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On September 27, 1891, Ivan Goncharov, Russian author, died at the age of 79. From the article:
"Analysis of Ivan Goncharov’s Novels
Ivan Goncharov’s (1812-1891) novels mark the transition from Russian Romanticism to a much more realistic worldview. They appeared at a time when sociological criteria dominated analysis and when authors were expected to address the injustices of Russian life. The critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov derived the term Oblomovism from Goncharov’s most famous novel, using it to denote the physical and mental sluggishness of Russia’s backward country gentry. Thus, Goncharov is credited with exposing a harmful national type: the spendthrift serf-holding landowner who contributed nothing to the national economy and resisted progress for fear of destroying his carefree existence.
By presenting this type in his rather ordinary surroundings and endeavors, stripped of the Romantic aura with which Alexander Pushkin’s classical and Mikhail Lermontov’s Romantic verse had imbued him, Goncharov gained renown as a critical realist. While all three of his novels remain popular classics in his homeland, only Oblomov has found a wide readership and critical acclaim abroad. Emphasis on that work has caused modern Western scholars to value Goncharov as highly for his artful psychological portraits of stunted adults adrift in a changing world as for his sociological contribution.
Oblomov’s “return to the womb” predates Sigmund Freud by several decades. On the artistic level, Goncharov far transcends the realistic label often applied to him. His talent for transforming an endlessly mundane provincial existence into a delicate poetic network of pre-Petrine Russian values set standards for the budding Russian novel; his stream-ofconsciousness approach points ahead to James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Goncharov has firmly established a place for himself within the genre of the modern psychological novel.
Analysis
“My life began flickering out from the very first moment I became conscious of myself.” Thus, Ilya Oblomov explains his arrested development to his successful business friend, Stolz, who is making a last try to rouse Oblomov from his fatal lethargy, and thus Goncharov points the reader to the cause of Oblomov’s inertia: his childhood in a sleepy, backward manor house, attended by an army of serfs, every moment structured to reinforce an existence of indolently blissful inactivity, a paradise to which the adult strives all of his life to return. Oblomov’s failure as a man and his search for a surrogate childhood in a simple St. Petersburg family fit perfectly the scheme of the psychological novel. From this perspective, the seemingly typical Russian landowner Oblomov becomes a universal figure, and the old-fashioned Russian village becomes merely background.
Such a perspective, however, has its drawbacks. If one considers Oblomov apart from Goncharov’s other novels, as is often the case in the West, the wider artistic sweep of his fiction is neglected. Each of his novels gives expression to a different facet of the contradictions encountered by the Russian patriarchal order as it confronted sociopolitical reform. Goncharov’s characters can be said to embody the two warring dominant philosophies of nineteenth century Russia: Slavophilism and Westernization. The author’s own struggle between these two opposing forces is cast into sharp focus in the novels, as his progress-oriented mind gradually loses ground to his tradition-loving, Slavophile heart.
Neither Goncharov’s personal dissatisfactions nor his conservative turn impair his stature as an accomplished novelist. The expert use of several literary devices contributes to this renown. There is, first of all, his power of observation, the ability to create such a lifelike image of an ordinary event through accumulation of detail that his scenes are compared to Flemish interiors. Authorial ambiguity also enriches the narrative. The first two novels conceptually demonstrate the advantages of a progressive economy and the futility of perpetuating serfdom, but Goncharov presents a dying way of life with such a wealth of attractive imagery that social indifference, indeed exploitation, infantilism, and stagnation, are turned into a languidly cozy, almost noble way of life, feeding on nostalgia and winning sympathy for its prejudices.
No less impressive is Goncharov’s skill in suggesting the delusions of the regressive personality. Oblomov’s insecure psyche reshapes his ordinary village into a harmless, safe refuge, smoothing craggymountains into gentle hillocks,swift rivers into murmuring brooks, extremes of climate into eternally pleasant weather, passions into lethargy. Readers are scarcely aware that the descriptions are no longer objective, but the distortions of a frightened mind.
Finally, Goncharov excels in drawing exquisite female portraits; his women also symbolize the synthesis between the old and new. In A Common Story, Lizaveta is able to balance the contradictory forces that pull the male characters into adversary position; in Oblomov, Olga combines the best of old Russia, its cultural heritage, with an inquisitive mind and an active personality; in The Precipice, Vera eventually unites the positive features of her patriarchal upbringing with the progressive forces of a commercially enterprising spouse.
In his final novel, Goncharov’s moralizing instincts undermine his mastery of style, as didactic elements intrude too explicitly. The author’s own estrangement from the present and his nostalgia for a less complex existence color his perceptions. His slow-paced upbringing, his later insecurities, his realization that progress was necessary, his struggle between old and new, and his final withdrawal from society are the building blocks of all of his works. He delicately managed to balance these elements before yielding to his own preferences.
A Common Story
The unstinting praise of Russia’s foremost social critic, Vissarion Belinsky, assured the success of A Common Story the moment it appeared in the literary journal Sovremennik. Ironically, the work was hailed as an exposé of the degenerate gentry class and a call for modernization. Critics and readers alike noted only the main character Alexander Aduev’s final acceptance of St. Petersburg’s progressive lifestyle, not his mentor-uncle’s disillusionment with it. They also overlooked the author’s cautious suggestion that the city’s competitive utilitarianism was no more satisfying than the monotony of the backward village.
This misperception attests Goncharov’s balancing skill. Alexander is lured from his peaceful, idyllic estate, lovingly presented in the fragrance of its lilacs, berries, bushes, and forests, by visions of cosmopolitan dazzle. Once he is taken in hand by a “new man,” his coldly efficient, philistine uncle, Peter, one disappointmentsucceeds another. Like an early Oblomov, Alexander adjusts only superficially, never able to integrate his rustic values with St. Petersburg’s diverse phenomena. Like a young Goncharov, Alexander blunders from one unsuccessful love affair to another. His literary endeavors, characterized by overblown sentimental clichés, are equally fruitless. Despite all efforts by Peter, he turns into a rather ridiculous figure, an out-of-place relic in the bustling city. Goncharov’s ambiguous attitude, however, gives enough scope to elicit a measure of pity from the reader, to mark the young man’s discomforts and his inability to cope.
Peter’s young wife, Lizaveta, compassionately brings out Alexander’s positive traits. When all attempts at acclimatization end in failure, he returns to his quiet country home and recovers his bearings. yet the lessons of the city are not lost. At a distance, its hectic multiplicity develops into a fair alternative to the boring idyll of the placid province. In the end, Alexander sets out for St. Petersburg once more, cured of his romantic expectations, determined to copy his uncle’s career through realistic adaptation and lowered sights. His success is presented in the epilogue. He parallels Peter faithfully: fat and balding, engaged to a young heiress, adjusted, mature, eager for progressive endeavors.
While this conclusion heartened liberal critics, Goncharov’s reservations are apparent in the incompletely dramatized and therefore unconvincing psychological transformation of Alexander. The artistically unmotivated ending causes a change of focus. The carefully developed juxtaposition of old versus new, village versus city, Slavophile versus Westernizer assumes the outline of a bildungsroman. Peter and Alexander represent two stages of identical development. Alexander’s romantic striving mirrors Peter’s own youthful immaturity, while Peter’s rational, mature stage serves as a marker for Alexander’s similar destiny. At the moment of Alexander’s arrival at that stage, Peter’s dry and joyless stance casts doubt on the wisdom of these very accomplishments, foreshadowing eventual disillusionment for his nephew. The general inattention to this downbeat element is a result of the shortage of bourgeois heroes in Russian literature.
The Romantic characters of Pushkin, Lermontov, and the early Turgenev are immobile, purposeless, and contemptuous of practical activity. Liberal critics had long called for a positively depicted, businesslike nobleman, and they accepted Alexander in his final guise enthusiastically as such. The careful reader is left questioning both men’s aspirations and sharing Lizaveta’s wistful awareness that St. Petersburg’s progress is far from ideal. The alternative of seeking that ideal in Russia’s past surfaces only in Goncharov’s later works, although the absence of a criticalstand against serfdom and landowner privileges already serves to modify the seeming victory of Westernization.
Oblomov
Turgenev’s popular A Nest of Gentlefolk threatened to overshadow Oblomov, which was first printed in Otechestvennye zapiski, until critic Dobrolyubov’s 1859 article “Chto takoyo Oblomovshchina?” (“What Is Oblomovism?”) swiftly drew national attention to the work. Following Dobrolyubov’s cue, most readers and succeeding generations saw in Oblomov the hero’s inertia the psychological consequence of total dependence on serf labor. By lavishing endless pages on the harmful effects of Oblomovism and the virtues of Stolz, a Western-influenced business type, Goncharov seemed to strike a forceful blow at the roots of Russia’s economic and social evils.
