Oblomov 1 part read in full. A novel in four parts

A novel in four parts

Part one

I

In Gorokhovaya Street, in one of the large houses, the population of which would have been the size of an entire county town, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov was lying in bed in his apartment in the morning. He was a man of about thirty-two or three years of age, of medium height, of pleasant appearance, with dark gray eyes, but with no definite idea, no concentration in his features. The thought walked like a free bird across the face, fluttered in the eyes, settled on half-open lips, hid in the folds of the forehead, then completely disappeared, and then an even light of carelessness glowed all over the face. From the face, carelessness passed into the poses of the whole body, even into the folds of the dressing gown. Sometimes his eyes were darkened by an expression as if of weariness or boredom; but neither fatigue nor boredom could for a moment drive away from the face the gentleness that was the dominant and basic expression, not only of the face, but of the whole soul; and the soul shone so openly and clearly in the eyes, in the smile, in every movement of the head and hand. And a superficially observant, cold person, glancing casually at Oblomov, would say: “There must be a kind man, simplicity!” A deeper and more sympathetic person, peering into his face for a long time, would walk away in pleasant thought, with a smile. Ilya Ilyich's complexion was neither ruddy, nor swarthy, nor positively pale, but indifferent or seemed so, perhaps because Oblomov was somehow flabby beyond his years: from a lack of movement or air, or maybe that and another. In general, his body, judging by the dull, too white light of the neck, small plump hands, soft shoulders, seemed too pampered for a man. His movements, when he was even alarmed, were also restrained by softness and laziness, not devoid of a kind of grace. If a cloud of care came over the face from the soul, the look became foggy, wrinkles appeared on the forehead, a game of doubt, sadness, fright began; but seldom did this anxiety solidify in the form of a definite idea, still more rarely did it turn into an intention. All anxiety was resolved with a sigh and faded into apathy or drowsiness. How Oblomov's home costume went to his dead features and to his pampered body! He was wearing a dressing gown made of Persian fabric, a real oriental dressing gown, without the slightest hint of Europe, without tassels, without velvet, without a waist, very roomy, so that Oblomov could wrap himself in it twice. The sleeves, in the same Asian fashion, went from fingers to shoulder wider and wider. Although this dressing gown had lost its original freshness and in some places replaced its primitive, natural gloss with another, acquired, it still retained the brightness of oriental color and the strength of the fabric. The dressing gown had in the eyes of Oblomov a darkness of invaluable virtues: it is soft, flexible; the body does not feel it on itself; he, like an obedient slave, submits to the slightest movement of the body. Oblomov always went home without a tie and without a vest, because he loved space and freedom. His shoes were long, soft and wide; when, without looking, he lowered his legs from the bed to the floor, he would certainly hit them at once. Lying down with Ilya Ilyich was neither a necessity, like a sick person or a person who wants to sleep, nor an accident, like someone who is tired, nor a pleasure, like a lazy person: this was his normal state. When he was at home and he was almost always at home he was always lying, and everyone was constantly in the same room where we found him, which served as his bedroom, study and reception room. He had three more rooms, but he rarely looked in there, unless in the morning, and then not every day when a person swept his office, which was not done every day. In those rooms, the furniture was covered with covers, the curtains were lowered. The room where Ilya Ilyich lay seemed at first glance to be beautifully furnished. There was a bureau of mahogany, two sofas upholstered in silk, beautiful screens embroidered with birds and fruits unknown in nature. There were silk curtains, carpets, a few paintings, bronzes, porcelain, and many beautiful little things. But the experienced eye of a man of pure taste, with one cursory glance at everything that was there, would read only a desire to somehow maintain the decorum of inevitable decorum, if only to get rid of them. Oblomov, of course, only bothered about this when he cleaned his office. Refined taste would not be satisfied with these heavy, ungraceful mahogany chairs, wobbly bookcases. The back of one sofa sank down, the pasted wood lagged behind in places. Exactly the same character was worn by paintings, and vases, and trifles. The owner himself, however, looked at the decoration of his office so coldly and absent-mindedly, as if asking with his eyes: “Who dragged and instructed all this here?” From such a cold view of Oblomov on his property, and perhaps even from a colder view of the same object of his servant, Zakhar, the appearance of the office, if you look there more and more closely, struck by the neglect and negligence that prevailed in it. On the walls, near the paintings, cobwebs saturated with dust were molded in the form of festoons; mirrors, instead of reflecting objects, could rather serve as tablets for writing down some memoirs on them over the dust. Carpets were stained. There was a forgotten towel on the sofa; on the table, a rare morning, there was not a plate with a salt shaker and a gnawed bone that had not been removed from yesterday's dinner, and there were no bread crumbs lying around. If not for this plate, and not for a pipe just smoked leaning against the bed, or not for the owner himself lying on it, then one would think that no one lives here everything was so dusty, faded and generally devoid of living traces of human presence . On the bookcases, it is true, there were two or three open books, a newspaper was lying about, and an inkstand with feathers stood on the bureau; but the pages on which the books were unfolded were covered with dust and turned yellow; it is clear that they were abandoned long ago; the number of the newspaper was last year's, and if you dipped a pen in it, only a frightened fly would have escaped with a buzz. Ilya Ilyich woke up, contrary to his usual habit, very early, at eight o'clock. He is very concerned about something. On his face alternately appeared not the fear, not the melancholy and annoyance. It was evident that he was overcome by an internal struggle, and the mind had not yet come to the rescue. The fact is that on the eve of Oblomov received from the village, from his headman, a letter of unpleasant content. It is known what troubles the headman can write about: crop failure, arrears, a decrease in income, etc. Although the headman wrote exactly the same letters to his master both in the past and in the third year, this last letter also had an effect as strong as any an unpleasant surprise. Is it easy? We had to think about the means to take some action. However, we must do justice to the care of Ilya Ilyich about his affairs. According to the first unpleasant letter from the headman, received several years ago, he already began to create in his mind a plan for various changes and improvements in the management of his estate. According to this plan, it was supposed to introduce various new economic, police and other measures. But the plan was far from being fully thought out, and the headman's unpleasant letters were repeated every year, prompting him to activity and, consequently, disturbing the peace. Oblomov was aware of the need to do something decisive before the end of the plan. As soon as he woke up, he immediately set out to get up, wash himself and, after drinking tea, think carefully, figure something out, write it down and generally do this business properly. For half an hour he lay still, tormented by this intention, but then he reasoned that he would still have time to do this even after tea, and tea can be drunk, as usual, in bed, especially since nothing prevents you from thinking while lying down. And so he did. After tea, he had already risen from his bed and almost got up; glancing at the shoes, he even began to lower one foot from the bed towards them, but immediately picked it up again. It struck half past ten, Ilya Ilyich started up. What am I really? he said aloud with annoyance. You need to know your conscience: it's time to get down to business! Just let yourself go and... Zakhar! he shouted. In the room, which was separated only by a short corridor from Ilya Ilyich's office, there was heard at first like the grumbling of a chained dog, then the sound of feet jumping off from somewhere. It was Zakhar who jumped off the couch, on which he usually spent his time, sitting immersed in a slumber. An elderly man entered the room, in a gray frock coat, with a hole under the arm, from which a piece of shirt stuck out, in a gray waistcoat, with copper buttons, with a skull bare as a knee, and with immensely wide and thick blond with graying whiskers, of which it would be three beards. Zakhar did not try to change not only the image given to him by God, but also his costume, in which he walked in the village. The dress was sewn for him according to the pattern he had taken out of the village. He also liked the gray frock coat and waistcoat because in this semi-uniform he saw a faint recollection of the livery that he had once worn when seeing the late gentlemen to church or on a visit; and the livery in his memoirs was the only representative of the dignity of the Oblomov family. Nothing more reminded the old man of the lordly, wide and quiet life in the wilderness of the village. The old gentlemen have died, the family portraits have remained at home and, tea, are lying around somewhere in the attic; the legends about the ancient way of life and the importance of the surname are all dying out or live only in the memory of the few old people who remained in the village. Therefore, a gray coat was dear to Zakhar: in it, and even in some signs preserved in the face and manners of the master, reminiscent of his parents, and in his whims, to which, although he grumbled, both to himself and aloud, but which between he respected it inwardly, as a manifestation of the lord's will, the master's right, he saw faint hints of obsolete greatness. Without these whims, he somehow did not feel the master over him; without them, nothing revived his youth, the village they left long ago, and the legends about it old house, the only chronicle kept by old servants, nannies, mothers and passed down from generation to generation. The Oblomovs' house was once rich and famous in its area, but then, God knows why, everything became poorer, smaller, and finally imperceptibly lost among the not old noble houses. Only the gray-haired servants of the house kept and passed on to each other the faithful memory of the past, cherishing it as a shrine. That is why Zakhar loved his gray coat so much. Perhaps he valued his sideburns because in his childhood he saw many old servants with this old, aristocratic decoration. Ilya Ilyich, immersed in thought, did not notice Zakhar for a long time. Zakhar stood in front of him silently. Finally he coughed. What are you? Ilya Ilyich asked. Did you call? Called? Why did I call I don’t remember! he answered stretching. Go to your place for now, and I will remember. Zakhar left, and Ilya Ilyich continued to lie and think about the accursed letter. A quarter of an hour has passed. Well, full lie! he said, you have to get up... But anyway, let me read the elder's letter again with attention, and then I'll get up. Zakhar! Again the same jump and grumbling stronger. Zakhar entered, and Oblomov again plunged into thought. Zakhar stood for about two minutes, unfavorably, looking a little sideways at the master, and finally went to the door. Where are you? Oblomov suddenly asked. You don't say anything, so why stand there for nothing? Zakhar croaked, for lack of another voice, which, according to him, he lost while hunting with dogs, when he rode with an old master and when a strong wind blew into his throat. He stood half-turned in the middle of the room and kept looking sideways at Oblomov. Are your legs withered that you can't stand up? You see, I'm preoccupied just wait! Haven't stayed there yet? Look for the letter I received yesterday from the headman. Where are you doing it? What letter? I didn't see any letter,” Zakhar said. You accepted it from the postman: such a dirty one! Where did they put him why should I know? said Zakhar, patting the papers and various things lying on the table with his hand. You never know anything. There, in the basket, look! Or fell behind the sofa? Here, the back of the sofa has not yet been repaired; what would you call a carpenter to fix? After all, you broke it. You won't think of anything! I did not break, answered Zakhar, she broke herself; it will not be a century for her to be: someday she must break. Ilya Ilyich did not consider it necessary to prove the contrary. Did you find it? he only asked. Here are some letters. Not those. Well, no more, said Zakhar. Well, go ahead! Ilya Ilyich said impatiently. I'll get up, I'll find it myself. Zakhar went to his room, but as soon as he put his hands on the couch in order to jump on it, a hasty cry was heard again: “Zakhar, Zakhar!” Oh, my God! Zakhar grumbled, going back to the office. What is this torment? If only death would come sooner! What do you want? he said, holding on to the door of the office with one hand and looking at Oblomov, as a sign of displeasure, so sideways that he had to see the master half-heartedly, and the master could see only one immense whisker, from which, you just expect that two will fly out - three birds. Handkerchief, quick! You yourself could guess: you do not see! Ilya Ilyich noted sternly. Zakhar did not show any particular displeasure or surprise at this order and reproach from the master, probably finding both of them very natural on his part. And who knows where the handkerchief is? he grumbled, going around the room and feeling each chair, although even so it was possible to see that nothing lay on the chairs. You lose everything! he remarked, opening the door to the living room to see if anyone was there. Where to? Search here! I haven't been there since the third day. Yes, rather! said Ilya Ilyich. Where is the handkerchief? I don't have a scarf! said Zakhar, spreading his arms and looking around in all corners. There he is, he suddenly wheezed angrily, under you! There the end sticks out. Lie on it yourself, and ask for a handkerchief! And without waiting for an answer, Zakhar went out. Oblomov felt a little embarrassed at his own mistake. He quickly found another reason to make Zakhar guilty. What a cleanliness you have everywhere: dust, dirt, my God! There, there, look in the corners - you're not doing anything! If I don't do anything... Zakhar spoke in an offended voice, I try, I don't regret my life! And I wash and sweep the dust almost every day ... He pointed to the middle of the floor and to the table on which Oblomov dined. Get out, get out, he said, everything is swept up, tidied up, as if for a wedding... What else? And what is this? Ilya Ilyich interrupted, pointing to the walls and the ceiling. And this? And this? He pointed both to the towel thrown from yesterday and to the forgotten plate with a slice of bread on the table. Well, I’ll probably take that away, Zakhar said condescendingly, taking the plate. Only this! And the dust on the walls, and the cobwebs?.. Oblomov said, pointing to the walls. I clean this up for the holy week: then I clean the images and remove the cobwebs ... And sweep the books, pictures? .. Books and pictures before Christmas: then Anisya and I will go through all the cupboards. Now when are you going to clean up? You are all at home. I sometimes go to the theater and visit: if only ... What a cleaning at night! Oblomov looked reproachfully at him, shook his head and sighed, while Zakhar looked indifferently out the window and sighed too. The master, it seems, thought: “Well, brother, you are even more Oblomov than I myself,” and Zakhar almost thought: “You're lying! you are only a master of speaking tricky and miserable words, but you don’t care about dust and cobwebs. Do you understand, said Ilya Ilyich, that moths start from dust? I sometimes even see a bed bug on the wall! I have fleas too! Zakhar responded indifferently. Is it good? After all, this is bullshit! Oblomov noticed. Zakhar grinned all over his face, so that the grin even covered his eyebrows and sideburns, which parted to the sides from this, and a red spot spread all over his face up to his forehead. What is my fault that there are bugs in the world? he said with naive surprise. Did I make them up? This is from impurity, interrupted Oblomov. That you're all lying! And I did not invent impurity. You have mice running around there at night I hear. And I did not invent mice. There are a lot of this creature, like mice, cats, bedbugs, everywhere. How can others not have moths or bedbugs? Distrust was expressed on Zakhar's face, or, to put it better, calm confidence that this does not happen. I have a lot of everything, he said stubbornly, you can’t see behind every bug, you won’t fit into a crack in it. And he himself, it seems, thought: “Yes, and what kind of sleep is it without a bug?” You mark, choose rubbish from the corners and there will be nothing, Oblomov taught. You take it away, and tomorrow it will be typed again, said Zakhar. It will not be typed, the master interrupted, it should not. There will be I know, the servant repeated. And it will be typed, so sweep it again. How is it? Every day touch all the corners? asked Zakhar. What kind of life is this? Better go to your soul! Why are others clean? objected Oblomov. Look opposite, at the tuner: it’s nice to look, but only one girl ... And where will the Germans take rubbish, Zakhar suddenly objected. You look at how they live! The whole family has been eating bones for a whole week. The coat passes from the shoulders of the father to the son, and from the son again to the father. The dresses on the wife and daughters are short: they all tuck their legs under themselves like geese ... Where can they get rubbish? They don’t have this, like we do, so that a bunch of old, worn-out dresses lie in the closets over the years, or a whole corner of bread crusts accumulated over the winter ... They don’t even have a crust lying around in vain: they make crackers, and drink with beer! Zakhar even spat through his teeth, talking about such a stingy life. Nothing to talk about! objected Ilya Ilyich, you better clean it up. Sometimes I would take it away, but you don’t give it yourself, said Zakhar. Fuck your own! You see, I'm in the way. Of course you; you are all sitting at home: how will you clean up in front of you? Go away for the day, and I'll clean it up. Here's another thought up that go away! Come on, you're better off. Yes right! Zakhar insisted. Here, if only today they would leave, Anisya and I would clean everything up. And then we can’t manage it together: we still need to hire women, wash everything. E! what an idea bab! Go to yourself, said Ilya Ilyich. He was no longer glad that he called Zakhar to this conversation. He kept forgetting that if you touch this delicate object just a little, you will not end up with trouble. Oblomov would like it to be clean, but he would like it to be done somehow, imperceptibly, naturally; and Zakhar always started a lawsuit, as soon as they began to demand from him sweeping dust, washing floors, etc. In this case, he will begin to prove the need for a huge fuss in the house, knowing very well that the mere thought of this horrified his master. Zakhar left, and Oblomov plunged into thought. A few minutes later another half hour struck. What is it? Ilya Ilyich said almost with horror. Eleven o'clock soon, but I haven't got up yet, haven't washed my face yet? Zahar, Zahar! Oh, my God! Well! was heard from the front, and then a well-known jump. Wash ready? asked Oblomov. Done long ago! answered Zakhar. Why don't you get up? Why don't you tell me it's ready? I would have gotten up a long time ago. Come on, I'm following you now. I have to study, I'll sit down to write. Zakhar left, but returned a minute later with a scribbled and oily notebook and scraps of paper. Here, if you write, by the way, if you please, and check the scores: you have to pay money. What accounts? What money? Ilya Ilyich asked with displeasure. From the butcher, from the greengrocer, from the laundress, from the baker: everyone asks for money. Only about money and care! grumbled Ilya Ilyich. Why don’t you file accounts little by little, but all of a sudden? After all, you all drove me away: tomorrow, yes tomorrow ... Well, now, isn't it possible until tomorrow? No! They are already very annoying: they don’t lend anymore. Today is the first number. Ah! Oblomov said with anguish. New concern! Well, what are you standing? Put it on the table. I'll get up now, wash myself and look, said Ilya Ilyich. So, are you ready to wash yourself? Done! said Zakhar. Well, now... He began, groaning, to push himself up in bed to get up. I forgot to tell you, began Zakhar, just now, while you were still resting, the janitor's manager sent: he says that you must definitely move out ... you need an apartment. Well, what is it? If you need it, then, of course, we will go. What are you doing to me? This is the third time you've told me about this. They pester me too. Say we'll move out. They say: you have been promising for a month, they say, but you still don’t move out; we say we'll let the police know. Let them know! Oblomov said decisively. We ourselves will move, as soon as it gets warmer, in three weeks. Where in three weeks! The manager says that in two weeks the workers will come: they will break everything ... “Move out, he says, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow ...” Uh-uh! too nimble! See what else! Would you like to order now? Don't you dare remind me of the apartment. I already forbade you once; and you again. Look! What am I to do then? Zakhar responded. What to do? Here is how he gets rid of me! answered Ilya Ilyich. He asks me! What do I care? You do not bother me, but there as you want, and dispose of it, only so as not to move. Can't try for the master! But how, father, Ilya Ilyich, I will arrange? Zakhar began with a soft hiss. The house is not mine: how can one not move from someone else's house if they are driven? If my house were, so I would with my great pleasure ... Is it possible to persuade them somehow. “We, they say, have been living for a long time, we pay regularly.” He did, said Zakhar. Well, what are they? What! They set up their own: “Move, they say, we need to redo the apartment.” They want to make one big apartment out of the doctor's office and this one, for the wedding of the master's son. Oh, my God! Oblomov said with annoyance. After all, there are such asses that get married! He rolled onto his back. You would have written, sir, to the owner, said Zakhar, so, perhaps, he would not have touched you, but would have told you to break down that apartment first. Zakhar pointed with his hand somewhere to the right. Well, as soon as I get up, I'll write ... You go to your room, and I'll think about it. You can’t do anything, he added, I have to worry about this rubbish myself. Zakhar left, and Oblomov began to think. But he was at a loss as to what to think about: whether about the letter from the headman, whether about moving to a new apartment, whether to begin to settle scores? He was lost in the tide of worldly worries and kept lying, tossing and turning from side to side. From time to time only jerky exclamations were heard: “Oh, my God! It touches life, it reaches everywhere. It is not known how long he would have remained in this indecision, but the bell rang in the hall. Someone has already come! said Oblomov, wrapping himself in a dressing gown. And I have not yet got up shame and nothing more! Who would it be so early? And he, lying down, looked with curiosity at the door.

