Oblomov

Part 1
Chapter 5 


    
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, flit 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 aff right 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 months 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 sameÄas though for each 
    year the heavenly treasury had allotted a given measure of electricity. But 
    of terrible and destructive storms that country can show no record. 

    
Nor has the country whereof I am speaking ever been visited with the 
    Egyptian or other plagues. Never has any member of its population beheld a 
    dire manifestation of Heaven, nor a thunderbolt, nor an unlooked-for 
    darkness; nor do venomous vermin abide there, and the locust comes. not 
    thither, and lions, tigers, bears, and wolves are unknown (owing to the fact 
    that the country contains no fastnesses for them to dwell in). In short, 
    over the fields and around the village wander only lowing cattle, bleating 
    sheep, and cackling poultry. 

    
Yet none but God knows whether a poet or a visionary would find himself 
    satisfied with the natural features of this peaceful spot. Such gentlemen, 
    we know, love to gaze upon the moon, and to listen to the strains of 
    nightingales; they love to see Luna clothe herself in coquettish, aureate 
    cloud, and then glide mysteriously through the boughs of trees, and send 
    forth clusters of silver beams to delight the eyes of her worshippers. But 
    in this country of Oblomov's dream no one knows such a moon; there Luna's 
    features, as she looks down upon the villages and the fields, resembles, 
    rather, a polished, cheery copper basin, and in vain would the poet fasten 
    ravished eyes upon her, for she would return his gaze with the same 
    indifference as that with which a round-faced rustic beauty meets the 
    eloquent, passionate glances of a town gallant. 

    
Nor has a nightingale ever been heard in that country—perchance for the 
    reason that the region contains no shaded arbours or gardens of roses. But 
    what an abundance of quails it can show!—so much so that in summer, when 
    the harvest is in course of being gathered, urchins can catch them even in 
    their hands! Yet it must not be supposed that thereafter the quails furnish 
    a gastronomic dainty. Such an outrage would be repugnant to the moral sense 
    of the inhabitants, since the quail is a bird, and therefore legally 
    prohibited from being used for food. Consequently it lives but to delight 
    the popular ear with its song, and in almost every house there hangs beneath 
    the eaves a wicker cage wherein a member of that feathered species sits 
    penned. 

    
Even the general aspect of this modest, unaffected spot would fail to 
    please the poet or the visionary. Never would it be theirs to behold a scene 
    in which all nature—woodland, lake, cotter's hut, and sandy hillside—is 
    burning with a purplish glow, while sharply defined against a purple 
    background may be seen, moving along a sandy, winding road, a cavalcade of 
    countrymen in attendance upon some great lady who is journeying towards a 
    ruined castle—a castle where they will find awaiting them the telling of 
    legends concerning the Wars of the Roses, the eating of wild goats for 
    supper, and the singing of ballads to the lute by a young English damsel—a 
    scene of Scottish or Swiss flavour of the kind which has been made familiar 
    to our imagination by the pen of Sir Walter Scott. 

    
Of this there is nothing in our country. How quiet and dreamy are the 
    three or four villages which constitute that restful region! They lie not 
    far from one another, and seem to have been thrown into their respective 
    positions by some giant hand, and ever since to have maintained those 
    positions. In particular, one hut stands on the edge of a ravine, with 
    one-half its bulk projecting over the declivity, but supported on three 
    props. Within it some three or four generations have spent happy, peaceful 
    lives; for though it looks scarcely large enough to house a chicken, it is 
    none the less tenanted by a well-to-do peasant and his wife. Onisim Suslov 
    is the peasant's name, and he cannot stand upright in his abode. The veranda 
    actually overhangs the ravine, and to reach it one has with one hand to 
    grasp the herbage, and, with the other, the gable before setting foot upon 
    the structure itself. Another of the huts is, as it were, gummed to the side 
    of a hill, like a swallow's nest, while three others stand close beside it, 
    and two are situated at the bottom of the ravine. 

    
In the village all is quiet. The doors of its solitary little dwellings 
    stand open, but not a soul is to be seen. Only the flies circle and buzz in 
    clusters. Were you to enter one of the huts, you would call aloud in vain, 
    for your only answer would be the deathlike silence, except that here and 
    there you might hear the gasping of an invalid or the deep cough of some old 
    woman who is living out her days upon the stove. Also, there might appear 
    from behind the fence a long-haired, barefooted youngster of three, clad 
    only in a shirt, who would gaze mutely at the new-comer, and then timidly 
    hide himself again. 

    
The same deep silence, the same deep peace, lies also upon the fields. 
    Only somewhere over the distant soil there can be seen moving, like an ant, 
    a sunburnt ploughman. Occasionally he leans upon his plough to clear his 
    forehead of the sweat. Even the manners of that region are possessed of a 
    still restfulness which nothing can disturb. Never has a robbery or a murder 
    or a similar happening been known there; never have the inhabitants 
    succumbed to strong passions, or experienced hazardous adventures. Indeed, 
    what passions, what adventures would have the power to move them? No man has 
    ever strayed beyond his own circle, for the local inhabitants dwell far from 
    other men, and both the nearest village and the nearest country town lie 
    distant from twenty-five to thirty versts. True, at given seasons the 
    peasants cart their grain to the river wharf which lies nearest to them, and 
    once a year, also, they attend a fair; but they maintain no relations beyond 
    these. In fact, all their interests are centred in themselves. True, they 
    know that eighty versts away there stands the provincial capital; but few of 
    them have ever journeyed thither. Also they know that beyond it stand 
    Saratov and Nizhni Novgorod—likewise they have heard that such places as 
    Moscow and Petrograd exist, and that on the farther side of them dwell folk 
    who are known as Germans and French; but beyond that point there begins for 
    them, as it did for the ancients, a mysterious world of unknown countries 
    which are peopled with monsters and two-headed giants, and bounded on the 
    outer side by a void of mist, and, again, by the colossal fish which bears 
    the world on its back. Moreover, since this peaceful corner of the universe 
    is almost inaccessible, there filters thither but few items of news 
    concerning the great white universe. Indeed, even traders in 
    rustic wares who live twenty versts away know no more than they do. 
    Likewise, it never enters into their heads to compare their lot with those 
    of other men—to inquire whether other men are rich or poor, comfortable or 
    in need, for these peasants live in the fortunate belief that no 
    circumstances could ever be different to their own—that all other folk must 
    surely be living even as they are, and that to live in any other fashion 
    would be a sin. Were you to assure them that others plough, sow, reap, or 
    sell their produce in any way than that which obtains in this particular 
    spot, the inhabitants would not believe you. That being so, how could any 
    element of vexation or disturbance ever come nigh them? True, they resemble 
    the rest of humanity in that they have their cares and weaknesses and 
    obligations of tax-payment and fits of laziness and lethargy; but these 
    press upon them but lightly, and occasion no real stirring of the blood. 
    Indeed, during the past five years not a single soul of that local 
    population of hundreds has died either a violent death or a natural. Even 
    should a man or a woman expire of old age or a senile disease, it is not 
    long before the rest have got over their astonishment at the unusual 
    occurrence. In the same way, after the trader Tarass had come near to 
    steaming himself to death in his hut, and had had to be revived with cold 
    water, the affair caused scarcely any stir in the neighbourhood. 

    
Of crimes, one only—that of theft of produce from market gardens—is at 
    all prevalent. Also, once two pigs and a chicken mysteriously disappeared. 
    True, the latter event threw the district into something of a turmoil, but 
    was unanimously ascribed to a pedlar who, the previous evening, had passed 
    through the district on his way to a fair. In general, such untoward 
    incidents are of the greatest rarity. 

    
However, in a ditch in a paddock near the bridge once there was found 
    lying a man—apparently a member of a party which had just traversed the 
    neighbourhood en route for the country town. Some boys were the 
    first to notice him, and at once they came running home with a horrifying 
    tale of a great serpent or werewolf which was crouching in a hole. To this 
    they added a statement that the said creature had pursued them, and come 
    near to devouring Kuzka. From far and near the peasants armed themselves 
    with hatchets and pitchforks, and proceeded to the ditch en masse. 
    

    
"Whither away?" the old men said reprovingly. "Are you mad? What do you 
    want to do? Leave things alone, and no harm will come of it!" 

    
Nevertheless the peasants set forth, and, when about a hundred paces from 
    the spot, began to adjure the monster in varying terms. But no answer was 
    returned. Next, after halting a moment, the party advanced a little further. 
    The man seemed still to be lying in the ditch, with his head resting against 
    a fence, while beside him lay a satchel and a cudgel (on the latter of which 
    was slung a pair of boots). Yet the peasants could not summon up the 
    necessary courage to approach him or to touch him. 

    
"Hi, friend!" they shouted—one scratching his head and another the back 
    of his neck. "What are you doing there? Who are you? What is the matter?" 
    

    
The traveller made as though to raise his head a little, but failed. 
    Evidently he was ill or tired out. Then a peasant ventured to touch him with 
    a pitchfork. 

    
"Don't interfere with him, don't interfere with him!" cried the rest. 
    "How do we know what he is, seeing that he refuses to speak? Leave him 
    alone, friends!" 

    
"Yes, we had better go away," added certain others. "What has he 
    to do with us? Harm might come of him." 

    
So all returned to the village, and told the elder men that, lying in a 
    ditch, there was a strange man who would not speak, and whose identity was 
    known only to God. 

    
"If he does not belong to these parts, leave him alone," advised the 
    elders from the spot where, with hands on knees, they were sitting resting 
    on a bank. "Yes, leave him to himself. 'Tis no use your going 
    there." 

    
This, then, was the corner of the world whither Oblomov passed in his 
    sleep. Of the three or four scattered villages in the region, one was named 
    Sosnovka, and a second Vavilovka—the two being distant from one another 
    about a verst. Together they constituted Oblomov's hereditary estate, and 
    bore the joint title of Oblomovka. In Sosnovka stood the manor-house and the 
    farm, while five versts from the village there lay the hamlet of 
    Verklevo—once the property of the Oblomovs, but long since passed into 
    other hands. The same hamlet had attached to it a number of outlying huts. 
    As a whole, Verklevo belonged to a rich landowner, a constant absentee, and 
    the estate was managed by a German bailiff. There you have the geography of 
    this remote corner of the world. 

