* Government official.
“But what have those authors to worry about, seeing that if, as you say, one chooses to take a given model for amusement’s sake, the picture is sure to succeed? Yet no: real life isnotto be described like that. In a system of that kind there is no understanding or sympathy, nor a particle of what we call humanity. ’Tis all self-conceit—no more. Folk describe thieves and fallen women as though they were apprehending them in the streets and taking them to prison. Never in the tales of such writers is the note of ‘hidden tears’ to be detected—only that of gross, manifest malice and love of ridicule.”
“And what more would you have? You yourself have said (and very aptly so) that seething venom, a taste for bilious incitement to vice, and a sneering contempt for the fallen are the only ingredients needed.”
“No, not the only ones,” said Oblomov, firing up. “Picture a thief or a fallen woman or a cheated fool, if you like, but do not forget the rest of mankind. What about humanity, pray? Writers like yourself try to write only with the head. What? Do you suppose the intellect can work separately from the heart? Why, the intellect needsloveto fertilize it. Rather, stretch out your hand to the fallen and raise him weep over him if he is lost beyond recall, but in no case make sport of him, for he is one to whom there should be extended only compassion. See in him yourself, and act accordingly. That done, I will read you, and bow my head before you. But in the writings of the school of which I have spoken, what art, what poetical colouring, are you able to discover? Should you elect to paint debauchery and the mire, at least do so without making any claim to poetry.”
“What? You bid me depict nature—roses, nightingales, a winter’s morning, and all that sort of thing—when things liketheseare seething and whirling around us? Nay, we need, rather, the bare physiology of society. No longer are love songs required.”
“Give me man, and man alone.” said Oblomov. “And, having given me him, do you try to love him.”
“What?To love the usurer, the hypocrite, the peculating and stupid official? Why should I do that? ’tis evident you have had little experience of literature! Such fellows want punishing—want turning out of the civic circle and the community.”
“Out of the civic circle and the community,’ you say?” ejaculated Oblomov with a gasp as he rose and stood before Penkin. “That is tantamount to saying that once in that faulty vessel there dwelt the supreme element—that, ruined though the man may be, he is still a human being, as even are you and I. Turn him out, indeed!Howare you going to turn him out of the circle of humanity, out of the bosom of Nature, out of the mercy of God?” Oblomov came near to shouting as he said this, and his eyes were blazing.
“How excited you have grown!” said Penkin in astonishment; whereupon even Oblomov realized that he had gone too far. He pulled himself up, yawned slightly, and stretched himself out sluggishly upon the sofa. For a while silence reigned.
“What kind of books do you mostly read?’ inquired Penkin.
“Books of travel,” replied Oblomov.
Again there was a silence.
“And will you read the poem when it has come out?” continued Penkin. “If so, I will bring you a copy of it.”
Oblomov shook his head.
“Nor my story?”
Oblomov signified assent.
“Very well, then. Now I must be off to press,” continued Penkin. “Do you know why I came to see you to-day? I came because I wanted to propose to you a visit to the Ekaterinhov. I have a conveyance of my own and, inasmuch as, to-morrow, I must write an article on current events, I thought we might jointly look over my notes on the subject, and you might advise me as to any point omitted. We should enjoy the expedition, I think. Let us go.”
“No, I am not well,” said Oblomov with a frown, covering himself with the bedclothes. “But you might come and lunch with me to-day, andthentalk. I have just experienced a couple of misfortunes.”
“Ah! The whole of our staff is to lunch at St. George’s, * I fear, and then to go on to the festival. Also, at night I have my article to write, and the printer must receive the manuscript by daylight at the latest. Good-bye!”
* A smart restaurant in Petrograd.
“‘At night I have my article to write,’” mused Oblomov after his friend’s departure. “Then when does he sleep? However, he is making some five thousand roubles a year, so his work is so much bread and butter to him. Yet to think of being continually engaged in writing, in wasting one’s intellect upon trifles, in changing one’s opinions, in offering one’s brain and one’s imagination for sale, in doing violence to one’s own nature, in giving way to ebullitions of enthusiasm—and the whole without a single moment’s rest, or the calling of a single halt! Yes, to think of being forced to go on writing, writing, like the wheel of a machine—writing to-morrow, writing the day after, writing though the summer is approaching and holidays keep passing one by! Does heneverstop to draw breath, the poor wretch?” Oblomov glanced at the table, where everything lay undisturbed, and the ink had become dried up, and not a pen was to be seen; and as he looked he rejoiced to think thathewas lying there as careless as a newborn baby—not worrying at all, nor seeking to offer anything for sale.