Current page: 1 (total book has 8 pages)

Ivan Goncharov
Oblomov

Publisher's website www.veche.ru

Oblomov's bathrobe

In an imaginary museum of literary objects - where in the reader's memory are stored three maps of Herman and Onegin's dueling pistol, Bashmachkin's overcoat and Chichikov's travel box, Raskolnikov's ax and Bazarov's lancet, Bolkonsky's regimental banner and Bezukhov's lenses, Belikov's galoshes and Trigorin's fishing rod, Nabokov's collection of butterflies and the fireproof manuscript of Bulgakov's Master, Oblomov's dressing gown also occupies a well-deserved place.

An amazing thing: the novel "Oblomov" is very unevenly written, but it does not matter, because its author hit, as they say, in the vein, in the very nerve of the problem. The story of the Russian couch potato (remember Ilya Muromets and Ivan the Fool on the stove) is captivating, since the book by Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891) speaks of the motivation and goals of any activity in general. Simplifying as much as possible: why work and worry if everyone ultimately strives for one thing - contentment and peace? Why war and not peace? Mandelstam called this the great and indestructible "dream of ending history." Suffice it to recall Tolstoy and Fukuyama.

The book begins with how Oblomov is visited on May Day morning and tries to tear him off the sofa - that is, take him out of his bathrobe! - restless visitors, a whole parade of nimble representatives of the "Vanity Fair". Oblomov regrets all his visitors in his hearts: unfortunate ones, why are they fussing so much? “When will you live? So they will live their lives, and so much will not even move in them ... ". But suddenly Oblomov's childhood friend and his perfect antipode Stolz appear on the threshold, suddenly returning from abroad - and the action of the novel begins.

Now it is no longer the surface friction of the characters, but the adhesion and conflict. Oblomov defends himself from Stolz as best he can: “Look, where is the center around which all this revolves: there is none, there is nothing deep that touches the living. All these are dead people, sleeping people, worse than me ... ”Even the assertive Stolz is clearly unable to pull his only friend out of his dressing gown and raise him from the sofa. For something like this, a woman is needed, and thanks to Stolz she appears. Olga Ilyinskaya (that is, by the very sound of the name “narrowed” by Ilya Oblomov!) is taken as a lazy person, what the world has never seen and world literature did not know how to “break off”.

The love story of Oblomov and Olga is very old-fashioned, somewhat naive and the best part of the novel. It is worth abandoning for a while modern views, ideas and aesthetic predilections in order to feel all the charm, depth and hopeless tragedy of this story.

The problem is that Oblomov is a reference gentleman and a living embodiment of sybaritism as a property. He is a representative of a special breed or even a biological species, unsuccessfully eradicated throughout the history of mankind. Just as there is physical beauty, hermitage, poetry, music, so there is a standard of idleness, without which happiness is impossible (this, in particular, was considered by the lifelong worker Chekhov). It is absolutely necessary so that people do not go crazy from the incessant pursuit of benefit and benefit, and it is just as useless as Oblomov - this tragicomic Don Quixote of serving the ideal of peace, unclouded peace and non-action (as this property is called in Eastern philosophy).

It is no coincidence that Goncharov in one place compares his hero with the “desert elders” who slept in a coffin and dug their own grave during their lifetime, and the hero himself admits that he has long been “ashamed” to live in the world. Despite the fact that in the novel the religious and church side of Russian life is almost completely absent, reduced here to one maxim: "we must pray to God and not think about anything."

Of course, during the periods of modernization of Oblomov (and with it, a whole string of so-called extra people) was unequivocally assessed as a social evil and a brake social development. Accordingly, “Oblomovism” (the term of Stolz / Goncharov, picked up by social Darwinists) was perceived as a disease (in the words of Dobrolyubov, the result of “loafing, parasitism and complete uselessness in the world”).

The problem is aggravated by the fact that Oblomov has ... a woman's heart! That's what Ilyinskaya and Stolz broke off about. And since three ... orphans met, another triangle was formed.

Ilinskaya wanted to be led, and Oblomov wanted to be nursed. Therefore, after a summer of painfully fruitless love, everything ended in a painful fiasco for both. Oblomov begs his beloved for mercy: “Isn’t love a service? .. Take me as I am, love what is good in me ...” But Olga is merciless: this is not love. “I loved the future Oblomov! You are meek, honest, Ilya; you are gentle ... dove; you hide your head under your wing - and you want nothing more; you are ready to coo all your life under the roof ... yes, I’m not like that: this is not enough for me, I need something else, but I don’t know what! .. You are kind, smart, noble ... and you are dying ... Who cursed you, Ilya? .. »

Let's see what she needed. Olga and the Russian German Stolz chattered about their happiness, as in the writings of some Chernyshevsky (which was the general mental insanity of that time). Their happiness turned out to be much more empty than the semi-vegetative happiness of Oblomov with an infinitely stupid and pure-hearted widow in a miserable likeness of Oblomovka in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.

prone to straight and effective solutions Stolz, "drowning passion in marriage," suddenly runs into a dead end: "Everything is found, there is nothing to look for, nowhere else to go." Olga, satisfied and having become a mother, echoes him: “Suddenly, it’s as if she finds something on me, some kind of melancholy ... life will seem to me ... as if not everything is in it ...”

Oblomov fled from the light of life - what Olga Ilyinskaya was for him - to her warmth - what a common widow became for him. And it's hard not to recall here a passage from Bulgakov's novel: he didn't deserve light, he deserved peace.

And everything would be fine if it were not for boredom. For Oblomov, peace was associated with the absence of worries and "quiet fun", while work was exclusively associated with "boredom". However, as the family experience of Oblomov and Stolz showed, both of these states equally end in melancholy - and this is a coin of a larger denomination.

Goncharov, in an extremely hypertrophied form, presented the problem of the struggle and unity of opposites (sorry, reader, for the cond's formulation), where each side, if not ugly, then insufficient, in other words, not viable. And he left us a novel that says something infinitely important about life in general. Not only Russian.

Igor KLEKH

Part one

I

In Gorokhovaya Street, in one of the large houses, the population of which would have been the size of an entire county town, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov was lying in bed in his apartment in the morning.

He was a man of about thirty-two or three years old, of medium height, of pleasant appearance, with dark gray eyes that wandered nonchalantly along the walls and ceiling, with that indefinite thoughtfulness which shows that nothing occupies him, nothing disturbs him. From the face, carelessness passed into the poses of the whole body, even into the folds of the dressing gown.

Sometimes his eyes were darkened by an expression as if tired or bored. But neither fatigue nor boredom could for a moment drive away from the face the gentleness that was the dominant and basic expression, not only of the face, but of the whole soul. The soul shone so openly and clearly in the eyes, in the smile, in every movement of the head and hands. And a superficially observant, cold person, glancing casually at Oblomov, would say: “There must be a kind man, simplicity!” A deeper and more sympathetic person, peering into his face for a long time, would walk away in pleasant thought, with a smile.

Ilya Ilyich's complexion was neither ruddy, nor swarthy, nor positively pale, but indifferent or seemed so, perhaps because Oblomov was somehow flabby beyond his years: from a lack of movement, or air, or maybe of both. In general, his body, judging by the dullness, is too white color neck, small plump arms, soft shoulders, seemed too pampered for a man.

His movements, when he was even alarmed, were also restrained by softness and laziness, not devoid of a kind of grace. If a cloud of care came over the face from the soul, the look became foggy, wrinkles appeared on the forehead, a game of doubt, sadness, fright began; but seldom did this anxiety solidify in the form of a definite idea, still more rarely did it turn into an intention. All anxiety was resolved with a sigh and faded into apathy or drowsiness.

How Oblomov's home costume went to his dead features and to his pampered body! He was wearing a dressing gown made of Persian fabric, a real oriental dressing gown, without the slightest hint of Europe, without tassels, without velvet, without a waist, very roomy, so that Oblomov could wrap himself in it twice. The sleeves, in the same Asian fashion, went from fingers to shoulder wider and wider. Although this dressing gown had lost its original freshness and in some places replaced its primitive, natural gloss with another, acquired, it still retained the brightness of oriental color and the strength of the fabric.

The dressing gown had in the eyes of Oblomov a darkness of invaluable virtues: it is soft, flexible; you do not feel it on yourself; he, like an obedient slave, submits to the slightest movement of the body.

Oblomov always went home without a tie and without a vest, because he loved space and freedom. His shoes were long, soft and wide; when, without looking, he lowered his legs from the bed to the floor, he would certainly hit them at once.

Lying down with Ilya Ilyich was neither a necessity, like a sick person or a person who wants to sleep, nor an accident, like someone who is tired, nor a pleasure, like a lazy person: this was his normal state. When he was at home - and he was almost always at home - he was always lying, and everyone was constantly in the same room where we found him, which served him as a bedroom, study and reception room. He had three more rooms, but he rarely looked in there, unless in the morning, and then not every day when a person swept his office, which was not done every day. In those rooms, the furniture was covered with covers, the curtains were lowered.

The room where Ilya Ilyich lay seemed at first glance to be beautifully furnished. There was a bureau of mahogany, two sofas upholstered in silk, beautiful screens embroidered with birds and fruits unknown in nature. There were silk curtains, carpets, a few paintings, bronzes, porcelain, and many beautiful little things.

But the experienced eye of a man of pure taste, with one cursory glance at everything that was there, would read only a desire to somehow maintain the decorum of inevitable decorum, if only to get rid of them. Oblomov, of course, only bothered about this when he cleaned his office. Refined taste would not be satisfied with these heavy, ungraceful mahogany chairs, wobbly bookcases. The back of one sofa sank down, the pasted wood lagged behind in places.

Exactly the same character was worn by paintings, vases, trifles.

The owner himself, however, looked at the decoration of his office so coldly and absent-mindedly, as if asking with his eyes: “Who dragged and instructed all this here?” From such a cold view of Oblomov on his property, and perhaps even from a colder view of the same object of his servant, Zakhar, the appearance of the office, if you look there more and more closely, struck by the neglect and negligence that prevailed in it.

On the walls, near the paintings, cobwebs saturated with dust were molded in the form of festoons; mirrors, instead of reflecting objects, could rather serve as tablets, for writing on them, through the dust, some notes for memory. Carpets were stained. There was a forgotten towel on the sofa; on the table, a rare morning, there was not a plate with a salt shaker and a gnawed bone that had not been removed from yesterday's dinner, and there were no bread crumbs lying around.

If not for this plate, and not for a pipe just smoked leaning against the bed, or not for the owner himself lying on it, then one would think that no one lives here - everything was so dusty, faded and generally devoid of living traces of human presence. On the bookcases, it is true, there were two or three open books, a newspaper was lying about, and an inkstand with feathers stood on the bureau; but the pages on which the books were unfolded were covered with dust and turned yellow; it is clear that they were abandoned long ago; the number of the newspaper was last year's, and if you dipped a pen in it, only a frightened fly would have escaped with a buzz.

Ilya Ilyich woke up, contrary to his usual habit, very early, at eight o'clock. He is very concerned about something. On his face alternately appeared not the fear, not the melancholy and annoyance. It was evident that he was overcome by an internal struggle, and the mind had not yet come to the rescue.

The fact is that on the eve of Oblomov received from the village, from his headman, a letter of unpleasant content. It is known what kind of troubles the headman can write about: crop failure, arrears, a decrease in income, etc. Although the headman wrote exactly the same letters to his master both in the past and in the third year, this last letter also had an effect as strong as any unpleasant surprise.

Is it easy? I had to think about the means to take some action. However, we must do justice to the care of Ilya Ilyich about his affairs. According to the first unpleasant letter from the headman, received several years ago, he already began to create in his mind a plan for various changes and improvements in the management of his estate.

According to this plan, it was supposed to introduce various new economic, police and other measures. But the plan was far from being fully thought out, and the headman's unpleasant letters were repeated every year, prompting him to activity and, consequently, disturbing the peace. Oblomov was aware of the need to do something decisive.

As soon as he woke up, he immediately set out to get up, wash himself and, after drinking tea, think carefully, figure something out, write it down and generally do this business properly.

For half an hour he lay still, tormented by this intention, but then he decided that he would still have time to do this even after tea, and tea can be drunk as usual in bed, especially since nothing prevents thinking while lying down.

And so he did. After tea, he had already risen from his bed and almost got up; glancing at the shoes, he even began to lower one foot from the bed towards them, but immediately picked it up again.

It struck half past ten, Ilya Ilyich started up.

“What am I really? - he said aloud with annoyance, - you need to know your conscience: it's time to get down to business! Just let yourself go, and…”

- Zakhar! he shouted.

In the room, which was separated only by a short corridor from Ilya Ilyich's office, there was heard at first like the grumbling of a chained dog, then the sound of feet jumping off from somewhere. It was Zakhar who jumped off the couch, on which he usually spent his time, sitting immersed in a slumber.

An elderly man entered the room, in a gray frock coat, with a hole under his arm, from which a piece of shirt stuck out, in a gray waistcoat, with copper buttons, with a skull bare as a knee, and with wide and thick blond with graying sideburns, of which each became three beards.

Zakhar did not try to change not only the image given to him by God, but also his costume, in which he walked in the village. The dress was sewn for him according to the pattern he had taken out of the village. He also liked the gray frock coat and waistcoat because in this semi-uniform he saw a faint recollection of the livery that he had once worn when seeing the late gentlemen to church or on a visit; and the livery in his memoirs was the only representative of the dignity of the Oblomov family.

Nothing more reminded the old man of the lordly, wide and quiet life in the wilderness of the village. The old gentlemen have died, the family portraits have remained at home and, tea, are lying around somewhere in the attic; the legends about the ancient way of life and the importance of the surname are all dying out or live only in the memory of the few old people who remained in the village. Therefore, a gray frock coat was dear to Zakhar: in it, and even in some signs preserved in the face and manners of the master, reminiscent of his parents, and in his whims, which, although he grumbled, both to himself and aloud, but which meanwhile, he respected inwardly, as a manifestation of the lord's will, master's right, he saw faint hints of obsolete greatness.

Without these whims, he somehow did not feel the master over him; without them, nothing revived his youth, the village, which they left long ago, and the legends about this old house.

The Oblomovs' house was once rich and famous in its own area, but then, God knows why, everything became poorer, smaller, and, finally, imperceptibly got lost among the old noble houses. Only the gray-haired servants of the house kept and passed on to each other the faithful memory of the past, cherishing it as a shrine.

That is why Zakhar loved his gray coat so much. Perhaps he valued his sideburns because in his childhood he saw many old servants with this old, aristocratic decoration.

Ilya Ilyich, immersed in thought, did not notice Zakhar for a long time. Zakhar stood in front of him silently. Finally he coughed.

- What you? Ilya Ilyich asked.

- You called, didn't you?

- Called? Why did I call - I do not remember! - he answered, stretching, - go to your place for now, and I will remember.

Zakhar left, and Ilya Ilyich continued to lie and think about the accursed letter.

A quarter of an hour has passed.

“Well, it’s full to lie down! he said.

Again the same jump and grumbling stronger. Zakhar entered, and Oblomov again plunged into thought. Zakhar stood for about two minutes, unfavorably, glancing a little sideways at the master, and finally went to the door.

– Where are you? Oblomov suddenly asked.

“You don’t say anything, so why stand there for nothing?” - Zakhar croaked, for lack of another voice, which, according to him, he lost while hunting with dogs, when he rode with an old master and when he blew like a strong wind in his throat.

He stood half-turned in the middle of the room and kept looking sideways at Oblomov.

“Are your legs withered that you can’t stand up?” You see, I'm preoccupied - just wait! Haven't been there yet? Look for the letter I received yesterday from the headman. Where are you doing it?

- Which letter? I didn’t see any letter,” Zakhar said.

- You took it from the postman: so dirty!

“Where did you put it—how should I know?” - Zakhar said, patting the papers and various things lying on the table with his hand.

“You never know anything. Look in the basket there! Or fell behind the sofa? Here, the back of the sofa has not yet been repaired; what would you call a carpenter to fix? After all, you broke it.

“I didn’t break it,” Zakhar answered, “she broke herself; it won’t be a century for her to be: someday she must break.

Ilya Ilyich did not consider it necessary to prove the contrary.

- Did you find it? he only asked.

“Here are some letters.

“Well, it’s not like that anymore,” Zakhar said.

- All right, come on! - Ilya Ilyich said impatiently, - I'll get up, I'll find it myself.

Zakhar went to his room, but as soon as he put his hands on the couch in order to jump on it, a hasty cry was heard again: “Zakhar, Zakhar!”

“Oh you, Lord! - Zakhar grumbled, going back to the office. – What is this torment? If only death would come sooner!”

- What do you want? - he said, holding on to the door of the office with one hand and looking at Oblomov, as a sign of displeasure, so sideways that he had to see the master half-heartedly, and the master could only see one immense whisker, from which you just expect that two or three will fly out birds.

- Handkerchief, quick! You yourself could guess: you do not see! Ilya Ilyich remarked sternly.

Zakhar did not show any particular displeasure or surprise at this order and reproach from the master, probably finding both of them very natural on his part.

- And who knows where the handkerchief is? he grumbled, walking around the room and feeling each chair, although it could be seen even so that nothing was lying on the chairs.

- You lose everything! he remarked, opening the door to the living room to see if anyone was there.

- Where? Search here! I haven't been there since the third day. Yes, hurry up! - said Ilya Ilyich.

- Where is the scarf? I don't have a scarf! - said Zakhar, throwing up his hands and looking around in all corners. “Yes, there he is,” he suddenly wheezed angrily, “under you!” There the end sticks out. Lie on it yourself, and ask for a handkerchief!

And without waiting for an answer, Zakhar went out. Oblomov felt a little embarrassed at his own mistake. He quickly found another reason to make Zakhar guilty.

- What a cleanliness you have everywhere: dust, dirt, my God! Get out, get out, look in the corners - you're not doing anything!

“If I don’t do anything ...” Zakhar spoke in an offended voice, “I try, I don’t regret my life!” And I erase the dust, and I sweep it almost every day ...

He pointed to the middle of the floor and to the table on which Oblomov dined.

“Out, out,” he said, “everything is swept up, tidied up, as if for a wedding ... What else?

- And what's that? interrupted Ilya Ilyich, pointing to the walls and the ceiling. – And this? And this? - He pointed to the towel thrown from yesterday, and to the plate with a slice of bread forgotten on the table.

“Well, I’ll probably take that away,” Zakhar said condescendingly, taking the plate.

- Just this! And the dust on the walls, and the cobwebs? .. - Oblomov said, pointing to the walls.

- I clean it up for Holy Week: then I clean the images and remove the cobwebs ...

- And sweep the books and pictures? ..

- Books and pictures before Christmas: then with Anisya we will go through all the cabinets. Now when are you going to clean up? You are all at home.

- I sometimes go to the theater and visit: if only ...

- What a cleaning at night!

Oblomov looked reproachfully at him, shook his head and sighed, while Zakhar looked indifferently out the window and sighed too. The master, it seems, thought: “Well, brother, you are even more Oblomov than I myself,” and Zakhar almost thought: “You're lying! you are only a master of speaking tricky and miserable words, but you don’t care about dust and cobwebs.