    
Oblomov dreamed that, aged seven, he awoke in his little cot at home. He 
    felt merry and full of life. What a goodly, handsome, plump youngster he 
    was, with cheeks of such rotundity that, however desperately any other young 
    scamp might have tried to rival them by inflation of his own, no competitor 
    could possibly have succeeded. Oblomov's nurse had long been waiting for him 
    to awake, and now she began to draw on for him his stockings. This he 
    refused to allow her to do; which end he attained by frisking and kicking, 
    while she tried to catch hold of his leg, and the pair laughed joyously 
    together. Finally, she lifted him on to her lap, and washed him, and combed 
    his hair; after which she conducted him to his mother. On seeing his 
    long-dead parent, the sleeping Oblomov's form trembled with delight and 
    affection, and from under his unconscious eyelids there stole and remained 
    two burning tears. . . . 

    
Upon him his mother showered affectionate kisses, and gazed at him with 
    tender solicitude to see whether his eyes were clear and healthy. Did he in 
    any way ail? she inquired. Had he (this to his nurse) slept quietly, or had 
    he lain awake all night? Had he had any dreams? Had he been at all feverish? 
    Lastly, she took him by the hand, and led him to the sacred ikon. 
    Kneeling with one arm around his form, she prompted him in the words of the 
    prayers, while the boy repeated them with scanty attention, since he 
    preferred, rather, to turn his eyes to the windows, whence the freshness and 
    scent of a lilac-tree was flooding the room. 

    
"Shall we go for a walk to-day, mamma?" suddenly he asked. 

    
"Yes, darling," she replied hastily, but kept her gaze fixed upon the 
    ikon, and hurriedly concluded the sacred formula. Yet into the 
    words of that formula her very soul was projected, whereas the little one 
    repeated them only in nonchalant fashion. 

    
The prayer over, they went to greet his father, and then to take morning 
    tea. Beside the table Oblomov could see seated the aunt of eighty who had 
    always lived with them. Never did she cease to grumble at the ancient 
    serving-maid who, her head trembling with senility, stood behind her chair 
    to wait upon her. Also there were present three old maiden ladies who were 
    distant relatives of his father's; a weak-minded gentleman named Chekmenev, 
    who, the brother-in-law of Oblomov's mother, was the owner of seven serfs, 
    and happened to be staying with Oblomov's parents; and certain other old men 
    and women. The latter, the domestic staff and retinue of the Oblomov family, 
    caught hold of the little Ilya Ilyitch, and started to heap him with 
    caresses and attentions—so much so that he had much ado to wipe away the 
    traces of these unsought kisses. Then there began the feeding of the child 
    with rolls, biscuits, and cream; after which his mother bestowed upon him 
    another embrace, and sent him out to walk round the garden and the courtyard 
    and the lake—accompanying her farewell with particular instructions to the 
    nurse that never must she leave the child alone for a single moment, nor yet 
    must she allow him to approach the horses, the dogs, or the goat, nor yet 
    must she take him far from home. Above all things, never must the nurse 
    suffer him to approach the ravine, which was the most dreaded spot in the 
    neighbourhood, and bore an evil reputation. Once there had been found there 
    a dog which confessed itself a mad one, inasmuch as it had run headlong from 
    folk who chased it with hatchets and pitchforks, and had disappeared behind 
    a neighbouring hill. Likewise to the ravine carrion was carted, while 
    robbers and wolves and various other creatures which never existed in the 
    world at all were supposed to dwell there. 

    
But to these warnings of his mother's the child paid little heed. Already 
    he was outside, in the courtyard. With gleeful surprise (as though for the 
    first time in his life) he went the round of his parents' establishment, 
    with its gates sagging outwards, its dinted roof where lichen grew, its 
    tottering veranda, its various annexes and outbuildings, and its overgrown 
    garden. Also he yearned to ascend to the hanging gallery which girdled the 
    house, that thence he might see the river; but the gallery was now in decay, 
    and scarcely able to hold together, so that none but the servants trod it, 
    and at no time did the gentry walk there. Heedless of his mother's warnings, 
    however, the little Oblomov was on the point of making for its seductive 
    steps when the nurse showed herself on the veranda, and caught hold of him. 
    Next, he rushed from her towards the hay-loft, with the intention of scaling 
    its steep ladder; and just had she time to destroy successive schemes of 
    ascending to the pigeon-cote, of penetrating to the cattle-yard, and—Heaven 
    preserve us all!—of making his way to the ravine! 

    
"God bless the child!" exclaimed the nurse. "Will you be quiet, 
    then, young sir? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" Indeed, the whole 
    day, as well as every day and every night, was spent by her in similar 
    alarums and excursions, in alternations of torture and relief on the child's 
    account, in terror because he had fallen and broken his nose, in 
    gratification at his warm, childish caresses, and in dim anxiety concerning 
    his ultimate future. Only these and like emotions made her old heart beat 
    and her old blood grow warm; only these retained in her the drowsy life 
    which, but for them, would long ago have flickered out. 

    
Yet the child was not always mischievous. Sometimes he would grow 
    suddenly quiet as, sitting beside her, he gazed fixedly before him with his 
    childish intellect taking in the various phenomena which presented 
    themselves to his vision. Such phenomena were sinking fast into his mind, to 
    grow and ripen there even as it grew and ripened. 

    
The morning was a splendid one, and the air still fresh, since the sun 
    had not yet attained much height. From the house, from the trees, from the 
    dovecote, and from the gallery there streamed long shadows which formed, in 
    the garden and in the orchard, cool corners which invited meditation and 
    sleep. Only in the distance a rye-field was glowing with flame, and the 
    river sparkling and flashing in the rays of the sun until actually it hurt 
    the eyes to look at it. 

    
"Why is it so dark in one place and bright in another?" asked the child. 
    "Will it soon be bright everywhere?" 

    
"Yes. That is because the sun has come out to meet the moon, and at times 
    keeps frowning because he cannot catch sight of her. By and by he 
    will catch sight of her. Then he will send out his light once 
    more." 

    
The child pondered, and gazed at the scene around him. Before him he 
    could see Antip driving the watercart, with another Antip, ten times as 
    large as the real one, accompanying him, and the barrel of the cart looking 
    as large as a house, and the horse's shadow covering the whole of the pond. 
    Then the shadows seemed to take two strides across the pond, and then to 
    move behind the hill, though the figure of Antip had not yet left the 
    courtyard. In his turn the child took a couple of strides, and then a third, 
    to see if he too would end by disappearing behind the hill, which he had a 
    great longing to ascend, for the purpose of ascertaining what had become of 
    the horse. Consequently he set off towards the gates—but only to hear his 
    mother calling from a window—"Nurse, nurse, do you not see that the boy has 
    just run out into the sunshine? Pray bring him back into the shade, or he 
    will get a sunstroke, and be ill, and sick, and unable to eat! Besides, he 
    might run down into the ravine!" 

    
"Oh, the naughty darling!" the nurse muttered to herself as she dragged 
    him back on to the veranda. The child looked about him with the keen, 
    observant glance of a "grown-up" who is debating how best a morning can be 
    spent. Not a trifle, not a circumstance, escaped the child's inquisitive 
    attention, so that insensibly the picture of his home life engraved itself 
    upon his mind, and his sensitive intellect nourished itself on living 
    examples, and involuntarily modelled its programme of life on the life which 
    surrounded it. 

    
Never at any time could it be said that the morning was wasted 
    in the Oblomovs' establishment. The sound of knives in. the kitchen as they 
    minced cutlets and vegetables, reached even to the village; while from the 
    servants' quarters came the hum of a spindle, coupled with the thin, low 
    voice of an old woman—but a voice so low that with difficulty could one 
    distinguish whether she were weeping, or whether she were merely improvising 
    to herself a mournful "song without words." Also, on Antip returning with 
    the watercart, there would advance to meet it, with pails, cans, and 
    pitchers, a number of maidservants and grooms, while from the storehouse an 
    old woman would a vessel of meal and a pile of eggs, and carry them to the 
    kitchen. There, on the cook suddenly throwing some water out of the window, 
    the cat Arapka—which, with eyes fixed upon the view, had spent the morning 
    in agitating the tip of her tail and licking herself—came in for a 
    splashing. 

    
The head of the family, too, was not idle, for he spent the morning in 
    sitting by the window and following with his eyes everything which took 
    place in the courtyard. 

    
"Hi, Ignashka, what have you there, you rascal?" he cried to a man who 
    happened to cross the open space. 

    
"Some knives to be sharpened in the scullery," the man replied, without 
    looking at his master. 

    
"Very well, then. Mind you sharpen them properly." 

    
Next, the master stopped one of the maid-servants. 

    
"Where are you going?" he inquired. 

    
"To the cellar to get some milk for the table," she replied, shading her 
    eyes with her hand. 