“But what of thestarosta’sletter and the notice to quit?” Yes, suddenly he had remembered these things; and once more he became absorbed in thought.
Again the doorbell rang.
“Why is every one seeking me out today?” he wondered as he waited to see who next should enter. This time the new-comer proved to be a man of uncertain age—of the age when it is difficult to guess the exact number of years. Also, he was neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall nor short, neither fair nor dark. In short, he was a man whom Nature had dowered with no sharp-cut, distinguishing features, whether good or bad, mental or physical.
“Ha!” said Oblomov as he greeted him. “So it is you, Alexiev? Whence are you come?”
“To tell the truth. I had not thought to call upon you to-day,” replied the visitor, “but by chance I met Ovchinin, and he carried me off to his quarters, whither I, in my turn, have now come to conveyyou.”
“To convey me to, to——?”
“To Ovchinin’s. Already Alianov, Pchailo, and Kolhniagin are there.”
“But why have they collected together? And what do they want with me?”
“Ovchinin desires you to lunch with him, and then to accompany him and the rest of us to the Ekaterinhov. Likewise he has instructed me to warn you to hire a conveyance. Come, get up! ’Tis fully time you were dressed.”
“How am I to dress? I have not yet washed myself.”
“Then do so at once.”
With that Alexiev fell to pacing the room. Presently he halted before a picture which he had seen a thousand times before; then he glanced once or twice out of the window, took from a whatnot an article of some sort, turned it over in his hands, looked at it from every point of view, and replaced the same. That done, he resumed his pacing and whistling—the whole being designed to avoid hindering Oblomov from rising and performing his ablutions. Ten minutes passed.
“What is the matter with you?” asked Alexiev suddenly.
“What is the matter with me?”
“I mean, why are you still in bed?”
“I cannot tell you. Is itreallynecessary that I should get up?”
“Of course it is necessary, for they are waiting for us. Besides, you said that you would like to go.”
“To go where? I have no such desire.”
“Only this moment you said we would go and lunch at Ovchinin’s, and then proceed to the Ekatennhov!”
“No, I cannot. It would mean my going out into the damp. Besides, rain is coming on. The courtyard looks quite dark.”
“As a matter of fact, not a single cloud is in the sky, and the courtyard looks dark only because you never have your windows washed.”
“Well, well!” said Oblomov. “By the way, have I yet told you of my misfortunes—of the letter from mystarosta, and of the notice given me to quit this flat?”
“No,” answered Alexiev. “What about the letter?”
The document not being immediately forthcoming, Zakhar was summoned to search for it; and after it had been discovered beneath the counterpane Oblomov read it to his friend—though passing over certain greetings, added to inquiries as to the recipient’s health. The gist of the epistle was that the bulk of the crops on Oblomov’s estate were likely to fail for want of rain.
“Never mind,” said Alexiev. “One must never give way to despair.”
“And what wouldyoudo in my place?”
“I should first of all consider matters. Never ought one to come to a hasty decision.”
Crumpling the letter in his hands, Oblomov leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and remained in that posture for a considerable time—his brain flooded with disturbing reflections.
“I wish Schtoltz would come!” at length he remarked. “He has written that he is about to do so, but God knows what has happened to him!Hecould solve the situation.”
Suddenly the doorbell rang with such vehemence that both men started, and Zakhar came hurrying out of his pantry.
The next moment there entered the room a tall, loosely built man who evidently did not believe in refinement of costume, nor was in any way ashamed of the fact. This was Mikhei Andreievitch Tarantiev, a native of the same district as Oblomov. Though an individual of rough, sullen mien, and of rather an overbearing manner, he did not lack a certain keen ruggedness of wit; nor could any one be a better judge of mundane questions in general, nor a better resolver of tangled juridical problems (though usually he behaved rudely to the person who had sought his advice on these matters). Nevertheless, his abilities stopped short at a talent for verbal exposition; and no sooner was he called upon to transmit a theory into action than his whole bearing underwent a change, and in every case he discovered practical difficulties in the way of what he conceived to be the best course to take.
“How are you?” he said brusquely as he extended a hairy hand. “What do you mean by lying in bed like a log? Presently it will be twelve o’clock, yet you are sprawling about on your back!” The other forestalled him by hurriedly slipping his feet into his slippers, or the new-comer would have pulled him out of bed.
“I was just about to rise,” said Oblomov with a yawn.