“Do you understand,” said Ilya Ilyich, “that dust starts moths?” I sometimes even see a bed bug on the wall!

- I have fleas too! Zakhar replied indifferently.

- Is it good? After all, this is bullshit!

Zakhar grinned all over his face, so that the grin even covered his eyebrows and sideburns, which parted to the sides from this, and a red spot spread all over his face up to his forehead.

- What is my fault that there are bugs in the world? he said with naive surprise. Did I make them up?

“It’s from impurity,” Oblomov interrupted. - What are you all lying about!

“And I did not invent the impurity.

- You have, here, there, mice run around at night - I hear.

“And I didn’t invent mice. There are a lot of this creature, like mice, cats, bedbugs, everywhere.

- How can others not have moths or bedbugs?

Distrust was expressed on Zakhar's face, or, to put it better, calm confidence that this does not happen.

“I have a lot of everything,” he said stubbornly, “you can’t see through every bug, you can’t fit into a crack in it.

And he himself, it seems, thought: “Yes, and what kind of sleep is it without a bug?”

“You sweep, pick rubbish from the corners - and there will be nothing,” Oblomov taught.

- Take it away, and tomorrow it will be typed again, - said Zakhar.

- It won’t be enough, - the master interrupted, - it shouldn’t.

- It will be enough - I know, - the servant repeated.

- And it will be typed, so sweep it again.

- Like this? Every day touch all the corners? Zakhar asked. - What kind of life is this? Better go to your soul!

- Why are others clean? Oblomov objected. “Look opposite, at the tuner: it’s nice to look, but only one girl ...

“And where will the Germans get rubbish,” Zakhar suddenly objected. - Look at how they live! The whole family has been eating bones for a whole week. The coat passes from the shoulders of the father to the son, and from the son again to the father. The dresses on his wife and daughters are short: they all tuck their legs under themselves, like geese ... Where can they get rubbish? They don’t have it, like we do, so that in the closets a bunch of old worn out clothes lay over the years or a whole corner of bread crusts accumulated over the winter ... They don’t even have a crust lying around in vain: they make crackers and with beer and drink it!

Zakhar even spat through his teeth, talking about such a stingy life.

- Nothing to talk about! Ilya Ilyich objected. - You better clean up.

“Sometimes I would take it away, but you don’t give it yourself,” Zakhar said.

- Get yours! You see, I'm in the way.

- Of course, you; you are all sitting at home: how will you clean up in front of you? Go away for the day, and I'll clean it up.

- Here's something else I thought up - to leave! Come on, you're better off.

- Yes true! Zakhar insisted. - Well, if only today they left, Anisya and I would clean everything up. And then we can’t manage it together: we still need to hire women, wash everything.

- E! what ideas - women! Go to yourself, - said Ilya Ilyich.

He was no longer glad that he called Zakhar to this conversation. He kept forgetting that if you touch this delicate object a little, you will not end up with trouble.

Oblomov would like it to be clean, but he would like it to be done somehow, imperceptibly, by itself; and Zakhar always started a lawsuit, as soon as they began to demand from him sweeping dust, washing floors, etc. In this case, he will begin to prove the need for enormous fuss in the house, knowing very well that the mere thought of this horrified his master.

Zakhar left, and Oblomov plunged into thought. A few minutes later another half hour struck.

"What is it? Ilya Ilyich said almost with horror. “Eleven o’clock is soon, but I haven’t got up yet, haven’t washed my face yet?”

Zakhar, Zakhar!

- Oh, my God! Well! - I heard from the front, and then a well-known jump.

- Ready to wash? Oblomov asked.

- Done a long time ago! Zakhar answered. Why don't you get up?

Why don't you tell me it's ready? I would have gotten up a long time ago. Come on, I'm following you now. I have to study, I'll sit down to write.

Zakhar left, but returned a minute later with a scribbled and oily notebook and scraps of paper.

- Well, if you write, by the way, if you please, and check the scores: you have to pay the money.

- What accounts? What money? Ilya Ilyich asked with displeasure.

- From the butcher, from the greengrocer, from the laundress, from the baker: everyone asks for money.

- Only about money and care! grumbled Ilya Ilyich. - And why don’t you file accounts a little, but all of a sudden?

- You all drove me away: tomorrow, yes tomorrow ...

“Well, now, can’t we see you tomorrow?”

- Not! They are already very annoying: they don’t lend anymore. Today is the first number.

– Ah! Oblomov said sadly. – New concern! Well, what are you standing? Put it on the table. I’ll get up right now, wash myself and take a look,” said Ilya Ilyich. "So you're ready to shower?"

- Ready!

- Well, now...

He began, groaning, to push himself up in bed to get up.

“I forgot to tell you,” Zakhar began, “just now, while you were still resting, the janitor’s manager sent: he says that you definitely need to move out ... you need an apartment.

- Well, what is it? If you need it, then, of course, we will go. What are you doing to me? This is the third time you've told me about this.

- They come to me too.

- Say we'll go.

- They say: you have been promising for a month, they say, but you still don’t move out; we say we'll let the police know.

- Let them know! Oblomov said decisively. - We will move ourselves, as soon as it gets warmer, in three weeks.

– Where weeks through three! The manager says that in two weeks the workers will come: they will break everything ... “Move out, he says, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow ...”

- Eee! too nimble! tomorrow! See what else! Would you like to order now? Don't you dare remind me of the apartment. I already forbade you once, and you again. Look!

– What am I to do? Zakhar replied.

– What to do? - that's how he gets rid of me! answered Ilya Ilyich. He's asking me! What do I care? You do not bother me, but there, as you want, and dispose of it, only so as not to move. Can't try for the master!

- But how, father, Ilya Ilyich, I will arrange? Zakhar began with a soft hiss. - The house is not mine: how can one not move from someone else's house, if they are driven? If my house were, so I would with my great pleasure ...

Is there any way to persuade them? “We, they say, have been living for a long time, we pay regularly.”

“I did,” Zakhar said.

- Well, what are they?

- What! They set up their own: “Move, they say, we need to redo the apartment.” They want to make one big apartment out of the doctor's office and this one, for the wedding of the master's son.

- Oh, my God! - Oblomov said with annoyance. “After all, there are such donkeys that get married!”

He rolled onto his back.

“You should write, sir, to the owner,” said Zakhar, “so maybe he wouldn’t touch you, but would order you to break down that apartment first.

Zakhar pointed with his hand somewhere to the right.

- Well, well, as soon as I get up, I'll write ... You go to your room, and I'll think about it. You don’t know how to do anything,” he added, “I have to worry about this rubbish myself.

Zakhar left, and Oblomov began to think.

But he was at a loss as to what to think about: whether about the letter from the headman, whether about moving to a new apartment, whether to begin to settle scores? He was lost in the tide of worldly worries and kept lying, tossing and turning from side to side. From time to time only jerky exclamations were heard: “Oh, my God! It touches life, it reaches everywhere.

It is not known how long he would have remained in this indecision, but the bell rang in the hall.

“Someone has come! - said Oblomov, wrapping himself in a dressing gown. - And I have not yet got up - a shame and nothing more! Who would it be so early?"

And he, lying down, looked with curiosity at the door.

A novel in four parts

Part one.Chapter I-II

In Gorokhovaya Street, in one of the large houses, the population of which would have been the size of an entire county town, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov was lying in bed in his apartment in the morning.

He was a man of about thirty-two or three years of age, of medium height, of pleasant appearance, with dark gray eyes, but with no definite idea, no concentration in his features. The thought walked like a free bird across the face, fluttered in the eyes, settled on half-open lips, hid in the folds of the forehead, then completely disappeared, and then an even light of carelessness glowed all over the face. From the face, carelessness passed into the poses of the whole body, even into the folds of the dressing gown.

Sometimes his eyes were darkened by an expression as if of weariness or boredom; but neither fatigue nor boredom could for a moment drive away from the face the gentleness that was the dominant and basic expression, not only of the face, but of the whole soul; and the soul shone so openly and clearly in the eyes, in the smile, in every movement of the head and hand. And a superficially observant, cold person, glancing casually at Oblomov, would say: "There must be a kind man, simplicity!" A deeper and more sympathetic person, peering into his face for a long time, would walk away in pleasant thought, with a smile.

Ilya Ilyich's complexion was neither ruddy, nor swarthy, nor positively pale, but indifferent or seemed so, perhaps because Oblomov was somehow flabby beyond his years: from a lack of movement or air, or maybe that and another. In general, his body, judging by the dull, too white light of the neck, small plump hands, soft shoulders, seemed too pampered for a man.

The dressing gown had in the eyes of Oblomov a darkness of invaluable virtues: it is soft, flexible; the body does not feel it on itself; he, like an obedient slave, submits to the slightest movement of the body.

There were silk curtains, carpets, a few paintings, bronzes, porcelain, and many beautiful little things.

The back of one sofa sank down, the pasted wood lagged behind in places.

Exactly the same character was worn by paintings, and vases, and trifles.

The owner himself, however, looked at the decoration of his study so coldly and absent-mindedly, as if asking with his eyes: "Who dragged and instructed all this here?" From such a cold view of Oblomov on his property, and perhaps even from a colder view of the same object of his servant, Zakhar, the appearance of the office, if you look there more and more closely, struck by the neglect and negligence that prevailed in it.

On the walls, near the paintings, cobwebs saturated with dust were molded in the form of festoons; mirrors, instead of reflecting objects, could rather serve as tablets for writing down some memoirs on them over the dust.

Carpets were stained. There was a forgotten towel on the sofa; on the table, a rare morning, there was not a plate with a salt shaker and a gnawed bone that had not been removed from yesterday's dinner, and there were no bread crumbs lying around.

If not for this plate, and not for a pipe just smoked leaning against the bed, or not for the owner himself lying on it, then one would think that no one lives here - everything was so dusty, faded, and generally devoid of living traces of human presence. On the bookcases, however, lay two or three open books, a newspaper was lying around. There was also an inkstand with feathers on the bureau; but the pages on which the books were unfolded were covered with dust and turned yellow; it is clear that they were abandoned long ago; the number of the newspaper was last year's, and if you dipped a pen in it, only a frightened fly would have escaped with a buzz.

The fact is that on the eve of Oblomov received from the village, from his headman, a letter of unpleasant content. It is known what troubles the headman can write about: crop failure, arrears, a decrease in income, etc. Although the headman wrote exactly the same letters to his master both in the past and in the third year, this last letter also had an effect as strong as any an unpleasant surprise.

Is it easy? We had to think about the means to take some action.

However, we must do justice to the care of Ilya Ilyich about his affairs.

According to the first unpleasant letter from the headman, received several years ago, he already began to create in his mind a plan for various changes and improvements in the management of his estate.

As soon as he woke up, he immediately set out to get up, wash himself and, after drinking tea, think carefully, figure something out, write it down and generally do this business properly.

For half an hour he lay still, tormented by this intention, but then he reasoned that he would still have time to do this even after tea, and tea can be drunk, as usual, in bed, especially since nothing prevents you from thinking while lying down.

And so he did. After tea, he had already risen from his bed and almost got up; glancing at the shoes, he even began to lower one foot from the bed towards them, but immediately picked it up again.

It struck half past ten, Ilya Ilyich started up.

What am I really? he said aloud with annoyance. - You need to know your conscience: it's time to get down to business! Just let yourself go and...

Zakhar! he shouted.

An elderly man entered the room, in a gray frock coat, with a hole under the arm, from which a piece of shirt stuck out, in a gray waistcoat, with copper buttons, with a skull bare as a knee, and with immensely wide and thick blond with graying whiskers, of which it would be three beards.

Nothing more reminded the old man of the lordly, wide and quiet life in the wilderness of the village. The old gentlemen have died, the family portraits have remained at home and, tea, are lying around somewhere in the attic; the legends about the ancient way of life and the importance of the surname all fade away or live only in the memory of the few old people who remained in the village. Therefore, a gray frock coat was dear to Zakhar. In him, and even in some signs, preserved in the face and manners of the master, reminiscent of his parents, and in his whims, which, although he grumbled, both to himself and aloud, but which meanwhile he respected inwardly, as a manifestation of the master's will , master's law, he saw faint hints of obsolete greatness.

Without these whims, he somehow did not feel the master over him; without them, nothing revived his youth, the village that they left long ago, and the legends about this old house, the only chronicle kept by old servants, nannies, mothers and passed down from generation to generation.

The Oblomovs' house was once rich and famous in its area, but then, God knows why, everything became poorer, smaller, and finally imperceptibly lost among the not old noble houses. Only the gray-haired servants of the house kept and passed on to each other the faithful memory of the past, cherishing it as a shrine.

That is why Zakhar loved his gray coat so much. Perhaps he valued his sideburns because in his childhood he saw many old servants with this old, aristocratic decoration.

Ilya Ilyich, immersed in thought, did not notice Zakhar for a long time. Zakhar stood in front of him silently. Finally he coughed.

What you? asked Ilya Ilyich.

Did you call?

Called? Why did I call - I do not remember! he answered, stretching. - Go to yourself for now, and I will remember.

Zakhar left, and Ilya Ilyich continued to lie and think about the accursed letter.

A quarter of an hour has passed.

Well, full lie! he said; - Zakhar!

Again the same jump and grumbling stronger. Zakhar entered, and Oblomov again plunged into thought. Zakhar stood for about two minutes, unfavorably, looking a little sideways at the master, and finally went to the door.

Where are you? - suddenly asked Oblomov.

You don't say anything, so why stand there for nothing? - Zakhar croaked, for lack of another voice, which, according to him, he lost while hunting with dogs, when he rode with an old master and when he blew like a strong wind in his throat.

He stood half-turned in the middle of the room and kept looking sideways at Oblomov.

Are your feet so dry that you can't stand up? You see, I'm preoccupied - just wait! Haven't stayed there yet? Look for the letter I received yesterday from the headman. Where are you doing it?

Which letter? I didn’t see any letter,” said Zakhar.

You took it from the postman: so dirty!

Where did they put him - why should I know? - said Zakhar, patting the papers and various things lying on the table with his hand.

You never know anything. There, in the basket, look! Or fell behind the sofa? Here, the back of the sofa has not yet been repaired; what would you call a carpenter to fix? After all, you broke it. You won't think of anything!

I did not break, - Zakhar answered, - she broke herself; it will not be a century for her to be: someday she must break.

Ilya Ilyich did not consider it necessary to prove the contrary.

Did you find it? he only asked.

Here are some letters.

Well, it’s not like that anymore,” Zakhar said.

Okay, come on! Ilya Ilyich said impatiently. - I'll get up, I'll find it myself.

Zakhar went to his room, but as soon as he put his hands on the couch in order to jump on it, a hasty cry was heard again: "Zakhar, Zakhar!"

Oh you, Lord! - Zakhar grumbled, going back to the office. - What is this torment? If only death would come sooner!

What do you want? - he said, holding on to the door of the office with one hand and looking at Oblomov, as a sign of displeasure, so sideways that he had to see the master half-heartedly, and the master could only see one immense whisker, from which you just expect two to fly out - three birds.

Handkerchief, quick! You yourself could guess: you do not see! Ilya Ilyich remarked sternly.

Zakhar did not show any particular displeasure or surprise at this order and reproach from the master, probably finding both of them very natural on his part.

And who knows where the handkerchief is? he grumbled, going around the room and feeling every chair, although it could be seen even so that nothing was lying on the chairs.

You are losing everything! he remarked, opening the door to the drawing-room to see if anyone was there.

Where? Search here! I haven't been there since the third day. Yes, rather! - said Ilya Ilyich.

Where is the scarf? I don't have a scarf! - said Zakhar, throwing up his hands and looking around in all corners. “Yes, there he is,” he suddenly wheezed angrily, “under you!” There the end sticks out. Lie on it yourself, and ask for a handkerchief!

And without waiting for an answer, Zakhar went out. Oblomov felt a little embarrassed at his own mistake. He quickly found another reason to make Zakhar guilty.

What a cleanliness you have everywhere: dust, dirt, my God! There, there, look in the corners - you're not doing anything!

If I don’t do anything ... - Zakhar spoke in an offended voice, - I try, I don’t regret my life! And I wash and sweep the dust almost every day ...

He pointed to the middle of the floor and to the table on which Oblomov dined.

Get out, get out, - he said, - everything is swept up, tidied up, as if for a wedding ...

What else?

And what's that? interrupted Ilya Ilyich, pointing to the walls and the ceiling. - And this?

And this? - He pointed to the towel thrown from yesterday and to the forgotten plate with a slice of bread on the table.

Well, I’ll probably take it away, ”Zakhar said condescendingly, taking a plate.

Just this! And the dust on the walls, and the cobwebs? .. - said Oblomov, pointing to the walls.

I clean this up for the holy week: then I clean the images and remove the cobwebs ...

And books, paintings, sweep? ..

Books and pictures before Christmas: then Anisya and I will go through all the cupboards. Now when are you going to clean up? You are all at home.

I sometimes go to the theater and visit: if only ...

What a cleaning at night!

Oblomov looked reproachfully at him, shook his head and sighed, while Zakhar looked indifferently out the window and sighed too. The master, it seems, thought: "Well, brother, you are even more Oblomov than I myself," and Zakhar almost thought:

"You're lying! You're just a master of speaking tricky and miserable words, but you don't care about dust and cobwebs."

Do you understand, - said Ilya Ilyich, - that moths start from the dust? I sometimes even see a bed bug on the wall!

I have fleas too! Zakhar replied indifferently.

Is it good? After all, this is bullshit! Oblomov noted.

Zakhar grinned all over his face, so that the grin even covered his eyebrows and sideburns, which parted to the sides from this, and a red spot spread all over his face up to his forehead.

What is my fault that there are bugs in the world? he said with naive surprise. Did I make them up?

This is from impurity, - interrupted Oblomov. - What are you all lying about!

And I did not invent the impurity.

You have mice running around there at night - I can hear it.

And I didn't invent mice. There are a lot of this creature, like mice, cats, bedbugs, everywhere.

How can others not have moths or bedbugs?

Distrust was expressed on Zakhar's face, or, to put it better, calm confidence that this does not happen.

I have a lot of everything,” he said stubbornly, “you can’t see through every bug, you can’t fit into a crack in it.

And he himself, it seems, thought: "And what kind of sleep is it without a bug?"

You sweep, pick rubbish from the corners - and there will be nothing, - Oblomov taught.

Take it away, and tomorrow it will be typed again, - said Zakhar.

It won’t be enough, - the master interrupted, - it shouldn’t.

It will be enough - I know, - the servant kept repeating.

And it will be typed, so sweep it again.

Like this? Every day touch all the corners? Zahar asked. - What kind of life is this? Better go to your soul!

Why are others clean? Oblomov objected. - Look opposite, at the tuner: it’s nice to look, but there’s only one girl ...

And where will the Germans take rubbish, - Zakhar suddenly objected. - Look at how they live! The whole family has been eating bones for a whole week. The coat passes from the shoulders of the father to the son, and from the son again to the father. The dresses on the wife and daughters are short: they all tuck their legs under themselves like geese ... Where can they get rubbish?

They don’t have this, like we do, so that a bunch of old, worn-out dresses lie in the closets over the years, or a whole corner of bread crusts accumulated over the winter ... They don’t even have a crust lying around in vain: they make crackers, and drink with beer!

Zakhar even spat through his teeth, talking about such a stingy life.

Nothing to talk! - Ilya Ilyich objected, you better clean it up.