    
"Good!" he pronounced. "And see that you don't spill any. You, 
    Zakharka—where are you off to once more? This is the third time I have seen 
    you gadding about. Go back to your place in the hall." Whereupon Zakharka 
    returned to her day-dreams at the post mentioned. Again, as soon as the cows 
    returned from pasture, old Oblomov was always there to see that they were 
    properly watered. Also, when, from his post at the window, he chanced to 
    observe the yard-dog chasing one of the hens he hastened to take the 
    necessary measures against a recurrence of such conduct. In the same way, 
    his wife was fully employed. For three hours she discussed with Averka, the 
    tailor, the best ways and means of converting a waistcoat of her husband's 
    into a jacket for her son—herself drawing the requisite lines in chalk, and 
    seeing to it that Averka should pilfer not a morsel of the cloth. Thereafter 
    she passed to the maids' room, where she parcelled out to each damsel the 
    day's portion of lacemaking; whence she departed to summon one of her 
    personal maids to attend her in the garden, for the purpose of seeing how 
    the apples were swelling, which of them had fallen or were turning ripe, 
    which trees wanted grafting or pruning, and so forth. But her chief care was 
    the kitchen and the dinner. Concerning the latter she consulted the entire 
    household, including the aged aunt. Each member of the family proposed a 
    special dish, and the sum of these proposals was taken into consideration, 
    adjudicated upon in detail, and adopted or rejected according to the final 
    decision of the mistress. From time to time, also, a maid was dispatched to 
    the culinary regions to remind the cook of this, or to tell her to add that, 
    or to instruct her to change the other, while conveying to her sugar, honey, 
    and wine for flavouring, and also seeing to it that the said cook was using 
    everything which had been measured out. In fact, the supervision of food was 
    the first and the principal domestic preoccupation of Oblomovka. What calves 
    were not fattened for the year's festivals! What poultry was not reared! 
    What forethought and care and skill were not devoted to the consumption of 
    comestibles! Game fowls and pullets were set apart solely for birthdays and 
    other solemn occasions wherefore they were stuffed with nuts. For the same 
    reason geese were caught several days beforehand, and hung up in bags until 
    wanted, in order that, being restrained from exercise, they might put on the 
    more fat. And what a roasting and a pickling and a baking would sometimes 
    take place, and what mead and kvass were there not brewed, and what pies were 
    there not compounded! 

    
Until noon, therefore, everything at Oblomovka was in a state of bustle 
    and commotion. Life was indeed full and antlike and in evidence! Even on 
    Sundays and holidays these labour-loving ants did not desist from their 
    toil, for on such days the clatter of knives in the kitchen sounded louder 
    and more rapid than ever, a maid made several journeys from the storeroom to 
    the kitchen with double quantities of meal and eggs, and in the poultry-run 
    an added amount of cackling and of bloodshed took place. Likewise, on such 
    days there was baked a gigantic pie, which was eaten by the gentry on the 
    same and the following days, and by the maids on the third and fourth; after 
    which, should it survive to the fifth day, the last stale remnants, devoid 
    of stuffing, were given, as a special favour, to Antip, who, crossing 
    himself, undauntedly attacked the rock-hard fragments—though it was in the 
    thought that it had recently been the gentry's pie rather than in the pie 
    itself that he took most delight; even as an archćologist rejoices to drink 
    even the poorest wine from the shell of a thousand-year-old vessel. 

    
All this the boy noted with his childish, ever-watchful mind. He 
    perceived that, after mornings thus usefully and busily spent, there ensued 
    noon and dinner. On the present occasion noontide was sultry, and not a 
    cloud was in the sky. Indeed, the sun seemed to be standing still to scorch 
    the grass, and the air to have ceased to circulate—to be hanging without 
    the slightest movement. Neither from tree nor lake could the faintest rustle 
    be heard, and over the village and the countryside there hung an unbroken 
    stillness, as though everything in them were dead. Only from afar could a 
    human voice be distinguished, while, some twenty sazhens away, the drone of a flying beetle, 
    with the snoring of some one who had sunk into the thick herbage to enjoy a 
    refreshing sleep, came gently to the ear. Even the house was possessed by a 
    silence as of death, for the hour of post-prandial slumber had arrived. The 
    boy's father, mother, and aged grand-aunt, with their attendants, could be 
    seen disposed in various corners; and, should any one not possess a 
    particular corner, he or she repaired either to the hay-loft or to the 
    garden or to a cool resting-place among the growing hay or, with face 
    protected from the flies with a handkerchief, to a spot where the scorching 
    heat would assist digestion after the enormous dinner. Even the gardener 
    stretched himself out beneath a bush by the side of his plot, and the 
    coachman in the stable. 

    
Little Oblomov proceeded to peep into the servants' hall, where the 
    inmates were sleeping as though slumber had become an epidemic. On the 
    benches, on the floor, and on the threshold they slept, while their children 
    crawled about the courtyard and fashioned mud pies. Indeed, the very dogs 
    had crawled into their kennels, since there was no longer any one to bark 
    at. In short, one might have traversed the entire establishment without 
    meeting a single soul; and everything in it could with ease have been 
    stolen, and removed in carts from the courtyard, since no one would have 
    been there to prevent the deed. The prevailing lethargy was all-consuming, 
    all-conquering—a true image of death; seeing that, but for the fact that 
    from various corners there came snores in different notes and keys, every 
    one seemed wholly to have departed this life. Only at rare intervals would 
    some one raise his head with a start, gaze around him with vacant eyes, and 
    then turn over to the other side. 

    
After dinner the child accompanied his nurse for a second airing out of 
    doors. Yet, despite her mistress's injunctions and her own resolves, the old 
    woman could not altogether resist the general call of sleep, and began to 
    fall a victim to the all-prevalent malady of Oblomovka. At first she kept a 
    vigilant eye upon her little charge, and, chiding him for his waywardness, 
    never let him stray from her side; but presently, after giving him strict 
    instructions not to go beyond the gates, nor to interfere with the goat, nor 
    to climb either the dovecote or the gallery, she settled herself in a shady 
    spot, with the ostensible intention of at once knitting a stocking and of 
    watching over young Oblomov. Next she took to checking him only in lazy 
    fashion, as her head nodded and she said to herself: "Look you, he will 
    certainly climb those stairs to the gallery, or else "—her eyes had almost 
    closed—"he will run down into the ravine." With that her head sank forward, 
    and the stocking slipped from her hands. In a second her open mouth had 
    emitted a gentle snore, and the boy had disappeared from her vision. 

    
Needless to say, this was the moment which the youngster had been 
    impatiently awaiting, for it marked the beginning of an independent 
    existence, and he was now alone in the wide, wide world. On tiptoe he left 
    the nurse's side, and, peeping cautiously at the other slumberers, kept 
    stopping to throw a second glance at any one who chanced to stir, or to 
    spit, or to snuffle in his sleep. At last, with a tremor of joy in his 
    heart, he made for the gallery, ascended the creaking stairs at a run, 
    scaled also the dovecote, explored the recesses of the garden, listened to 
    the buzzing of beetles, and followed with his eyes their flight through the 
    air. Next, on hearing a chirping sound in the grass, he sought and captured 
    the disturber of the public peace, in the shape of a dragon-fly, whose wings 
    he proceeded to tear off, and whose body to impale upon a straw, in order 
    that he might see how, thus hampered, the creature would contrive to fly. 
    Afterwards, fearing almost to breathe, he watched a spider suck blood from a 
    captured fly, while the wretched victim struggled and buzzed in the spider's 
    claws. Finally the tragedy was brought to an end by the boy slaying both 
    torturer and tortured. Next, he repaired to the moat to search for sundry 
    small roots which he knew of; which found, he peeled them, and then devoured 
    the same with relish, in the make-believe that they were the apples and 
    preserves which his mamma was accustomed to give him. This item exhausted, 
    he hied him through the entrance gates—his object in so doing being to 
    reach a birch copse which looked to him so close at hand that, should he 
    take the direct route, and not the circuitous high-road (that is to say, 
    should he walk straight across the moat, and through the osier plantation), 
    he would be able to attain his goal in five minutes. But, alas! he felt 
    afraid, for he had heard tales of wood goblins, of brigands, and of fearsome 
    wild beasts. Next, the spirit moved him to make for the ravine, which lay a 
    hundred paces from the garden; so, running to the edge of the declivity, and 
    puckering his eyes, he gazed into its depths as into Vulcan's crater. 
    Suddenly to his mind recurred all the tales and traditions concerning the 
    spot; and terror seized him, and, half-dead, half-alive, he rushed back and 
    threw himself into his nurse's arms. Awakened, she sprang up, straightened 
    the cap on her head, arranged her grey curls with one finger, and pretended 
    never to have been to sleep at all. Glancing suspiciously at the little 
    Ilya, and then at the gentry s windows, she began with tremulous hands to 
    work the knitting needles of the stocking which had been lying in her lap. 
    

    
Meanwhile the heat had decreased, and everything in nature had revived a 
    little, since the sun was fast declining towards the forest. Gradually the 
    stillness indoors also began to be broken. Here and there a door creaked, 
    footsteps could be heard crossing the yard, and some one sneezed in the 
    hay-loft. Soon from the kitchen a man came hurrying under the weight of a 
    huge samovar, and the entire household then assembled for tea—one 
    man with his face flushed and his eyes still dim, another man with red marks 
    on his cheek and temple, a third speaking in a voice not his own for 
    drowsiness, and all of them snuffling, wheezing, yawning, scratching their 
    heads, and stretching themselves in a semi-waking condition. It seemed that 
    dinner and sleep had combined to arouse an unquenchable thirst which parched 
    the throat, for even dozens of cupfuls of tea could not assuage it, and, 
    amid a chorus of sighs and grunts, resort had to be made to bilberry wine, 
    to perry, to kvass, and even to more medicinal methods of 
    moistening this avidity of gullet. The company sought relief from thirst as 
    from a Heaven-sent plague, and all felt as exhausted as though they were 
    travelling in the Arabian desert, and could nowhere find a spring. 

    
By his mother's side the child gazed at the strange faces around him, and 
    listened to the drowsy, drawling talk. Yet the spectacle delighted him, and 
    he found each stray word interesting. 

    
After tea every one took up some minor occupation or another. One man 
    repaired to the riverside, and strolled along the brink—kicking pebbles 
    into the water as he did so. Another took a seat in a window, and followed 
    with his eyes each passing occurrence. Should a cat cross the courtyard, or 
    a jackdaw fly by, the watcher scanned both the one and the other, and turned 
    his head to right and to left in order to do so. In the same way will dogs 
    spend whole days at a window—their heads thrust into the sunlight, and 
    their gaze taking stock of every passer-by. 

    
The mother took little Ilya's head in her hands, drew it down into her 
    lap, and combed his hair with a gentle caress as, inviting her maids to 
    admire him, she talked concerning his future, and preordained for him the 
    hero's part in some splendid epic. For their part, the maids foretold for 
    him mountains of gold. 