Oblomov appears as the epitome of the superfluous nobleman, the lazy, alienated dreamer who cannot adjust to change or find a place for himself in the present. Different embodiments of this type exist in Pushkin’s Onegin, Lermontov’s Pechorin, and Turgenev’s Rudin. Oblomov differs from these characters in that he rejects even the search for an alternative, preferring instead the never-changing ways of his childhood Oblomovka. The location of this estate on the Asian border aptly suggests the Asian fatalism and circular philosophy that represent Oblomov’s and, by extension, Russia’s Eastern Tartar heritage. The hero’s Asian dressing gown, serving as his security blanket and finally his shroud, is an equally fitting symbol.
The reader is initiated into all the details of Russian provincial backwardness through Oblomov’s lengthy dream of his sleepy backwater. The dream, a thematic outline of the work and its centerpiece, had been published separately as a sort of overture as early as 1849. The finished novel shows the deadening effect of this “blessed spot” on those who cannot free themselves from the dependencies it fosters. Little Ilya was born a normal child, willing to experiment, to rough it, to develop. The atmosphere of Oblomovka snuffed out all of these inclinations. Tradition stipulates that a Russian gentleman sit, surrounded by hordes of serfs who attend to his every whim, that he eat and doze most of the day, phlegmatically observe the seasonal and ecclesiastical rituals, ignore any attempt at change, be it literacy or postal service, and hope that the waves of Peter the Great’s Westernizing reforms never reach his quiet hamlet. Inevitably, they do reach Oblomovka, and the product of its upbringing must serve his term in St. Petersburg.
The innumerable ways in which the transplanted Oblomov manages to ignore the city’s reality take up a good portion of the narrative. Each failure on the realistic plane is paralleled by a success on the imaginary level, which always features a happy Oblomov in a paradisiacal Oblomovka. Eventually, Oblomov gains a questionable victory. A motherly widow’s shabby lodging transforms itself into a blissful surrogate of Oblomovka for the by-now infantile hero. He has returned to the womb and lives out a short but happy span, until mental stagnation and greedy overeating end his life.
Two people try their best to save Oblomov. First Stolz, the half-German entrepreneur, as lean as an English racehorse where Oblomov is fat and flabby, uses reason and intellectual appeal to convince Oblomov to change. Then Olga, already adapted to a modern intelligentsia but preserving a deep love for Russia’s cultural past, lures him with promises of selfless love. Sexually aroused, Oblomov briefly responds to her, but when he finds that Olga also demands intellectual arousal, constant mental awareness, he takes flight. The equally dull-witted widow offers both maternal and mistress services without the necessity of mental effort.
Stolz and Olga, who eventually marry, represent the best of traditional Russia fused with the best of imported progressive behavior. Stolz is an improved version of Peter Aduev. The latter’s negative traits and final pessimistic outlook have been replaced by Stolz’s cheerfulness and compassion. Even here, however, the author’s descriptive talents hover lovingly over the blubbery Oblomov—over his dreams, his reflections, his blunders—while Stolz comes across as artificial and wooden, the victim of uninspired portrayal. Olga, who loves and appreciates Oblomov’s values, is a more credible figure, and it is she who embodies and carries into the future the reconciliation of the conflict. In some respects, she acts as Goncharov’s mouthpiece. Her dissatisfactions, even with the faultless Stolz, echo the author’s own inability to believe fully in the spiritual benefits of a forwardmoving Russia. Goncharov had no such reservations when it came to praising the charms of Oblomovka. Its oneness with nature renders each inhabitant a paragon of virtue. No passionate outbursts or personal animosities mar the peacefulness. Serfs are not slaves, but content to be reflections of their masters. Their sloth and their ample participation in all the feasting, indulged by benevolent owners, help to deplete Oblomovka’s reserves. When this slothful behavior is transplanted to St. Petersburg in the person of Oblomov’s loyal valet Zakhar, it loses much of its bucolic enchantment, yet the touching interdependence of master and servant redeems the ineptness. It was simply impossible for Goncharov to carry to its logical conclusion his commonsense understanding that radical Slavophilism would result in national stagnation and regression.
The Precipice
Goncharov’s unwillingness to endow his progressive characters with the vitality necessary to make them convincing and interesting asserts itself more fully in his last major work, The Precipice. It appeared in Vestnik Evropy at a time when emancipation was a fact, when Alexander II’s liberalism gave wide scope to social commentators, when literature closely echoed the zeitgeist of reform. Goncharov’s liberal representative is the political exile Volokhov, who, like Turgenev’s nihilist Bazarov, spreads unrest in a deeply conservative village. Volokhov’s positive qualities are quickly neutralized by his seduction of a virtuous country woman, Vera, who naïvely tries to straighten him out. Vera is also a link to the other male principal, Raisky, a St. Petersburg intellectual, who has failed to find a purpose in life and returns to his country estate in search of a footing. It is easy to see in him yet another embodiment of Goncharov’s favorite type: the neurotic male whose interests, convictions, and common sense pull him toward reform but whose temperament and deep-seated impulses chain him to the past. In each of these split personalities, Goncharov’s own schism finds expression. As before, he reserves the best of his descriptive talents for the backwoods, symbolized by the figure of the grandmother. It is in this traditional setting that the abused Vera finds regeneration and mental recovery; it is the rural past that bequeaths stability, sanity, and direction for the future.
Goncharov had once again drawn an exquisite cameo of old Russia, once again contrasted the conflicting values of old and new, once again pictured an artistically masterful “homecoming.” Despite the popularity of the somewhat meandering work, Goncharov’s point of view drew heavy moral indignation. Liberal critics were quick to point out that Goncharov had come down on the side of rural conservatism, that he favored the Slavophiles. Obviously and painfully out of step with the tenor of the time, and psychologically unable and unwilling to recapture his artistic independence, Goncharov withdrew. His subsequent writings did not approach the stature of his novels.
Goncharov’s significance in the development of the Russian novel and Russian intellectual history remains great. He brought to life the characters of old Russia, with a style peculiarly his own, at a time when that patriarchal order began to disintegrate. In his portraits of Slavophiles and Westernizers, he elaborated on the dominant conflict of midcentury Russia. He was the first Russian author to integrate psychological complexities successfully and expertly into his plots, and thereby he created universal types."
"Analysis of Ivan Goncharov’s Novels
Ivan Goncharov’s (1812-1891) novels mark the transition from Russian Romanticism to a much more realistic worldview. They appeared at a time when sociological criteria dominated analysis and when authors were expected to address the injustices of Russian life. The critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov derived the term Oblomovism from Goncharov’s most famous novel, using it to denote the physical and mental sluggishness of Russia’s backward country gentry. Thus, Goncharov is credited with exposing a harmful national type: the spendthrift serf-holding landowner who contributed nothing to the national economy and resisted progress for fear of destroying his carefree existence.
By presenting this type in his rather ordinary surroundings and endeavors, stripped of the Romantic aura with which Alexander Pushkin’s classical and Mikhail Lermontov’s Romantic verse had imbued him, Goncharov gained renown as a critical realist. While all three of his novels remain popular classics in his homeland, only Oblomov has found a wide readership and critical acclaim abroad. Emphasis on that work has caused modern Western scholars to value Goncharov as highly for his artful psychological portraits of stunted adults adrift in a changing world as for his sociological contribution.
Oblomov’s “return to the womb” predates Sigmund Freud by several decades. On the artistic level, Goncharov far transcends the realistic label often applied to him. His talent for transforming an endlessly mundane provincial existence into a delicate poetic network of pre-Petrine Russian values set standards for the budding Russian novel; his stream-ofconsciousness approach points ahead to James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Goncharov has firmly established a place for himself within the genre of the modern psychological novel.
Analysis
“My life began flickering out from the very first moment I became conscious of myself.” Thus, Ilya Oblomov explains his arrested development to his successful business friend, Stolz, who is making a last try to rouse Oblomov from his fatal lethargy, and thus Goncharov points the reader to the cause of Oblomov’s inertia: his childhood in a sleepy, backward manor house, attended by an army of serfs, every moment structured to reinforce an existence of indolently blissful inactivity, a paradise to which the adult strives all of his life to return. Oblomov’s failure as a man and his search for a surrogate childhood in a simple St. Petersburg family fit perfectly the scheme of the psychological novel. From this perspective, the seemingly typical Russian landowner Oblomov becomes a universal figure, and the old-fashioned Russian village becomes merely background.