Sometimes I would take it away, but you don’t give it yourself, ”said Zakhar.

Went yours! You see, I'm in the way.

Of course, you; you are all sitting at home: how will you clean up in front of you? Go away for the day, and I'll clean it up.

Here's another thought up - to leave! Come on, you're better off.

Yeah right! Zakhar insisted. - Here, if only today they would leave, Anisya and I would clean everything up. And then we can’t manage it together: we still need to hire women, wash everything.

E! what ideas - women! Go to yourself, - said Ilya Ilyich.

He was no longer glad that he called Zakhar to this conversation. He kept forgetting that if you touch this delicate object just a little, you will not end up with trouble.

Oblomov would like it to be clean, but he would like it to be done somehow, imperceptibly, naturally; and Zakhar always started a lawsuit, as soon as they began to demand from him sweeping dust, washing floors, etc. In this case, he will begin to prove the need for a huge fuss in the house, knowing very well that the mere thought of this horrified his master.

Zakhar left, and Oblomov plunged into thought. A few minutes later another half hour struck.

What's this? - Ilya Ilyich said almost with horror. - Eleven o'clock soon, but I haven't got up yet, haven't washed my face yet? Zahar, Zahar!

Oh my God! Well! - I heard from the front, and then a well-known jump.

Ready to wash? - asked Oblomov.

Done a long time ago! Zakhar answered. - Why don't you get up?

Why don't you tell me it's ready? I would have gotten up a long time ago. Come on, I'm following you now. I have to study, I'll sit down to write.

Zakhar left, but returned a minute later with a scribbled and oily notebook and scraps of paper.

Now, if you write, by the way, if you please, and check the scores: you have to pay money.

What accounts? What money? Ilya Ilyich asked with displeasure.

From the butcher, from the greengrocer, from the laundress, from the baker: everyone asks for money.

Only about money and care! grumbled Ilya Ilyich. - A you that little by little don't submit scores, and all of a sudden?

After all, you all drove me away: tomorrow, yes tomorrow ...

Well, now why not until tomorrow?

Not! They are already very annoying: they don’t lend anymore. Today is the first number.

Oh! - Oblomov said with anguish. - New concern! Well, what are you standing? Put it on the table. I'll get up now, wash myself and look, - said Ilya Ilyich. - So, are you ready to wash up?

Ready! Zakhar said.

Well now...

He began, groaning, to push himself up in bed to get up.

I forgot to tell you, - Zakhar began, - just now, while you were still resting, the janitor's manager sent: he says that you must definitely move out ...

apartment is needed.

Well, what is it? If you need it, then, of course, we will go. What are you doing to me? This is the third time you've told me about this.

They come to me too.

Say we'll go.

They say: you've been promising for a month, they say, but you still don't move out; we say we'll let the police know.

Let them know! Oblomov said decisively. - We ourselves will move, as it will be warmer, in three weeks.

Where in three weeks! The manager says that in two weeks the workers will come: they will break everything ... "Move out, he says, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow ..."

Eee! too nimble! See what else! Would you like to order now? Don't you dare remind me of the apartment. I already forbade you once; and you again.

What am I to do? Zakhar replied.

What to do? - this is how he gets rid of me! answered Ilya Ilyich. - He asks me! What do I care? You do not bother me, but there as you want, and dispose of it, only so as not to move. Can't try for the master!

But how, father, Ilya Ilyich, I will arrange? Zakhar began with a soft hiss. - The house is not mine: how can one not move from someone else's house, if they are driven?

If my house were, so I would with my great pleasure ...

Is there any way to persuade them? "We, they say, have been living for a long time, we pay regularly."

He spoke, - said Zakhar.

Well, what are they?

What! We set up our own: "Move, they say, we need to redo the apartment." They want to make one big apartment out of the doctor's office and this one, for the wedding of the master's son.

Oh my God! - Oblomov said with annoyance. - After all, there are such asses that get married!

He rolled onto his back.

You should write, sir, to the landlord,” said Zakhar, “so maybe he wouldn’t touch you, but would order you to break down that apartment first.

Zakhar pointed with his hand somewhere to the right.

Well, as soon as I get up, I'll write ... You go to your room, and I'll think about it. You don’t know how to do anything,” he added, “I have to worry about this rubbish myself.

Zakhar left, and Oblomov began to think.

But he was at a loss as to what to think about: whether about the letter from the headman, whether about moving to a new apartment, whether to begin to settle scores? He was lost in the tide of worldly worries and kept lying, tossing and turning from side to side. From time to time, only jerky exclamations were heard: "Oh, my God! It touches life, it gets everywhere." Read the work of Oblomov (Part 1) from Goncharov I.A., in the original format and in full. If you appreciated the work of Goncharov I.A..ru

PART ONE

DREAM OF OBLOMOV

Where are we? To what blessed corner of the earth did Oblomov's dream take us? What a wonderful land!

No, really, there is the sea, no high mountains, rocks and abysses, no dense forests - there is nothing grandiose, wild and gloomy.

And why is it, this wild and grandiose? Sea, for example? God bless him! It brings only sadness to a person: looking at him, you want to cry. The heart is embarrassed by timidity in front of the boundless veil of waters, and there is nothing to rest on the look, exhausted by the monotony of the endless picture.

The roar and frenzied peals of the waves do not caress a weak ear: they keep repeating their own, from the beginning of the world, one and the same song of a gloomy and undeciphered content; and one and the same groan is heard in it, the same complaints, as if a monster doomed to torment, and someone's piercing, ominous voices. Birds don't chirp around; only silent seagulls, like condemned men, rush dejectedly along the coast and circle over the water.

The roar of the beast is powerless before these cries of nature, the voice of man is insignificant, and the man himself is so small, weak, so imperceptibly disappears in the small details of the big picture! That may be why it is so hard for him to look at the sea.

No, God be with him, with the sea! Its very stillness and immobility do not give rise to a gratifying feeling in the soul: in the barely perceptible fluctuation of the water mass, a person still sees the same immense, albeit sleeping, force, which sometimes so venomously mocks his proud will and so deeply buries his brave plans, all his troubles and labors.

Mountains and abysses are also not created for the amusement of man. They are formidable, terrible, like the claws and teeth of a wild beast released and directed at him; they too vividly remind us of our mortal composition and keep us in fear and longing for life. And the sky there, above the rocks and abysses, seems so far and inaccessible, as if it had receded from people.

Not such a peaceful corner where our hero suddenly found himself.

The sky there, it seems, on the contrary, presses closer to the earth, but not with the aim of throwing stronger arrows, but only to hug her tighter, with love: it spreads so low overhead, like a parent’s reliable roof, to protect, it seems , a chosen corner from all sorts of adversities.

The sun shines brightly and hotly there for about half a year and then does not move away from there suddenly, as if unwillingly, as if turning back to look once or twice at a favorite place and give it in the fall, in the midst of bad weather, a clear, warm day.

The mountains there seem to be only models of those terrible mountains erected somewhere, which terrify the imagination. It is a series of gently sloping hills from which it is pleasant to ride, frolic, on your back, or, sitting on them, to look in thought at the setting sun.

The river runs merrily, frolicking and playing; it either spills into a wide pond, or aspires with a quick thread, or subsides, as if in thought, and crawls a little over the pebbles, releasing frisky streams from itself on the sides, under the murmur of which it sweetly slumbers.

The whole corner of fifteen or twenty versts around presented a series of picturesque sketches, cheerful, smiling landscapes. The sandy and gently sloping banks of a bright river, a small bush creeping up to the water from a hill, a twisted ravine with a stream at the bottom, and a birch grove - everything seemed to be deliberately tidied up one to one and masterfully drawn.

Exhausted by worries or completely unfamiliar with them, the heart asks to hide in this corner forgotten by everyone and live in happiness unknown to anyone. Everything promises there a calm, long-term life up to the yellowness of the hair and an imperceptible, sleep-like death.

Correctly and imperturbably, the yearly cycle takes place there.

According to the calendar, spring will come in March, dirty streams will run from the hills, the earth will thaw and smoke with warm steam; the peasant throws off his short fur coat, goes out into the air in one shirt and, covering his eyes with his hand, admires the sun for a long time, shrugging his shoulders with pleasure; then he will pull the cart turned upside down, now by one shaft, then by the other, or he will examine and kick the plow lying idly under a canopy, preparing for ordinary labors.

Sudden blizzards do not return in the spring, do not fall asleep fields and do not break trees with snow.

Winter, like an impregnable, cold beauty, maintains its character right up to the legitimized time of warmth; does not tease with unexpected thaws and does not oppress in three arcs with unheard-of frosts; everything proceeds according to the general order prescribed by nature.

In November, snow and frost begin, which by Epiphany intensifies to the point that the peasant, leaving the hut for a minute, will certainly return with frost on his beard; and in February, a sensitive nose already feels in the air a soft breath of approaching spring.

But summer, summer is especially intoxicating in that region. There you need to look for fresh, dry air, filled with - not lemon and not laurel, but simply the smell of wormwood, pine and bird cherry; there to look for clear days, slightly burning, but not scorching rays of the sun and for almost three months a cloudless sky.

As clear days go, then three or four weeks last; and the evening was warm there, and the night was stuffy. The stars are so welcoming, so friendly blinking from heaven.

Will it rain - what a beneficial summer rain! It will gush briskly, plentifully, jump merrily, like large and hot tears of a suddenly overjoyed person; and as soon as it stops, the sun again, with a clear smile of love, examines and dries the fields and hillocks; and the whole side again smiles with happiness in response to the sun.

The peasant joyfully welcomes the rain: “The rain will soak, the sun will dry!” - he says, substituting with pleasure his face, shoulders and back under the warm downpour.

Thunderstorms are not terrible, but only beneficial there: they happen constantly at the same set time, almost never forgetting Ilya's day, as if in order to support a well-known tradition among the people. And the number and strength of the blows, it seems, are the same every year, just as if a certain measure of electricity was released from the treasury for a year to the whole region.

Neither terrible storms nor destruction can be heard in that land.

No one ever read anything like it in the papers about this God-blessed corner. And nothing would ever have been printed, and nothing would have been heard about this region, if only the peasant widow Marina Kulkova, twenty-eight years old, had not given birth to four babies at once, which could no longer be kept silent.

The Lord did not punish that side either with Egyptian or simple plagues. None of the inhabitants has seen and does not remember any terrible heavenly signs, no balls of fire, no sudden darkness; there are no poisonous reptiles; locusts do not fly there; there are no roaring lions, no roaring tigers, not even bears and wolves, because there are no forests. Only munching cows, bleating sheep and clucking chickens roam the fields and the village.

God knows if a poet or a dreamer would be content with the nature of a peaceful corner. These gentlemen, as you know, love to stare at the moon and listen to the clicking of nightingales. They love the coquette moon, which would dress up in pale-yellow clouds and mysteriously see through the branches of trees or pour sheaves of silver rays into the eyes of its fans.

And in this region, no one knew what kind of moon this was - everyone called it a month. She somehow good-naturedly, with all her eyes, looked at the villages and the field and was very much like a cleaned copper basin.

It would be in vain for a poet to look with enthusiastic eyes at her: she would look at the poet just as ingenuously as a round-faced village beauty looks in response to the passionate and eloquent glances of urban red tape.

Solovyov is also not heard in that region, perhaps because there were no shady shelters and roses there; but what an abundance of quails! In the summer, when harvesting bread, the boys catch them with their hands.

Yes, they won’t think, however, that quail would be an object of gastronomic luxury there - no, such corruption has not penetrated into the mores of the inhabitants of that region: quail is a bird that is not shown as food by charter. There she delights the human ear with singing: that is why in almost every house a quail hangs in a thread cage under the roof.

A poet and a dreamer would not be satisfied even with the general appearance of this modest and unpretentious area. They would not have been able to see there some evening in the Swiss or Scottish taste, when all nature - and the forest, and the water, and the walls of the huts, and the sandy hills - everything burns like a crimson glow; when this crimson background is sharply set off by a cavalcade of men riding along a sandy winding road, accompanying some lady on walks to a gloomy ruin or hastening to a strong castle, where an episode about the war of two roses awaits them, told by their grandfather, a wild goat for dinner and sung by a young Miss, to the sound of the lute, a ballad - pictures with which the pen of Walter Scott so richly populated our imagination.

No, this was not the case in our region.

How quiet everything is, everything is sleepy in the three or four villages that make up this corner! They lay not far from each other and were as if accidentally thrown by a giant hand and scattered into different sides, and have remained so ever since.

As one hut fell on the cliff of a ravine, it has been hanging there since time immemorial, standing with one half in the air and propped up by three poles. Three or four generations quietly and happily lived in it.

It seems that a chicken would be afraid to enter it, and there lives with his wife Onisim Suslov, a respectable man who does not stare at full height in his dwelling.

Not everyone will be able to enter the hut to Onesimus; unless the visitor asks her stand back to the forest, and front to it.

The porch hung over the ravine, and in order to get on the porch with your foot, you had to grab the grass with one hand, the roof of the hut with the other, and then step straight onto the porch.

Another hut clung to a hillock like a swallow's nest; there three found themselves by chance nearby, and two stand at the very bottom of the ravine.

Everything is quiet and sleepy in the village: the silent huts are wide open; not a soul is visible; only flies fly in clouds and buzz in stuffiness.

Entering the hut, in vain you will begin to call loudly: dead silence will be the answer: in a rare hut, an old woman living out her life on the stove will respond with a painful groan or a dull cough, or a long-haired barefoot will appear from behind the partition three year old in one shirt, silently, gazes intently at the newcomer and timidly hides again.

The same deep silence and peace lie in the fields; only in some places, like an ant, a plowman, scorched by the heat, hovering on a black field, leaning on a plow and sweating.

Silence and imperturbable calm reign in the morals of people in that region. There were no robberies, no murders, no terrible accidents; neither strong passions nor daring undertakings excited them.

And what passions and enterprises might excite them? Everyone knew himself there. The inhabitants of this region lived far away from other people. The nearest villages and the county town were twenty-five and thirty versts away.

Peasants in known time they carried bread to the nearest pier to the Volga, which was their Colchis and the pillars of Hercules, and once a year some went to the fair, and had no more contact with anyone.

Their interests were focused on themselves, did not intersect and did not come into contact with anyone else.

They knew that eighty versts from them there was a "province", that is, a provincial town, but few went there; then they knew that further away, there, Saratov or Nizhny; they heard that there is Moscow and St. Petersburg, that the French or Germans live beyond St. Petersburg, and then the dark world began for them, as for the ancients, unknown countries inhabited by monsters, people with two heads, giants; darkness followed there - and, finally, everything ended with that fish that holds the earth on itself.

And as their corner was almost impassable, there was nowhere to get the latest news about what was happening in the world: the guards with wooden utensils lived only twenty miles away and knew no more than them. There was nothing even to compare them with their life-being; whether they live well, whether not; whether they are rich or poor; was there anything else you could wish for that others have.

Happy people lived, thinking that it should not and cannot be otherwise, confident that all others live in exactly the same way and that it is a sin to live otherwise.

They would not have believed it if they had been told that others plowed, sowed, reaped, sold in some other way. What passions and excitements could they have?

They, like all people, had both worries and weaknesses, a contribution of tribute or dues, laziness and sleep; but all this cost them cheaply, without blood disturbances.

In the last five years, out of several hundred souls, no one has died, let alone a violent, even a natural death.

And if someone from old age or from some chronic illness and rested in eternal sleep, then for a long time after that they could not be surprised at such an unusual event.

Meanwhile, it did not seem at all surprising to them how, for example, the blacksmith Taras himself almost got himself steamed to death in a dugout, to the point that it was necessary to pour water over him.

One of the crimes, namely the theft of peas, carrots and turnips in the gardens, was in great use, but one day two piglets and a chicken suddenly disappeared - an incident that outraged the entire neighborhood and was unanimously attributed to a wagon train passing the day before with wooden utensils to the fair. And then in general, accidents of any kind were very rare.

Once, however, a man was found lying behind the outskirts, in a ditch, by the bridge, apparently lagging behind the artel passing into the city.

The boys were the first to notice him and ran in horror to the village with the news of some terrible snake or werewolf that was lying in the ditch, adding that he had chased them and almost ate Kuzka.

Where is it taking you? - soothed the old people. - Is Al's neck strong? What do you need? Don't worry: you are not being chased.

But the peasants went on, and fifty sazhens before the place began to call out to the monster in different voices: there was no answer; they stopped; then they moved again.

In the ditch lay a peasant, his head resting on a hillock; a sack and a stick were lying around him, on which two pairs of bast shoes were hung.

The men did not dare to come close or touch.

Hey! You brother! they shouted in turn, scratching the back of their heads, some of them. - How are you? Hey, you! What do you want here?

The passer-by made a movement to raise his head, but could not: he was apparently unwell or very tired.

One decided to touch him with a pitchfork.

Don't shut up! Don't shut up! many shouted. - How do you know what he is: oh, nothing beats: maybe some kind of ... Don't bother him, guys!

Let's go, - some said, - really, let's go: what is he to us, uncle, or what? Only trouble with him!

And everyone went back to the village, telling the old people that there was a stranger lying there, that he didn’t hurt anything, and God knows that he was there ...

Outsider, don't stop it! - said the old men, sitting on the mound and putting their elbows on their knees. - Let it to yourself! And there was nothing for you to walk on!

Such was the corner where Oblomov was suddenly transported in a dream.

Of the three or four villages scattered there, there was one Sosnovka, the other Vavilovka, one verst from each other.

Sosnovka and Vavilovka were the hereditary fathers of the Oblomov family and therefore were known under the common name of Oblomovka.

In Sosnovka there was a manor and a residence. About five versts from Sosnovka lay the village of Verkhlevo, which also once belonged to the Oblomov family and had long since passed into other hands, and a few more huts scattered here and there, numbered in the same village.

The village belonged to a wealthy landowner who never showed up to his estate: it was managed by a German manager.

That's the whole geography of this corner.

Ilya Ilyich woke up in the morning in his little bed. He is only seven years old. It's easy and fun for him.

What a pretty, red, full he is! The cheeks are so round that some naughty puffs up on purpose, but he won't do them.

Nanny is waiting for him to wake up. She begins to put on his stockings; he is not given, he is naughty, dangles his legs; the nurse catches him, and they both laugh.

At last she succeeded in lifting him to his feet; she washes him, combs his hair, and leads him to his mother.

Oblomov, seeing his long-dead mother, trembled in his sleep with joy, with ardent love for her: from him, in a sleepy one, two warm tears slowly floated out from under his eyelashes and became motionless.

His mother showered him with passionate kisses, then examined him with greedy, caring eyes, whether his eyes were cloudy, asked if something hurt, asked the nurse, did he sleep peacefully, did he wake up at night, did he toss and turn in his sleep, was there any does he have a fever? Then she took him by the hand and led him to the icon.

There, kneeling down and embracing him with one arm, she prompted him the words of prayer.

The boy repeated them absently, looking out the window, from which coolness and the smell of lilacs poured into the room.

Are we, mother, going for a walk today? he suddenly asked in the midst of prayer.

Let's go, darling, - she said hastily, not taking her eyes off the icon and hurrying to finish the holy words.

The boy repeated them listlessly, but his mother poured her whole soul into them.

Then they went to their father, then to tea.