    
At length dusk began to draw in. Once more the fire crackled in the 
    kitchen, and the clatter of knives became audible. Supper was being 
    prepared. Meanwhile the rest of the servants gathered at the entrance gates, 
    and thence came sounds of laughter, and of music, and of the playing of 
    gorielki. The sun had sunk behind the forest, yet still was sending 
    forth rays in a fiery, faintly warm streak which, as it passed over the 
    surface of the treetops, touched to gold the tips of the pines. Finally 
    these rays successively expired, until only a solitary beam could be seen 
    fixed, needle-like, in a cluster of boughs before going to join its 
    comrades. Objects then began to lose their outline, and the scene to become 
    blurred in, first greyness, then a blank almost of total obscurity. The 
    songs of birds grew fainter, then ceased altogether, save for one persistent 
    singer which, as though disagreeing with its fellows, continued to break the 
    silence with intermittent warbling. Presently it too took to uttering its 
    song at rarer intervals, and to whistling with more feeble insistence; until 
    finally it breathed a last soft-drawn note, gave a flutter or two which 
    gently stirred the foliage around it, and—fell asleep. 

    
After that all was silent, save that some crickets were chirping in 
    chorus and against one another. A mist was rising from the earth, and 
    spreading over lake and river. Like everything else, the latter had sunk to 
    rest; and though something caused it to splash for a last time, the water 
    instantly resumed its absolute immobility. In the air a dampness could be 
    detected, and the air itself could be felt growing warmer and warmer. Amid 
    it the trees looked like groups of monsters; and when, suddenly, something 
    cracked in the weird depths of the forest, it might have been thought that 
    one of those monsters had been shifting its position, and with its foot had 
    snapped a dry bough in doing so. Overhead, the first star could be seen 
    glowing like a living eye, while in the windows of the house were a few 
    twinkling lights. The hour of nature's most solemn, all-embracing silence 
    had arrived—the hour when the creative brain can work at its best, and when 
    poetic thought seethes most ardently, and when the heart flames with the 
    greatest heat of passion or with the greatest poignancy of grief—the hour 
    when the cruel soul ripens to a maximum of strength and composure as it 
    meditates evil—the hour when, at Oblomovka, every one settled down to a 
    night of profound, calm restfulness. 

    
"Let us go for a walk," said little Ilya to his mother. 

    
"God bless the child!" she cried. "How could we go for a walk? 
    It is now damp, and you would get your little feet wet. Besides, we should 
    find it dreadful out of doors, for at this hour the wood goblin is abroad, 
    and he carries off little boys." 

    
"To what place does he carry them, and what is he like, and where does he 
    live?" asked the child; whereupon the mother gave full rein to her unbridled 
    fancy. As she did so the child listened with blinking eyes until at length, 
    on sleep completely overcoming him, the nurse approached, took him from his 
    mother's lap, and bore him to bed, with his head hanging over her shoulder. 
    

    
"Another day is over, praise be to God!" said the inmates of Oblomovka 
    as, yawning, they made the sign of the cross and then retired to rest. "Well 
    spent it has been, and God send that to-morrow be like it. Glory, O Lord, to 
    Thee this night! Glory, O Lord, to Thee!" 




    
Oblomov dreamed a second dream. On a long winter's evening he was 
    pressing close to his nurse, and she was whispering of some unknown country 
    where neither cold nor darkness were known, and where miracles took place, 
    and where rivers ran honey and milk, and where no one did anything the year 
    round, and where only good boys like Ilya Ilyitch himself walked day by day 
    in company with maidens such as neither tongue nor pen could hope to 
    describe. Also (the nurse said) there dwelt there a kind witch who sometimes 
    revealed herself to mortals in the shape of a pikefish; and this witch 
    singled out as her especial favourite a quiet, inoffensive boor who formerly 
    had been the butt of his fellows, and, for some unknown reason, heaped him 
    with her bounty, so that always he possessed plenty to eat, and clothes ever 
    ready to wear, and ended by marrying a marvellous beauty whose name was 
    Militrissa Kirbitievna. 

    
The nurse related the story, and the child, with alert eyes and ears, 
    hung upon her words. So artfully did the nurse or tradition eliminate from 
    the story all resemblance to everyday life that the boy's keen intellect and 
    imagination, fired by the device, remained enthralled until, in later years, 
    he had come even to man's estate. As a matter of fact, the tale which the 
    nurse thus lovingly related was the legend of the fool Emel—that clever, 
    biting satire upon our forefathers and, it may be, also upon ourselves. 
    True, in proportion as he grew up, little Oblomov came to learn that no such 
    things as rivers of honey and milk, or even such persons as kind witches, 
    really existed; yet, though he came to smile at his nurse's stories, that 
    smile was never wholly sincere, since always it would be accompanied by a 
    sigh. For him the legend confounded itself with life, and, unconsciously, he 
    found himself regretting that the legend differed from life, and that life 
    differed from the legend. Involuntarily he would dream of Militrissa 
    Kirbitievna, and feel attracted towards the country whereof nothing was 
    known except that folk there went for walks, and were free from sorrow and 
    care. Never could he rid himself of a longing to spend his days in lying 
    upon the stove (even as the favourite of the legend had done), and to be 
    dressed in ready-made, unearned clothes, and to eat at the expense of a 
    benevolent witch. To the same story had his father and his grandfather 
    listened as, shaped according to the stereotyped version current throughout 
    antiquity, it had issued from the mouths of male and female nurses through 
    the long course of ages and of generations. 

    
Then Oblomov's nurse proceeded to draw another picture for the 
    imagination of her charge. That is to say, she told him of the exploits of 
    the Russian Achilleses and Ulysseses, and of the manner in which those 
    heroes had been used to wander about Russia, and to kill and slay; and of 
    how once they had disputed as to which of them could best drain a beaker of 
    wine at a draught. Also, she told the boy of cruel robbers, of sleeping 
    princesses, and of cities and peoples which had been turned into stone. 
    Lastly, she passed to Russian demonology, to dead folk, to monsters, and to 
    werewolves. With a simplicity, yet a sincerity, worthy of Homer, with a 
    lifelike similitude of detail and a power of clear-cut relief that might 
    have vied with the great Greek poet's, she fired the boy's intellect and 
    imagination to a love for that Iliad which our heroes founded during the dim 
    ages when man had not yet become adapted to the sundry perils and mysteries 
    of nature and of life—when still he trembled before werewolves and wood 
    demons, and sought refuge with protectors like Alesha Popovitch from the 
    calamities which surrounded him—when air and water and forest and field 
    alike were under the continued sway of the supernatural. Truly the life of a 
    mortal of those days must have been full of fear and trembling, seeing that, 
    should he but cross his threshold, he stood in danger of being devoured by a 
    wild beast, or of having his throat cut by a brigand, or of being despoiled 
    of his all by a Tartar, or of disappearing from human ken without trace 
    left! Again, celestial portents would be seen in the shape of pillars and 
    balls of fire, while over a freshly made grave a light would glow, and some 
    one would seem to be walking through the forest with a lantern, and laughing 
    horribly, and flashing bright eyes amid the gloom. And in man's own 
    personality much that passed his understanding would also take shape and 
    materialize. No matter how long or how righteously a man might have lived, 
    he would suddenly start babbling, or shout aloud in a voice not his own, or 
    go wandering o' nights in a trance, or involuntarily begin beating and 
    assaulting his fellows. And just at the moment when such things happened a 
    hen would crow like a cock, and a raven would croak from the gable! 
    Consequently feeble mankind, peering tremblingly at life, sought in its own 
    imagination, its own nature, a key to the mysteries which surrounded it: and 
    it may be that the immobility, the inertia, the absence of all active 
    passion or incident or peril which such a retired existence imposed upon man 
    led him to create, in the midst of the world of nature, another and an 
    impossible world, in which he found comfort and relief for his idle 
    intellect, explanations of the more ordinary sequences of events, and 
    extraneous solutions of extraordinary phenomena. In fact, our poor 
    forefathers lived by instinct. Neither wholly giving rein to nor wholly 
    restraining their volition, they found themselves either naďvely surprised 
    at or overcome with terror by the evils and the misfortunes which befell 
    them, and resorted for the causes of these things to the dim, dumb 
    hieroglyphics of nature. In their opinion, death might come of carrying a 
    corpse from a house head foremost instead of with feet in front, and a fire 
    be caused by the fact of a dog having howled, three nights running, beneath 
    a window. Hence always they were at pains to remove a dead person feet 
    foremost—though continuing to eat the same quantity of food as before, and 
    to sleep on the bare ground; while, with regard to a howling dog, always 
    they drove away the animal with blows—though continuing to scatter sparks 
    broadcast over tinder-dry floors. 

    
To this day the Russian, though surrounded by a stern, unimaginative 
    world of reality, loves to believe the seductive tales of antiquity. And 
    long will it be before he will have been weaned from that belief. In the 
    Same way, as little Oblomov listened to his nurse's legends concerning the 
    Golden Fleece, the great Cassowary Bird, and the cells and secret dungeons 
    of the Enchanted Castle, he became more and more fired to the idea that he 
    too was destined to become the hero of doughty deeds. Tale succeeded to 
    tale, and the nurse pursued her narrative with such ardour and vividness and 
    attractiveness of description that at times her breath choked in her throat. 
    For she too half-believed the legends which she related; so that, during the 
    telling of them, her eyes would shoot fire, her head shake with excitement, 
    and her voice attain an unwonted pitch, while the child, overcome with 
    mysterious horror, would press closer and closer to her side, and have tears 
    in his eyes. Whether the narrative treated of dead men rising from the tomb 
    at midnight, or of victims languishing in slavery to a monster, or of a bear 
    with a wooden leg which went roaming the villages and farms in search of the 
    natural limb which had been chopped from its body, the boy's hair bristled 
    with fear, his childish imagination alternately seethed and froze, and he 
    experienced the harassing, the sickly sweet, process of having his nerves 
    played upon like the strings of an instrument. When his nurse repeated the 
    words of the bear, "Creak, creak, wooden leg! I have visited every village 
    and farm, and have found all the women asleep save one, who is now sitting 
    on my back, and searing my flesh, and weaving my coat into cloth"; when, 
    also, the bear entered the right hut, and was just getting ready to pounce 
    upon the true ravisher of his natural leg—why, then the boy could stand it 
    no longer, but, trembling and whimpering, flung himself into his nurse's 
    arms with tears of terror—yet also with a laugh of joy to think that 
    he was not in the clutches of the bear, but sitting on the stove 
    couch beside his old guardian. Full of strange phantoms was his mind, and 
    fear and grief had sunk deep (and, possibly, for ever) into his soul. 
    Mournfully he gazed about him, and saw that everything in life was charged 
    with evil and misfortune. And as he did so he would keep thinking of the 
    magic country where neither cruelty nor noise nor grief existed, and where 
    Militrissa Kirbitievna lived, and where folk were fed and clothed for 
    nothing. . . . 