“Yes; I know how you rise—how you go rolling about until lunch-time! Zakhar, come and help your master to dress!”
Zakhar entered and glared at Tarantiev. Raising himself on his elbow, Oblomov stepped from the bed like a man who is thoroughly worn out, and, dropping into an arm-chair, sat there without moving, Meanwhile Zakhar pomaded, parted, and combed his master’s hair, and then asked him if he desired to wash.
“Presently,” said Oblomov. “Do you wait a little.”
“Ah! Soyouare here?” said Tarantiev suddenly as he turned to Alexiev. “I had not seen you. By the way, what a swine is that kinsman of yours!”
“Whatkinsman?” inquired Alexiev with a stare. “I do not possess a single relative.”
“I mean Athanasiev. Surely he is a relative of yours? Iknowhe is.”
“My name is Alexiev, not Athanasiev,” said the other. “And I repeat that I do not possess a single relative.”
“But he is just like you an ugly man, as well as (like yourself, again) a man of the name of Vassili Nikolaitch?”
“Nevertheless he is no kinsman of mine. Besides, my first names are Ivan and Alexeitch.”
“Well, he is exactlylikeyou, and a swine besides. You can tell him that when next you meet him.”
“I neither possess his acquaintance nor have ever set eyes upon him,” said Alexiev, opening his snuffbox.
“Give me a pinch,” put in Tarantiev. “You use the plain stuff, and not the French, do you? Why not use the French? Never have I seen a swine like that relative of yours. On one occasion I borrowed of him fifty roubles. That was two years ago. And fifty roubles are not a very large sum, are they? They are a sum which he might well have forgotten, mightn’t he? Yes, he very well might. But as a matter of fact, he remembered it. Not a month had passed before he took to saying, whenever he met me: ‘How about that debt?’ I assure you I found him a perfect nuisance! And only yesterday he walked into our office, and said to me: ‘I expect you have just received your salary, and are therefore in a position to repay me?’ Well, I handed him over my salary, even though he had come there for the express purpose of shaming me in public. I had much ado not to put him out of the door. ‘Poor fellow, you need the money, I suppose?’ As though I hadnotneeded it! Am I such a rich man that I should quietly let him pouch fifty roubles? Oblomov, hand me a cigar.”
“The cigars are in that box there,” said Oblomov, pointing to a whatnot. He was still posed in his usual lazy but becoming attitude—he was still taking no notice whatever of what was being done or said around him, but contemplating his small white hands.
“What a rubbishy weed!” Tarantiev remarked, after sending out a puff of tobacco smoke and inhaling another.
“You have come too early in the morning,” suggested Oblomov with a yawn.
“Then I am boring you, am I?”
“No; I was merely making a remark. Usually you arrive at lunch-time, but to-day you have come an hour beforehand.”
“I have come an hour beforehand because I wish to find out what there is likely to be to eat at dinner. As a rule you provide such rubbishy stuff.”
“You had better go into the kitchen and inquire.”
Taramiev departed for the purpose,
“We are to have beef and veal,” he remarked, on returning. “Ah, friend Oblomov, though a landowner, you haven’t the smallest notion how to live. Yourménageis theménageof a tradesman. Have you bought that Madeira yet?”
“I don’t know,” replied Oblomov, scarcely noticing what had been said. “You had better inquire of Zakhar. At all events there will be some sort of wine.”
“What? The rubbishy old stuff which you bought of a German dealer? You ought to go to the English Store for your wines.”
“Very well. Please send to the Store for some.”
“Money first, please!”
Oblomov fumbled in a cashbox, and produced therefrom a ten-rouble, note.
“Madeira costs seven roubles the bottle,” he said. “Here are ten roubles. You will be given change at the Store.”
Tarantiev hastened to cram the note into his pocket.
“Likewise, do you feel like hiring a conveyance and going to the Ekaterinhov today?” he inquired. “If so, you might take me with you.”
Oblomov shook his head.
“I have met with two misfortunes,” he remarked. “In the first place, I am to be turned out of this fiat.”
“Because you haven’t paid your rent, I suppose?”
“No, that isnotthe reason. I always pay in advance. Tell me what had better be done.”
“Who mademeyour adviser? Do you think I give advice for nothing? Askhim, rather”—and Tarantiev pointed to Alexiev—“or else that kinsman of his.”
“No, no. Tell me what I ought to do.”
“I should advise you to move to another flat.”
“I could have said that myself.”
