Is laziness or depression the curse of Oblomovka?

This Russian classic about Ilya Oblomov and his life struggles is wonderfully written. Oblomov struggles with activity of any type on a daily basis from getting out of bed to reading a book. Love brings Oblomov alive, but will it last? ( )

More translations of Russian novels? We’ve done our time with War and Peace, what more do you want? Indeed. In the case of Russian literature, the vaults are still being opened, classics are still being unearthed, and new Russian literary works are still making their way to our shores. Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov and Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard are a new and noteworthy pairing, and their translations are brought to us by Marian Schwartz, a prize-winning translator of Russian fiction, history, biography, and criticism.

Schwartz’s recently published translation of Oblomov is the first time Goncharov’s preferred 1862 edition has been made available in English. The combination of Goncharov’s edits and Schwartz’s translation left me thumbing back to the copyright page to confirm 1862, not 1962, as this translation sparkles with contemporary lyricism and humor.

For the rest of this review, see the spring 2009 edition of The Quarterly Conversation. http://quarterlyconversation.com/oblo... ( )

This magnificent book is about whether to simply endure life or to really live it, and if the latter, then how.

Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov is a good-hearted man of independent means who lives a life of excessive laziness. Ensconced in his bed, or on his sofa in one room in his apartment, he spends his days in his worn and filthy dressing gown doing nothing, not even reading or writing (there is not a shred of paper in the place, and the ink in the inkwell has dried up), and bickering incessantly with his servant, Zahar, who has been with him since his childhood and treats his master with a mixture of contempt, devotion, insolence and humility. At times their relationship takes on some of the hilarious character of Beckett’s ambiguous and bleak male-male relationships:

“You lose everything,” [Zahar] remarked, opening the door into the drawing room to see if the handkerchief was there.
“Where are you going? Look for it here. I haven’t been in there for two days. Do be quick,” Ilya Ilyitch said.

The plot involves Oblomov’s struggle to escape the vice of sloth, in his failed love affair with the ravishing Olga Sergeyevna, his growing love for his landlady Agafya Matveyevna, and the machinations of her brother and his crony to rob Oblomov of the income from his estate. Oblomov is motivated by a drive to achieve the perfect bliss of family life, to which he thinks Olga can help him. Ironically, he achieves this state only with his landlady, and it takes him a while to realise this. Olga eventually marries Oblomov’s childhood friend, the worldly and practical Stolz, while Oblomov succumbs to the enervating effects of indecision, prevarication and idleness...

Read the full review on The Lectern:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/0... ( )

1414 Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov translated by Natalie Duddington (read 26 Oct 1976) This novel from the mid-1800s is rather verbose and discursive. It tells of Oblomov who is so lazy he only wants to vegetate. He falls in love with Olga, but is unwilling to take the actions necessary to marry her. She marries Stolz. He marries a woman who does all for him, so he can merely vegetate. Not much of a plot, but it had its moments. ( )

Capolavoro assoluto ( )