Oblomov (11 page)

Very seldom did fate throw him together with a woman so closely that he could catch fire for a few days and imagine himself to be in love. That was why his love adventures never developed into love affairs; they stopped short at the very beginning, and in their simplicity, innocence, and purity equalled the love-stories of a schoolgirl. He particularly avoided the pale, melancholy maidens, mostly with black eyes which reflected
‘tormenting days and iniquitous nights’, maidens with secret joys and sorrows, who always have something to confide, something to tell, and when they tell it, shudder, burst into tears, then suddenly throw their arms around their friend’s neck, gaze into his eyes, then at the sky, and declare that there is a curse on their life, and sometimes fall down in a faint. He avoided them fearfully. His soul was still pure and virginal; it was perhaps waiting for real love, for support, for overpowering passion, and then, as the years passed, seemed to have despaired of waiting.

Oblomov parted still more coldly from his many friends. Immediately after receiving his first letter from the bailiff with news of arrears and failure of crops, he replaced his best friend, the chef, by a woman cook, then sold his horses and, finally, dismissed his other ‘friends’. There was hardly anything that attracted him in the town and he became more and more firmly attached to his flat. At first he found it a bit hard to remain dressed all day, then he felt too lazy to dine out except with intimate friends, mostly bachelors, who did not object to his divesting himself of his tie or unbuttoning his waistcoat, and even, if possible, lying down to have an hour’s sleep. Soon he got tired of parties, too: one had to put on a dress-suit and shave every day. He read somewhere that only morning mists were good for one and evening mists were bad, and he began to fear the damp. In spite of these, eccentricities, his friend Stolz succeeded in making him go out and call on people; but Stolz often left Petersburg for Moscow, Nizhny-Novgorod, the Crimea, and latterly abroad, too, and without him Oblomov was plunged up to the neck in solitude and seclusion, from which he could be dragged only by something unusual, something out of the ordinary events of life; but nothing of the sort ever happened or was likely to happen.

Besides, as Oblomov grew older, he reverted to a sort of childish timidity, an expectation of danger and evil from everything that was outside the sphere of his daily experience, the result of getting out of touch with life. He was not afraid, for example, of the crack in his bedroom ceiling, he was used to it; nor did it ever occur to him that the stuffy atmosphere in the room and his constant sitting indoors was almost more perilous for his health than night dampness, that his daily over-indulgence at a meal was a kind of slow suicide, for he was used to it and felt no fear. He was not used to movement, to life, to crowds, and to bustle. He felt stifled in a crowd; he got into a boat fearing that he would not reach the other bank in safety; he drove in a
carriage expecting the horse to bolt and smash it. Sometimes ha had an attack of nerves; he was afraid of the stillness around him or for a reason he did not understand a cold shiver ran down his spine. Sometimes he looked apprehensively at a dark corner, dreading lest his imagination should trick him into seeing a ghost there.

That was what his social life had come to. He lazily dismissed all the youthful hopes that had betrayed him or been betrayed by him, all the bitter-sweet, bright memories that sometimes make even an old man’s heart beat faster.

6

W
HAT
did he do at home, then? Did he read or write or study? Yes, if he chanced to pick up a book or a newspaper, he read it. If he heard of some remarkable work, he would feel an urge to become acquainted with it. He tried to get the book, asked for it, and if it was brought to him soon, he began it and formed some idea of what it was about; another step and he would have mastered it, but instead he lay looking apathetically at the ceiling, with the book lying beside him unfinished and not properly understood. He grew indifferent much faster than he had grown interested: he never went back to a book he had abandoned. And yet he had been educated like other people, like everyone, in fact – that is to say, till the age of fifteen he had been in a boarding-school, then his old parents had decided, after a long struggle, to send their darling boy to Moscow, where willy-nilly he had to follow the course of his studies to the end. His timid, apathetic nature prevented him from giving full play to his laziness and caprices among strangers at school, where no exceptions were made for spoiled children. He had to sit straight in his schoolroom and listen to what the teachers were saying, because there was nothing else he could do, and he learned his lessons with much labour, with sighs, in the sweat of his brow. All that he regarded as a punishment sent by heaven for our sins.