    
Not only over the Oblomovkan children, but also over the Oblomovkan 
    adults, did this legend exercise a lifelong sway. Every one in the house and 
    the village alike—from the barin and his wife down to the 
    blacksmith Tarass—became a trifle nervous as evening drew on, seeing that 
    at that hour every tree became transformed into a giant, and every bush into 
    a robbers' den. The rattle of a shutter, the howl of the wind in the 
    chimney, caused these folk to turn pale. At Epiphany-tide not a man or a 
    woman of them would go out of doors after ten o'clock at night; and never 
    during the season of Easter would any one venture o' nights into the stable, 
    lest there he should be confronted by the domovoi, by the horse 
    demon. 

    
At Oblomovka everything was believed in—including even ghosts 
    and werewolves. Had you informed an inmate of the place that a haycock was 
    walking about in the fields, he would have believed it. Had you spread 
    abroad a rumour that (say) a certain sheep was not a sheep at all, but 
    something else, or that Martha or Stepanida had become turned into a witch, 
    the company would thenceforth have walked in terror both of the sheep and of 
    the maidservant. Never would their heads have thought it necessary to 
    inquire why the sheep had ceased to be a sheep, or why Martha or Stepanida 
    had become turned into a witch. Rather these credulous folk would have 
    thrown themselves upon any doubter—so strong was Oblomovka's belief in 
    supernatural phenomena. 

    
Later, little Oblomov came to see that the world is ordered on a simple 
    plan, and that dead folk never rise from the tomb, and that no sooner do 
    giants appear than they are clapped into booths, as robbers are cast into 
    prison: yet, though his actual belief in such marvels vanished, there 
    remained behind a sediment of terror and of unaccountable sadness. Nothing 
    was to be apprehended from monsters—that he knew full well; but always he 
    stood in awe of something which seemed to be awaiting him at every step; 
    and, if left alone in a dark room, or if fated to catch sight of a corpse, 
    he would tremble with that sense of oppressive foreboding which his infancy 
    had instilled into his very being. Inclined, of a morning, to laugh at his 
    fears, of an evening his countenance paled again. 

    
In the next dream Oblomov saw himself a boy of thirteen or fourteen. By 
    this time he was going to school at the village of Verklevo, five versts 
    from Oblomovka, where an old German named Schtoltz kept a small educational 
    establishment for the sons of neighbouring gentry. Schtoltz had a son of his 
    own—one Andrei, a boy almost of the same age as Oblomov; while likewise he 
    had been given charge of a boy who did few lessons, for the reason that he 
    suffered from scrofula and was accustomed to spend most of his days with his 
    eyes and ears bandaged, and weepiog quietly because he was not living with 
    his grandmother, but, rather, in a strange house and amid hard-hearted folk 
    who never petted him or baked him his favourite pies. These three boys 
    constituted the only pupils. As for the tutor himself, he was both capable 
    and strict—like most Germans; wherefore Oblomov might have received a good 
    education had Oblomovka stood five hundred versts from Verklevo. As 
    it was, the atmosphere, the mode of life, and the customs of Oblomovka 
    extended also to Verklevo, and the one place represented a sort of replica 
    of the other, until only old Schtoltz's establishment stood clear of the 
    primordial mist of laziness, of simplicity of morals, of inertia, and of 
    immobility for which Oblomovka was distinguished. With the scenes, the 
    incidents, and the morals of that mode of life young Oblomov's mind and 
    heart had become saturated before even he had seen his first book. Who knows 
    how early the growth of the intellectual germ in the youthful brain begins? 
    Can we, in that youthful consciousness, follow the growth of first 
    impressions and ideas? Possibly, even before a child has learnt to speak, or 
    even to walk, or even to do more than to look at things with the dumb, fixed 
    gaze which his elders call "dull," it has already discerned and envisaged 
    the meaning, the inter-connection, of such phenomena as encompass its 
    sphere—and that though the child is still powerless to communicate the 
    fact, whether to itself or to others.

    
Thus for a long time past young Oblomov may have remarked and understood 
    what was being said and done in his presence; for a long time past he may 
    have understood why his father, in plush breeches and a wadded, 
    cinnamon-coloured coat, walked to and fro with his hands behind his back, 
    and took snuff, and sneezed, while his mother passed from coffee to tea, and 
    from tea to dinner, in the daily round, and his father always refused to 
    believe how many sheaves had been cut and reaped, but was for ever looking 
    out for derelictions of duty, and, a handkerchief in his hand, holding forth 
    on the subject of irregularities, and turning the whole place upside down. 
    Briefly, for a long time past the boy may have decided in his mind that 
    that, and no other, order of life was the right one. For how else could he 
    have decided? In what manner did the "grown-ups" of Oblomovka live? God only 
    knows whether they ever asked themselves for what purpose life had been 
    given them. Did they, at all events, return themselves any answer to that 
    question? No, no answer at all, since the whole thing seemed to them at once 
    simple and clear. Had they, then, never heard of a hard life wherein people 
    walk with anxious hearts, and roam the face of the earth, and devote their 
    existence to everlasting toil? No, the good folk of Oblomovka had no belief 
    in disturbing the mind; they never adopted as their mode of life a round of 
    ceaseless aspirations somewhither, and towards an indefinite end. In fact, 
    they feared the distraction of passion as they did fire; and as, in other 
    spheres, men's and women's bodies burn with the volcanic violence of inward 
    and spiritual flame, so the souls of the denizens of Oblomovka lay plunged 
    in an undisturbed inertia which possessed their ease-loving organisms to the 
    core. Consequently, life did not stamp them, as it stamped others, with 
    premature wrinkles; nor did it deal out to them any morally destructive 
    blows or misfortunes. These good-humoured folk looked upon life as, rather, 
    an idyll of peace and inactivity—though an idyll occasionally broken by 
    such untoward incidents as sicknesses, losses, quarrels, and rare bouts of 
    labour. That labour they endured as a punishment formerly imposed upon their 
    forefathers also; yet they never loved it, and invariably escaped its 
    incidence whenever they found it possible so to do. Such an avoidance they 
    considered permissible, for never did they worry themselves with vague moral 
    or intellectual questions. In this manner they flourished in constant health 
    and cheerfulness: for which reason most of them lived to a green old age. 
    Men of forty would look like youths, and old men, instead of battling with 
    the approach of a hard and painful end, lived to the utmost possible limit, 
    and then died, as it were, unawares, and with a gentle chilling of the 
    frame, and an imperceptible drawing of the closing breath. No wonder that in 
    these days folk say that the people used to be more robust! 

    
Yes, it was more robust, for the reason that in those days 
    parents did not hurry to explain to a boy the meaning of life, and to 
    prepare him for life as for something at once difficult and solemn. No, they 
    did not weary a child with books which would cloud his head with questions 
    likely to devour the heart and the intellect, and to shorten existence. 
    Rather, the standard of life was furnished him and taught him by parents who 
    had received it ready-made from their parents, together with a 
    testamentary injunction to preserve the integrity, the inviolability of that 
    standard as they would have done that of the Vestal flame. As things were 
    done in the time of Oblomovkan fathers and grandfathers, so were they done 
    in the time of the present Oblomov's tenure of the estate. Of what needed he 
    to think? Concerning what needed he to trouble his head? What needed he to 
    learn? What ends needed he to compass? The Oblomovs required nothing—their 
    life flowed like a peaceful river, and all that they had to do was to sit on 
    the bank of that river, and to observe the inevitable phenomena which, 
    successively, and unsought, presented themselves to the eyes of each 
    observer. 

    
Before the vision of the sleeping Oblomov there next uprose a series of 
    living pictures of the three chief acts of Oblomovkan life, as played in the 
    presence of his family, of his relatives, and of his friends—namely, the 
    three acts of birth, of marriage, and of death. This was succeeded by a 
    varied procession of minor incidents of life, whether grave or gay—of 
    baptisms, birthdays, family festivals, Shrovetides, Easters, convivial 
    feasts, family gatherings, welcomes, farewells, and occasions of official 
    congratulation or condolence. These passed before Oblomov's vision with 
    solemn exactitude, and also he beheld the bearing of familiar faces at these 
    ceremonies, according as they were affected by vanity or by care. No matter 
    what the festival might be—whether a betrothal or a solemn wedding or a 
    name-day—every possible social rule had to be consulted, and no mistake 
    made as to where each person was to sit, what presents, and to what value, 
    ought to be given, who was to walk with whom at the ceremony, and what 
    signals had best be made during its course. 