Near the tea table, Oblomov saw an elderly aunt living with them, eighty years old, incessantly grumbling at her girl, who, shaking her head from old age, served her, standing behind her chair. There are three elderly girls, distant relatives of his father, and a little crazy brother-in-law of his mother, and the landowner of seven souls, Chekmenev, who was visiting them, and some other old women and old men.

All this staff and the retinue of the Oblomov family picked up Ilya Ilyich in their arms and began to shower him with caresses and praises; he barely had time to wipe off the traces of uninvited kisses.

After that, feeding him with buns, crackers, and cream began.

Then the mother, after caressing him some more, let him go for a walk in the garden, around the yard, on the meadow, with strict confirmation to the nanny not to leave the child alone, not to allow him to horses, to dogs, to a goat, not to go far from home, and most importantly, not to let him in. into the ravine, as the most terrible place in the neighborhood, which enjoyed a bad reputation.

There they once found a dog, recognized as rabid because it rushed away from people when they gathered at it with pitchforks and axes, and disappeared somewhere behind the mountain; carrion was brought into the ravine; robbers, and wolves, and various other creatures were supposed to be in the ravine, which either did not exist in that region, or did not exist at all.

The child did not wait for the mother's warnings: he had been in the yard for a long time.

With joyful amazement, as if for the first time, he looked around and ran around the parental house with the gates bent to one side, with a wooden roof that had sunk in the middle, on which tender green moss grew, with a staggering porch, various outbuildings and settings, and with a neglected garden.

He passionately wants to run up to the hanging gallery that goes around the whole house, in order to look from there at the river; but the gallery is dilapidated, barely holding on, and only “people” are allowed to walk along it, but the gentlemen do not.

He did not heed his mother's prohibitions and was already heading for the seductive steps, but the nanny appeared on the porch and somehow caught him.

He rushed from her to the hayloft, with the intention of climbing up the steep stairs there, and as soon as she had time to reach the hayloft, she had to rush to destroy his plans to climb into the dovecote, penetrate into the barnyard and, God forbid! - into the ravine.

Oh, Lord, what a child, what a spinning top! Will you sit still, sir? Ashamed! the nanny said.

And the whole day, and all the days and nights of the nanny, were filled with turmoil, running around: either torture, then living joy for the child, then the fear that he would fall and hurt his nose, then tenderness from his unfeigned childish caress or vague longing for his distant future: it was only with this that her heart beat, with these excitements the blood of the old woman was warmed up, and somehow they supported her sleepy life, which without that, perhaps, would have died out a long time ago.

Not everything is frisky, however, the child: sometimes he suddenly calms down, sitting near the nurse, and looks at everything so intently. His childish mind observes all the phenomena taking place before him; they sink deep into his soul, then grow and mature with him.

The morning is magnificent; the air is cool; the sun is still low. From the house, from the trees, and from the dovecote, and from the gallery - long shadows ran far away from everything. Cool corners formed in the garden and in the yard, beckoning to thoughtfulness and sleep. Only in the distance the field with rye is as if on fire, and the river glistens and sparkles in the sun so much that it hurts the eyes.

Why is it, nanny, it's dark here, and there it's light, but will it be light there too? the child asked.

Because, father, that the sun goes towards the moon and does not see it, it frowns; and as soon as he sees from afar, he will brighten up.

The child thinks and looks around: he sees how Antip went for water, and on the ground, next to him, another Antip walked, ten times larger than the real one, and the barrel seemed the size of a house, and the shadow of the horse covered the whole meadow, the shadow only stepped twice across the meadow and suddenly moved over the mountain, and Antip still did not have time to move out of the yard.

The child also took a step or two, another step - and he will go over the mountain.

He would like to go to the mountain, to see where the horse has gone. He is towards the gate, but from the window he heard his mother's voice:

Nanny! Do not you see that the child ran out into the sun! Take him into the cold; bake his head - it will hurt, it will become nauseous, he will not eat. He will go into your ravine like that!

Wu! minion! - the nanny grumbles softly, dragging him onto the porch.

The child looks and observes with a sharp and captivating look how and what adults do, what they devote the morning to.

Not a single trifle, not a single feature escapes the inquisitive attention of a child; the picture of domestic life indelibly cuts into the soul; the soft mind is imbued with living examples and unconsciously draws a program of his life from the life around him.

It cannot be said that the morning was wasted in the Oblomovs' house. The sound of knives chopping cutlets and greens in the kitchen even reached the village.

The hissing of the spindle and the soft, thin voice of the woman could be heard from the human room: it was difficult to recognize whether she was crying or improvising a mournful song without words.

In the yard, as soon as Antip returned with a barrel, from different corners crawled towards it with buckets, troughs and jugs of a woman, a coachman.

And there the old woman will carry from the barn to the kitchen a cup of flour and a bunch of eggs; there the cook will suddenly throw water out of the window and pour it over Arapka, who has been staring out the window for the whole morning, wagging her tail affectionately and licking her lips.

Oblomov himself, the old man, is also not without work. He sits at the window all morning and strictly observes everything that is happening in the yard.

Hey Ignashka? What are you talking about, you fool? - he will ask a man walking through the yard.

I'm bringing knives to sharpen in the human room, - he answers, without looking at the master.

Well, bring it, bring it, yes, well, look, sharpen it!

Then he stops the woman:

Hey grandma! Woman! Where did you go?

To the cellar, father, - she said, stopping, and, covering her eyes with her hand, looked at the window, - to get milk to the table.

Well go, go! - answered the barin. - Look, don't spill the milk. - And you, Zakharka, shooter, where are you running again? - shouted then. - I'll let you run! I see that you are running for the third time. Went back to the hallway!

And Zakharka went back to doze in the hallway.

If the cows come from the field, the old man will be the first to see that they are watered; If he sees from the window that the cur is chasing a chicken, he will immediately take strict measures against disorder.

And his wife is very busy: she talks for three hours with Averka, the tailor, how to alter Ilyusha's jacket from her husband's jersey, draws with chalk herself and watches that Averka does not steal the cloth; then he will go into the girl's room, ask each girl how much lace to weave on the day; then he will invite Nastasya Ivanovna, or Stepanida Agapovna, or another of his retinue, to take a walk in the garden with a practical purpose: to see how the apple is pouring, whether yesterday's one, which has already ripened, has fallen; graft there, cut there, etc.

But the main concern was the kitchen and dinner. The whole house conferred about dinner; and the elderly aunt was invited to the council. Everyone offered his dish: some soup with offal, some noodles or stomach, some tripes, some red, some white gravy to the sauce.

Any advice was taken into account, discussed in detail, and then accepted or rejected by the final verdict of the hostess.

Nastasya Petrovna and Stepanida Ivanovna were constantly sent to the kitchen to remind them whether to add this or cancel that, bring sugar, honey, wine for food and see if the cook put everything that was released.

Caring for food was the first and main concern of life in Oblomovka. What calves fattened there for the annual holidays! What a bird was brought up! How many subtle considerations, how much knowledge and worries in courting her! Turkeys and chickens assigned to name days and other solemn days were fattened with nuts; geese were deprived of exercise, forced to hang motionless in a bag a few days before the holiday, so that they swam with fat. What stocks were there of jams, pickles, biscuits! What honeys, what kvass were brewed, what pies were baked in Oblomovka!

And so, until noon, everything was bustling and caring, everything lived such a full, ant-like, such a noticeable life.

On Sunday and holidays these industrious ants did not let up either: then the knock of knives in the kitchen was heard more often and stronger; the woman made several trips from the barn to the kitchen with double the amount of flour and eggs; there was more groaning and bloodshed in the poultry yard. They baked a gigantic cake, which the gentlemen themselves ate the next day; on the third and fourth days, the remains entered the girl's room; the pie survived until Friday, so that one completely stale end, without any filling, went, in the form of a special favor, to Antipas, who, crossing himself, undauntedly destroyed this curious fossil with a crash, enjoying more the consciousness that this was the master's pie than the pie itself, like an archaeologist who enjoys drinking rubbish wine from a shard of some thousand-year-old crockery.

And the child looked and observed everything with his childish mind, which did not miss anything. He saw how, after a useful and troublesome morning, noon and dinner would come.

Hot afternoon; the sky is clear. The sun stands motionless overhead and burns the grass. The air has ceased to flow and hangs without movement. Neither wood nor water moves; an imperturbable silence lies over the village and the field - everything seems to have died out. A human voice resounds loudly and far in the void. Twenty sazhens away you can hear a beetle flying by and buzzing, and in the thick grass someone is still snoring, as if someone has collapsed there and is sleeping a sweet dream.

And the house was dead silent. It was time for the afternoon nap.

The child sees that the father, and the mother, and the old aunt, and the retinue - all scattered in their corners; and who did not have it, he went to the hayloft, another to the garden, the third sought coolness in the passage, and another, covering his face with a handkerchief from flies, fell asleep where the heat killed him and threw down the bulky dinner. And the gardener stretched out under a bush in the garden, beside his pick, and the coachman slept in the stable.

Ilya Ilyich looked into the people's room: in the people's room everyone lay side by side, on the benches, on the floor and in the entryway, leaving the children to themselves; children crawl around the yard and dig in the sand. And the dogs climbed far into the kennels, since there was no one to bark at.

One could walk right through the whole house and not meet a soul; it was easy to rob everything around and take them out of the yard in carts: no one would interfere if only there were thieves in that region.

It was some kind of all-consuming, invincible dream, a true likeness of death. Everything is dead, only a variety of snoring in all tones and modes is rushing from all corners.

From time to time someone will suddenly raise his head from sleep, look senselessly, with surprise, at both sides and roll over to the other side, or, without opening his eyes, spit awake and, smacking his lips or grumbling something under his breath, will fall asleep again.

And the other quickly, without any preliminary preparations, jumps up with both feet from his bed, as if afraid of losing precious minutes, grabs a mug of kvass and, blowing on the flies floating there, so that they are carried to the other side, why the flies, until then immobile, begin to move violently, in the hope of improving their situation, wet their throats and then fall back on the bed like a shot.

And the child watched and watched everything.

He and his nanny went out into the air again after dinner. But even the nanny, in spite of all the severity of the lady's orders and of her own will, could not resist the charm of sleep. She, too, became infected with this epidemic disease that prevailed in Oblomovka.

At first she cheerfully looked after the child, did not let him go far from her, grumbled severely for playfulness, then, feeling the symptoms of an approaching infection, she began to beg not to go out of the gate, not to touch the goat, not to climb the dovecote or gallery.

She herself sat down somewhere in the cold: on the porch, on the threshold of the cellar, or simply on the grass, apparently in order to knit a stocking and look after the child. But soon she lazily appeased him, nodding her head.

“It will fit, oh, just look, this top will fit into the gallery,” she thought almost through a dream, “or something else ... as if into a ravine ...”

Here the old woman's head bowed to her knees, the stocking fell out of her hands; she lost sight of the child and, opening her mouth a little, let out a slight snore.

And he was looking forward to this moment, with which his independent life began.

He seemed to be alone in the whole world; he tiptoed away from the nurse, examined everyone who was sleeping where; stops and looks intently as someone wakes up, spits or mumbles something in a dream; then, with a beating heart, he ran up to the gallery, ran around on the creaking boards, climbed the dovecote, climbed into the wilderness of the garden, listened to the buzzing of the beetle, and watched its flight in the air far away; he listened to someone chirping in the grass, looking for and catching the violators of this silence; he will catch a dragonfly, tear off its wings and see what will come of it, or pierce a straw through it and watch how it flies with this addition; with pleasure, afraid to die, he watches the spider, how he sucks the blood of a caught fly, how the poor victim beats and buzzes in his paws. The child will end up killing both the victim and the tormentor.

Then he climbs into the ditch, digs, looks for some roots, peels off the bark and eats to his heart's content, preferring the apples and jam that mother gives.

He will also run out of the gate: he would like to go into the birch forest; he seems so close to him that in five minutes he would have reached him, not around, along the road, but straight ahead, through a ditch, wattle fences and pits; but he is afraid: there, they say, there are goblin, and robbers, and terrible beasts.

He also wants to run into the ravine: he is only fifty sazhens from the garden; the child already ran to the edge, screwed up his eyes, wanted to look into the crater of a volcano ... but suddenly all the rumors and legends about this ravine arose before him: he was seized with horror, and he, neither dead nor alive, rushes back and, trembling from fear, rushed to the nurse and woke the old woman.

She woke up from sleep, straightened the scarf on her head, picked up tufts of gray hair under it with her finger and, pretending that she had not slept at all, looked suspiciously at Ilyusha, then at the master's windows and began to poke with trembling fingers one into the other knitting needles of the stocking that lay with her. on the knees.

Meanwhile, the heat began to subside a little; in nature everything has become more alive; The sun has already moved towards the forest.

And the silence in the house was broken little by little: in one corner a door creaked somewhere; someone's steps were heard in the yard; in the hayloft someone sneezed.

Soon a man hurriedly carried from the kitchen, bending over from the weight, a huge samovar. They began to gather for tea: whose face was wrinkled and his eyes swollen with tears; the latter laid a red spot on his cheek and temples; the third speaks from a dream in a voice that is not his own. All this sniffs, groans, yawns, scratches his head and warms up, barely coming to his senses.

Dinner and sleep gave rise to an unquenchable thirst. Thirst burns the throat; he drinks twelve cups of tea, but this does not help: groaning, groaning is heard; they resort to lingonberry, pear water, kvass, and others to a medical allowance, just to fill the drought in their throats.

Everyone was looking for deliverance from thirst, as from some kind of punishment from the Lord; everyone is rushing about, everyone is languishing, like a caravan of travelers in the Arabian steppe, not finding a source of water anywhere.

The child is here, next to his mother: he peers into the strange faces around him, listens to their sleepy and sluggish conversation. It is fun for him to look at them, every nonsense they say seems curious to him.

After tea, everyone will do something: someone will go to the river and quietly wander along the shore, pushing pebbles into the water with their foot; the other will sit by the window and catch with his eyes every fleeting phenomenon: whether a cat runs across the yard, whether a jackdaw flies by, the observer pursues both with his eyes and the tip of his nose, turning his head to the right, then to the left. So sometimes dogs like to sit for whole days on the window, putting their heads under the sun and carefully looking at every passerby.

Mother will take Ilyusha's head, put it on her knees and slowly comb his hair, admiring its softness and making both Nastasya Ivanovna and Stepanida Tikhonovna admire it, and talk to them about Ilyusha's future, make him the hero of some brilliant epic she created. They promise him mountains of gold.

But now it's starting to get dark. In the kitchen, the fire crackles again, the fractional clatter of knives is heard again: dinner is being prepared.

The servants gathered at the gate: there is heard a balalaika, laughter. People are playing with burners.

And the sun was already sinking behind the forest; it cast several slightly warm rays, which cut through the entire forest in a fiery stripe, brightly pouring gold over the tops of the pines. Then the rays went out one by one; the last ray remained long; he, like a thin needle, pierced into a thicket of branches; but that one also faded.

Objects lost their shape; everything merged first into gray, then into a dark mass. The singing of the birds gradually weakened; soon they were completely silent, except for one stubborn one, who, as if in defiance of everyone, in the midst of the general silence alone chirped monotonously at intervals, but less and less often, and she finally whistled weakly, silently, for the last time, started up, slightly stirring the leaves around me... and fell asleep.

Everything was silent. Some grasshoppers crackled louder in their launches. White vapors rose from the earth and spread over the meadow and along the river. The river also subsided; a little later, and suddenly someone splashed in her for the last time, and she became motionless.

It smelled of dampness. It got darker and darker. The trees were grouped into some kind of monsters; in the forest it became frightening: there someone would suddenly creak, as if one of the monsters were moving from its place to another, and a dry twig seemed to crunch under his foot.

The first star shone brightly in the sky, like a living eye, and lights flickered in the windows of the house.

The moments of general, solemn silence of nature have come, those moments when the creative mind works harder, poetic thoughts boil hotter, when passion flares up in the heart more vividly or longing aches more painfully, when the grain of criminal thought ripens more calmly and stronger in a cruel soul, and when ... in Oblomovka everyone rests so soundly and calmly.

Let's go, mom, for a walk, - says Ilyusha.

What are you, God is with you! Now walk, - she answers, - it's damp, you'll catch a cold; and it’s scary: now the goblin walks in the forest, he takes away small children.

Where does he take it? What is it like? Where does he live? the child asks.

And the mother gave free rein to her unbridled fantasy.

The child listened to her, opening and closing his eyes, until finally sleep overcame him altogether. The nanny would come and, taking him from his mother's lap, would carry the sleepy one, with his head hanging over her shoulder, to bed.

The day has passed, and thank God! - said the Oblomovites, lying down in bed, groaning and making the sign of the cross. - lived happily; God bless tomorrow too! Glory to you, Lord! Glory to you, Lord!

Then Oblomov dreamed of another time: he was in endless winter evening timidly presses close to the nanny, and she whispers to him about some unknown side, where there are neither nights nor cold, where miracles all happen, where rivers of honey and milk flow, where no one does anything all year round, and only day and day they know that everyone is walking good fellows, such as Ilya Ilyich, and beauties, which cannot be said in a fairy tale or described with a pen.

There is also a kind sorceress, who sometimes appears to us in the form of a pike, who will choose for herself some kind of favorite, quiet, harmless, in other words, some lazy person whom everyone offends, and showers him, for no reason at all, different goods, but you know he eats himself and dresses up in a ready-made dress, and then marries some unheard-of beauty Militrissa Kirbityevna.

The child, ears and eyes pricked up, passionately dug into the story.

Nurse or legend so skillfully avoided everything that really exists in the story that imagination and mind, imbued with fiction, remained in his slavery until old age. The nanny kindly narrated the tale of Emel the Fool, this evil and insidious satire on our great-grandfathers, and perhaps also on ourselves.

Although the adult Ilya Ilyich later learns that there are no rivers of honey and milk, there are no good sorceresses, although he jokes with a smile over the tales of his nanny, but this smile is not sincere, it is accompanied by a secret sigh: his fairy tale is mixed with life, and he unconsciously sometimes sad, why a fairy tale is not life, and life is not a fairy tale.

He involuntarily dreams of Militrisa Kirbityevna; everything pulls him in that direction, where they only know that they are walking, where there are no worries and sorrows; he always has the disposition to lie on the stove, walk around in a ready-made, unearned dress and eat at the expense of a good sorceress.

Both old man Oblomov and grandfather listened in childhood to the same tales that passed in the stereotypical edition of antiquity, in the mouths of nannies and uncles, through centuries and generations.

The nanny, meanwhile, paints a different picture for the child's imagination.

She tells him about the exploits of our Achilles and Ulysses, about the prowess Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, about Polkan the Bogatyr, about Kolechishche the passerby, about how they wandered around Russia, beat countless hordes of infidels, how they competed in who would drink green wine in one breath and not grunt; then she spoke of evil robbers, sleeping princesses, petrified cities and people; finally, she moved on to our demonology, to the dead, to monsters and werewolves.

With the simplicity and good-naturedness of Homer, with the same burning fidelity of detail and the relief of pictures, she put into the children's memory and imagination the iliad of Russian life, created by our homerids of those foggy times, when man still did not get along with the dangers and mysteries of nature and life, when he trembled and before the werewolf, and before the goblin, and at Alyosha Popovich, he sought protection from the troubles surrounding him, when miracles reigned in the air, and in the water, and in the forest, and in the field.

Terrible and unfaithful was the life of the then man; it was dangerous for him to go beyond the threshold of the house: look, he would be beaten up by a beast, a robber would slaughter him, an evil Tatar would take away everything from him, or a man would disappear without a trace, without any trace.