“To the flat of a friend of mine in the Veaborg Quarter,” continued Tarantiev.
“What? To a flat in the Veaborg Quarter? In winter the whole district is overrun with wolves!” *
* The Veaborg Quarter is one of the most outlying suburbs ofPetrograd.
“True, at times they come there from the Neva Islands, but my friend’s house has high walls to it, and, in addition, she and her family and a bachelor brother are nice people, and not like that fellow over there.” He pointed to Alexiev.
“But what has all this to do with me?” said Oblomov irritably. “I tell you I amnotgoing to move there.”
“You fool!” exclaimed Tarantiev. “In that house you would be much quieter and more comfortable than you are here, and you would pay less, and you would have larger quarters. Besides, it is a more respectable place than this. Here one has to sit at a dirty table on which the pepper-pot is empty, the vinegar bottle the same, the knives are not clean, the tablecloth is falling to pieces, and dust, dust, dust, lies everywhere. Give me my cab-fare, and I will go and secure you the flat at once. Then you can move into it to-morrow.” Tarantiev started to leave the room.
“Stop, stop!” cried Oblomov. “I tell you I amnotgoing to the Veaborg Quarter. Pray exercise your wits in contriving how I may remain where I am. Moreover, I have a still more important affair on hand. That is to say, I have just received from mystarostaa letter concerning which I should be glad of your advice.”
With that he searched for the document, found it after some difficulty, and read it aloud.
“So you hear what thestarostasays as to drought and a failure of the crops? What ought I to do?”
“The prime necessity,” replied Tarantiev, “is complete quiet for you. That you would get at the house of the friend of whom I have just spoken; and I could come to see you every day.”
“Yes, yes,” said Oblomov. “But what about this affair of thestarosta?”
“Thestarostais lying. He is a thief and a rogue. Why, I know an estate, only fifty versts from yours, where the harvest of last year was so good that it cleared the owner completely of debt. That being so, why have the crops onyourestate threatened to fail? Clearly thestarostais a robber. If I were there I’d teach him! Do you suppose this letter to be a natural, an honest one? No, no more than we can suppose that that sheep’s head over there he pointed to Alexiev again—“is capable of writing an honest letter, or his kinsman either.”
“Whom am I to appoint in thestarosta’splace?” asked Oblomov. “Another man might prove even worse than he.”
“You yourself had better go to the estate, and stay there for the summer, and then move into my friend’s house.Iwill see that her rooms shall be ready for you—yes, I will see to it at once. Personally, I should have sold that property of yours, and bought another. Hand it over to me, and I will very soon make the folk there aware that I am alive!”
The upshot of it was that Oblomov accorded a half-hearted consent to Tarantiev’s procuring him a new lodging, and also to his writing to the governor of the district where his (Oblomov’s) property was situated. After that Tarantiev departed, stating that he would return to dinner at five o’clock.
With Tarantiev’s departure a calm of ten minutes reigned in the apartment. Oblomov was feeling greatly upset, both by thestarostasletter and by the prospect of the impending removal. Also, the tumultuous Tarantiev had thoroughly tired him out.
“Why do you not sit down and write the letter?” asked Alexiev. “If you wish I will clean the inkstand for you.”
“Clean it, and the Lord bless you!” sighed Oblomov. “Let me write the letter alone, and then you shall fair-copy it after dinner.”
“Very well,” replied Alexiev. “But now I must be off, or I shall be delaying the Ekaterinhov party. Good-bye!”
Oblomov did not heed him, but, sinking back into a recumbent position in the armchair, relapsed into a state of meditative lethargy.
Zakhar, after closing the dour successively behind Tarantiev and Alexiev, stood expecting to receive a summons from his master, inasmuch as he had overheard the fact that the latter had undertaken to write a letter. But in Oblomov’s study all remained silent as the tomb. Zakhar peeped through the chink of the door, and perceived that his master was lying prone on the sofa, with his head resting on the palm of his hand. The valet entered the room.
“Why have you lain down again?” he asked.
“Do not disturb me: cannot you see that I am reading?” was Oblomov’s abrupt reply.
“Nay, but you ought to wash, and then to write that letter,” urged Zakhar, determined not to be shaken on.
“Yes, I suppose I ought. I will do so presently. Just now I am engaged in thought.”
As a matter of fact, hedidread a page of the book which was lying open—a page which had turned yellow with a month’s exposure. That done, he laid it down and yawned.
