180
PARTISAN REVIEW
double thing. There is a certain unfixable moral point at which a per–
sonal and passive failure becomes a public and active wrong. Like
an investigator at the end of his story, Goncharov (though he
remains anonymous) arrives with Stolz on the Vyborg side. They
notice the beggars in front of a church. "I want to know," says the
writer, "how does one become a beggar, how does one come to that
position? Does it happen suddenly or gradually, is it false or gen–
uine?" They call one old man over to them. "Zahar!" Stolz exclaims.
"Is it you?"
Zahar tells his story-of how he has been cast adrift after
Oblomov's death, how he has gone from one job to another and
from bad to worse, how he finally ended up here. Stolz asks him to
come to the country with them and promises him a home. But
Zahar refuses and says, "I don't want to go away from here, from
his grave, I mean! Our dear master, Ilya Ilyitch, you know....
I've been praying for him again today, the Kingdom of Heaven be
his! To think that the Lord should have taken such a man from us!
He was a joy to all, he ought to have lived a hundred years...."
Here the idea of Oblomov as a person has disappeared and
has drifted symbolically into the idea of thousands of Oblomovs in
their relations with millions of Zahars allover Russia. The ragged
beggar on the street comer with his cap in his hand represents as
sharply as anything can the failure of paternalism, the failure of
Oblomovism. All of Goncharov's mildness and good manners can no
longer conceal
him;
he looked at something as hideous and as tragic
as any revolutionary ever saw. Almost the last thing in the book
is that painful sobbing of Zahar. It is meant to be a blessing on the
soul of Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov. In reality it is a fiery and eternal curse.
This is the most earnest way of looking at Oblomov and there
is a good deal of nineteenth-century earnestness in Goncharov's
intention. This symbol of Sloth must have been much less amusing
to the contemporary readers of his own country, for it put a name
to something they were already afraid of. Oblomov's hibernations
were too similar to those long Russian winters during which every–
body, in the rural parts, lived drowsily around the stoves. Oblomov's
brief summer of love was too much like everybody's brief Russian sum–
mer of work or activity to seem unusually cornic..
Oblomovism
be-