Such a perspective, however, has its drawbacks. If one considers Oblomov apart from Goncharov’s other novels, as is often the case in the West, the wider artistic sweep of his fiction is neglected. Each of his novels gives expression to a different facet of the contradictions encountered by the Russian patriarchal order as it confronted sociopolitical reform. Goncharov’s characters can be said to embody the two warring dominant philosophies of nineteenth century Russia: Slavophilism and Westernization. The author’s own struggle between these two opposing forces is cast into sharp focus in the novels, as his progress-oriented mind gradually loses ground to his tradition-loving, Slavophile heart.
Neither Goncharov’s personal dissatisfactions nor his conservative turn impair his stature as an accomplished novelist. The expert use of several literary devices contributes to this renown. There is, first of all, his power of observation, the ability to create such a lifelike image of an ordinary event through accumulation of detail that his scenes are compared to Flemish interiors. Authorial ambiguity also enriches the narrative. The first two novels conceptually demonstrate the advantages of a progressive economy and the futility of perpetuating serfdom, but Goncharov presents a dying way of life with such a wealth of attractive imagery that social indifference, indeed exploitation, infantilism, and stagnation, are turned into a languidly cozy, almost noble way of life, feeding on nostalgia and winning sympathy for its prejudices.
No less impressive is Goncharov’s skill in suggesting the delusions of the regressive personality. Oblomov’s insecure psyche reshapes his ordinary village into a harmless, safe refuge, smoothing craggymountains into gentle hillocks,swift rivers into murmuring brooks, extremes of climate into eternally pleasant weather, passions into lethargy. Readers are scarcely aware that the descriptions are no longer objective, but the distortions of a frightened mind.
Finally, Goncharov excels in drawing exquisite female portraits; his women also symbolize the synthesis between the old and new. In A Common Story, Lizaveta is able to balance the contradictory forces that pull the male characters into adversary position; in Oblomov, Olga combines the best of old Russia, its cultural heritage, with an inquisitive mind and an active personality; in The Precipice, Vera eventually unites the positive features of her patriarchal upbringing with the progressive forces of a commercially enterprising spouse.
In his final novel, Goncharov’s moralizing instincts undermine his mastery of style, as didactic elements intrude too explicitly. The author’s own estrangement from the present and his nostalgia for a less complex existence color his perceptions. His slow-paced upbringing, his later insecurities, his realization that progress was necessary, his struggle between old and new, and his final withdrawal from society are the building blocks of all of his works. He delicately managed to balance these elements before yielding to his own preferences.
A Common Story
The unstinting praise of Russia’s foremost social critic, Vissarion Belinsky, assured the success of A Common Story the moment it appeared in the literary journal Sovremennik. Ironically, the work was hailed as an exposé of the degenerate gentry class and a call for modernization. Critics and readers alike noted only the main character Alexander Aduev’s final acceptance of St. Petersburg’s progressive lifestyle, not his mentor-uncle’s disillusionment with it. They also overlooked the author’s cautious suggestion that the city’s competitive utilitarianism was no more satisfying than the monotony of the backward village.
This misperception attests Goncharov’s balancing skill. Alexander is lured from his peaceful, idyllic estate, lovingly presented in the fragrance of its lilacs, berries, bushes, and forests, by visions of cosmopolitan dazzle. Once he is taken in hand by a “new man,” his coldly efficient, philistine uncle, Peter, one disappointmentsucceeds another. Like an early Oblomov, Alexander adjusts only superficially, never able to integrate his rustic values with St. Petersburg’s diverse phenomena. Like a young Goncharov, Alexander blunders from one unsuccessful love affair to another. His literary endeavors, characterized by overblown sentimental clichés, are equally fruitless. Despite all efforts by Peter, he turns into a rather ridiculous figure, an out-of-place relic in the bustling city. Goncharov’s ambiguous attitude, however, gives enough scope to elicit a measure of pity from the reader, to mark the young man’s discomforts and his inability to cope.
Peter’s young wife, Lizaveta, compassionately brings out Alexander’s positive traits. When all attempts at acclimatization end in failure, he returns to his quiet country home and recovers his bearings. yet the lessons of the city are not lost. At a distance, its hectic multiplicity develops into a fair alternative to the boring idyll of the placid province. In the end, Alexander sets out for St. Petersburg once more, cured of his romantic expectations, determined to copy his uncle’s career through realistic adaptation and lowered sights. His success is presented in the epilogue. He parallels Peter faithfully: fat and balding, engaged to a young heiress, adjusted, mature, eager for progressive endeavors.
While this conclusion heartened liberal critics, Goncharov’s reservations are apparent in the incompletely dramatized and therefore unconvincing psychological transformation of Alexander. The artistically unmotivated ending causes a change of focus. The carefully developed juxtaposition of old versus new, village versus city, Slavophile versus Westernizer assumes the outline of a bildungsroman. Peter and Alexander represent two stages of identical development. Alexander’s romantic striving mirrors Peter’s own youthful immaturity, while Peter’s rational, mature stage serves as a marker for Alexander’s similar destiny. At the moment of Alexander’s arrival at that stage, Peter’s dry and joyless stance casts doubt on the wisdom of these very accomplishments, foreshadowing eventual disillusionment for his nephew. The general inattention to this downbeat element is a result of the shortage of bourgeois heroes in Russian literature.
The Romantic characters of Pushkin, Lermontov, and the early Turgenev are immobile, purposeless, and contemptuous of practical activity. Liberal critics had long called for a positively depicted, businesslike nobleman, and they accepted Alexander in his final guise enthusiastically as such. The careful reader is left questioning both men’s aspirations and sharing Lizaveta’s wistful awareness that St. Petersburg’s progress is far from ideal. The alternative of seeking that ideal in Russia’s past surfaces only in Goncharov’s later works, although the absence of a criticalstand against serfdom and landowner privileges already serves to modify the seeming victory of Westernization.
Oblomov
Turgenev’s popular A Nest of Gentlefolk threatened to overshadow Oblomov, which was first printed in Otechestvennye zapiski, until critic Dobrolyubov’s 1859 article “Chto takoyo Oblomovshchina?” (“What Is Oblomovism?”) swiftly drew national attention to the work. Following Dobrolyubov’s cue, most readers and succeeding generations saw in Oblomov the hero’s inertia the psychological consequence of total dependence on serf labor. By lavishing endless pages on the harmful effects of Oblomovism and the virtues of Stolz, a Western-influenced business type, Goncharov seemed to strike a forceful blow at the roots of Russia’s economic and social evils.
Oblomov appears as the epitome of the superfluous nobleman, the lazy, alienated dreamer who cannot adjust to change or find a place for himself in the present. Different embodiments of this type exist in Pushkin’s Onegin, Lermontov’s Pechorin, and Turgenev’s Rudin. Oblomov differs from these characters in that he rejects even the search for an alternative, preferring instead the never-changing ways of his childhood Oblomovka. The location of this estate on the Asian border aptly suggests the Asian fatalism and circular philosophy that represent Oblomov’s and, by extension, Russia’s Eastern Tartar heritage. The hero’s Asian dressing gown, serving as his security blanket and finally his shroud, is an equally fitting symbol.
The reader is initiated into all the details of Russian provincial backwardness through Oblomov’s lengthy dream of his sleepy backwater. The dream, a thematic outline of the work and its centerpiece, had been published separately as a sort of overture as early as 1849. The finished novel shows the deadening effect of this “blessed spot” on those who cannot free themselves from the dependencies it fosters. Little Ilya was born a normal child, willing to experiment, to rough it, to develop. The atmosphere of Oblomovka snuffed out all of these inclinations. Tradition stipulates that a Russian gentleman sit, surrounded by hordes of serfs who attend to his every whim, that he eat and doze most of the day, phlegmatically observe the seasonal and ecclesiastical rituals, ignore any attempt at change, be it literacy or postal service, and hope that the waves of Peter the Great’s Westernizing reforms never reach his quiet hamlet. Inevitably, they do reach Oblomovka, and the product of its upbringing must serve his term in St. Petersburg.
The innumerable ways in which the transplanted Oblomov manages to ignore the city’s reality take up a good portion of the narrative. Each failure on the realistic plane is paralleled by a success on the imaginary level, which always features a happy Oblomov in a paradisiacal Oblomovka. Eventually, Oblomov gains a questionable victory. A motherly widow’s shabby lodging transforms itself into a blissful surrogate of Oblomovka for the by-now infantile hero. He has returned to the womb and lives out a short but happy span, until mental stagnation and greedy overeating end his life.
