Ivan Goncearov was not a citizen of the XXth century or of contemporaneity, centuries in which ideas about motivation and willpower were, and are, quotidian, he lived in XIXth century Russia, known for its particular, non-western way of life. Starting from this data, how accidental it appears - to a naïve reader like myself - that Oblomov, his fourth novel and one of his most appreciated, is contemporaneous in its psychology.
Oblomov is the story of the eponymous character, the tableau of a life resembling a neglected garden, one in desolation. The novel depicts how and, perhaps, why life can bear little fruit. It is not a pretty sight, but it is an invitation to the reader to brace him/herself, make …show more content…
The novel has four parts, in the first one Goncearov describes how the sheltered noble of 31 years spends a normal day in his house in ST. Petersburg: we witness a nightmarish slumber. How does a perfectly peaceful day develop like a bad dream? In a fogyish perception of time, Oblomov wakes up and falls back asleep, plans than looses train of thought, wants but does not act, is affected yet senseless. And through all this he uses his mind to judge, he is a judging and fantasizing machine.
Goncearov introduces his entourage of either blase or ferocious characters, and presents the idyllic childhood that formed him. Oblomovka, his home and estate, is a character in its own right, there when Oblomov was a child, people lived the same day in a loop, without great effort or investment. They taught the child in these ways. It was a sort of heaven on earth.
Yet Oblomov, does not return to live there, Oblomovka remains a far away