GONCHAROV, Ivan (Aleksandrovich) (LITERATURE)

Born: Simbirsk, Russia, 18 June 1812. Education: Educated at local boarding school, 1820-22; Moscow Commercial School, 1822-31; University of Moscow, 1831-34. Military Service: Civil servant in St. Petersburg from 1834: secretary to Admiral Pitiatin on trip to Far East, 1852-55; Career: Official censor, St. Petersburg, 1856-60, and member of the committee of review of Russian censorship groups, 1863-67; retired from civil service as Actual Councillor of State, 1867. Died: 27 September 1891.

Publications

Collections

Povesti i ocherki [Stories and Essays], edited by B.M. Engelgardt. 1937.

Sobranie sochinenii [Collected Works], edited by A.P. Rybasov. 8 vols., 1952-55.

Sobranie sochinenii [Collected Works], edited by S.I. Mashinskii. 8 vols., 1977-80.

Izbrannye sochineniia [Selected Works], edited by G.I. Belen’kii. 1990.

Fiction

Obyknovennaia istoriia. 1848; as A Common Story, translated by Constance Garnett, 1894; as The Same Old Story, translated by Ivy Litvinova, 1956; as An Ordinary Story, with ViktorRovoz, edited and translated by Maijorie L. Hoover, 1993.

Oblomov. 1859; as Oblomov, translated by C.J. Hogarth, 1915; also translated by Natalie Duddington, 1929; David Magarshack, 1954; Ann Dunnigan, 1963. Obryv. 1870; as The Precipice, translated by M. Bryant, 1915; translated by Laury Magnus and Boris Jakim, 1993.


Other

Russkie v Iaponii v kontse 1853 i v nachale 1854 godov [Russians in Japan in the End of 1853 and the Beginning of 1854]. 1855; revised edition, as Fregat Pallada, 1858; edited by D.V. Oznobishin, 1986; as The Frigate Pallas: Notes on a Journey, translated by N.W. Wilson, 1965.

Literaturno-kriticheskie stat’i i pis’ma [Literary Critical Articles and Letters], edited by A.P. Rybasova. 1938. I.A. Goncharov-kritik (selection), edited by V.I. Korobov. 1981.

Ocherki. Stat’i. Pis’ma. Vospominaniiasovremennikov [Essays. Articles. Letters. Reminiscences of Contemporaries]. 1986.

Critical Studies::

Goncharov by Janko Lavrin, 1954; Goncharov by Alexandra and Sverre Lyngstad, 1971; Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov by Milton Ehre, 1973; Goncharov: His Life and His Works by V. Setchkarev, 1974; Oblomov: A Critical Examination of Goncharov’s Novels by Richard Peace, 1991; The Autobiographical Novel of Co-consciousness: Goncharov, Woolf, and Joyce by Gayla Diment, 1994; Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, edited by Gayla Diment, 1998.

Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov’s best known novel, so dwarfs his other fiction that, in the West, at least, he tends to be known for this work alone. This is regrettable because, for all its uniqueness, it is still arguable that Oblomov achieves its fullest resonance against the background of its predecessor, Obyknovennaia istoriia (A Common Story), and its successor, Obryv (The Precipice).

All three novels are concerned with the confrontation between the rising pragmatism of the mid-19th century and the comparatively established norms of Romantic idealism. A Common Story explores the relationship between Aleksandr Aduev, a young idealist dreaming of love and literary success and his uncle who has become reconciled to the uninspiring realities of the world. Somewhat too schematically, perhaps, Goncharov plots the course of Aduev’s disenchantment to its issue: assimilation to the uncle’s viewpoint. In The Precipice the ineffective Raiskii, another idealist, vies with a nihilist for the heroine’s hand. Although the nihilist manages to seduce her, both he and Raiskii are ultimately rejected in favour of Tushin, a solid, commonsensical neighbour of the heroine.

The triumph of the pragmatic outlook is also an essential feature of Oblomov. Stolz, the half-German friend of the eponymous hero, attempts to awaken the latter from his torpid inactivity, urging him to use his talents in the real world before it is too late. Encouraged by the practical Stolz and by the heroine, Olga, with whom he has an affair, Oblomov makes some progress in extricating himself from the mire before succumbing once more to the temptations of inertia. Oblomov dies of a stroke and Stolz marries the heroine. Oblomov’s slothful attachment to his bed, his almost symbiotic relationship with his aged servant Zakhar and his addiction to comfort are generally seen as satirized characteristics of the declining Russian landed gentry of the mid-19th century. Stolz embodies the entrepreneurial class that will oust the aristocracy unless it adapts.

However, the status of Oblomov as a world classic derives from the fact that Oblomov, like Hamlet (whose indecisiveness he shares) transcends his chronotopos to personify a universal human predicament. Oblomov is the passive romantic who instinctively resists every incursion from the real world of disturbing activity. This passivity is represented in the novel as something akin to sleep, and, like sleep, is solaced by dreaming.

”Oblomov’s Dream,” a pivotal section of the novel, was published separately in 1849. It offers an idyllic vision of the hero’s rural childhood that has so fatefully shaped his later life. The dream is not just a representation of the past but an abiding subconscious reality that continues to exert a stultifying influence on Oblomov’s will. Such is its fatally soothing power that, after his brief awakening by Olga and Stolz, Oblomov is unable to resist his landlady’s adult reconstruction of the old childhood comforts.

The use of dream, both for subliminal analysis and as a means of representing contradictions inherent in the romantic outlook, makes Oblomov a profoundly psychological novel. It is Goncharov’s achievement to have successfully grafted psychological portrayal on to the Gogolian stock of external characterization. To this extent Oblomov may be held to anticipate the great novels of Tolstoi and Dostoevskii and must be assigned a crucial role in the development of the Russian novel.

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