Two people try their best to save Oblomov. First Stolz, the half-German entrepreneur, as lean as an English racehorse where Oblomov is fat and flabby, uses reason and intellectual appeal to convince Oblomov to change. Then Olga, already adapted to a modern intelligentsia but preserving a deep love for Russia’s cultural past, lures him with promises of selfless love. Sexually aroused, Oblomov briefly responds to her, but when he finds that Olga also demands intellectual arousal, constant mental awareness, he takes flight. The equally dull-witted widow offers both maternal and mistress services without the necessity of mental effort.
Stolz and Olga, who eventually marry, represent the best of traditional Russia fused with the best of imported progressive behavior. Stolz is an improved version of Peter Aduev. The latter’s negative traits and final pessimistic outlook have been replaced by Stolz’s cheerfulness and compassion. Even here, however, the author’s descriptive talents hover lovingly over the blubbery Oblomov—over his dreams, his reflections, his blunders—while Stolz comes across as artificial and wooden, the victim of uninspired portrayal. Olga, who loves and appreciates Oblomov’s values, is a more credible figure, and it is she who embodies and carries into the future the reconciliation of the conflict. In some respects, she acts as Goncharov’s mouthpiece. Her dissatisfactions, even with the faultless Stolz, echo the author’s own inability to believe fully in the spiritual benefits of a forwardmoving Russia. Goncharov had no such reservations when it came to praising the charms of Oblomovka. Its oneness with nature renders each inhabitant a paragon of virtue. No passionate outbursts or personal animosities mar the peacefulness. Serfs are not slaves, but content to be reflections of their masters. Their sloth and their ample participation in all the feasting, indulged by benevolent owners, help to deplete Oblomovka’s reserves. When this slothful behavior is transplanted to St. Petersburg in the person of Oblomov’s loyal valet Zakhar, it loses much of its bucolic enchantment, yet the touching interdependence of master and servant redeems the ineptness. It was simply impossible for Goncharov to carry to its logical conclusion his commonsense understanding that radical Slavophilism would result in national stagnation and regression.
The Precipice
Goncharov’s unwillingness to endow his progressive characters with the vitality necessary to make them convincing and interesting asserts itself more fully in his last major work, The Precipice. It appeared in Vestnik Evropy at a time when emancipation was a fact, when Alexander II’s liberalism gave wide scope to social commentators, when literature closely echoed the zeitgeist of reform. Goncharov’s liberal representative is the political exile Volokhov, who, like Turgenev’s nihilist Bazarov, spreads unrest in a deeply conservative village. Volokhov’s positive qualities are quickly neutralized by his seduction of a virtuous country woman, Vera, who naïvely tries to straighten him out. Vera is also a link to the other male principal, Raisky, a St. Petersburg intellectual, who has failed to find a purpose in life and returns to his country estate in search of a footing. It is easy to see in him yet another embodiment of Goncharov’s favorite type: the neurotic male whose interests, convictions, and common sense pull him toward reform but whose temperament and deep-seated impulses chain him to the past. In each of these split personalities, Goncharov’s own schism finds expression. As before, he reserves the best of his descriptive talents for the backwoods, symbolized by the figure of the grandmother. It is in this traditional setting that the abused Vera finds regeneration and mental recovery; it is the rural past that bequeaths stability, sanity, and direction for the future.
Goncharov had once again drawn an exquisite cameo of old Russia, once again contrasted the conflicting values of old and new, once again pictured an artistically masterful “homecoming.” Despite the popularity of the somewhat meandering work, Goncharov’s point of view drew heavy moral indignation. Liberal critics were quick to point out that Goncharov had come down on the side of rural conservatism, that he favored the Slavophiles. Obviously and painfully out of step with the tenor of the time, and psychologically unable and unwilling to recapture his artistic independence, Goncharov withdrew. His subsequent writings did not approach the stature of his novels.
Goncharov’s significance in the development of the Russian novel and Russian intellectual history remains great. He brought to life the characters of old Russia, with a style peculiarly his own, at a time when that patriarchal order began to disintegrate. In his portraits of Slavophiles and Westernizers, he elaborated on the dominant conflict of midcentury Russia. He was the first Russian author to integrate psychological complexities successfully and expertly into his plots, and thereby he created universal types."
Analysis of Ivan Goncharov’s Novels
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Writers and Censors in the Russian Empire: The Case of Ivan Goncharov
When Ivan Goncharov was finishing Oblomov in late 1850ies, he was officially employed at St. Petersburg Censorship Committee. Goncharov’s career as a censor ...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that Russian author Ivan Alexandrovich [son of Alexander] Goncharov died at the age of 79 on September 27, 1891.
Writers and Censors in the Russian Empire: The Case of Ivan Goncharov
When Ivan Goncharov was finishing Oblomov in late 1850ies, he was officially employed at St. Petersburg Censorship Committee. Goncharov’s career as a censor lasted for almost 10 years and earned him high ranks in bureaucratic system of the Russian Empire and solid wage, but had a negative effect on his literary reputation. Several Goncharov’s contemporaries considered it immoral or at least not appropriate for a writer to become censor. Still, Goncharov himself accepted his dubious position not only because of possible career advancement. He seemed to consider himself not part of a repressive system of the government, but an intermediary between the state and the society, the latter of which represented by literature. The case of Goncharov’s service as censor and his ultimate failure to mediate between writers and state officials reveals the complexity of relations between the public sphere and the state in Imperial Russia.
Kirill Zubkov is Associate Professor at Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and research fellow at the Institute of Russian Literature (St. Petersburg). He graduated from St. Petersburg State University. His research interests include the institution of Russian literary criticism, the history of censorship in the Russian Empire and Russian drama of 19th century. Zubkov is the author of several articles and publications, including a critical edition of Russian 19th century literary criticism “Sovremennik protiv Moskvityanina”. He is also one of the editors of Complete Works and Letters by Goncharov."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyUhsJ6cO9M
Images:
1. Portrait of Goncharov by Ivan Kramskoi, 1865
2. Portrait of Ivan Goncharov by Kirill Gorbunov, 1847
3. Top row (from left)- Leo Tolstoy, Dmitry Grigorovich, Bottom row (from left)- Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Druzhinin, and Alexander Ostrovsky
4. Portrait of Ivan Goncharov by Ivan Kramskoi (1874)
Biographies;
1. russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-goncharov
2. enotes.com/topics/ivan-goncharov
1. Background from {[https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-goncharov/]}
Prominent Russians: Ivan Goncharov written by Anna Yudina, RT
June 18, 1812 – September 27, 1891
The Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov is one of the greatest realists of Russian literature. His novel "Oblomov" and other works are considered classics of Russian fiction.
Childhood
Ivan Goncharov was born into the well-to-do family of a grain merchant on 18 June 1812 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk). Although the family background was of the merchant class, young Ivan was brought up in the patriarchal atmosphere of Russian manor life. Goncharov's father died in 1819 leaving Ivan to be raised by his godfather, Nikolai Tregubov, a liberal-minded aristocrat and a former mariner. It was Tregubov who developed in the boy a love for novels about traveling, journeys and adventures – young Goncharov hung upon his stepfather’s lips when the latter recalled his sea voyages and all the difficulties he had to stem.
Education
Goncharov received an excellent private education. At the age of eight he was sent to a private school, where he stayed for two years until, at the age of 10, he was sent to a private boarding school in Moscow, specializing in commerce. Later, in August 1831, Goncharov successfully entered the Moscow State University, where he studied in the department of literature. Goncharov was quite unsociable and viewed politics with a certain skepticism and therefore did not join any of the student circles that dedicated much of their time to discussing philosophical issues and socio-political matters.
After graduating from the university in 1834 Goncharov returned to Simbirsk and stayed there for nearly a year, serving in the governor’s secretariat. But life far from the city seemed boring, and Goncharov soon moved to Saint Petersburg. The first ten years in the capital were tranquil and longsome – Goncharov had to serve as a petty official at the foreign trade office. Still, these years turned out to be quite useful, as the writer had plenty of time and opportunity to watch the clerks and officers whose lives he would later describe in his works.
Beginning of literary career
In 1838 and 1839 almanacs of the literary society headed by Nikolay Maikov (Goncharov became acquainted with Maikov’s sons - the poet Apollon Maikov and his brother Valerian - who encouraged Goncharov in his writing aspirations while working at the foreign trade office in St. Petersburg) published Goncharov’s first romantic verses and novelettes. Later, in the spring of 1846 Goncharov met Belinsky – one of the most renowned Russian literary critics of all times. The latter had a great influence upon the young writer.
Goncharov's first novel, “Obyknovennaya Istoriya” or “A Common Story,” which dealt with the conflicts between the excessive romanticism of a young Russian nobleman freshly arrived in Saint Petersburg from the provinces and the emerging commercial class of the capital with its sober pragmatism, was published in 1847 in the periodical “The Contemporary.” It was a true sensation in Russia, thanks to the young writer’s talent and praise from the critic Belinsky.