And then suddenly signs of heaven will appear, pillars of fire and balls; and there, over a fresh grave, a light will flash, or someone is walking in the forest, as if with a lantern, but laughing terribly and sparkling in the dark.

And so many incomprehensible things happened to the person himself: a person lives and lives long and well - nothing, but suddenly he speaks such an uncouth one, or learns to scream in a voice that is not his own, or wanders around sleepy at night; the other, for no apparent reason, will begin to jar and beat to the ground. And before doing this, a hen had just crowed like a rooster and a raven had croaked over the roof.

A weak man lost himself, looking around in horror in life, and searched in his imagination for the key to the mysteries of his surroundings and his own nature.

Or maybe sleep, the eternal silence of a sluggish life and the absence of movement and any real fears, adventures and dangers forced a person to create in the natural world another, unrealizable one, and in it to look for revelry and fun for idle imagination or a clue to the ordinary chains of circumstances and causes of a phenomenon outside of itself. phenomena.

Our poor ancestors lived by touch; they did not inspire and did not restrain their will, and then they naively marveled or were horrified at the inconvenience, evil and interrogated the reasons from the mute, obscure hieroglyphs of nature.

Death happened to them from a dead man taken out of the house before with his head, and not with his feet from the gate; fire - from the fact that the dog howled three nights under the window; and they fussed to carry the dead man out of the gate with their feet, but they ate the same thing, in the same amount, and slept as before on the bare grass; the howling dog was beaten or driven out of the yard, and the sparks from the torch were nevertheless thrown into the crack of the rotten floor.

And to this day, Russian people, among the strict reality that surrounds him, devoid of fiction, loves to believe the seductive tales of antiquity, and for a long time, perhaps, he will not renounce this faith.

Listening to the nanny's tales about our Golden Fleece - Firebird, about the barriers and secrets of the magic castle, the boy either cheered up, imagining himself a hero of a feat - and goosebumps ran down his back, then he suffered for the failures of the brave man.

Story after story flowed. Nanny narrated with ardor, picturesquely, with enthusiasm, in places with inspiration, because she herself half believed the stories. The eyes of the old woman sparkled with fire; his head was trembling with excitement; his voice rose to an unfamiliar note.

The child, embraced by unknown horror, clung to her with tears in his eyes.

Whether it was about the dead rising from the graves at midnight, or about the victims languishing in captivity with a monster, or about a bear with a wooden leg that goes through villages and villages to look for a natural leg cut off from him, the child’s hair crackled on his head with horror ; children's imagination now froze, then boiled; he experienced a painful, sweetly painful process; nerves tensed like strings.

When the nanny gloomily repeated the words of the bear: “Squeak, creak, fake foot; I walked through the villages, walked through the village, all the women are sleeping, one woman does not sleep, she sits on my skin, cooks my meat, spins my wool, etc.; when the bear finally entered the hut and was preparing to grab the kidnapper of his leg, the child could not stand it: with trembling and squealing, he threw himself into the arms of the nanny; tears of fright spurt from him, and together he laughs with joy that he is not in the claws of the beast, but on the couch, next to the nurse.

The boy's imagination was inhabited by strange ghosts; fear and longing settled down for a long time, perhaps forever, in the soul. He sadly looks around and sees everything in life, harm, misfortune, everything dreams of that magical side, where there is no evil, trouble, sorrow, where Militrisa Kirbityevna lives, where they feed so well and dress for nothing ...

The fairy tale retains its power not only over children in Oblomovka, but also over adults until the end of their lives. Everyone in the house and in the village, from the master, his wife, to the hefty blacksmith Taras, everyone trembles for something on a dark evening: then every tree turns into a giant, every bush into a den of robbers.

The rattle of the shutters and the howling of the wind in the chimney made men, women and children turn pale. No one in Epiphany will go out after ten o'clock in the evening alone through the gate; everyone on Easter night is afraid to go to the stable, fearing to find a brownie there.

In Oblomovka they believed everything: both werewolves and the dead. If they tell them that a haystack was walking around the field, they will not hesitate and believe; If anyone misses a rumor that this is not a ram, but something else, or that such and such a Martha or Stepanida is a witch, they will be afraid of both the ram and Martha: it would not even occur to them to ask why the ram became not a ram, and Martha became a witch, and even attack the one who would dare to doubt this - so strong is faith in the miraculous in Oblomovka!

Ilya Ilyich will see later that the world is simply arranged, that the dead do not rise from the graves, that the giants, as soon as they start up, are immediately put into a booth, and robbers into prison; but if the very belief in ghosts disappears, then some residue of fear and unaccountable anguish remains.

Ilya Ilyich found out that there are no troubles from monsters, and he barely knows what they are, and at every step everything is waiting for something terrible and afraid. And now, when he remains in a dark room or sees a dead person, he trembles from the ominous melancholy planted in his soul in childhood; laughing at his fears in the morning, he turns pale again in the evening.

He is already studying in the village of Verkhlev, five versts from Oblomovka, with the local manager, the German Stolz, who has started a small boarding school for the children of the surrounding nobles.

He had his own son, Andrei, almost the same age as Oblomov, and they gave him one boy who almost never studied, but suffered more from scrofula, spent all his childhood constantly blindfolded or with his ears and cried all in secret about the fact that he lives not with his grandmother, but in a strange house, among the villains, that there is no one to caress him and no one will bake his favorite pie.

In addition to these children, there were no others in the boarding house yet.

There is nothing to do, father and mother put the spoiled Ilyusha behind the book. It was worth the tears, the screams, the whims. Finally taken away.

The German was a practical and strict man, like almost all Germans. Perhaps Ilyusha would have had time to learn something well from him if Oblomovka had been five hundred versts from Verkhlev. And then how to learn? The charm of the Oblomov atmosphere, way of life and habits extended to Verkhlyovo; after all, it, too, was once Oblomovka; there, except for Stolz's house, everything breathed the same primitive laziness, simplicity of morals, silence and immobility.

The mind and heart of the child were filled with all the pictures, scenes and customs of this life before he saw the first book. And who knows how early the development of the mental seed in the children's brain begins? How to follow the birth of the first concepts and impressions in the infant soul?

Perhaps when the child was still barely pronouncing the words, or perhaps not yet pronouncing at all, not even walking, but only looking at everything with that fixed, mute childish gaze that adults call dull, he already saw and guessed the meaning and connection of the phenomena surrounding him. spheres, but only did not admit it either to themselves or to others.

Perhaps Ilyusha has been noticing and understanding for a long time what they say and do in his presence: like his father, in plush trousers, in a brown woolen fleece jacket, all day and day he knows that he walks from corner to corner, with his hands folded back, sniffing snuff and blowing his nose, and mother goes from coffee to tea, from tea to dinner; that a parent will never even think of believing how many kopecks are beveled or squeezed, and to exact for an omission, but give him a handkerchief not soon, he will shout about riots and turn the whole house upside down.

Perhaps his childish mind had long ago decided that this is how, and not otherwise, one should live, as adults live around him. And how else would you order him to decide? How did adults live in Oblomovka?

Did they ask themselves the question: why is life given? God knows. And how did they respond to it? Probably not; it seemed to them very simple and clear.

They have not heard of the so-called hard-working life, of people who carry languishing cares in their chests, scurry for some reason from corner to corner across the face of the earth, or give their lives to eternal, endless labor.

The Oblomovites also had little faith in spiritual anxieties; they did not take for life the cycle of eternal aspirations somewhere, towards something; they were afraid, like fire, of passions; and just as in another place the body of people quickly burned out from the volcanic work of the inner, spiritual fire, so the soul of the Oblomovites peacefully, without hindrance, sank into a soft body.

Life did not stigmatize them, like others, neither with premature wrinkles, nor with moral destructive blows and ailments.

Good people understood it only as the ideal of peace and inactivity, disturbed from time to time by various unpleasant accidents, such as: illnesses, losses, quarrels and, among other things, work.

They endured labor as a punishment imposed on our forefathers, but they could not love, and where there was an opportunity, they always got rid of it, finding it possible and proper.

They never embarrassed themselves with any vague intellectual or moral questions: that is why they always bloomed with health and fun, that is why they lived there for a long time; men at forty looked like young men; the old people did not struggle with a difficult, painful death, but, having lived to the point of impossibility, they died as if furtively, quietly freezing and imperceptibly breathing their last breath. That is why they say that before the people were stronger.

Yes, in fact, it is stronger: before, they were in no hurry to explain to the child the meaning of life and prepare him for it, as for something tricky and serious; they didn’t torment him over books that give rise to a multitude of questions in his head, and questions gnaw at his mind and heart and shorten his life.

The norm of life was ready and taught to them by their parents, and they accepted it, also ready, from grandfather, and grandfather from great-grandfather, with the covenant to observe its integrity and inviolability, like the fire of Vesta. As what was done under grandfathers and fathers, so it was done under the father of Ilya Ilyich, so, perhaps, it is still being done now in Oblomovka.

What did they have to think about and what to worry about, what to learn, what goals to achieve?

Nothing is needed: life, like a calm river, flowed past them; they could only sit on the banks of this river and observe the inevitable phenomena, which, in turn, without a call, appeared before each of them.

And so the imagination of the sleeping Ilya Ilyich began, just as in turn, like living pictures, to open at first the three main acts of life, played out both in his family and with relatives and friends: homeland, wedding, funeral.

Then a motley procession of its cheerful and sad divisions stretched out: christenings, name days, family holidays, incantations, breaking the fast, noisy dinners, related congresses, greetings, congratulations, official tears and smiles.

Everything was sent with such precision, so solemnly and solemnly.

He even imagined familiar faces and their mines at different ceremonies, their care and vanity. Give them what delicate matchmaking you want, what kind of solemn wedding or name day you want - they will do it according to all the rules, without the slightest omission. Whom to plant where, what and how to serve, who to go with whom in ceremonies, whether I will accept to observe - in all this no one has ever made the slightest mistake in Oblomovka.

Will the child not be able to go out there? One has only to look at what pink and weighty cupids the local mothers carry and lead. They stand for the children to be plump, white and healthy.

They will retreat from spring, they will not want to know it, if they do not bake at the beginning of its lark. How can they not know and not do it?

Here is their whole life and science, here are all their sorrows and joys: that is why they drive away any other care and sorrow from themselves and do not know other joys; their life was teeming exclusively with these fundamental and inevitable events, which provided endless food for their minds and hearts.

They, with their hearts beating with excitement, expected a rite, a feast, a ceremony, and then, having baptized, married or buried a person, they forgot the person himself and his fate and plunged into the usual apathy, from which they were led out by a new similar event - name day, wedding and etc.

As soon as a child was born, the first concern of the parents was, as accurately as possible, without the slightest omission, to perform on him all the rites required by decency, that is, to set a feast after the christening; then began caring for him.

The mother set herself and the nanny a task: to leave a healthy child, to protect him from a cold, from an eye and other hostile circumstances. They worked diligently so that the child was always cheerful and ate a lot.

As soon as they put the young man on his feet, that is, when he no longer needs a nanny, a secret desire already creeps into the heart of the mother to find him a girlfriend - also healthier, rosier.

Again comes the era of rituals, feasts; finally, the wedding; the whole pathos of life was concentrated on this.

Then repetitions began: the birth of children, rites, feasts, until the funeral changed the scenery; but not for long: some faces give way to others, children become youths and at the same time suitors, marry, produce others like themselves - and so life according to this program stretches out in an uninterrupted monotonous fabric, imperceptibly breaking off at the very grave.

True, sometimes other worries were imposed on them, but the Oblomovites met them for the most part with stoic immobility, and the worries, circling over their heads, rushed past, like birds that fly to a smooth wall and, not finding a place to take shelter, flutter their wings in vain. near a solid stone and fly further.

So, for example, once a part of the gallery on one side of the house suddenly collapsed and buried a hen with chickens under its ruins; Aksinya, the wife of Antipas, who would have sat down under the gallery with the bottom, but at that time, fortunately for her, would have gone for the earlobes, would have also got it.

There was a hubbub in the house: everyone came running, from young to old, and were horrified, imagining that instead of a hen with chickens, the lady herself with Ilya Ilyich could walk around here.

Everyone gasped and began to reproach each other for something that had not occurred to them for a long time: to remind one, to order to correct the other, to correct the third.

Everyone was amazed that the gallery collapsed, and on the eve they wondered how it had been holding up for so long!

Worries and talk began about how to improve the matter; they took pity on the mother hen with the chickens and slowly dispersed to their places, strictly forbidding them to bring Ilya Ilyich to the gallery.

Then, about three weeks later, Andryushka, Petrushka, Vaska were ordered to drag the collapsed boards and railings to the sheds so that they would not lie on the road. They lay there until spring.

Every time the old man Oblomov sees them from the window, he will be preoccupied with the thought of an amendment: he will call for a carpenter, begin to confer on how best to do it, whether to build a new gallery or break down the remains; then he will let him go home, saying: "Go for yourself, and I will think."

This went on until Vaska or Motka informed the master that, when he, Motka, climbed the remains of the gallery this morning, the corners completely fell behind the walls and looked like they would collapse again.

Then the carpenter was summoned to a final meeting, as a result of which it was decided to support the rest of the surviving gallery for the time being with old fragments, which was done by the end of the same month.

E! Yes, the gallery will go again again! the old man said to his wife. - Look how Fedot beautifully arranged the logs, like the columns of the leader in the house! Now it's good: again for a long time!

Someone reminded him that by the way, it would be nice to fix the gate and fix the porch, otherwise, they say, not only cats, but also pigs crawl through the stairs into the basement.

Yes, yes, it’s necessary, ”Ilya Ivanovich answered solicitously and immediately went to inspect the porch.

In fact, you see how it is completely shaken, ”he said, shaking the porch with his feet like a cradle.

Yes, even then it staggered, as it was made, - someone noticed.

So what was wobbly? - answered Oblomov. - Yes, it didn’t fall apart, even though it’s worth sixteen years without amendment. Glorious then did Luke!.. There was a carpenter, so a carpenter ... died - the kingdom of heaven to him! Today they are spoiled: they won't do it.

And he turned his eyes in the other direction, and the porch, they say, is tottering to this day, and still has not collapsed.

It can be seen that this carpenter Luke was really glorious.

It is necessary, however, to give the owners justice: sometimes in trouble or inconvenience, they will be very worried, even get excited and angry.

How, they say, can you start or leave both? We must take action now. And they only talk about how to repair the bridge, or something, across a ditch, or enclose a garden in one place so that the cattle do not spoil the trees, because part of the wattle fence completely lay on the ground.

Ilya Ivanovich extended his solicitude even to the point that one day, while walking in the garden, he personally lifted, groaning and groaning, the wattle fence and ordered the gardener to put up two poles as soon as possible: thanks to Oblomov’s diligence, the wattle fence stood like that all summer, and only in winter it fell down with snow again.

Finally, it even got to the point that three new boards were laid on the bridge, immediately, as soon as Antip fell off it, with a horse and a barrel, into a ditch. He had not yet had time to recover from a bruise, and the bridge was finished almost anew.

Cows and goats also took a little after the new fall of the wattle fence in the garden: they ate only currant bushes and began to peel off the tenth linden, but they didn’t reach the apple trees, as the order followed to dig the wattle fence properly and even dig in a groove.

The two cows and the goat, caught in action, also got it: they puffed up their sides nicely!

Ilya Ilyich also dreams of a large dark living room in his parents' house with antique ash armchairs always covered with slipcovers, with a huge, awkward and hard sofa upholstered in a faded blue barrack in spots, and one large leather armchair.

A long winter evening is coming.

The mother sits on the sofa, her legs tucked under her, and lazily knits a baby stocking, yawning and scratching her head with a knitting needle from time to time.

Nastasya Ivanovna and Pelageya Ignatievna sit beside her and, with their noses buried in work, are diligently sewing something for the holiday for Ilyusha, or for his father, or for themselves.

The father, with his hands behind his back, walks up and down the room in perfect pleasure, or he will sit down in an armchair and, after sitting for a while, begin to walk again, attentively listening to the sound of his own steps. Then he sniffs the tobacco, blows his nose and sniffs again.

One tallow candle burns dimly in the room, and this was allowed only in winter and autumn evenings. In the summer months, everyone tried to go to bed and get up without candles, in daylight.

This was done partly out of habit, partly out of economy. For every item that was not produced at home, but was purchased by purchase, the Oblomovites were extremely stingy.

They will gladly slaughter an excellent turkey or a dozen chickens for the arrival of a guest, but they will not put an extra raisin in the dish and will turn pale, as the same guest will arbitrarily take it into his head to pour himself into a glass of wine.

However, such depravity almost did not happen there: perhaps some tomboy, a person who died in the general opinion, will do this; such a guest will not be allowed into the yard.

No, such manners were not there: a guest there before a triple regale and will not touch anything. He knows very well that a single meal more often contains a request to refuse the offered dish or wine than to taste it.

Even two candles are not lit for everyone: a candle was bought in the city with money and, like all purchased things, was protected under the key of the hostess herself. Cinders were carefully counted and hidden.

In general, they did not like to spend money there, and, no matter how necessary a thing was, the money for it was always issued with great condolence, and even if the cost was insignificant. A significant waste was accompanied by groans, cries and abuse.

The Oblomovites agreed to endure any kind of inconvenience better, they even got used to not considering them as inconveniences, than to spend money.

From this, the sofa in the living room has long been all stained, from this the leather armchair of Ilya Ivanych is only called leather, but in fact it is not that bast, not that rope: there is only one scrap of leather left on the back, and the rest has already fallen to pieces for five years and peeled off; That's why, perhaps, the gates are all crooked, and the porch is tottering. But to pay for something, even the most necessary, suddenly two hundred, three hundred, five hundred rubles seemed to them almost suicide.

Hearing that one of the surrounding young landowners went to Moscow and paid three hundred rubles for a dozen shirts, twenty-five rubles for boots and forty rubles for a waistcoat for the wedding, old Oblomov crossed himself and said with an expression of horror, patter, that “a sort of young man should be imprisoned in jail."

In general, they were deaf to the political and economic truths about the need for a quick and lively circulation of capital, about increased productivity and a change in products. In the simplicity of their souls they understood and put into practice the only use of capitals - to keep them in a chest.

On the chairs in the living room, in different positions, the inhabitants or ordinary visitors of the house sit and sniff.

For the most part, deep silence reigns between the interlocutors: everyone sees each other daily; mental treasures are mutually exhausted and explored, and there is little news from outside.

Quiet; only the steps of heavy, homemade boots of Ilya Ivanovich are heard, the wall clock in the case still taps dully with a pendulum, and a thread torn from time to time by hand or teeth at Pelageya Ignatievna or at Nastasya Ivanovna breaks the deep silence.

So sometimes half an hour will pass, unless someone yawns aloud and crosses his mouth, saying: “Lord have mercy!”

A neighbor yawns behind him, then the next one, slowly, as if on command, opens his mouth, and so on, the contagious play of air in the lungs will bypass everyone, and a tear will break through another.

Or Ilya Ivanovich will go to the window, look in there and say with some surprise: “Only five more hours, and how dark it is outside!”

Yes, someone will answer, it is always dark at this time; the long evenings are coming.

And in the spring they will be surprised and delighted that long days are coming. And ask why they need these long days, they themselves do not know.

And they shut up again.

And there someone will begin to remove from the candle and suddenly extinguish it - everyone will start up: “Unexpected guest!” someone will surely say.

