Russian literature. It begins as a Proustian masterpiece, and if you’ve read Proust then you’ll know that nobody writes in the same way, except perhaps Ivan Goncharov who describes Oblomov’s childhood home with such care and meticulousness that you are transported to another world, it is almost a fairytale, but not without a hint of darkness, just as all fairytales have. I was intrigued to read the continual reference to Oblomovka, as a Russian diminutive meaning ‘place of origin’ among other things, and reading around the novel after completing it, that Oblomovism is a synonym for laziness. You will find it in the thesaurus.
Written in 1859, 50 years before the Russian Revolution, you nonetheless feel the underlying tensions which led to such upheaval, because this novel is very much a treatise on the failings of the gentry, and the suffering of the lackey which resulted in the emancipation of the serfs.
But underneath this political message, there is a human one. Oblomov is a gentle and sweet man, handicapped by his soporific upbringing and who thereby loses all passion for life. It is a really wonderful book, beautifully written, but of course, its message is a sad one.
So goes the entire life philosophy of Ilyich Oblomov, taking with it all his hopes, dreams, and time. And the love of Olga, who cannot abide his worldview, though she cares for him deeply.
This is a remarkable novel by an author I’d not even heard of until I decided to read more Russian literature. It begins as a Proustian masterpiece, and if you’ve read Proust then you’ll know that nobody writes in the same way, except perhaps Ivan Goncharov who describes Oblomov’s childhood home with such care and meticulousness that you are transported to another world, it is almost a fairytale, but not without a hint of darkness, just as all fairytales have. I was intrigued to read the continual reference to Oblomovka, as a Russian diminutive meaning ‘place of origin’ among other things, and reading around the novel after completing it, that Oblomovism is a synonym for laziness. You will find it in the thesaurus.
Written in 1859, 50 years before the Russian Revolution, you nonetheless feel the underlying tensions which led to such upheaval, because this novel is very much a treatise on the failings of the gentry, and the suffering of the lackey which resulted in the emancipation of the serfs.
But underneath this political message, there is a human one. Oblomov is a gentle and sweet man, handicapped by his soporific upbringing and who thereby loses all passion for life. It is a really wonderful book, beautifully written, but of course, its message is a sad one.