Round-the-world journey
Between 1852 and 1855 Goncharov served as a secretary to the legendary Navy Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin. The writer took part in the historic Russo-Japanese Treaty of 1855, serving as the official interpreter between the Russian and Japanese governments. At that time Goncharov made voyages aboard the Russian Navy frigate "Pallada," visiting many countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. When he returned to Russia he wrote a travelogue describing the journey. It was published in 1858 and presented a chronicle of his three-year voyage; “Frigate Pallada” made a splash in Tsarist Russia.
“Oblomov”
After returning to Saint Petersburg in 1856 Goncharov became a government censor - a post that earned him criticism and mistrust among many of his contemporaries. Although his politics as a censor were clearly conservative, when it came to reviewing Russian journals and almanacs, he tried to use his position to allow many important and liberal works of literature into print, including works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Alexander Herzen.
Goncharov’s next book, “Oblomov,” published in 1859, made its author a living classic. The novel described a man who was too lazy and inert to live; the work deals not only with the social phenomenon of inertia, but also with the Russian national character. Still, “Oblomov” wasn’t easy to write – Goncharov spent several years producing sketches, throwing them away and rewriting. The novel was hailed as a masterpiece and among others Fyodor Dostoyevsky considered Goncharov a literary equal. From the figure of Oblomov (the main character of the novel) derives the frequently used Russian term “oblomovshchina” meaning backwardness, inertia. “Oblomov” was even compared to Shakespeare's “Hamlet.” The novel was adapted into the eponymous film. In modern Western literature, it is said to have inspired Samuel Beckett's play “Waiting for Godot.”
Last years
In 1860, when censorship became even more severe than before, Goncharov retired from his government position. But some time later he was again asked to take a position as a censor, which he accepted. He did not quit definitively until 1867.
Goncharov wrote numerous short stories, critiques, essays and memoirs and continued traveling outside of Russia, but remained known primarily for his novels. During the 1860s Goncharov was part of the St. Petersburg cultural milieu.
The third most famous novel by Goncharov, “Obryv” (“The Precipice”), appeared in 1868 though it was started in 1849. As the writer had to work and earn a living, he could not dedicate all his time to writing and the work on the novel slowed and was resumed year after year. Goncharov felt he was getting older, causing him to put the work aside. At times Goncharov felt so pessimistic he thought he wouldn’t be able to finish “Obryv.” The last novel of the writer described the rivalry between three men, a nihilist, an idealist and a commonsensical neighbor, for the love of a mysterious woman. The work, however, did not attract much initial attention. Only several years later did the public begin to show interest in “Obryv.” With the help of his three most famous novels Goncharov is believed to mirror a certain step in the historical development of Russia.
On 12 September 1891 Goncharov caught a cold. The illness developed rapidly and three days later, on 15 September, Ivan Goncharov died of pneumonia at the age of 79. He was buried in Saint Petersburg in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.
Ivan Goncharov never married, he was said to be shy with women and his love affairs remained a mystery.
Goncharov’s three major works, commonly known as the “Three O’s” (“Obyknovennaya Istoriya,” “Oblomov,” “Obryv”), are included in the Russian school curriculum and reissued in massive printings.
Mental health
Goncharov was said to have shown certain signs of mental instability. For example, he accused Flaubert of getting the idea for “Sentimental Education” from Turgenev, who, in his turn, had heard it from Goncharov. Goncharov's unfounded accusation of plagiarism against Ivan Turgenev caused a scandal in the literary world. Goncharov lived most of his life in sedentary seclusion."
2. Background from {[https://www.enotes.com/topics/ivan-goncharov}]
Ivan Goncharov was born Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov on June 18, 1812, in remote Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) on a country estate of the type featured in his novels. He was born into a well-to-do merchant family living the manorial life of Russian gentry. After losing his merchant father at age seven, he was reared in the old tradition by his strong-willed mother and her landowning companion. This heritage of easygoing manor life and progressive mercantile activity characterizes Goncharov’s own outlook and that of his major fictional characters.
In 1822 Goncharov went to Moscow to study at the School of Commerce, where he became seriously interested in literature. Encouraged to follow in his father’s footsteps, he languished for eight years in a school of commerce without graduating. He left the school in 1830 and entered the philological department of Moscow University, graduated in 1834, and began to work as a secretary to the governor of Simbirsk. He entered the literary world as a tutor in the culturally sophisticated Maikov family, using this experience to produce his first poems and stories.
In 1835 Goncharov left for St. Petersburg to work as a translator in the ministry of finance. Although he was, according to Leo Tolstoy, a thorough townsman, Goncharov demonstrated in his novels a profound concern for the disintegration of gentry traditions. His first novel, A Common Story, published when Goncharov was thirty-five years old, traces the disillusioning sentimental education of an idealist who makes the transition from an idyllic country estate to St. Petersburg and becomes a smug opportunist.
The success of his first novel, A Common Story, did not alleviate Goncharov’s self-doubt, and he remained fettered to extraliterary activity. A worldwide sailing tour on behalf of the trade ministry in the 1850’s yielded material for his travel sketches. Between 1852 and 1854 Goncharov took part in an expedition to Japan on the military frigate Pallas. The cycle of essays The Voyage of the Frigate Pallada gives a brilliant, realistic account of this trip. On his return from the expedition Goncharov worked as a censor, an editor, and a member of the Council of the Press Affairs. In 1859 his second novel, Oblomov, was published. The hero, who gives the novel its title, is a cultured, intelligent man of generous impulses who is nevertheless hopelessly slothful and ineffectual—indeed for a number of pages he cannot even get out of bed—and who sinks slowly and undramatically into the depths of what he himself calls “Oblomovism.” This characterization was immediately recognized as representing a significant type in Russian society, and the name Oblomov became proverbial. In his autobiographical essay “Luchshe pozdno, chem nikogda” (better late than never) Goncharov himself remarked that he intended to present the lethargy of Russia in contrast to the ferment of foreign influences; the author’s sympathy, however, is obviously for Oblomov.
Goncharov’s rise to fame was slow, and he was trapped in a civil service career spanning more than thirty years, almost half of which was spent uneventfully as a translator in the finance ministry. Goncharov’s private existence turned out to be equally monotonous. Although he was attracted to a number of women, his courtships were not successful, and he never married. The frustrations of his relationships with women are prominently mirrored in all three novels.
The same period brought an appointment to the literary censorship board, a result of Czar Alexander II’s relaxed attitude. Goncharov followed a middle-of-the-road philosophy in this post, often enraging progressive writers, whose harsh judgments of conservative ideals he would not accept. He secured his own literary fame with Oblomov but felt too insecure to devote himself exclusively to literature. After a brief try at editing the official newspaper Severnaya pchela in the 1860’s, he returned to a censorial post in the influential Press Council. His civic duties earned for him the Order of Vladimir, third class, prior to retirement in 1868.
Meanwhile, Goncharov’s mental state had gradually deteriorated. Ivan Turgenev’s literary success easily eclipsed that of Goncharov, and when Turgenev’s Dvoryanskoe gnezdo (1859; Liza: Or, “A Nest of Nobles,” 1869; better known as A Nest of Gentlefolk, 1959) superseded Oblomov in critical acclaim, Goncharov accused his rival of plagiarism. Arbitration found Turgenev innocent, and the writers reconciled, but in private, the increasingly neurotic Goncharov continued the accusations, venting on Turgenev all the frustrations of his own unsatisfactory existence.
Goncharov worked slowly on another novel, The Precipice, in which he again shows a talented, intelligent man doomed to remain a dilettante, as well as a young man torn between old and new values. The book contains, besides, a sympathetic portrait of an old-style grandmother, and an unsympathetic portrait of a contemporary nihilist.
Philosophically, Goncharov moved from a modestly progressive stance to a firm defense of the traditional values of the landed gentry. These sentiments found expression in The Precipice, in which moral regeneration is embedded in the unchanging order of provincial Russia.
After retiring in 1867 he wrote reminiscence, criticism, and a few stories; in the 1870’s a curious book appeared, An Uncommon Story, which, when it was finally published in 1924, showed Goncharov to have been suffering from the delusion that Ivan Turgenev and others had stolen his ideas.
Goncharov died on September 15, 1891, a stranger to the swiftly moving social currents of the latter part of the century. His later published works chronicle his artistic decline. A complete recluse, he burned his letters and manuscripts. He spent his final days not unlike his major hero, Oblomov, in a St. Petersburg flat, looked after by a kindly woman and her children.