“How it all wearies me!” he whispered, stretching, and then drawing up, his legs. Glancing at the ceiling as once more he relapsed into a voluptuous state of coma, he said to himself with momentary sternness: “No—business first.” Then he rolled over, and clasped his hands behind his head.
As he lay there he thought of his plans for improving his property. Swiftly he passed in review certain grave and fundamental schemes affecting his plough-land and its taxation; after which he elaborated a new and stricter course to be taken against laziness and vagrancy on the part of the peasantry, and then passed to sundry ideas for ordering his own life in the country.
First of all, he became engrossed in a design for a new house. Eagerly he lingered over a probable disposition of the rooms, and fixed in his mind the dimensions of the dining-room and the billiard-room, and determined which way the windows of his study must face. Indeed, he even gave a thought to the furniture and to the carpets. Next, he designed a wing for the building, calculated the number of guests whom that wing would accommodate, and set aside proper sites for the stables, the coachhouses, and the servants’ quarters. Finally he turned his attention to the garden. The old lime and oak-trees should all be left as they were, but the apple-trees and pear-trees should be done away with, and succeeded by acacias. Also, he gave a moment’s consideration to the idea of a park, but, after calculating the cost of its upkeep, came to the conclusion that such a luxury would prove too expensive—wherefore he passed to the designing of orangeries and aviaries.
So vividly did these attractive visions of the future development of his estate flit before his eyes that he came to fancy himself already settled there, and engaged in witnessing the result of several years’ working of his schemes.
On a fair summer’s evening he seemed to be sitting at a tea-table on the terrace of Oblomovka—sitting under a canopy of leafy shade which the sun was powerless to penetrate. From a long pipe in his hand he was lazily inhaling smoke, and revelling both in the delightful view which stretched beyond the circle of the trees and in the coolness and the quiet of his surroundings. In the distance some fields were turning to gold as the sun, setting behind a familiar birch-grove, tinged to red the mirror-like surface of the lake. From the fields a mist had risen, for the chill of evening was falling, and dusk approaching apace. To his ears, at intervals, came the clatter of peasantry as they returned homewards, and at the entrance gates the servants of the establishment were sitting at ease, while from their vicinity came the sound of echoing voices and laughter, the playing ofbalalaiki, * and the chattering of girls as they pursued the sport ofgoriclki. ** Around him, also, his little ones were frisking at times climbing on to his knee and hanging about his neck; while behind thesamovar*** was seated the real ruler of all that his eyes were beholding his divinity, a woman, hiswife!... And in the dining-room—a room at once elegant and simply appointed—a cheerful fire was glowing, and Zakhar, now promoted to the dignity of a major-domo, and adorned with whiskers turned wholly grey, was laying a large, round table to a pleasant accompanying tinkle of crystal and silver as he arranged, here a decanter and there a fork.
* Three-stringed, lute-like instruments.** A sort of catch-as catch-can.*** Tea-urn.
Presently the dreamer saw his wife and himself sit down to a bountiful supper. Yes, and with them was Schtoltz, the comrade of his youth, his unchanging friend, with other well-known faces. Lastly, he could see the inmates of the house retiring to rest....
Oblomov’s features blushed with delight at the vision. So clear, so vivid, so poetical was it all that for a moment he lay with his face buried in the sofa cushions. Suddenly there had come upon him a dim longing for love and quiet happiness; suddenly he had become athirst for the fields and the hills of his native place, for his home, for a wife, for children....
After lying face downwards for a moment or two, he turned upon his back. His features were alight with generous emotion, and for the time being he was—happy.
Again the charming seductiveness of sleep-waking enfolded him in its embrace. He pictured to himself a small colony of friends who should come and settle in the villages and farms within a radius of fifteen or twenty versts of his country house. Every day they should visit one another’s houses—whether to dine or to sup or to dance; until everywhere around him he would be able to see only bright faces framed in sunny days—faces which should be ever free of care and wrinkles, and round, and merry, and ruddy, and double-chinned, and of unfailing appetite. In all his neighbourhood there should be constant summertide, constant gaiety, unfailing good fare, the joys of perennial lassitude.... “My God, my God!” he cried in the fullness of his delight: and with that he awoke. Once more to his ears came the cries of hawkers in the courtyard as they vended coal, sand, and potatoes; once more he could hear some one begging for subscriptions to build a church; once more from a neighbouring building which was in course of erection there streamed a babel of workmen’s shouts, mingled with the clatter of tools.