    
Do you think, then, that goodly children would not result from such 
    formal unitings? For answer you would need but to look at the rosy, heavy 
    little cupids which the mothers of the place carried or led by the hand. 
    Every one of those mothers would have insisted that their little ones were 
    the plumpest, the whitest, and the healthiest children possible. Another 
    local custom was to make a lark-pie as soon as spring came in. Without it 
    spring would not have been spring at all, for observances of this kind 
    comprised the whole life, the whole scientific knowledge, of the 
    inhabitants, all of whose joys and sorrows were bound up with Oblomovka, and 
    whose hearts beat high at the anticipation of such local rites and feasts 
    and ceremonies. Yet no sooner had they christened, married, or buried an 
    individual than they forgot both the latter and his (or her) fate, and 
    relapsed into their usual apathy until aroused by a new occasion—by a 
    baptism, a wedding, or other happening of the kind. Directly a child was 
    born the parents made it their first care to perform over the little one 
    every ceremony prescribed by decorum, and then to follow up the christening 
    with a banquet. Thereafter the child's bringing up began according to a 
    system dictated by the mother and the nurse for his healthy development, and 
    for his protection from cold, from the evil eye, and from sundry other 
    inimical influences. Indeed, no pains were spared to keep the youngster in 
    good appetite and spirits. Also as soon as he was able to fend for himself, 
    and a nurse had become a superfluity, his mother would be seized with a 
    desire to procure for him a helpmeet as strong and as ruddy as himself; 
    whereupon there would ensue a further epoch of rites and feastings, until 
    eventually a marriage had been arranged. Always this consummation 
    represented the epitome of life's incidents, and as soon as it was reached 
    there began a repetition of births, rites, and banquets, until, finally, a 
    funeral ceremony interrupted the festivities—though not for long, since 
    other faces would appear to succeed the old ones, and children would become 
    youths and maidens, and plight their troth to one another, and marry one 
    another, and produce individuals similar to themselves. Thus life stretched 
    out in a continuous, uniform chain which broke off imperceptibly only when 
    the tomb had been reached. 

    
True, there were times when other cares overtook the good folk of 
    Oblomovka, but always they faced the situation with stoical immobility, and 
    the said cares, after circling over their heads, flew away like birds which, 
    having sought to cling to a smooth, perpendicular wall, find that they are 
    fluttering their wings in vain against the stubborn stone, and therefore 
    spread those pinions and depart. For instance, on one occasion a portion of 
    the gallery around the house fell upon, and buried under its ruins, a 
    hen-coop full of poultry, as well as, in doing so, narrowly missed a 
    serving-woman who happened to be sitting near the spot with her husband. At 
    once the establishment was in an uproar. Every one came running to the 
    scene, under the impression that not only the hencoop, but also the 
    barinia and little Ilya, were lying under the débris. 
    Every one held up his or her hands in horror, and fell to blaming every one 
    else for not having foreseen the catastrophe. Every one expressed surprise 
    that the gallery had fallen, and also surprise that it had not fallen long 
    ago. Upon that there ensued a clamour and a discussion as to how things 
    could best be put right; after which, with sighs of regret for the poultry, 
    the company slowly dispersed, while strictly forbidding little Ilya to 
    approach the ruins. Three weeks later Andrushka, Petrushka, and Vassika were 
    ordered to chop the planks and the remainder of the balustrade in pieces, 
    and then to remove the fragments to the outbuildings, lest the road should 
    become obstructed; and in the outbuildings those fragments tossed about 
    until the following spring. Every time that the elder Oblomov saw them from 
    the window he fell to thinking what had best be done with them. Summoning 
    the carpenter, he took counsel with the man as to whether he had better 
    build a new gallery or pull down what was left of the old one; until finally 
    he dismissed his subordinate with the words, "Do you wait a little until I 
    have considered the matter further." The same thing went on until, one day, 
    either Vassika or Motika reported to the barin that that morning, 
    while he (Vassika or Motika) had been climbing over the remains of the old 
    gallery, the corners of it had come away from the walls, and more of the 
    structure had fallen; whereupon the carpenter was summoned to a final 
    consultation, and the upshot was that some of the old fragments were used to 
    prop the remaining portions of the gallery. Sure enough, by the close of the 
    month this had been done. 

    
"Aye, that gallery looks as good as new, the old man said to his wife. 
    "See how splendidly Thedot has re-erected the beams! They resemble the 
    pillars which the Governor has just had fitted to his house. The job has 
    been well done, and will last for a long time." 

    
Here some one reminded him that it would be as well also to have the 
    gates rehung and the veranda repaired, since the holes in the steps to the 
    latter were affording access, not only to the cats, but also to the pigs. 
    

    
"Yes, yes, it ought to be done," said the barin 
    thoughtfully. Then he went out to look at the veranda. "Yes, certainly the 
    thing is breaking up," he continued as he see-sawed one of the planks like a 
    cradle. 

    
"They have been loose ever since the veranda was made," some one 
    remarked. 

    
"How so?" asked the barin. "They are loose only because the 
    floor has not been mended for sixteen years. It was done then by Luka. He 
    was a carpenter, if you like! Now he is dead, may God rest his 
    soul! Workmen are not as clever as they used to be—they merely spoil 
    things." 

    
From that old Oblomov turned his attention to something else; and to this 
    day—so report has it—the veranda is rickety, though not actually fallen to 
    pieces. Certainly Luka must have been a good workman! 

    
However, to do the master and the mistress justice, they were capable of 
    being shaken out of their apathy, even to the point of growing angry and 
    heated, should any failure or misfortune occur. How, they would inquire, 
    could such and such a matter have come to be overlooked or neglected? At 
    once due measures must be taken. Perhaps this would be relative to the fact 
    that the footbridge over the moat needed mending, or that the garden fence 
    called for repairs at a spot where the planking was lying flat upon the 
    ground and allowing the cattle to enter and spoil the shrubs. Indeed, so 
    solicitous was the barin for his property that once, when walking 
    in the garden, he, with his own hands, and with many grunts and groans, 
    lifted up a length of fencing, and ordered the gardener to fix a couple of 
    props to the same; and to this activity on the part of the proprietor was 
    due the fact that the said fence remained upright during the whole of the 
    remainder of the summer—until once more a winter snowstorm laid it low. 
    Also, when Antip, with his horse and water-cart, fell through the bridge 
    into the moat three new planks were inserted into the structure! Indeed, 
    Antip had not recovered from his bruising before the bridge was looking 
    almost as good as new! And even when the garden fence collapsed a second 
    time the cows and the goats did not reap very much advantage from the event. 
    True, they managed to devour a few currant-bushes, and also to strip a dozen 
    lime-trees; but before they could begin also upon the apple-trees an order 
    was issued that the fence should be properly dug in and reditched. But this 
    was only after two cows and a goat had been caught redhanded. You should 
    have seen the distension of their stomachs with the generous fare! . . . 


    
Once more Oblomov dreamed that he was in the great, dark drawing-room at 
    home. The long winter's evening was closing in, and his mother, seated on 
    the sofa and engaged in quietly knitting a boy's stocking, was yawning 
    occasionally, and scratching her head with a knitting-needle. Beside her 
    were two maids—their heads bent over their work as industriously they 
    fashioned a holiday garment either for young Ilya or for his father or for 
    themselves. Meanwhile the barin, with hands clasped behind his 
    back, was pacing cheerfully to and fro, or seating himself on a chair for a 
    moment or two before resuming his walk. Ever and anon, too, he would take a 
    pinch of snuff, sneeze, and then take another pinch. As for light, it came 
    from a single tallow candle, and even the said candle was a luxury permitted 
    only on autumn and winter evenings; for in summer every one contrived to 
    rise and to go to bed by daylight, so that candles might be saved 
    altogether. This was a practice which had arisen partly from custom and 
    partly from economy. Of every commodity not produced at home, but requiring, 
    rather, to be bought, the good folk of Oblomovka were extremely 
    parsimonious; so that, although they would willingly slaughter a fine 
    gamefowl or a dozen young pullets for a guest's entertainment, not a raisin 
    too much would be put into a pudding, and every face would whiten if the 
    said guest should pour himself out a second glassful of wine. Very seldom, 
    however, did such contretemps occur: only the most abandoned of 
    wretches would have done things like those—and guests of that kidney never 
    obtained even admittance to Oblomovka. Local manners required that, what 
    though twice or thrice invited to partake of a given dish or a given bottle 
    of wine, the guest should not do so, since he was supposed to be aware that 
    even the first invitation had conveyed a secret prayer that he would kindly 
    abstain from the dish or bottle of wine after merely tasting of the same. 
    Nor were two candles lit for every guest, since candles required to be 
    bought in the town, and therefore, like all other purchased articles, were 
    kept under lock and key by the lady of the house, and, with the candle-ends, 
    were counted before being stored away. 

    
In short, Oblomovka disliked disbursing hard cash; so much so that, 
    however much a given article might be required, the money for it would be 
    handed out with reluctance, however insignificant the sum. As for any 
    considerable outlay, it was accompanied with groans, lamentations, 
    and high words, since the Oblomovkans would suffer any kind of misfortune 
    rather than part with their coin. For this reason the sofa in the 
    drawing-room had long been in rags, and the leather on the barin's 
    arm-chair leather only by courtesy, since most of its cord and rope stuffing 
    was now exposed, and only a single strip of the original covering clung to 
    the back of the chair—the rest having, during the past five years, become 
    split into strips, and fallen away. For the same reason the entrance gates 
    had sagged, and the veranda become rickety. Nevertheless, to pay out, say, 
    from two to five hundred roubles for a given purpose, however necessary that 
    purpose might be, seemed to the inhabitants of the establishment something 
    almost approaching suicide. In fact, on hearing that a young landowner of 
    the neighbourhood had gone to Moscow and there paid three hundred roubles 
    for a dozen shirts, twenty-five for a pair of boots, and forty for a 
    waistcoat (it was on the occasion of the landowner's marriage), old Oblomov 
    crossed himself, and exclaimed with an expression of horror: "That young man 
    ought to be clapped into prison!" In general, the Oblomovkans paid no heed 
    to politico-economic axioms concerning the necessity of swift, brisk 
    circulation of capital, or concerning the active production and exchange of 
    commodities. In the simplicity of their souls they considered that the best 
    theory, as well as the best practice, with regard to capital was to hoard 
    it. 