FYI LTC Greg Henning LTC (Join to see) COL Mikel J. Burroughs Maj William W. 'Bill' Price Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. Maj Kim Patterson SMSgt Lawrence McCarter MSgt Robert "Rock" Aldi PO3 Frederick DunnSSG Chad Henning MSG Felipe De Leon Brown GySgt Thomas Vick PO1 William "Chip" Nagel (Join to see)SP5 Geoffrey VannersonAlan K.Sgt Deborah Cornatzer SSG Jose M. Hernandezsanchez
Writers and Censors in the Russian Empire: The Case of Ivan Goncharov
When Ivan Goncharov was finishing Oblomov in late 1850ies, he was officially employed at St. Petersburg Censorship Committee. Goncharov’s career as a censor lasted for almost 10 years and earned him high ranks in bureaucratic system of the Russian Empire and solid wage, but had a negative effect on his literary reputation. Several Goncharov’s contemporaries considered it immoral or at least not appropriate for a writer to become censor. Still, Goncharov himself accepted his dubious position not only because of possible career advancement. He seemed to consider himself not part of a repressive system of the government, but an intermediary between the state and the society, the latter of which represented by literature. The case of Goncharov’s service as censor and his ultimate failure to mediate between writers and state officials reveals the complexity of relations between the public sphere and the state in Imperial Russia.
Kirill Zubkov is Associate Professor at Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and research fellow at the Institute of Russian Literature (St. Petersburg). He graduated from St. Petersburg State University. His research interests include the institution of Russian literary criticism, the history of censorship in the Russian Empire and Russian drama of 19th century. Zubkov is the author of several articles and publications, including a critical edition of Russian 19th century literary criticism “Sovremennik protiv Moskvityanina”. He is also one of the editors of Complete Works and Letters by Goncharov."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyUhsJ6cO9M
Images:
1. Portrait of Goncharov by Ivan Kramskoi, 1865
2. Portrait of Ivan Goncharov by Kirill Gorbunov, 1847
3. Top row (from left)- Leo Tolstoy, Dmitry Grigorovich, Bottom row (from left)- Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Druzhinin, and Alexander Ostrovsky
4. Portrait of Ivan Goncharov by Ivan Kramskoi (1874)
Biographies;
1. russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-goncharov
2. enotes.com/topics/ivan-goncharov
1. Background from {[https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/ivan-goncharov/]}
Prominent Russians: Ivan Goncharov written by Anna Yudina, RT
June 18, 1812 – September 27, 1891
The Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov is one of the greatest realists of Russian literature. His novel "Oblomov" and other works are considered classics of Russian fiction.
Childhood
Ivan Goncharov was born into the well-to-do family of a grain merchant on 18 June 1812 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk). Although the family background was of the merchant class, young Ivan was brought up in the patriarchal atmosphere of Russian manor life. Goncharov's father died in 1819 leaving Ivan to be raised by his godfather, Nikolai Tregubov, a liberal-minded aristocrat and a former mariner. It was Tregubov who developed in the boy a love for novels about traveling, journeys and adventures – young Goncharov hung upon his stepfather’s lips when the latter recalled his sea voyages and all the difficulties he had to stem.
Education
Goncharov received an excellent private education. At the age of eight he was sent to a private school, where he stayed for two years until, at the age of 10, he was sent to a private boarding school in Moscow, specializing in commerce. Later, in August 1831, Goncharov successfully entered the Moscow State University, where he studied in the department of literature. Goncharov was quite unsociable and viewed politics with a certain skepticism and therefore did not join any of the student circles that dedicated much of their time to discussing philosophical issues and socio-political matters.
After graduating from the university in 1834 Goncharov returned to Simbirsk and stayed there for nearly a year, serving in the governor’s secretariat. But life far from the city seemed boring, and Goncharov soon moved to Saint Petersburg. The first ten years in the capital were tranquil and longsome – Goncharov had to serve as a petty official at the foreign trade office. Still, these years turned out to be quite useful, as the writer had plenty of time and opportunity to watch the clerks and officers whose lives he would later describe in his works.
Beginning of literary career
In 1838 and 1839 almanacs of the literary society headed by Nikolay Maikov (Goncharov became acquainted with Maikov’s sons - the poet Apollon Maikov and his brother Valerian - who encouraged Goncharov in his writing aspirations while working at the foreign trade office in St. Petersburg) published Goncharov’s first romantic verses and novelettes. Later, in the spring of 1846 Goncharov met Belinsky – one of the most renowned Russian literary critics of all times. The latter had a great influence upon the young writer.
Goncharov's first novel, “Obyknovennaya Istoriya” or “A Common Story,” which dealt with the conflicts between the excessive romanticism of a young Russian nobleman freshly arrived in Saint Petersburg from the provinces and the emerging commercial class of the capital with its sober pragmatism, was published in 1847 in the periodical “The Contemporary.” It was a true sensation in Russia, thanks to the young writer’s talent and praise from the critic Belinsky.
Round-the-world journey
Between 1852 and 1855 Goncharov served as a secretary to the legendary Navy Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin. The writer took part in the historic Russo-Japanese Treaty of 1855, serving as the official interpreter between the Russian and Japanese governments. At that time Goncharov made voyages aboard the Russian Navy frigate "Pallada," visiting many countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. When he returned to Russia he wrote a travelogue describing the journey. It was published in 1858 and presented a chronicle of his three-year voyage; “Frigate Pallada” made a splash in Tsarist Russia.
“Oblomov”
After returning to Saint Petersburg in 1856 Goncharov became a government censor - a post that earned him criticism and mistrust among many of his contemporaries. Although his politics as a censor were clearly conservative, when it came to reviewing Russian journals and almanacs, he tried to use his position to allow many important and liberal works of literature into print, including works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Alexander Herzen.
Goncharov’s next book, “Oblomov,” published in 1859, made its author a living classic. The novel described a man who was too lazy and inert to live; the work deals not only with the social phenomenon of inertia, but also with the Russian national character. Still, “Oblomov” wasn’t easy to write – Goncharov spent several years producing sketches, throwing them away and rewriting. The novel was hailed as a masterpiece and among others Fyodor Dostoyevsky considered Goncharov a literary equal. From the figure of Oblomov (the main character of the novel) derives the frequently used Russian term “oblomovshchina” meaning backwardness, inertia. “Oblomov” was even compared to Shakespeare's “Hamlet.” The novel was adapted into the eponymous film. In modern Western literature, it is said to have inspired Samuel Beckett's play “Waiting for Godot.”
Last years
In 1860, when censorship became even more severe than before, Goncharov retired from his government position. But some time later he was again asked to take a position as a censor, which he accepted. He did not quit definitively until 1867.
Goncharov wrote numerous short stories, critiques, essays and memoirs and continued traveling outside of Russia, but remained known primarily for his novels. During the 1860s Goncharov was part of the St. Petersburg cultural milieu.
The third most famous novel by Goncharov, “Obryv” (“The Precipice”), appeared in 1868 though it was started in 1849. As the writer had to work and earn a living, he could not dedicate all his time to writing and the work on the novel slowed and was resumed year after year. Goncharov felt he was getting older, causing him to put the work aside. At times Goncharov felt so pessimistic he thought he wouldn’t be able to finish “Obryv.” The last novel of the writer described the rivalry between three men, a nihilist, an idealist and a commonsensical neighbor, for the love of a mysterious woman. The work, however, did not attract much initial attention. Only several years later did the public begin to show interest in “Obryv.” With the help of his three most famous novels Goncharov is believed to mirror a certain step in the historical development of Russia.
On 12 September 1891 Goncharov caught a cold. The illness developed rapidly and three days later, on 15 September, Ivan Goncharov died of pneumonia at the age of 79. He was buried in Saint Petersburg in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.
Ivan Goncharov never married, he was said to be shy with women and his love affairs remained a mystery.
Goncharov’s three major works, commonly known as the “Three O’s” (“Obyknovennaya Istoriya,” “Oblomov,” “Obryv”), are included in the Russian school curriculum and reissued in massive printings.
Mental health
Goncharov was said to have shown certain signs of mental instability. For example, he accused Flaubert of getting the idea for “Sentimental Education” from Turgenev, who, in his turn, had heard it from Goncharov. Goncharov's unfounded accusation of plagiarism against Ivan Turgenev caused a scandal in the literary world. Goncharov lived most of his life in sedentary seclusion."
2. Background from {[https://www.enotes.com/topics/ivan-goncharov}]
Ivan Goncharov was born Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov on June 18, 1812, in remote Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) on a country estate of the type featured in his novels. He was born into a well-to-do merchant family living the manorial life of Russian gentry. After losing his merchant father at age seven, he was reared in the old tradition by his strong-willed mother and her landowning companion. This heritage of easygoing manor life and progressive mercantile activity characterizes Goncharov’s own outlook and that of his major fictional characters.
