I’d been thinking of tackling some long novel I’d never read over the summer break, and having trouble deciding which of the many such books to begin with, when I noticed that today is Ivan Goncharov’s 200th birthday. That settled it. Here are some of the bits that caught my eye in the first three chapters of Oblomov<\/i> (Everyman edition, translated by Natalie Duddington):<\/p>\n
1.<\/b> I had thought that this famous passage was the opening of the novel, but it actually comes on the second page (4):<\/p>\n “Lying down was not for Ilya Ilyitch either a necessity as it is for a sick or a sleepy man, or an occasional need as it is for a person who is tired, or a pleasure as it is for a sluggard:it was his normal state. When he was at home – and he was almost always at home – he was lying down, and invariably in the same room, the one in which we have found him and which served him as bedroom, study, and reception-room.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 3.<\/b> Just a little further on, after mentioning the dirty plate left (as always) from last night’s dinner (5):<\/p>\n “If it had not been for this plate and for a freshly smoked pipe by the bed, and for the owner himself lying in it, one might have thought that the room was uninhabited – everything was so dusty and faded and devoid of all traces of human presence. It is true that there were two or three open books and a newspaper on the chiffoniers, an inkstand and pens on the bureau; but the open pages had turned yellow and were covered with dust – evidently they had been left so for weeks; the newspaper dated from last year, and if one dipped a pen into the inkstand a startled fly might perhaps come buzzing out of it.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 3.<\/b> Nice work if you can get it – Oblomov’s friend Volkov (28):<\/p>\n “I have a post that doesn’t oblige me to go the office, thank goodness; I only go twice a week to see the general and have dinner with him.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n There is much more on the banal horrors of bureaucracy – too much to quote here. I’m surprised that LanguageHat, with his love for Russian literature, has not mentioned the anniversary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’d been thinking of tackling some long novel I’d never read over the summer break, and having trouble deciding which of the many such books to begin with, when I noticed that today is Ivan Goncharov’s 200th birthday. That settled … Continue reading \n
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