He never looked beyond the line which the teacher marked with his nail in setting the lesson; he never asked any questions and never required any explanations. He was quite satisfied with what was written in his note-book and showed no tiresome curiosity even when he failed to understand all that he heard and learned. If he managed somehow or other to master a book
on statecraft, history, or political economy, he was perfectly satisfied. When Stolz brought him books, which he had to read in addition to what he had learned, he used to look at him in silence for a long time.

‘So you, too, Brutus, are against me?’ he said with a sigh, as he sat down to read them.

Such immoderate reading seemed hard and unnatural to him. Of what use were all those note-books which had taken up so much time, paper, and ink? What is the use of text-books? And, last but not least, why waste six or seven years of your life being cooped up in a school? Why put up with all the strict discipline, the reprimands, the boredom of sitting over lessons, the bans on running about, playing, and amusing yourself, when life is still ahead of him?

‘When am I to live?’ he asked himself again. ‘When am I at last to put into circulation all this capital of knowledge, most of which will be of no use to me in life anyway? Political economy, for instance, algebra, geometry – what am I going to do with them in Oblomovka?’

History, too, depressed him terribly: you learn and read that at a certain date the people were overtaken by all sorts of calamities and were unhappy, then they summoned up their strength, worked, took infinite care, endured great hardships, laboured in preparation for better days. At last they came – one would think history might take a rest, but no, clouds gathered again, the edifice crashed down, and again the people had to toil and labour… The bright days do not remain, they fly, and life flows on, one crisis follows upon another.

Serious reading tired him. Philosophers did not succeed in awakening in him a passion for speculative thought. The poets, on the other hand, touched him to the quick: like everyone else, he became young again. He, too, reached the happy time of life, which never fails anyone and which smiles upon all, the time when one’s powers are at their height, when one is conscious of life and full of hope and desire to do good, to show one’s prowess, to work, when one’s heart beats faster and the pulses quicken, when one thrills with emotion, makes enthusiastic speeches, and sheds sweet tears. His heart and mind grew clear: he shook off his drowsiness and longed for activity. Stolz helped him to prolong that moment as long as was possible for such a nature as his friend’s. He took advantage of Oblomov’s love of the poets and kept him for sixteen months under the spell of thought and learning. He made use of the ecstatic flight of his young friend’s
fancy to introduce aims other than pure delight in the reading of poetry, pointed out the distant goals of his own and his friend’s life, and carried him off into the future. Both grew excited, wept, and exchanged solemn promises to follow the path of reason and light. Oblomov was infected by the youthful ardour of Stolz, and he was aflame with the desire to work and to reach his distant, but fascinating goal.

But the flower of life opened up and bore no fruit. Oblomov sobered down, and only occasionally, on Stolz’s advice, read one book or another, though not at once, and without hurry or eagerness, lazily scanning the lines. However absorbing the passage that engaged his attention might be, if it was time to have dinner or to go to bed, he put the book face downwards and went to have dinner or blew out the candle and went to sleep. If he was given the first volume of some work, he did not, after finishing it, ask for the second, but if it were brought to him, he read it through slowly. Later on he found even the first volume too much for him and spent most of his leisure with his elbow on the table and his head on his elbow; sometimes, instead of his elbow, he used the book Stolz insisted that he should read.