In 1822 Goncharov went to Moscow to study at the School of Commerce, where he became seriously interested in literature. Encouraged to follow in his father’s footsteps, he languished for eight years in a school of commerce without graduating. He left the school in 1830 and entered the philological department of Moscow University, graduated in 1834, and began to work as a secretary to the governor of Simbirsk. He entered the literary world as a tutor in the culturally sophisticated Maikov family, using this experience to produce his first poems and stories.
In 1835 Goncharov left for St. Petersburg to work as a translator in the ministry of finance. Although he was, according to Leo Tolstoy, a thorough townsman, Goncharov demonstrated in his novels a profound concern for the disintegration of gentry traditions. His first novel, A Common Story, published when Goncharov was thirty-five years old, traces the disillusioning sentimental education of an idealist who makes the transition from an idyllic country estate to St. Petersburg and becomes a smug opportunist.
The success of his first novel, A Common Story, did not alleviate Goncharov’s self-doubt, and he remained fettered to extraliterary activity. A worldwide sailing tour on behalf of the trade ministry in the 1850’s yielded material for his travel sketches. Between 1852 and 1854 Goncharov took part in an expedition to Japan on the military frigate Pallas. The cycle of essays The Voyage of the Frigate Pallada gives a brilliant, realistic account of this trip. On his return from the expedition Goncharov worked as a censor, an editor, and a member of the Council of the Press Affairs. In 1859 his second novel, Oblomov, was published. The hero, who gives the novel its title, is a cultured, intelligent man of generous impulses who is nevertheless hopelessly slothful and ineffectual—indeed for a number of pages he cannot even get out of bed—and who sinks slowly and undramatically into the depths of what he himself calls “Oblomovism.” This characterization was immediately recognized as representing a significant type in Russian society, and the name Oblomov became proverbial. In his autobiographical essay “Luchshe pozdno, chem nikogda” (better late than never) Goncharov himself remarked that he intended to present the lethargy of Russia in contrast to the ferment of foreign influences; the author’s sympathy, however, is obviously for Oblomov.
Goncharov’s rise to fame was slow, and he was trapped in a civil service career spanning more than thirty years, almost half of which was spent uneventfully as a translator in the finance ministry. Goncharov’s private existence turned out to be equally monotonous. Although he was attracted to a number of women, his courtships were not successful, and he never married. The frustrations of his relationships with women are prominently mirrored in all three novels.
The same period brought an appointment to the literary censorship board, a result of Czar Alexander II’s relaxed attitude. Goncharov followed a middle-of-the-road philosophy in this post, often enraging progressive writers, whose harsh judgments of conservative ideals he would not accept. He secured his own literary fame with Oblomov but felt too insecure to devote himself exclusively to literature. After a brief try at editing the official newspaper Severnaya pchela in the 1860’s, he returned to a censorial post in the influential Press Council. His civic duties earned for him the Order of Vladimir, third class, prior to retirement in 1868.
Meanwhile, Goncharov’s mental state had gradually deteriorated. Ivan Turgenev’s literary success easily eclipsed that of Goncharov, and when Turgenev’s Dvoryanskoe gnezdo (1859; Liza: Or, “A Nest of Nobles,” 1869; better known as A Nest of Gentlefolk, 1959) superseded Oblomov in critical acclaim, Goncharov accused his rival of plagiarism. Arbitration found Turgenev innocent, and the writers reconciled, but in private, the increasingly neurotic Goncharov continued the accusations, venting on Turgenev all the frustrations of his own unsatisfactory existence.
Goncharov worked slowly on another novel, The Precipice, in which he again shows a talented, intelligent man doomed to remain a dilettante, as well as a young man torn between old and new values. The book contains, besides, a sympathetic portrait of an old-style grandmother, and an unsympathetic portrait of a contemporary nihilist.
Philosophically, Goncharov moved from a modestly progressive stance to a firm defense of the traditional values of the landed gentry. These sentiments found expression in The Precipice, in which moral regeneration is embedded in the unchanging order of provincial Russia.
After retiring in 1867 he wrote reminiscence, criticism, and a few stories; in the 1870’s a curious book appeared, An Uncommon Story, which, when it was finally published in 1924, showed Goncharov to have been suffering from the delusion that Ivan Turgenev and others had stolen his ideas.
Goncharov died on September 15, 1891, a stranger to the swiftly moving social currents of the latter part of the century. His later published works chronicle his artistic decline. A complete recluse, he burned his letters and manuscripts. He spent his final days not unlike his major hero, Oblomov, in a St. Petersburg flat, looked after by a kindly woman and her children.
FYI LTC Greg Henning LTC (Join to see) COL Mikel J. Burroughs Maj William W. 'Bill' Price Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. Maj Kim Patterson SMSgt Lawrence McCarter MSgt Robert "Rock" Aldi PO3 Frederick DunnSSG Chad Henning MSG Felipe De Leon Brown GySgt Thomas Vick PO1 William "Chip" Nagel (Join to see)SP5 Geoffrey VannersonAlan K.Sgt Deborah Cornatzer SSG Jose M. Hernandezsanchez
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Neskolko dney iz zhizni I.I. Oblomova (1980) Oblomov Türkçe Altyazılı and English Subtitles
Her Gün Bir Sanat Filmi'nin önerisi olan https://hergunbirsanatfilmi.blogspot.com.tr/2017/03/neskolko-dney-iz-zhizni-ii-oblomova.html Neskolko dney iz zhizni...
Neskolko dney iz zhizni I.I. Oblomova (1980) Oblomov Türkçe Altyazılı and English Subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgmy6Ke_xQY
Images:
1. Ivan Goncharov
2. Ivan Goncharov 'Memories are the height of poetry only when they are memories of happiness. When they graze wounds over which scars have formed they become an aching pain.'
3. Ivan Goncharov 'It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are not needed, or not possible, to avoid making those that are required.'
4. Ivan Goncharov 'All his anxiety resolved itself into a sigh and dissolved into apathy and drowsiness.'
Biographies:
1. imdb.com/name/nm0327199/bio
2. biography.yourdictionary.com/ivan-aleksandrovich-goncharov]
1. Background from {[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0327199/bio}]
Ivan Goncharov was a classic Russian writer whose novel 'Oblomov' was adapted to film by director Nikita Mikhalkov.
He was born Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov on June 18, 1812, in Simbirsk, Russian Empire (now Ulyanovsk, Russia). His father, a wealthy merchant, died when Goncharov was only seven, and he was brought up by his Godfather, Nikolai Tregubov, a retired Navy sailor. Goncharov received an excellent private education at the home of his parents. From the age of 10 he studied at a private boarding school in Moscow, specializing in commerce. From 1830 - 1834 Goncharov attended Moscow University, having such schoolmates a Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Gertsen, and Ivan Turgenev among other distinguished Russians. Upon his graduation from Moscow University in 1834, Goncharov served as a government official for the next thirty years. He specialized in translations of foreign correspondence with the Russian government.
Between 1852 and 1855 Goncharov served as a secretary to the legendary Navy Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin. Goncharov took part in the historic Russo-Japanese Treaty of 1855, serving as the official interpreter between the Russian and Japanese governments. At that time Goncharov made voyages aboard the Russian Navy frigate "Pallada" ('Pallas'), visiting many countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Upon his return to Russia, Goncharov eventually experienced disillusionment with the Russian social and economic traditions. His 1858 publication of his travelogue, a chronicle of his three-year journey, became a sensation in the Tsarist Russia. His next book, Oblomov', made Goncharov a classic, and was praised by such figures as Fyodor Dostoevsky, and others.
In 1867 Goncharov fell under pressure for his independent views, and retired from his position as a government interpreter and censor. He eventually became a professional writer, living in St. Petersburg, Russia. He wrote numerous short stories, critiques, essays and memoirs, and continued traveling outside of Russia. During the 1860s Goncharov was part of the St. Petersburg cultural milieu, albeit his independent political position and his advanced and original views on Russian reality were causing him problems with the rigid hard-liners in the Russian establishment. He eventually suffered from negative criticism that was orchestrated by his conservative opponents. Goncharov struggled for twenty years writing his third big novel, 'Obryv' (aka.. The Precipice), dealing with romantic rivalry of three men, and sporting a veiled critique of disintegrating Russian society. Ivan Goncharov never married, he died if pneumonia in his home in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was laid to rest in the writer's corner of cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Ivan Goncharov's most important novel, 'Oblomov', was published in 1859, and became widely successful in Russia. It was even compared with the Shakespeare's Hamlet, albeit the title character, Oblomov, is giving the answer "No!" to the question "To be or not to be?". The story of Oblomov and Russians around him is dealing with a conundrum of problems of social and economic nature that are typical of Russia. The novel was adapted into the eponymous film, Oblomov (1980), by director Nikita Mikhalkov, starring Oleg Tabakov in the title role.