“Ah!” he sighed with a sense of pain. “Such is real life! What ugliness there is in the roar of the capital! When shall I attain the life of paradise—the life for which I yearn? Shall I ever see my own fields, my own forests? Would that at this moment I were lying on the grass under a tree, and gazing upwards at the sun through the boughs, and trying to count the birds which come and go over my head!”
But what about the plans for improving the estate? And what about thestarostaand the flat? Once again these things knocked at his memory.
“Yes, yes,” he answered them. “Seichass—presently.”
With that he rose to a sitting posture on the sofa, lowered his legs to the level of his slippers, and slipped the latter on to his feet; after which he sat still for a little while. At length he attained a wholly erect posture, and remained meditating for a couple of minutes.
“Zakhar! Zakhar!” he shouted as he eyed the table and the inkstand. “I want you to, to——” Further he failed to get, but mutely pointed to the inkstand, and then relapsed into thought.
The doorbell rang, and a little man with a bald head entered.
“Hullo, doctor!” Oblomov exclaimed as he extended one hand towards his guest, and with the other one drew forward a chair. “What chance brings you here?”
“The chance that, since all of you decline to be ill, and never send for me, I am forced to come of myself,” replied the doctor jestingly. “But no,” he added, in a more serious tone. “The truth is, I had to visit a neighbour of yours on the upper floor, and thought I might as well take you on the way. How are you?”
Oblomov shook his head despondently. “Poorly, doctor,” he said. “I have just been thinking of consulting you. My stomach will scarcely digest anything, there is a pain in the pit of it, and my breath comes with difficulty.”
“Give me your wrist,” said the doctor. He closed his eyes and felt the patient’s pulse. “And have you a cough?” he inquired.
“Yes—at night-time, but more especially while I am at supper.”
“Hm! And does your heart throb at all, or your head ache?” He then added other questions, bowed his bald pate, and subsided into profound meditation. At length he straightened himself with a jerk, and said with an air of decision—
“Two or three years more, of this room, of lying about, of eating rich, heavy foods, and you will have a stroke.”
Oblomov started.
“Then what ought I to do, doctor? Tell me, for Heaven’s sake!”
“Merely what other people do—namely, go abroad.”
“Pardon me, doctor, but how am I to do that?”
“Why should you not? Does money prevent you, or what?”
“Yes, yes; money is the reason,” replied Oblomov, gladly catching at the excuse, which was the most natural one that could possibly have been devised. “See here—just read what myslarostawrites.”
“Quite so, but that is no business of mine,” said the doctor. “Mybusiness is to inform you that you must change your mode of life, and also your place of residence. You must have fresh air—you must have something to do. Go to Kissingen or to Ems, and remain there during June and July, whilst you drink the waters. Then go on to Switzerland, or to the Tyrol, and partake of the local grape cure. That you can do during September and October.”
“Oh the devil take the Tyrol!” murmured Oblomov under his breath.
“Next, transfer yourself to some dry place like Egypt, and put away from you all cares and worries.”
“Excellent!” said Oblomov. “I only wish thatstarostas’ letters like this one reached you!”
“Also you must do no thinking whatsoever.”
“No thinking, you say?”
“Yes—you must impose upon the brain no exertion.”
“But what about my plans for my estate? I am not a log, if you will pardon my saying so.”
“Oh, very well. I have merely been warning you. Likewise, you must avoid emotion of every kind, for that sort of thing is sure to militate against a successful cure. Try, rather, to divert yourself with riding, with dancing, with moderate exercise in the open air, and with pleasant conversation—more especially conversation with the opposite sex. These things are designed to make your heart beat more lightly, and to experience none but agreeable emotions. Again, you must lay aside all reading and writing. Rent a villa which faces south and lies embowered in flowers, and surround yourself also with an atmosphere of music and women.”
“And may I eat at all?”
“Yes, certainly; but avoid all animal and farinaceous food, as well as anything which may be served cold. Eat only light soups and vegetables. Even inthisgreat care will need to be exercised, for cholera, I may tell you, is about. Walk eight hours out of every twenty-four; go in for shooting.”
“Good Lord!” groaned Oblomov.
“Finally,” concluded the doctor, “go to Paris for the winter, where, surrounded by a whirlpool of gaiety, you will best be able to distract your mind from your habitual brooding. Cultivate, theatres, balls, masquerades, the streets, society friends, noise, and laughter.”
“Anything else?” inquired Oblomov, with ill-concealed impatience. The doctor reflected a moment.
“Yes; also get the benefit of sea air,” he said. “Cross over to England, or else go for a voyage to America.”