Sometimes this will lead to a conversation.

Who would this guest be? the hostess will say. - Is it Nastasya Faddeevna? Oh, God bless! Well no; She will not be closer than a holiday. That would be joy! They would hug and cry with her together! And for matins, and for mass together ... Yes, where should I go after her! I’m a gift that I’m younger, and I don’t have to endure so much!

And when, I mean, did she leave us? - asked Ilya Ivanovich. - It seems, after Ilyin's day?

What are you, Ilya Ivanovich! You always get confused! She didn’t even wait for seven, ”the wife corrected.

She, it seems, was here in petrovka, - Ilya Ivanovich objects.

You always are! - the wife will reproachfully say. - Arguing, only embarrassing ...

Well, why wasn't she in Petrovka? Even then, everyone baked pies with mushrooms: she loves ...

So this is Marya Onisimovna: she loves pies with mushrooms - how can you not remember! Yes, and Marya Onisimovna stayed not until Ilyin's day, but before Prokhor and Nikanor.

They kept track of time by holidays, by seasons, by various family and domestic occasions, never referring to months or numbers. Perhaps this was partly due to the fact that, except for Oblomov himself, others all confused both the names of the months and the order of numbers.

The defeated Ilya Ivanovich will fall silent, and again the whole society will plunge into slumber. Ilyusha, having collapsed behind his mother, is also dozing, and sometimes completely asleep.

Yes, - later one of the guests will say with a deep sigh, - here is the husband of Marya Onisimovna, the deceased Vasily Fomich, what he was, God bless him, healthy, but he died! And he didn’t live sixty years - he would have lived a hundred years!

We will all die, to whom when - the will of God! - Pelageya Ignatievna objects with a sigh. - Who dies, but the Khlopovs do not have time to baptize: they say Anna Andreevna gave birth again - this is the sixth.

Is Anna Andreevna alone! - said the hostess. - That's how her brother will be married and the children will go - how much more trouble will there be! And the smaller ones grow up, they also look at the suitors; give your daughters in marriage, but where are the suitors here? Today, you see, everyone wants a dowry, but everything is in money ...

What are you talking about? - Ilya Ivanovich asked, going up to those who were talking.

Yes, we are saying...

And they repeat the story to him.

That's human life! Ilya Ivanovich said instructively. - One dies, another is born, the third gets married, and we are all getting old: not like year after year, day after day does not happen! Why is this so? Wouldn't it matter if every day was like yesterday, yesterday like tomorrow!.. Sad, as you think...

The old grows old, and the young grows! - someone said in a sleepy voice from the corner.

We must pray to God more and not think about anything! the hostess remarked sternly.

True, true, - Ilya Ivanovich responded cowardly, quickly, having taken it into his head to philosophize, and again went to walk back and forth.

For a long time they are silent again; only threads that are threaded back and forth with a needle hiss. Sometimes the hostess will break the silence.

Yes, it's dark outside, she says. - Here, God willing, as soon as we wait for the Christmas time, they will come to visit their own, it will already be more fun, and it is not clear how the evenings will pass. Now, if Malanya Petrovna would come, there would be leprosy here! What won't she do! And pour tin, and drown wax, and run out of the gate; the girls will lead me all astray. He will start different games ... such, right!

Yes, lady of the world! - said one of the interlocutors. - In the third year, she invented riding from the mountains, that's how Luka Savich bruised his eyebrow ...

Suddenly everyone started up, looked at Luka Savic and burst into laughter.

How are you, Luka Savic? Come on, come on, tell me! - says Ilya Ivanovich and dies with laughter.

And everyone continues to laugh, and Ilyusha woke up, and he laughed.

Well, what to tell! - says the embarrassed Luka Savic. - It's all out Alexei Naumych invented: there was nothing at all.

E! - they all joined in chorus. - But how could there be nothing? Are we really dead? .. And the forehead, forehead, there and still the scar is visible ...

And they laughed.

What are you laughing at? Luka Savic tries to utter in between laughter. - I would ... and not that one ... yes, that’s all Vaska, the robber ... I slipped the old sled ... they parted under me ... I and that ...

General laughter covered his voice. In vain did he try to tell the story of his fall: laughter spread throughout the society, penetrated to the hall and to the girls' room, embraced the whole house, everyone remembered Funny case, everyone laughs for a long time, together, unspeakably like the Olympic gods. As soon as they begin to fall silent, someone will pick it up again - and it’s off to write.

Finally, somehow, with difficulty, they calmed down.

And what, are you going to ride about Christmas time, Luka Savich? Ilya Ivanovich asked after a pause.

Again a general burst of laughter, which lasted ten minutes.

Shouldn't Antipka be ordered to make a mountain by fasting? - Oblomov will suddenly say again. - Luka Savich, they say, is a big hunter, he can't wait ...

The laughter of the whole company did not let him finish.

Are those ... sleds intact? - one of the interlocutors uttered hardly from laughter.

Again laughter.

Everyone laughed for a long time, and finally, little by little, they began to calm down: one wiped away his tears, another blew his nose, a third coughed furiously and spat, uttering with difficulty:

Oh you, Lord! The sputum completely choked ... made me laugh then, by God! Such a sin! How he is with his back up, and the floors of the caftan are apart ...

Here followed finally the last, most prolonged roar of laughter, and then everything fell silent. One sighed, the other yawned aloud, with a sentence, and everything fell into silence.

As before, only the swing of the pendulum, the clatter of Oblomov's boots, and the slight crackle of a bitten off thread could be heard.

Suddenly Ilya Ivanovich stopped in the middle of the room, looking worried, holding the tip of his nose.

What is this trouble? Check this out! - he said. - To be dead: the tip of my nose itches all the time ...

Oh you, Lord! - clapping her hands, said the wife. - What kind of dead man is this, if the tip itches? Dead man - when the nose itches. Well, Ilya Ivanovich, what you, God be with you, forgetful! That's what you say in public someday or at a party and - you will be ashamed.

And what does it mean, the tip itches? asked the embarrassed Ilya Ivanovich.

Look into the glass. And how it is possible: dead man!

I confuse everything! - said Ilya Ivanovich. - Where can I mention it: either the side of the nose itches, then from the end, then the eyebrows ...

On the side, - picked up Pelageya Ivanovna, - means to lead; eyebrows itch - tears; forehead - bow; on the right side it itches - for a man, on the left - for a woman; ears itch - it means rain, lips - kiss, mustaches - there are gifts, elbow - sleep in a new place, soles - road ...

Well, Pelageya Ivanovna, well done! - said Ilya Ivanovich. - And then when the oil is cheap, the back of the head, or something, itches ...

The ladies began to laugh and whisper; some of the men were smiling; another burst of laughter was preparing, but at that moment there was heard in the room at the same time, as it were, the growl of a dog and the hiss of a cat, when they were about to throw themselves at each other. It was the clock.

E! Yes, nine o'clock! - Ilya Ivanovich said with joyful amazement. - Look, perhaps, and not see how time has passed. Hey Vaska! Vanka! Motka!

Three sleepy faces appeared.

Why don't you set the table? - Oblomov asked with surprise and annoyance. - No, to think about the gentlemen? Well, what are you standing for? Hurry, vodka!

That's why the tip of the nose itched! said Pelageya Ivanovna vividly. - You will drink vodka and look into the glass.

After supper, having smacked their lips and crossed each other, everyone disperses to their beds, and sleep reigns over careless heads.

Ilya Ilyich sees in a dream not one, not two such evenings, but whole weeks, months and years of days and evenings spent like this.

Nothing disturbed the monotony of this life, and the Oblomovites themselves were not burdened by it, because they could not imagine any other way of life; and even if they could imagine, they would turn away from him with horror.

They did not want another life, and they would not love it. They would be sorry if circumstances brought changes to their life, whatever they were. They will be bitten by longing if tomorrow does not look like today, and the day after tomorrow does not look like tomorrow.

Why do they need variety, change, accidents that others ask for? Let others disentangle this cup, but they, the Oblomovites, have nothing to do with it. Let others live as they wish.

After all, accidents, even if there are some benefits, are restless: they require trouble, worries, running around, do not sit still, trade or write - in a word, turn around, is it a joke!

For decades they continued to sniff, doze and yawn or burst into good-natured laughter from village humor, or, gathering in a circle, told what they had seen in a dream at night.

If the dream was terrible - everyone thought, they were afraid in earnest; if it was prophetic, everyone was genuinely happy or sad, depending on whether the dream was sad or comforting. Whether a dream required the observance of some sign, active measures were immediately taken for this.

This is not how they play fools, their trump cards, but on holidays with guests in Boston or lay out grand solitaire, guess at the king of hearts and the queen of clubs, predicting marriage.

Sometimes some Natalya Faddeevna will come to visit for a week or two. First, the old women will sort out the entire neighborhood, who lives in what way, who does what; they will penetrate not only into family life, into backstage life, but into the innermost thoughts and intentions of everyone, get into the soul, scold, discuss unworthy, most unfaithful husbands, then recount different occasions: name day, christening, homeland, who treated what, whom called who was not.

Tired of this, they will start showing new clothes, dresses, coats, even skirts and stockings. The hostess will boast of some canvases, threads, laces of a homemade product.

But that too will be depleted. Then they add coffee, teas, jams. Then they move on to silence.

They sit for a long time, looking at each other, at times they sigh heavily about something. Sometimes someone will cry.

What are you, my mother? another will ask in alarm.

Oh, sad, little dove! - the guest answers with a heavy sigh. - We angered the Lord God, accursed. Do not be good.

Oh, do not scare, do not frighten, dear! interrupts the hostess.

Yes, yes, she continues. - The last days have come: tongue upon tongue will rise, kingdom upon kingdom ... doomsday will come! - Natalya Faddeevna finally speaks out, and both weep bitterly.

There were no grounds for such a conclusion on the part of Natalya Faddeevna, no one rebelled against anyone, there was not even a comet that year, but old women sometimes have dark forebodings.

Occasionally, perhaps this pastime will be interrupted by some accidental event, when, for example, everyone will burn the whole house, from small to large.

There were almost no other diseases to be heard in the house and the village; unless someone runs into some kind of stake in the dark, or curls up from the hayloft, or a board falls off the roof and hits on the head.

But all this rarely happened, and tried-and-tested home remedies were used against such accidents: they would rub the bruised place with bodyagi or the dawn, give them holy water to drink or whisper - and everything will pass.

But fumes happened frequently. Then everyone rolls side by side on the beds: groans and groans are heard; one puts cucumbers on his head and ties him with a towel, another puts cranberries in his ears and sniffs horseradish, a third goes out into the cold in one shirt, a fourth just lies unconscious on the floor.

This happened periodically once or twice a month, because they did not like to put heat into the chimney for nothing and closed the stoves when such lights were still running in them, as in Robert the Devil. Not a single bed

it was impossible to lay hands on a single stove: just look, a bubble would jump up.

Once, only the monotony of their life was broken by a truly accidental event.

When, having rested after a difficult dinner, everyone gathered for tea, suddenly an Oblomov peasant came back from the city, and he already got it, got it out of his bosom, finally forcibly pulled out a crumpled letter addressed to Ilya Ivanovich Oblomov.

Everyone was stunned; the hostess even changed a little in her face; Everyone's eyes were fixed and their noses were stretched out towards the letter.

What a curiosity! Who is it from? said the lady at last, coming to her senses.

Oblomov took the letter and tossed it in his hands in bewilderment, not knowing what to do with it.

Yes, where did you get it? he asked the man. - Who gave you?

And in the yard where I pestered in the city, you hear, - the peasant answered, - they came from the post office twice to ask if there were any Oblomov peasants: listen, there is a letter to the master.

Well, first of all, I hid: the soldier left with a letter. Yes, the deacon from Verkhlyov saw me, and he said. They came suddenly. As they suddenly came in a row, they began to swear and handed over the letter, taking another nickel. I asked what, they say, should I do with him, where should I put him? So they ordered to give your mercy.

And you wouldn’t take it,” the lady remarked angrily.

I didn't take it either. What, they say, we need a letter - we do not need. We, they say, were not punished to take letters - I don’t dare: go ahead, with a letter! Yes, the soldier went to swear painfully: he wanted to complain to the authorities; I took it.

Fool! - said the lady.

From whom would it be? Oblomov said thoughtfully, examining the address. - The hand seems to be familiar, right!

And the letter went from hand to hand. Rumors and guesses began: from whom and what could it be about? Everyone finally came to a standstill.

Ilya Ivanovich ordered to find glasses: they were looking for an hour and a half. He put them on and was already thinking of opening the letter.

That's enough, don't open it, Ilya Ivanovich, - his wife stopped him with fear, - who knows what kind of letter it is? maybe even more terrible, some kind of trouble. You see, what kind of people have become today! Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow you will have time - it will not leave you.

And the letter with the glasses was hidden under lock and key. Everyone took up tea. It would have lain there for years if it had not been too unusual a phenomenon and had not excited the minds of the Oblomovites. Over tea and the next day, all they had to do was talk about the letter.

Finally, they could not stand it, and on the fourth day, having gathered in a crowd, they printed it out with embarrassment. Oblomov glanced at the signature.

“Radishchev,” he read. - E! Yes, this is from Philip Matveich!

BUT! E! That's who! rose from all sides. How is he still alive to this day? Come on, you're not dead yet! Well, thank God! What is he writing?

Send it, send it to him! - everyone spoke. - I have to write a letter.

So two weeks passed.

I must write! - Ilya Ivanovich repeated to his wife. - Where is the recipe?

And where he? - answered the wife. - Still to be found. Wait, what's the rush? Here, God willing, we will wait for the holiday, we will break the fast, then you will write; won't leave yet...

In fact, I’d better write about the holiday, ”said Ilya Ivanovich.

At the party, the topic of writing was again discussed. Ilya Ivanovich was about to write completely. He retired to his office, put on his glasses and sat down at the table.

There was a deep silence in the house; people were not ordered to stomp and make noise. "The barin writes!" - they all said in such a timidly respectful voice, which they say when there is a dead person in the house.

He was just about to type out: “Dear sir,” slowly, crookedly, with a trembling hand and with such caution, as if he were doing some dangerous business, when his wife appeared to him.

Searched, searched - there is no recipe, - she said. - We must also look in the bedroom in the closet. Yes, how to send a letter?

With mail it is necessary, - answered Ilya Ivanovich.

And what goes there?

Oblomov took out an old calendar.

Forty kopecks, he said.

Here, throw forty kopecks on trifles! she remarked. - We'd better wait, if there will be an opportunity from the city to go there. You told the men to find out.

And, in fact, it’s better if it happens,” answered Ilya Ivanovich, and, flicking his pen on the table, he thrust it into the inkwell and took off his glasses.

Really, it's better, - he concluded, - he won't leave yet: we'll have time to send.

It is not known whether Philip Matveyevich waited for the recipe.

Ilya Ivanovich will sometimes take a book in his hands - it doesn't matter to him, any. He did not even suspect an essential need in reading, but considered it a luxury, such a thing that one can easily do without, just as one can have a picture on the wall, one may not have it, one can go for a walk, one may not go: from this he doesn't care what the book is; he looked at her as if she were a thing intended for entertainment, out of boredom and nothing to do.

I haven’t read a book for a long time, he will say or sometimes change the phrase: “Let me read a book,” he will say, or simply, in passing, accidentally see a small pile of books inherited from his brother and take it out without choosing what will come across. Will he get Golikov Newest whether dream interpretation, Kheraskova Rossiada, or the tragedies of Sumarokov, or, finally, the third-year statements - he reads everything with equal pleasure, saying at times:

See what you've come up with! What a robber! Oh, so empty for you!

These exclamations referred to authors, a title which in his eyes had no respect whatsoever; he even adopted for himself the half-contempt for writers that the people of the old days had for them. He, like many then, revered the writer as nothing more than a merry fellow, a reveler, a drunkard and a joker, like a dancer.

Sometimes he reads from third-year newspapers and reads aloud, for everyone, or so he informs them of the news.

Here they write from Gaga, he will say, that His Majesty the King has deigned to return safely from a short trip to the palace, and at the same time he will look through his glasses at all the listeners.

In Vienna, such and such an envoy handed over his letters of credit.

And here they write, - he read more, - that the works of Mrs. Janlis were translated into Russian.

That's all, tea, for that they translate, - one of the listeners, a small landowner, remarks, - in order to lure money from our brother, a nobleman.

And poor Ilyusha goes and goes to Stolz to study. As soon as he wakes up on Monday, he is already attacked by melancholy. He hears the sharp voice of Vaska, who shouts from the porch:

Antipka! Pawn the skewbald: take the barchonka to the German!

His heart flutters. He sad comes to his mother. She knows why and begins to gild the pill, secretly sighing herself about being separated from him for a whole week.

They don’t know what to feed him that morning, they bake him buns and pretzels, let him go with pickles, biscuits, jams, marshmallows of various and all sorts of other dry and wet delicacies, and even edible supplies. All this was sold in the forms that the Germans feed low-fat.

You won’t get fed up there,” the Oblomovites said, “they’ll give you lunch with soup, and roast, and potatoes, butter for tea, and for dinner, then morgen fries- Wipe your nose.

However, Ilya Ilyich dreams more of such Mondays when he does not hear Vaska's voice ordering to lay the pegash, and when his mother meets him for tea with a smile and with good news:

You won't go today; Thursday is a big holiday: is it worth driving back and forth for three days?

Or sometimes he suddenly announces to him: "Today is parental week - not up to learning: we will bake pancakes."

Otherwise, on Monday morning, his mother will look at him intently and say:

Something in your eyes is stale today. Are you healthy? - and shakes his head.

The crafty boy is healthy, but he is silent.

Sit at home this week, - she will say, - and there - what God will give.

And everyone in the house was imbued with the conviction that learning and parental Saturday should not coincide in any way together, or that the holiday on Thursday is an insurmountable barrier to learning for the whole week.

Is it only sometimes that a servant or a girl, who gets it for a barchonka, will grumble:

Wow, darling! Will you soon fail to your German?

Another time, Antipka will suddenly appear on a familiar pegash to the German, in the middle or at the beginning of the week, for Ilya Ilyich.

They say Marya Savishna or Natalya Faddeevna came to visit or the Kuzovkovs with their children, so please go home!

And for three weeks Ilyusha stays at home, and there, you see, it’s not far to Holy Week, and there is a holiday, and for some reason someone in the family decides that they don’t study on St. Thomas’s week; there are two weeks left until the summer - it’s not worth driving, and in the summer the German himself is resting, so it’s better to postpone until the fall.

Look, Ilya Ilyich will take a walk in six months, and how he will grow up at that time! How fat! How well he sleeps! They do not stop looking at him in the house, noticing, on the contrary, that, returning on Saturday from the German, the child is thin and pale.

How long until sin? - said the father and mother. “Learning won’t go away, but you can’t buy health; health is the most precious thing in life. You see, he returns from school as if from a hospital: all the fat disappears, he is so thin ... and a naughty one: he just needs to run!

Yes, - the father will notice, - learning is not your brother: at least someone will turn into a ram's horn!

And the tender parents continued to look for excuses to keep their son at home. For pretexts, and except for the holidays, the matter did not stop. In winter it seemed cold to them, in summer it was also not good to go in the heat, and sometimes it would rain, in autumn slush interfered. Sometimes Antipka seems somehow doubtful: drunk, not drunk, but somehow wildly looking: there would be no trouble, he would get stuck or break off somewhere.