    
On chairs in the drawing-room there would be seated snoring, in different 
    attitudes, the gentry and customary intimates of the house. For the most 
    part a profound silence would reign among them, for they saw one another 
    every day, and their respective stores of intellectual wealth had long been 
    tapped and explored, while news from without arrived but scantily. Indeed, 
    amid the stillness the only sound to be heard would be that of old Oblomov's 
    heavy, workaday slippers, the dull beat of the clock in its case, and the 
    snapping of thread as one or another of the sewing party bit or broke off a 
    piece. Perhaps after half an hour of this one of those present would 
    yawn—then make the sign of the cross over the lips, and murmur: "Lord, 
    pardon me!" Next, some one would follow suit, and then a third, until the 
    infectious desire to ventilate the lungs had gone the round of the company. 
    Next, old Oblomov would approach the window, look through it, and say with a 
    touch of surprise: "Only five o'clock, yet already it is dark in the 
    courtyard!" 

    
"Yes," some one would answer, "'tis always dark by this time. The long 
    evenings are beginning to draw in." 

    
In spring, contrariwise, the company would fall to expressing surprise 
    and gratification at the thought that the long days were 
    approaching. Yet, had you inquired what the long days meant to them, they 
    could not possibly have told you! After this episode silence would resume 
    its sway, until, perhaps, in snuffing the candle, some one would chance to 
    extinguish it. Upon that every one would give a start, and one of the 
    company would be sure to ejaculate: "An unexpected guest is making his way 
    in our direction." In fact, it was not an uncommon phenomenon for the 
    incident to give rise to a lengthy conversation. 

    
Time, at Oblomovka, was reckoned mostly by festivals, by the seasons of 
    the year, and by various family and domestic events—no reference whatsoever 
    being made to months or to the days of a month. This may have partly arisen 
    from the fact that none but old Oblomov were capable of distinguishing 
    between the names of the months and the dates in a given month. 

    
Presently the head of the family would relapse into meditation, while 
    little Ilya, lolling behind his mother's back, would also be sunk in dreams, 
    and at times actually dozing. Suddenly old Oblomov would (to take a typical 
    incident) halt in the middle of his pacing, and clap his hand anxiously to 
    the tip of his nose; whereupon there would ensue some such dialogue as the 
    following:— 

    
The master of the house: What on earth is the matter with me? 
    See! Some one must have passed away, for the tip of my nose is itching!

    
His wife: Good Lord! Why should any one have passed away because 
    the tip of your nose is sore? Some one has passed away only when 
    the bridge of one's nose is hurting one. What a forgetful man you 
    are, to be sure! Were you to say a thing like that before strangers, you 
    would make us blush for you. 

    
The master of the house: But every part of my nose is 
    hurting me? 

    
His wife: Pain at the side of it means news to come; in the 
    eyebrows, sorrow; in the forehead, a greeting; on the right side, a man; on 
    the left side, a woman; in the ears, rain; in the lips, a kiss; in the 
    whiskers, a present of something to eat; in the elbow, a new place to sleep 
    in; and in the sole of the foot, a journey. 

    
And so forth, and so forth. 

    
Lastly, when nine o'clock had struck there would follow supper; after 
    which the company would disperse to rest, and sleep would once more reign 
    over the care-free heads of the Oblomovkans. 

    
In his dream Oblomov saw not only an evening spent in this manner, but 
    whole weeks and months and years of such evenings. Never did anything occur 
    to interrupt the uniformity of that life, nor were the Oblomovkans in any 
    way wearied by it, since they could conceive no other existence, and would 
    have turned from any other with distaste. Had there been imported into that 
    existence any change due to circumstances, they would have regretted the 
    fact, and felt troubled by the thought that to-morrow was not going to be 
    precisely as to-day. What wanted they with the diversity, the 
    changes, the incidents, for which others yearned? "Let others drink of that 
    cup," said they; "but for us Oblomovkans—no such thing. Let others live as 
    they please." Incident—even pleasing incident—they considered to bring 
    disturbance and fuss and worry and commotion in its train, so that one could 
    not sit quietly in one's seat and just talk and eat one's meals. Therefore, 
    as decade succeeded decade, the Oblomovkans dozed and yawned, and indulged 
    in good-humoured laughter at rustic jests, and assembled in corners to 
    relate of what they had dreamed during the previous night. Had their dreams 
    been unpleasant, the company at once became thoughtful and nervous, and 
    refrained from jesting. On the other hand, had their dreams been of a 
    prophetic nature, at once the company grew cheerful or despondent, according 
    as the visions had promised sorrow or joy. Lastly, had their dreams called 
    for the consideration of some portent, the company proceeded to take such 
    active measures as might be necessary to deal with the situation. Also, 
    every one indulged in card-playing, games of "fools," and so forth; while, 
    as for the womenfolk, they would discuss the neighbourhood, and pry not only 
    into its family life and social gaiety, but also into its secret ends and 
    desires. About these they would dispute, and then pass censure upon various 
    persons (more particularly upon unfaithful husbands), and relate details of 
    birthdays, christenings, namedays, and dinner parties, with the lists of the 
    invited and non-invited guests. Likewise they would show one another various 
    articles of their wardrobes, and the hostess would proudly vaunt the merits 
    of her sheets, her knitted garments, and her lace of home manufacture. Yet 
    at length even these things would begin to pall; whereupon coffee, tea, and 
    cakes would be served, and a silence, broken only by desultory remarks, 
    ensue. 

    
Of course, also, there were certain rare occasions when these methods of 
    spending the time were interrupted by such happenings as the entire 
    household falling ill of a fever, or some member of it either tripping over 
    a stake in the dark or falling out of the hayloft or being struck on the 
    head by a beam which had slipped from the roof. Yet, as I say, such events 
    were rare, and when they occurred, every known and tried domestic remedy was 
    brought into play. The injured spot was rubbed with ointment, a dose of holy 
    water was administered, a prayer was muttered—and all was well. On the 
    other hand, a winter headache was quite a common phenomenon, and in 
    that case the household would retire to bed, groans and sighs would resound 
    from every room, one person would wrap up his head in a cucumber poultice 
    and a towel, another place cranberries in his ears and inhale horseradish, a 
    third walk about in the frost with nothing on but his shirt, and a fourth, 
    half-conscious, roll about the floor. It was at regular periods of once or 
    twice a month that this happened, for the reason that the Oblomovkans did 
    not like to allow any superfluous heat to escape by the chimney, but covered 
    the stoves when the flames were rising high. Consequently upon no single 
    stove-couch or stove could a hand be laid without danger of that hand being 
    blistered. 

    
Only once was the monotony of Oblomovkan life broken by a wholly 
    unexpected circumstance. The household, exhausted by the labours of dinner, 
    had assembled for tea, when there entered a local peasant who had just been 
    making an expedition to the town. Thrusting his hand into his bosom, he with 
    difficulty produced a much-creased letter, addressed to the master of the 
    house. Every one sat thunderstruck, and even the master himself changed 
    countenance. Not an eye was there which did not dart glances at the missive. 
    Not a nose was there which was not strained in its direction. 

    
"How unlooked for!" at length said the mistress of the household as she 
    recovered herself. "From whom can the letter have come?" 

    
Old Oblomov took it, and turned it over in his hands, as though at a loss 
    what to do with the epistle. 

    
"Where did you get it from?" he inquired of the peasant. "And who gave it 
    you?" 

    
"I got it at the inn where I put up," replied the man. "Twice did folk 
    come from the post-office to inquire if any peasantry from Oblomovka were 
    there, since a letter was awaiting the barin. The first time they 
    came, I kept quiet, and the postman took the letter away; but afterwards the 
    deacon of Verklevo saw me, and they came and gave me the letter, and made me 
    pay five kopecks for it. I asked them what I was to do with the letter, and 
    they said that I was to hand it to your Honour." 

    
"Then at first you refused it?" the mistress remarked sharply. 

    
"Yes, I refused it. What should we want with letters? 
    We have no need for them, nor had I any orders to take charge of 
    such things. So I was afraid to touch it. 'Don't you go too fast with that 
    thing,' I said to myself. Yet how the postman abused me! He would have 
    complained to the authorities had I left the letter where it was." 

    
"Fool!" exclaimed the lady of the house. 

    
"And from whom can it be?" said old Oblomov meditatively as he studied 
    the address. "Somehow I seem to know the handwriting." 

    
Upon that the missive fell to being passed from one person to another; 
    and much guessing and discussion began. Finally the company had to own 
    itself nonplussed. The master of the house ordered his spectacles to be 
    fetched, and quite an hour and a half were consumed in searching for the 
    same; but at length he put them on, and then bethought him of opening the 
    letter. 

    
"Wait a moment," said his wife, hastily arresting his hand. "Do not break 
    the seal. Who knows what the letter may contain? It may portend something 
    dreadful, some misfortune. To what have we not come nowadays? To-morrow, or 
    the day after, will be soon enough. The letter will not walk away of 
    itself." 

    
So the letter was placed under lock and key, and tea passed round. In 
    fact, the document would have lain there for a year, had it not constituted 
    a phenomenon so unusual as to continue to excite the Oblomovkans' curiosity. 
    Both after tea and on the following day the talk was of nothing else. At 
    length things could no longer be borne, and on the fourth day, the company 
    being assembled, the seal was diffidently broken, and old Oblomov glanced at 
    the signature. 

    
"Radistchev!" he exclaimed. "So the message is from Philip Matveitch!" 
    

    
"Oh! Ah! From him, indeed?" resounded on all sides. "To think 
    that he is actually alive! Glory be to God! And what does he say?" 

    
Upon that old Oblomov started to read the letter aloud. It seemed that 
    Philip Matveitch desired him to forward the recipe for a certain beer which 
    was brewed at Oblomovka. 

    
"Then send it, send it," exclaimed the chorus. "Yes, and also write him 
    an answer." 

    
Two weeks elapsed. 

    
"Really we must write that note," old Oblomov kept repeating. 
    "Where is the recipe?" 

    
"Where is it? " retorted his wife. "Why, it still has to be looked for. 
    Wait a little. Why need we hurry? Should God be good, we shall soon be 
    having another festival, and eating flesh again. Let us write then. 
    I tell you, the recipe won't run away." 

    
"Yes, I daresay it would be better to write when we have reached 
    the festival." 