With chat he rose to take his leave. “Should you carry out these instructions to the letter——” he began.
“Yes, yes. OfcourseI shall carry them out!” said Oblomov bitterly as he accompanied the physician to the door.
The doctor having departed, Oblomov threw himself back into an arm-chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and remained sitting in an almost unthinking heap. Roused by Zakhar to consider once more the question of changing his quarters, he engaged in a long and heated conversation with the valet. Eventually he dismissed the man to his den, but could not dismiss from his own mind certain comparisons which Zakhar had drawn between his master’s life and the life of ordinary people. How strange that suddenly there should have dawned in him thoughts concerning human fate and destiny! All at once he found his mind drawing a parallel between that destiny and his own existence; all at once questions of life arose before his vision, like owls in an ancient ruin flushed from sleep by a stray ray of sunlight. Somehow he felt pained and grieved at his arrested development, at the check which had taken place in his moral growth, at the weight which appeared to be pressing upon his every faculty. Also gnawing at his heart there was a sense of envy that others should be living a life so full and free, while all the time the narrow, pitiful little pathway of his own existence was being blocked by a great boulder. And in his hesitating soul there arose a torturing consciousness that many sides of his nature had never yet been stirred, that others had never even been touched, and that not one of them had attained complete formation. Yet with this there went an aching suspicion that, buried in his being, as in a tomb, there still remained a moribund element of sweetness and light, and that it was an element which, though hidden in his personality, as a nugget lies lurking in the bowels of the earth, might once have become minted into sterling coin. But the treasure was now overlaid with rubbish—was now thickly littered over with dust. ’Twas as though some one had stolen from him, and besmirched, the store of gifts with which life and the world had dowered him; so that always he would be prevented from entering life’s field and sailing across it with the aid of intellect and of will. Yes, at the very start a secret enemy had laid a heavy hand upon him and diverted him from the road of human destiny. And now he seemed to be powerless to leave the swamps and wilds in favour of that road. All around him was a forest, and ever the recesses ox his soul were growing dimmer and darker, and the path more and more tangled, while the consciousness of his condition kept awaking within him less and less frequently—to arouse only for a fleecing moment his slumbering faculties. Brain and volition alike had become paralysed, and, to all appearances, irrevocably—the events of his life had become whittled down to microscopical proportions. Yet even with them he was powerless to cope—he was powerless to pass from one of them to another. Consequently they bandied him to and fro like the waves of the ocean. Never was he able to oppose to any event elasticity of will; never was he able to conceive, as the result of any event, a reasoned-out impulse. Yet to confess this, even to himself, always cost him a bitter pang: his fruitless regrets for lost opportunities, coupled with burning reproaches of conscience, always pricked him like needles, and led him to strive to put away such reproaches and to discover a scapegoat....
Once again Oblomov sank asleep; and as he slept he dreamed of a different period, of different people, of a different place from the present. Let us follow him thither.
We find ourselves transported to a land where neither sea nor mountains nor crags nor precipices nor lonely forests exist—where, in short, there exists nothing grand or wild or immense.
Of what advantage, indeed, is the grand, the immense? The ocean depresses the soul of man, and at the sight of its boundless expanse of billows—an expanse whereon the weary eye is allowed no resting-place from the uniformity of the picture—the heart of man grows troubled within him, and he derives no solace from the roaring and mad rolling of the waves. Ever since the world began, those waves have sung the same dim, enigmatical song. Ever since the world began, they have voiced but the querulous lament of a monster which, everlastingly doomed to torment, utters a chorus of shrill, malicious cries. On the shores of the sea no bird warbles; only the silent gulls, like lost spirits, fit wearily along its margin, or circle over its surface. In the presence of that turmoil of nature the roar even of the wildest beast sounds weak, and the voice of man becomes wholly overwhelmed. Yes, beside it man’s form looks so small and fragile that it is swallowed up amid the myriad details of the gigantic picture. That alone may be why contemplation of the ocean depresses man’s soul. During periods, also, of calm and immobility his spirit derives no comfort from the spectacle; for in the scarcely perceptible oscillation of the watery mass he sees ever the slumbering, incomprehensible force, which, until recently, has been mocking his proud will and, as it were, submerging his boldest schemes, his most dearly cherished labours and endeavours.
