Oblomov / Обломов. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Иван Гончаров

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.

      As soon as he got up in the morning and had taken his breakfast, he lay down at once on the sofa, propped up his head on his hand and plunged into thought without sparing himself till at last his head grew weary from the hard work and his conscience told him that he had done enough for the common welfare. Only then did he permit himself to rest from his labours and change his thoughtful pose for another less stern and business-like and a more comfortable one for languorous day-dreaming. Having done with the cares of business, Oblomov liked to withdraw into himself and live in the world of his own creation. He was not unacquainted with the joys of lofty thoughts; he was not unfamiliar with human sorrows. Sometimes he wept bitterly in his heart of hearts over the calamities of mankind and experienced secret and nameless sufferings and anguish and a yearning for something far away, for the world, perhaps, where Stolz used to carry him away. … Sweet tears flowed from his eyes.

      It would also happen that sometimes he would be filled with contempt for human vice, lies, and slanders, for the evil that was rife in the world, and he was consumed by a desire to point out to man his sores, and suddenly thoughts were kindled in him, sweeping through his head like waves of the sea, growing into intentions, setting his blood on fire, flexing his muscles, and swelling his veins; then his intentions turned to strivings; moved by a spiritual force, he would change his position two or three times in one minute, and half-rising on his couch with blazing eyes, stretch forth his hand and look around him like one inspired… In another moment the striving would turn into an heroic act – and then, heavens! What wonders, what beneficent results might one not expect from such a lofty effort!

      But the morning passed, the day was drawing to its close, and with it Oblomov’s exhausted energies were crying out for a rest: the storms and emotions died down, his head recovered from the spell of his reverie, and his blood flowed more slowly in his veins. Oblomov turned on his back quietly and wistfully and, fixing a sorrowful gaze at the window and the sky, mournfully watched the sun setting gorgeously behind a four-storied house. How many times had he watched the sun set like that!

      Next morning there was life once