THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN
177
lover in spite of the neIVous strain. He lays aside his symbolical
dressing-gown and fastens his attention on the lilac branch Olga
carries in her hand.
On her side, Olga, attracted by his goodness, gentleness and
innocence, makes the eternal error of feminine confidence, taking
love for some philosopher's stone capable of transmuting base metal.
Actually, it is more like an adrenalin shock that will wear off in time.
Occasionally she seems to sense her mistake. When Oblomov writes
her a letter trying to sneak out of the affair "for her own good," she
perceives the selfish motive and asks him, "What if you prefer to me
not another woman, but your dressing-gown?" Certainly this is the
real choice, but for the time being neither of them realizes it. Olga
seems to have enough vitality for both; then Oblomov asks her to
marry him.
With the end of summer comes the inevitable retreat. The last
part of the book is a minute and painful study of slow collapse. In
the autumn he moves back to Petersburg and begins
to
see less and
less of Olga, spending more anp more time lost in the vacuity of his
daydreams. This is at once the most dismal and horrifying part of
the
story
and in this long dwelling on the gradual ebb of Oblomov's
life, Goncharov creates that odd gray atmosphere of pathos which
is usually so inexpressible. At first sight Oblomov seems only bloated
and funny. By means of the love affair Goncharov has transplanted
him
to a human level and on that level discovered his complications,
his sensitivity, his capacity for passionate interior conflicts. When he
finds life too poignant and begins to relax back into vegetablism, he
can no longer be laughed at. His life is still a comedy, but it is the
paradoxical comedy of mortality- of the funeral joke or the graveside
smile.
Oblomov's final hibernation in the winter of his life begins
as he settles in a new apartment "on the Vyborg side" of the river
Neva. His landlady is a woman named Agafya who cares for him,
waits on
him
and begins to love him in an entirely speechless way.
She is another vegetable, but a different kind; she works continually
and comprehends almost nothing that is said to her. She becomes a
mother to
him.
Meanwhile, he shirks his appointments with Olga. One day he
has a horrible suspicion that the wedding he had anticipated so much