    
Sure enough, the said festival arrived, and again there was talk of the 
    letter. In fact, old Oblomov did in truth get himself ready to write it. He 
    shut himself up in his study, he put on his spectacles, and he sat down to 
    the table. Everything in the house was profoundly quiet, since orders had 
    been issued that the establishment was not to stamp upon the floor, nor, 
    indeed, to make a noise of any kind. "The barin is writing," was 
    said in much the same tone of respectful awe that might have been used had a 
    dead person been lying in the house. 

    
Hardly had old Oblomov inscribed the words "Dear Sir"—slowly and 
    crookedly, and with a shaking hand, and as cautiously as though he had been 
    engaged in a dangerous task—when there entered to him his wife. 

    
"I have searched and searched," she said, "but can find no recipe. 
    Nevertheless the bedroom wardrobe still remains to be ransacked, so 
    how can you write the letter now?" 

    
"It ought to go by the next post," her husband remarked. 

    
"And what will it cost to go?" 

    
Old Oblomov produced an ancient calendar. "Forty kopecks," he said. 

    
"What? You are going to throw away forty kopecks on such a 
    trifle?" she exclaimed. "We had far better wait until we are sending other 
    things also to the town. Let the peasants know about it." 

    
"That might be better," agreed old Oblomov, tapping his pen 
    against the table. With that he replaced the pen in the inkstand, and took 
    off his spectacles. 

    
"Yes, it might be better," he concluded. And to this day no one 
    knows how long Philip Matveitch had to wait for that recipe. 

    
Also, there were times when old Oblomov actually took a book in his 
    hands. What book it might be he did not care, for he felt no actual craving 
    to read; he looked upon literature as a mere luxury which could easily be 
    indulged in, or be done without, even as one might have a picture on one's 
    wall, or one might not—one might go out for an occasional walk, or one 
    might not. Hence, as I say, he was indifferent to the identity of a book, 
    since he looked upon such articles as mere instruments of distraction from 
    ennui and lack of employment. Also, he always adopted towards 
    authors that half-contemptuous attitude which used to be maintained by 
    gentry of the ancien régime; for, like many of his day, he 
    considered a writer of books to be a roisterer, a ne'er-do -well, a 
    drunkard, a sort of merry-andrew. Also, he would read aloud items of 
    intelligence from journals three years old—such items as, "It is reported 
    from The Hague that, on returning to the Palace from a short drive, the King 
    gazed at the assembled onlookers through his spectacles," or "At Vienna such 
    and such an Ambassador has just presented his Letter of Credentials." 

    
Again, there was a day when he read aloud the intelligence that a certain 
    work by a foreign writer had just been translated into Russian. 

    
"The only reason why they go in for translating such things," remarked a 
    small landowner who happened to be present, "is that they may wheedle more 
    money out of us dvoriané." 

    
Meanwhile the little Ilya was engaged in journeying backwards and 
    forwards to Schtoltz's school. Every Monday, when he awoke, he felt overcome 
    with depression, should he happen to hear Vassika's rasping voice shout 
    aloud from the veranda: "Antipka, harness the piebald, as the young 
    barin has to drive over to the German's!" Yes, then Ilya's heart 
    would tremble, and he would repair sadly to his mother, who would know why 
    he did so, and begin to gild the pill, while secretly sighing to herself at 
    the thought that she was to be parted from the lad for a whole week. Indeed, 
    on such mornings he could scarcely be given enough to eat, and scarcely 
    could a sufficiency of buns and cakes and pies and sweetmeats be made to 
    take with him (the said sufficiency being based upon an assumption that at 
    the German's the pupils fared far from richly). 

    
"One couldn't overeat oneself there," said the Oblomovkans. "For dinner 
    one gets nothing but soup, roast, and cabbage, for tea only cold meat, and 
    for supper morgen fri. . . 

    
However, there were Mondays when he did not hear Vassika's voice 
    ordering the piebald to be harnessed, and when his mother met him with a 
    smile and the pleasant tidings that he was not to go to school that day, 
    since the following Thursday would be a holiday, and it was not worth while 
    for him to make the journey to and fro for a stay only of three days. At 
    other times he would be informed that that week was the Week of Kindred, and that therefore cake-baking, and 
    not book-learning, would be the order of the day. Or on a Monday morning his 
    mother would glance at him, and, say: "Your eyes look dull to-day. Are you 
    sure that you are well?" Then she would shake her head dubiously, 
    and though the crafty youngster would be in perfect health, he would hold 
    his tongue on the subject. Thereafter she would continue: "You must stay at 
    home this week, for God knows what might happen to you at that other place." 
    And in her decision she would be confirmed by the whole of the rest of the 
    household. True, these fond parents were not blind to the value of education 
    it was that they realized only its external value. That is to say, 
    they could not look beyond the fact that education enabled folk to get on in 
    the world so far as the acquisition of rank, crosses, and money was 
    concerned. Certain evil rumours had arisen regarding the necessity of 
    learning not only one's letters, but also various branches of science which 
    until now had remained unknown to the world of Oblomovka; but, as I say, the 
    good folk of that place had only the dimmest, the remotest, comprehension of 
    any internal demand for education, and therefore desired to secure 
    for their little Ilya only certain showy advantages, and no more—to wit, a 
    fine uniform, and the getting of him into the Civil Service (his mother even 
    foresaw him become a provincial governor!). Yet this, they thought, ought to 
    be attained at as little cost as possible, and by means of a covert evasion 
    of the various rocks and barriers which lay strewn about the path of 
    enlightenment. Yes, those rocks and barriers, they said, must be walked 
    around, not scaled; learning must be assimilated lightly, and not at the 
    cost of exhaustion both of body and mind. In their view the process need be 
    continued only until the little Ilya had obtained some sort of a certificate 
    to the effect that he had been through "a course of the arts and sciences." 
    

    
But to this Oblomovkan system old Schtoltz was wholly opposed; and 
    probably his German persistency would have carried the day, had he not had 
    to contend with difficulties even in his own camp. That is to say, his son 
    was accustomed to spoil young Oblomov by doing his exercises for him, and 
    prompting him in his translations. Also, young Oblomov could clearly discern 
    the differences between his home life and life at school. At home, no sooner 
    would he have awakened than he would find Zakhar standing by his bed. Even 
    as the nurse had done, Zakhar would draw on for the lad his stockings, and 
    put on his boots; and if Master Ilya—now become a boy of fourteen—did not 
    altogether approve of Zakhar's performances he would nudge the valet on the 
    nose with his toe. Moreover, should the boy at any time want anything, he 
    had three or four servants to hasten to do his bidding; and in this fashion 
    he never learnt what it was to do a single thing for himself. Yet in the end 
    his parents' fond solicitude wearied him, for at no time could he even cross 
    the courtyard, or descend the staircase, without hearing himself followed by 
    shouts of "Where are you going to, Ilya?" or "How can you do that?" or "You 
    will fall and hurt yourself!" Thus, pampered like an exotic plant in a 
    greenhouse, he grew up slowly and drowsily, and in a way which turned his 
    energies inwards, and gradually caused them to wither. 

    
Yet on rare occasions he would still awake as fresh and vigorous and 
    cheerful as ever; he would awake feeling that an imp of mischief was egging 
    him on to climb the roof, or to go and roll in a field, or to rush round the 
    meadow where the hay was being cut, or to perch himself on the top of a 
    fence, or to start teasing the farm dogs—in short, to take to running 
    hither and thither and everywhere. 

    
At length the thing was no longer to be borne; no longer could he resist 
    the imp's prompting. One winter's morning, capless, he leaped from the 
    veranda into the courtyard, and thence through the entrance gates. 
    Thereafter, rolling a snowball hastily in his hands, he darted towards a 
    crowd of boys. The fresh air cut his face, the frost nipped his ears, his 
    mouth and throat felt choked with cold, but in his breast there was a great 
    joy. He rushed forward as fast as his legs could carry him, he shouted and 
    he laughed. In two seconds he was in the thick of the boys. One snowball he 
    threw—it achieved a miss; a second snowball he threw—it achieved the same; 
    and just as he was seizing a third his face became converted into one large 
    clot of snow. He fell, and, being unused to falling, hurt himself; yet still 
    he laughed merrily, though the tears had sprung to his eyes. Behind the knot 
    of youngsters ran two dogs, pulling at their clothes; for, as every one 
    knows, dogs cannot with equanimity see a human being running. Thus the whole 
    gang sped through the village—a noisy, shouting, barking crew. At length 
    the lads were caught, and justice was meted out—to one on the head, to a 
    second on the ears, to a third on the rump. Also, the fathers of the 
    culprits were threatened with retribution. As for the young barin, 
    he was hastily thrust into a snatched-up greatcoat, then into his father's 
    sheepskin, and, lastly, into a couple of quilts; after which he was borne 
    homeward in triumph. The entire household had expected to behold him arrive 
    in a moribund condition; and indescribable was his parents' delight on 
    seeing him carried in both alive and unharmed. Yes, they gave thanks to God, 
    they dosed the boy with mint and elderberry wine and raspberry syrup, and 
    they kept him three days in bed—although the one thing that would have done 
    him any good would have been to have let him go out again and play in the 
    snow! 

    

    
. . . . . .

    
Entering quietly, Zakhar tried to arouse the sleeper, but failed. 
    Suddenly a loud laugh proceeded from the neighbourhood of the door. Oblomov 
    started up. 

    
"Schtoltz! Schtoltz!" he cried rapturously as he threw himself upon the 
    newcomer.



    
[St. Elias' Day:] Namely, that, should thunder occur 
    on that day, the whole of the ensuing year will be prosperous, since the 
    peals represent the saint's passage to heaven. 

    
[the great white universe:] As distinguished from 
    the black universe, the unknown. 

    
[kvass:] A liquor made from fermented bread 
    crusts or fruit. 

    
[sazhen:] The sazhen equals six English feet. 
    

    
[winter headache:] Due to the fumes of the 
    charcoal used for heating purposes. 

    
[dvoriané:] Squires, or gentry. 

    
[morgen frei:] German black pudding.

    
[Week of the Kindred:] Week of the Dead. 



  









 

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