In the same way, mountains and gorges were not created to afford man encouragement, inasmuch as, with their terrible, menacing aspect, they seem to him the fangs and talons of some gigantic wild beast—of a beast which is reaching forth in an effort to devour him. Too vividly they remind him of his own frail build; too painfully they cause him to go in fear for his life. And over the summits of those crags and precipices the heavens look so remote and unattainable that they seem to have become removed out of the ken of humanity.
Not so that peaceful corner of the earth upon which our hero, in his slumber, opened his eyes. There, on the contrary, the heavens seemed to hug the earth—not in order that they might the better aim their thunderbolts, but in order that they might the closer enfold it in a loving embrace. In fact, they hovered low in order that, like a sheltering, paternal roof, they might guard this chosen corner of the earth from every adversity. Meanwhile the sun shone warm and bright during half the year, and, withdrawing, did so so slowly and reluctantly that it seemed ever to be turning back for one more look at the beloved spot, as though wishing to give it one more bright, warm day before the approaching weather of autumn. Also the hills of that spot were no more than reduced models of the terrible mountains which, in other localities, rear themselves to affright the imagination. Rather, they resembled the gentle slopes down which one may roll in sport, or where one may sit and gaze dreamily at the declining sun Below them, toying and frisking, ran a stream. In one place it discharged itself into a broad pool, in another it hurried along in a narrow thread, in a third it slackened its pace to a sudden mood of reverie, and, barely gliding over the stones, threw out on either side small rivulets whereof the gentle burbling seemed to invite sleep. Everywhere the vicinity of this corner of the earth presented a series of landscape studies and cheerful, smiling vistas. The sandy, shelving bank of the stream, a small copse which descended from the summit of that bank to the water, a winding ravine of which the depths were penetrated by a rill, a plantation of birch-trees—all these things seemed purposely to be fitted into one another, and to have been drawn by the hand of a master. Both the troubled heart and the heart which has never known care might have yearned to hide themselves in this forgotten corner of the world, and to live its life of ineffable happiness. Everything promised a quiet existence which should last until the grey hairs were come, and thereafter a death so gradual as almost to resemble the approach of sleep.
There the yearly round fulfils itself in a regular, serene order. As the calendar ordains, spring comes in in March, when turbid rivulets begin to run from the hills, and the earth, thawing, steams with tepid vapour. Then the peasant, doffing his sheepskin, goes out in shirtsleeves alone, and shades his eyes with’ his hand as gladly he shrugs his shoulders and drinks his fill of the gleaming sunlight. Then, with a shaft in either hand, he draws forth the cart which has been lying bottom upwards, under the tiltshed, or examines and sounds with his foot the plough which has been reposing in the penthouse. All this is in preparation for the usual routine of toil, since in that region spring sees no return of sudden snowstorms to heap the fields and crack the branches. On the other hand, Winter, like a cold, unapproachable beauty, retains her character until the lawful season of thaw has arrived. Never does she mock one with unexpected softenings of the air; never does she triple-harness the earth with unheard-of degrees of frost. Everything proceeds according to rote—according to a generally prescribed order of nature. Although, in November, there begin snow and frost which, towards the festival of Epiphany, increase to the point of freezing to an icicle the beard of the peasant who has stepped out of his hut for a breath of fresh air, the sensitive nose can, by February, detect the kindly odour of approaching spring.
Next, the summer is peculiarly ravishing. Only in that particular spot can one find that fresh, dry perfume which is the scent neither of laurel nor of lemon, but of mingled wormwood, pine, and cherry-blossom. Only there, also, can one find those bright days when the sun’s rays are warm, but never scorching, and the sky remains cloudless for three mouths on end. As the bright days draw on they lengthen, week by week; and during that period the evenings are hot and the nights stifling, while the stars twinkle in the heavens with the welcoming mien of friends. And when rain at length arrives, how beneficent is its coming! Boisterously, richly, merrily it spates forth, like the large, hot tears of a man unexpectedly relieved of care; and as soon as ever it has passed the sun appears with a new smile of love, to dry the fields and the hillocks, and to cause all the countryside to assume an answering smile of delight. How gladly, too, the peasant greets the rain! “The good rain washes us, and the sun will dry us again,” is his saying as he exposes his face to the tepid downpour and lets it play upon his shoulders and back. Moreover, in that region thunder is never terrible, but, rather, benevolent, and always occurs at one particular season (generally on Saint Elias’ Day, in order that the people’s established tradition may be fulfilled * ). Also it would appear that, every year, both the number and the intensity of the peals remain the same—as though for each year the heavenly treasury had allotted a given measure of electricity. But of terrible and destructive storms that country can shew no record.