So ended Oblomov’s career as a student. The date on which he heard his last lecture was the utmost limit of his learning. The principal’s signature on his certificate, like his teacher’s nail-mark on his book in the old days, was the line beyond which our hero did not think it necessary to extend the field of his knowledge. His head was a complicated depository of past deeds, persons, epochs, figures, religions, disconnected political, economic, mathematical and other truths, problems, principles, and so on. It was like a library composed entirely of odd volumes of various branches of knowledge. His studies had a strange effect on Oblomov; there was for him a gulf between life and learning which he never attempted to cross. To him life was one thing and learning another. He had studied all the existing and the no longer existing systems of law, he had been through the course of practical jurisprudence, but when after a burglary in his house he had to write to the police, he took a sheet of paper and pen, spent a long time thinking over it, and in the end sent for a clerk. His estate accounts were kept by the bailiff. ‘What has learning to do with it?’ he asked himself in perplexity.

He returned to his seclusion without any store of knowledge which might have given a direction to his roving and idly slumbering thoughts. What did he do? Why, he went on drawing the
pattern of his own life. He found in it, not without reason, so much wisdom and poetry that it provided him with an inexhaustible source of occupation even without any books and learning. Having given up the service and society, he began to solve the problem of existence in a different way; he began to ponder about the purpose of his life, and at last discovered that it was in himself that he had to look for its secret. He understood that family happiness and the care of the estate were his sole business in life. Till then he had no idea of the position of his affairs: Stolz sometimes looked after them for him. He did not know exactly what his income and expenditure were, he never drew up any budget – he did nothing.

Oblomov’s father left the estate to his son as he had received it from his father. Though he had spent all his life in the country, he never tried to be clever or racked his brains over different improvements as landowners do nowadays: how to discover new sources of productivity of the land or to enlarge and increase the old sources, and so on. The fields were cultivated in the same way as in his grandfather’s time, and the methods of marketing the agricultural produce were the same. The old man, to be sure, was very pleased if a good harvest or a rise in prices provided him with a larger income than the year before: he called it a divine blessing. He had merely an aversion to making money in all sorts of new-fangled and devious ways.

‘Our fathers and forefathers were no stupider than we,’ he used to say in answer to what he regarded as harmful advice, ‘and yet they lived happily, and so shall we: God willing, we shall not starve.’

Receiving, without various cunning shifts, an income from the estate that was sufficient to provide a good dinner and supper for his family and guests, he thanked God and thought it a sin to try to get more than that. If his steward brought him 2,000 roubles, having put another 1,000 in his own pocket, and tearfully blamed the hail, drought, or bad harvest for it, old Oblomov crossed himself and said also with tears:

‘God’s will be done. I shall not argue with God. We must thank God for what there is.’

Since the death of Oblomov’s parents the affairs on the estate had not improved; on the contrary, as was evident from the bailiff’s letter, they had grown worse. It was obvious that Oblomov had to go there himself and find out on the spot the reason for the gradual decline in his income. He intended to do so, but kept delaying, partly because such a journey meant almost a new
and unknown feat for him. In all his life he had made only one journey – in a big, old-fashioned coach, amidst featherbeds, chests, trunks, hams, loaves, all sorts of roasted and cooked beef and poultry, and accompanied by several servants. That was how he had made his only journey from the estate to Moscow, and this journey he took as the standard for all journeys. And now, he was told, one no longer journeyed like that: one travelled at breakneck speed. Again, Oblomov put off his journey because he was not yet ready to put his affairs in order. He was certainly not like his father and grandfather. He had studied and lived in the world: all that suggested all sorts of ideas that were new to him. He understood that acquisition was not a sin, but that it was the duty of every citizen to help to raise the general welfare by honest labour. That was why the greatest part of the pattern of life which he drew in his seclusion was devoted to a fresh plan for re-organization of the estate and dealing with the peasants in accordance with the needs of the times. The fundamental idea of the plan, its arrangement and its main parts had long been ready in his head; only the details, the estimates and the figures remained. He worked untiringly on the plan for several years, thinking it over continually as he was pacing his room or lying down or visiting friends; he kept adding to it or changing various items, recalling what he had thought of the day before and forgotten during the night; and sometimes a new, unexpected idea would flash like lightning through his mind and set it simmering – and the work would start all over again. He was not some petty executor of somebody else’s ready-made notions; he had himself created his own ideas and he was going to carry them out.