172
PARTISAN REVIEW
and immensely more patient. He saw the beginnings and the ends of
things while Gogol saw only the middle. Gogol burst in on his
scenes, saw them all with fantastic clarity, laughed, and walked out
again. Goncharov, a little bored but doggedly taking notes, has
been there all the time.
The first section of 0
blomov
is a dramatic definition of
Oblomovism; in form it is a mock-morality play, the main problem
of which is to get Oblomov out of bed. A little after he has awakened,
he realizes the possibility of such an action:
As
soon as he awoke he decided to get up and wash and, after
drinking his
tea,
to think matters over, taking various things into con–
sideration ... altogether,
to
go thoroughly into the subject. He lay for
half
an hour tonnented by his decision; but then he reflected that he
would have time to think after breakfast which he would have in bed
as usual, since one can think just as well lying down.
This
was
what he did. After his morning tea he sat up and very
nearly got out of bed; looking at his slippers, he began lowering one
foot down toward them, but at once drew it back again.
In succession, seven people and two ideas come to bother
Oblomov. Each friend who drops in has a plausible reason for his
getting out of bed in the morning. Volkhov, a dandy, says he must
have a social life; Sudbinsky, the businessman, mentions ambition,
money, getting ahead; Penkin, the writer, talks about the intellectual
life, satirizing, refonning. Tarantyev, the scrounger, comes to eat and
borrow money.
It
would be enough reason to get up simply to
throw Tarantyev out. The doctor tells Oblomov he must travel for
his health; Stolz says that one must get up in order to live at all.
Each
is
a torment; for each he has an excuse, a postponement
or a promise and he makes several false starts toward his clothes and
slippers. When they have gone Oblomov, still lying in bed, has a
moment of consciousness:
Horror possessed
him
when there arose before
him
a clear and
vivid idea of what human destiny was meant to be as compared with
his own life, when the problems of life awakened within him and
whirled through his mind like frightened birds aroused suddenly by a ray
of sunlight in a slumbering ruin.... It hurt his timid mind to grasp
that many sides of his nature had never been awakened. . . . And yet
he
was
painfully conscious that something fine and
good
lay buried
within
him.•..