Ivan Goncharov's writings are included in the Russian school curriculum and reissued in massive printings.
Background from {[https://biography.yourdictionary.com/ivan-aleksandrovich-goncharov]}
"Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov Facts
The Russian novelist Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) is one of the great realists of Russian literature. His novel "Oblomov" is a classic of Russian fiction.
Ivan Goncharov was born of a well-to-do family. Although the family background was of the merchant class, he was brought up in the patriarchal atmosphere of Russian manor life. After leaving the University of Moscow, he entered the civil service, where he labored patiently for many years without conspicuous success. His rise to literary prominence came in 1847, when he published his first novel, A Common Story. Hailed enthusiastically by the great Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky, this work dealt with the transformation of a young provincial idealist into a somewhat vulgar and practical young man.
In 1849 Goncharov published "The Dream of Oblomov," a short sketch that became the core of his greatest novel. In 1853 he accompanied an expedition on a 2-year voyage to the Far East. He did not enjoy the trip, but he was a perceptive reporter and his account of the journey appeared as The Frigate Pallas in 1856.
In 1858 Goncharov finished the novel Oblomov, and it was published the following year. Oblomov has become an archetypal character, the embodiment of vegetable comfort, of disinclination to action, and of lassitude. He is the dreamer rather than the doer, and he is contrasted with Shtolz, the new man, the energetic, self-willed man, who unsuccessfully attempts to inspire Oblomov to a more active existence. As a superfluous man, Oblomov is part of a gallery of great Russian fictional creations, which includes Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Mikhail Lermontov's Pechorin, and Ivan Turgenev's Rudin. The word Oblomovshchina (Oblomovism) has passed into the Russian language to signify a special kind of high-minded indolence.
Goncharov's last important novel, The Ravine, appeared in 1869. The theme of the novel, as in A Common Story, has to do with the new and the old, the ideal and the useful. The novel expresses what is perhaps the most important conflict in Goncharov's work: the conflict between a love for the patriarchal, leisurely, fixed ways of old Russia and an interest and curiosity in the liberal and radical elements that were breaking through the crust of old Russia.
Goncharov also wrote an autobiographical apologia, Better Late than Never (1870, published in 1879), in which he attempted to prove to the younger generation that he understood the spirit of his age as well as they. Among his other publications are My University Reminiscences (1870); A Million Torments (1872), a work of criticism; and Notes on Belinsky's Personality (1874). A posthumous work entitled An Uncommon Story came to light in the 1920s and confirmed the psychopathic side of his personality; it is an account of imagined plots against him and imagined attempts by others to plagiarize his work.
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1. Ivan Goncharov
2. Ivan Goncharov 'Memories are the height of poetry only when they are memories of happiness. When they graze wounds over which scars have formed they become an aching pain.'
3. Ivan Goncharov 'It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are not needed, or not possible, to avoid making those that are required.'
4. Ivan Goncharov 'All his anxiety resolved itself into a sigh and dissolved into apathy and drowsiness.'
Biographies:
1. imdb.com/name/nm0327199/bio
2. biography.yourdictionary.com/ivan-aleksandrovich-goncharov]
1. Background from {[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0327199/bio}]
Ivan Goncharov was a classic Russian writer whose novel 'Oblomov' was adapted to film by director Nikita Mikhalkov.
He was born Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov on June 18, 1812, in Simbirsk, Russian Empire (now Ulyanovsk, Russia). His father, a wealthy merchant, died when Goncharov was only seven, and he was brought up by his Godfather, Nikolai Tregubov, a retired Navy sailor. Goncharov received an excellent private education at the home of his parents. From the age of 10 he studied at a private boarding school in Moscow, specializing in commerce. From 1830 - 1834 Goncharov attended Moscow University, having such schoolmates a Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Gertsen, and Ivan Turgenev among other distinguished Russians. Upon his graduation from Moscow University in 1834, Goncharov served as a government official for the next thirty years. He specialized in translations of foreign correspondence with the Russian government.
Between 1852 and 1855 Goncharov served as a secretary to the legendary Navy Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin. Goncharov took part in the historic Russo-Japanese Treaty of 1855, serving as the official interpreter between the Russian and Japanese governments. At that time Goncharov made voyages aboard the Russian Navy frigate "Pallada" ('Pallas'), visiting many countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Upon his return to Russia, Goncharov eventually experienced disillusionment with the Russian social and economic traditions. His 1858 publication of his travelogue, a chronicle of his three-year journey, became a sensation in the Tsarist Russia. His next book, Oblomov', made Goncharov a classic, and was praised by such figures as Fyodor Dostoevsky, and others.
In 1867 Goncharov fell under pressure for his independent views, and retired from his position as a government interpreter and censor. He eventually became a professional writer, living in St. Petersburg, Russia. He wrote numerous short stories, critiques, essays and memoirs, and continued traveling outside of Russia. During the 1860s Goncharov was part of the St. Petersburg cultural milieu, albeit his independent political position and his advanced and original views on Russian reality were causing him problems with the rigid hard-liners in the Russian establishment. He eventually suffered from negative criticism that was orchestrated by his conservative opponents. Goncharov struggled for twenty years writing his third big novel, 'Obryv' (aka.. The Precipice), dealing with romantic rivalry of three men, and sporting a veiled critique of disintegrating Russian society. Ivan Goncharov never married, he died if pneumonia in his home in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was laid to rest in the writer's corner of cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Ivan Goncharov's most important novel, 'Oblomov', was published in 1859, and became widely successful in Russia. It was even compared with the Shakespeare's Hamlet, albeit the title character, Oblomov, is giving the answer "No!" to the question "To be or not to be?". The story of Oblomov and Russians around him is dealing with a conundrum of problems of social and economic nature that are typical of Russia. The novel was adapted into the eponymous film, Oblomov (1980), by director Nikita Mikhalkov, starring Oleg Tabakov in the title role.
Ivan Goncharov's writings are included in the Russian school curriculum and reissued in massive printings.
Background from {[https://biography.yourdictionary.com/ivan-aleksandrovich-goncharov]}
"Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov Facts
The Russian novelist Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) is one of the great realists of Russian literature. His novel "Oblomov" is a classic of Russian fiction.
Ivan Goncharov was born of a well-to-do family. Although the family background was of the merchant class, he was brought up in the patriarchal atmosphere of Russian manor life. After leaving the University of Moscow, he entered the civil service, where he labored patiently for many years without conspicuous success. His rise to literary prominence came in 1847, when he published his first novel, A Common Story. Hailed enthusiastically by the great Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky, this work dealt with the transformation of a young provincial idealist into a somewhat vulgar and practical young man.
In 1849 Goncharov published "The Dream of Oblomov," a short sketch that became the core of his greatest novel. In 1853 he accompanied an expedition on a 2-year voyage to the Far East. He did not enjoy the trip, but he was a perceptive reporter and his account of the journey appeared as The Frigate Pallas in 1856.
In 1858 Goncharov finished the novel Oblomov, and it was published the following year. Oblomov has become an archetypal character, the embodiment of vegetable comfort, of disinclination to action, and of lassitude. He is the dreamer rather than the doer, and he is contrasted with Shtolz, the new man, the energetic, self-willed man, who unsuccessfully attempts to inspire Oblomov to a more active existence. As a superfluous man, Oblomov is part of a gallery of great Russian fictional creations, which includes Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Mikhail Lermontov's Pechorin, and Ivan Turgenev's Rudin. The word Oblomovshchina (Oblomovism) has passed into the Russian language to signify a special kind of high-minded indolence.
Goncharov's last important novel, The Ravine, appeared in 1869. The theme of the novel, as in A Common Story, has to do with the new and the old, the ideal and the useful. The novel expresses what is perhaps the most important conflict in Goncharov's work: the conflict between a love for the patriarchal, leisurely, fixed ways of old Russia and an interest and curiosity in the liberal and radical elements that were breaking through the crust of old Russia.
Goncharov also wrote an autobiographical apologia, Better Late than Never (1870, published in 1879), in which he attempted to prove to the younger generation that he understood the spirit of his age as well as they. Among his other publications are My University Reminiscences (1870); A Million Torments (1872), a work of criticism; and Notes on Belinsky's Personality (1874). A posthumous work entitled An Uncommon Story came to light in the 1920s and confirmed the psychopathic side of his personality; it is an account of imagined plots against him and imagined attempts by others to plagiarize his work.
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