The Oblomovites tried, however, to give as much legitimacy as possible to these pretexts in their own eyes, and especially in the eyes of Stolz, who did not spare both to the eyes and behind the eyes. donnerwetters for such a prank.

The times of the Prostakovs and Skotinins are long gone. Proverb: Learning is light and ignorance is darkness- already wandered around the villages and villages, along with books carried by second-hand booksellers.

The old people understood the benefits of enlightenment, but only its external benefits. They saw that everyone had already begun to go out into the world, that is, to acquire ranks, crosses and money only through learning; that the old clerks, busy businessmen in the service, grown old in long-standing habits, quotation marks and hooks, had a bad time.

Ominous rumors began to circulate about the need not only for literacy, but also for other sciences, hitherto unheard of in everyday life. Between the titular adviser and the collegiate assessor a gulf opened up, a bridge across which some kind of diploma served.

Old servants, children of habit and pets of bribes, began to disappear. Many who did not have time to die were expelled for unreliability, others were put on trial; the happiest were those who, having waved their hand at the new order of things, retired kindly and healthily to the acquired corners.

The Oblomovs understood this and understood the benefits of education, but only this obvious benefit. They still had a vague and distant idea of the inner need for learning, and therefore they wanted to catch for the time being some brilliant advantages for their Ilyusha.

They also dreamed of an embroidered uniform for him, imagined him as an adviser in the chamber, and his mother even as a governor; but they would like to achieve all this somehow cheaper, with various tricks, to get around the stones and obstacles secretly scattered along the path of enlightenment and honor, without bothering to jump over them, that is, for example, to study lightly, not to exhaustion of soul and body, not until the loss of the blessed fullness acquired in childhood, but only so as to comply with the prescribed form and somehow obtain a certificate in which it would be said that Ilyusha passed all the sciences and arts.

This whole Oblomov system of education met with strong opposition in the Stolz system. The struggle was fierce on both sides. Stolz directly, openly and persistently hit his opponents, and they evaded the blows with the above and other tricks.

The victory was not decided in any way; perhaps German perseverance would have overcome the stubbornness and rigidity of the Oblomovites, but the German encountered difficulties on his own side, and victory was not destined to be decided on either side. The fact is that the son of Stolz spoiled Oblomov, either prompting him lessons, or making translations for him.

Ilya Ilyich clearly sees both his home life and life with Stolz.

He will just wake up at home, as Zakharka, later his famous valet Zakhar Trofimych, is already standing by his bed.

Zakhar, as he used to be a nanny, pulls on his stockings, puts on his shoes, and Ilyusha, already a boy of fourteen, only knows that he is offering him this or that leg when lying down; and if something seems wrong to him, then he will succumb to Zakharka with his foot in the nose.

If the dissatisfied Zakharka takes it into his head to complain, he will receive another mallet from the elders.

Then Zakharka scratches her head, pulls on her jacket, carefully slipping Ilya Ilyich's hands into the sleeves so as not to disturb him too much, and reminds Ilya Ilyich that one must do one thing or another: get up in the morning, wash, etc.

If Ilya Ilyich wants anything, he has only to blink - already three or four servants rush to fulfill his desire; whether he drops something, whether he needs to get a thing, but if he doesn’t get it, whether to bring something, whether to run after something: sometimes, like a frisky boy, he just wants to rush and redo everything himself, and then suddenly his father and mother and three aunts in five voices and shout:

What for? Where? What about Vaska, and Vanka, and Zakharka? Hey! Vaska! Vanka! Zaharka! What are you looking at, bro? Here I am!..

And Ilya Ilyich will never be able to do anything for himself.

Later, he found that it was much quieter, and he himself learned to shout: “Hey, Vaska! Vanka! give it, give it another! I don't want this, I want this! Run, get it!"

At times, the gentle solicitude of his parents bored him.

Whether he runs down the stairs or across the yard, suddenly ten desperate voices will be heard after him: “Ah, ah! Support stop! He will fall, he will hurt himself ... stop, stop!

Will he think of jumping out into the canopy in winter or opening the window - again shouting: “Ay, where? How can you? Don't run, don't walk, don't open: you'll kill yourself, you'll catch a cold...

And Ilyusha remained sadly at home, cherished like an exotic flower in a greenhouse, and, like the last one under glass, he grew slowly and listlessly. Seeking manifestations of power turned inward and drooped, withering.

And sometimes he wakes up so cheerful, fresh, cheerful; he feels: something is playing in him, seething, as if some kind of demon has settled in, which teases him now to climb on the roof, then sit on the savraska and jump into the meadows where hay is being cut, or sit on the fence on horseback, or tease village dogs; or suddenly you want to start running through the village, then into the field, along the gullies, into the birch forest, and in three leaps rush to the bottom of the ravine, or follow the boys to play snowballs, try your hand.

The imp is tempting him: he clings to it, clings to it, finally he can’t stand it, and suddenly, without a cap, in winter, he jumps from the porch into the yard, from there through the gate, grabs a clod of snow in both hands and rushes to a bunch of boys.

The fresh wind cuts his face like that, frost stings behind his ears, his mouth and throat smelled of cold, and his chest was filled with joy - he rushes where his legs came from, he himself squeals and laughs.

Here are the boys: he bangs with snow - by: there is no skill; just wanted to grab another snowball, when a whole block of snow covered his whole face: he fell; and it hurts him out of habit, and merrily, and he laughs, and there are tears in his eyes ...

And there is a hubbub in the house: Ilyusha is gone! Scream, noise. Zakharka jumped out into the yard, followed by Vaska, Mitka, Vanka - everyone was running, confused, around the yard.

Two dogs rushed after them, grabbing them by the heels, which, as you know, cannot indifferently see a running person.

People screaming, screaming, dogs barking rush through the village.

Finally, they ran into the boys and began to administer justice: some by the hair, some by the ears, another slapped on the back of the head; they also threatened their fathers.

Then they already took possession of the young lady, wrapped him in a captured sheepskin coat, then in his father's fur coat, then in two blankets, and solemnly brought him home in his arms.

At home they despaired of seeing him already, considering him dead; but at the sight of him, alive and unharmed, the joy of his parents was indescribable. They thanked the Lord God, then gave him mint to drink, elderberry there, and raspberries in the evening, and kept him in bed for three days, and one thing could be useful for him: to play snowballs again ...

The novel "Oblomov" is one of the greatest works Russian literature of the 19th century.

Together with two other novels by Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov - " Ordinary history” and “Cliff” - it makes up trilogy dedicated to the transition from one stage of development of Russian society to another.

In contact with

The history of the creation of "Oblomov"

Part of the work - the chapter "Oblomov's Dream" - was published in 1849 as a separate work (the author himself noted it as an unfinished work). The entire novel was written and published only ten years later.

"Oblomov's Dream" was warmly received by the public, but the journey and work on other works did not allow Goncharov to complete "Oblomov" in a short time. After publication, the novel brought fame to its creator.

In fact, he became the work thanks to which we know about Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov today.

Composition of the novel

The work is divided into four parts:

the first part describes one day in the life of Ilya Oblomov, which he spends entirely on the couch. Goncharov tells the reader about the conditions in which the protagonist of the novel grew and developed;
in the second part, the love story of Ilya and Olga is revealed, Andrey Stolz's attempts to bring his friend back to life are shown;
in the third part, the author notes that Oblomov is not able to change his usual way of life. Another iconic character is introduced into the story - Agafya Pshenitsyna;
the fourth part shows the return of Ilya Ilyich to his usual life and his extinction.

The composition of the novel is circular: first, the reader observes Oblomov's dream, then his awakening, and then again falling into a dream.

Below you can find online a summary of the chapters in each of the four parts of the novel.

Summary of the novel by I. A. Goncharov "Oblomov"

Part one

Chapter 1. The author introduces the reader to Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a nobleman aged 32-33, who, together with his servant Zakhar, lives in St. Petersburg on Gorokhovaya Street. Oblomov all day long does nothing but lie on the couch in his favorite bathrobe.

Ilya Ilyich lives on the funds that his estate Oblomovka brings him. The author describes him as a person at the same time:

good-natured;
lazy;
uninitiated.

His laziness Goncharov gives the following characterization: Oblomov's laziness is not at all the same as that of a sick or tired person, and not even the same as that of a lazy person - Ilya Ilyich is in this state all the time. It has become normal for him.

The protagonist of the novel has a number of serious problems: the estate began to bring him less money than before, the productivity has decreased, and even the owner of the apartment is evicting Oblomov. He would have to deal with these issues, but the mere thought of this frightens the hero. He hopes that people will appear in his life who will do everything for him.

Chapter 2. Four people come to Oblomov in turn: Volkov, Sudbinsky, Penkin and Alekseev.

Volkov is cheerful, charged with energy, he tells Oblomov about the social events that he recently attended, about the gloves he bought the other day. Sudbinsky in the near future he will marry the daughter of a wealthy man. Penkin invites the main character to get acquainted with his articles, and Alekseev is characterized as a person without whom society would not have lost anything.

Oblomov hopes that one of them will take up the solution of his problems, but none of his visitors are interested in them.

Chapters 3 and 4. Tarantiev also comes to Oblomov. He was considered a person who could resolve even the most complicated situation, although he himself spent 25 years in the office as a scribe: he could only speak beautifully, but nothing more.

Alekseev and Tarantiev constantly visit Oblomov, although they annoy him. Ilya Ilyich hopes that Stolz will arrive soon - the only person who understands him - and will solve all his problems.

Tarantiev offers Oblomov to move to his godfather and forces him to go to his estate. The main character does not like this plan of action.

Chapters 5 and 6. When Ilya Ilyich just got a job in the office, he had a desire to build a career, get a high status in society, and start a family.

The problem is that Oblomov's ideas about life did not correspond to reality. This caused him suffering, and in this state he worked in the office for two years. The protagonist retired from there shortly after he made a serious mistake in the performance of his duties.

After the resignation, Oblomov closed himself in, began to leave the house less often and communicate with other people. Sometimes Andrei Stoltz managed to pull him out of this state - and even then only for a short time.

Chapter 7. It describes Oblomov's relationship with Zakhar, his servant. Zakhar constantly bickers with his master, and he accuses him of unwillingness to work and untidiness. Despite this, they cannot live without each other.

Chapter 8. A doctor comes to the protagonist of the novel and warns him that if he does not reconsider his lifestyle, he will soon have a stroke.

Oblomov thinks that perhaps there is something bright in him, but does not know how to activate this resource.

Chapter 9. The protagonist of the novel has a dream about childhood in Oblomovka. When little Ilya wakes up, everyone in the family caresses him, tells him good words, fed with cream, buns and crackers. Then the nanny goes for a walk with the boy, but at the same time does not leave him unattended for a second.

The day at the estate passes slowly. After dinner everyone goes to bed. The nanny reads tales to Ilya about honey and milk rivers and good sorceresses, but over time, the adult Oblomov realizes that in fact there are neither the first nor the second.

The protagonist realizes that the content of fairy tales is at odds with reality, but in life he is still drawn to this fictional world, where there is neither grief nor evil, and good sorceresses solve all the problems of heroes.

Chapters 10 and 11. Zakhar discusses his master with the servant while he is sleeping, and then tries to wake him up. Ilya Ilyich was paid a visit by Andrei Stolz, a childhood friend. Upon arrival, Stolz watches Zakhar arguing with Oblomov, and cannot help laughing.

Part two

Chapters 1 and 2. By origin Andrey Stolz is half German, half Russian. From his father, he inherited German upbringing and hard work, and from his mother - kindness and gentleness.

Andrei's father did not want him to be on his payroll after graduating from the university, and sent him to St. Petersburg. There Stoltz made a career, he earned a house himself, and now he is employed in a company that sends goods abroad.

Stolz came to the main character to take a breath and calm his nerves in a sincere friendly conversation. He was an active man, but there was nothing superfluous in his movements.

Chapters 3 and 4. Andrei tries to convince his friend to change his lifestyle. All week Oblomov and Stolz pay visits different people, but then the first complains that he cannot constantly live in such a rhythm.

When Andrei asks Ilya Ilyich how he would like to live, he brings him brief retelling your sleep. Oblomov dreams of living measuredly in the countryside with his wife, enjoying nature, and in the evenings listening to the aria Casta Diva. Stolz does not like his friend's ideas.

In two weeks, Stolz promises to take Oblomov abroad, and before that he wants to introduce him to Olga Ilyinskaya - especially since she perfectly performs his favorite aria.

Chapter 5. After meeting Olga, Ilya Ilyich is transformed. He has a desire to "read, write and do in one hour what he could not do in ten years." In any case, Oblomov shows a willingness to fundamental changes In my life.

The protagonist promised Stolz to come to him in Paris. The coat was bought, the documents necessary for the trip were issued - but Oblomov's lip swelled after being bitten by a fly, and this ruined his plans. He never went to the capital of France: not in a month, not in three.

After that, Ilya Ilyich lived in the country, read a lot, and became more energetic. Falling in love with Olga made itself felt.

Chapters 6, 7 and 8. The protagonist and Olga meet in the park and explain their feelings.

Followed by short story about Olga's house. She lives with her aunt. The morals in her family are quite strict: when visiting the Ilyinskys, you constantly need to remember how to behave, what to talk about, about your appearance etc. Stolz believes that communication with a young, lively and at the same time a little mocking woman will awaken in Oblomov an interest in life.

At a certain point, Ilya begins to think that Olga has lost interest in him. Soon Zakhar informs her about Oblomov's desire to leave for the city and about his intentions regarding her. After that, Olga meets Ilya in the park and makes it clear that her relationship with him is really very dear to her.

Chapters 9, 10, 11 and 12. Olga and Oblomov continue to meet. Ilya's beloved is trying to bring him back to life: she makes him read, go to the theater, communicate with other people. To please her, Oblomov changes the headman on his estate, establishes contact with one of the neighbors (even through Stolz).

The protagonist of the novel again begins to think that Olga does not really love him: in his opinion, it is impossible in principle to love people like him. By letter, he notifies her of the rupture of relations, and then hides and watches her reaction to the message. Seeing her tears, he asks her forgiveness - after that, the relationship becomes the same as before. Moreover, Oblomov offers Olga a hand and heart, and she agrees to become his wife.

Part Three

Chapters 1, 2 and 3. Before moving to the dacha, Ilya Ilyich signed an agreement to rent an apartment on Vyborgskaya - Tarantiev comes to him and demands that he pay for housing. First, he wants to go to Olga's relatives and announce the wedding, but Oblomov's beloved insists that he first solve all his problems.

Oblomov does not want to keep another apartment, but in the end he has no choice but to move to Vyborgskaya. He fails to negotiate the termination of the contract with either Agafya Pshenitsyna, the owner of the apartment, or Mukhoyarov, her brother, who does business on her behalf.

Ilya Ilyich lives in the city, and Olga lives in the country. They are becoming less and less common.

Chapters 5 and 6. Everyone has long known that Ilya proposed to Olga, but he has never even been at his chosen one's house. Olga asks Oblomov to pay a visit to them, but he refers to the workload of problems. It's already winter, but main character so he never once visited Ilyinskaya's house.

Chapter 7. Ilya spends all his time at Pshenitsyna's apartment with her children, Masha and Vanya. Olga herself comes to him, after which Oblomov blossoms again.

Chapters 8, 9 and 10. Oblomov wants to transfer the management of the estate to his neighbor by proxy, but he refuses, in addition warning Ilya that Oblomovka will bring big losses.

Pshenitsyna's brother advises Oblomov to hire a manager so that he does not have to go to the estate (after all, in this case, Ilya's wedding with Olga would be upset) and advises him to hire his colleague Zatertoy for this position. Ilya Ilyich follows this advice, but does not even suspect that his subordinate is simply pulling money out of Oblomovka and putting it in his pocket.

Chapters 11 and 12. Olga and Ilya still broke up. Olga cannot come to terms with the fact that Oblomov entrusted the management of his estate to a stranger. In addition, she is not satisfied with the fact that she emotionally invests in a relationship with Ilya, but does not receive anything from him in return.

Part four

Chapter 1. Ilya comes to his senses only a year after breaking up with Olga.

All this time he lives with Agafya. These two people are spiritually close to each other: Pshenitsyna sees the meaning of her life in caring for Oblomov, and he is also very comfortable with her.

The worn one sends less money than Ilya planned to receive (without dues), but he does not receive a reprimand for this.

Chapter 2. Stolz came to Ilya for a name day and told him that Olga had left for Switzerland, but at the same time asked him not to leave him alone. Andrey also sees that Zaterty is impudently deceiving Oblomov and himself takes up the position of village manager, trying to restore order there.

Chapter 3. In fact, the quitrent was collected, it was just divided between Zaterty, Mukhoyarov and Tarantiev. The latter two meet and express dissatisfaction with the fact that their criminal plan was revealed. Now Mukhoyarov wants to blackmail Oblomov with a receipt for ten thousand rubles in the name of his sister.

Chapter 4. In Paris, even before meeting Ilya, Stoltz met Olga and became close to her. Olga briefly retold Andrey the love story with Oblomov. Andrew proposed to her.

Chapters 5, 6 and 7. Mukhoyarov managed to put his plan into practice, after which Oblomov and Pshenitsyna were left completely without money. Ilya began to drink, and his dressing gown was worn out even more.

Stoltz found out why his friend's situation worsened, and solved the problem:

first, he demanded that Agafya Pshenitsyna draw up a receipt stating that Oblomov did not owe her anything;
then he complained about Mukhoyarov to his superiors, as a result of which he lost his job.

Ilya broke off relations with Tarantiev. Stolz wants to take his friend away, but he asks to give him another month.

Chapter 9. Oblomov still remains with Agafya. He is very pleased with the way of his life, because he had everything, as in Oblomovka:

he could eat long and appetizingly;
he had the opportunity to work little and leisurely;
next to him was his wife, who fully served him;
he could nonchalantly drink currant vodka and wine;
no one prevented him from sleeping for a long time after dinner;
they also had a son with Agafya - Oblomov named him Andrei, in honor of Stolz.

Only once Oblomov's measured life was overshadowed by an apoplexy - but he managed to return to life thanks to Agafya's care and support.

Andrei Stoltz and Olga Ilyinskaya visit Ilya Ilyich in St. Petersburg. Andrei cannot believe that his friend is again bogged down in laziness and idleness. He tries for the last time to bring Oblomov back to life, but his attempt ends in failure. Olga wanted to see Ilya, but he flatly refused to communicate with her.

Chapter 10. Three years later, Oblomov died: after the second apoplexy, his health began to deteriorate, he was significantly weakened. He died without pain or torment last minutes He spent his life in solitude.

Agafya lived for the sake of her loved ones and caring for them, but after the death of Ilya, the meaning of life for her was lost: her son from her first marriage went to school, her daughter got married, and little Andrey Stoltsy was taken to be raised.

She only sometimes visits her son - and she herself lives with her brother's family.

From the money that Oblomovka brings, Pshenitsyna refuses: she wants these funds to go to little Andrei.

Chapter 11. One day Andrei Stoltz and a literary friend were passing by a church. At the end of the service, the beggars were the first to leave it, and in one of them Andrei recognized Zakhar, the former servant of Oblomov. It turned out that he tried to find a job in several families, but did not stay anywhere for a long time. As a result, Zakhar's well-being deteriorated significantly.

Stolz offered Zakhar to move to Oblomovka, which he continued to manage, but he refused. Oblomov's former lackey wanted to stay near the grave of his master.

When the writer inquired about the fate of Ilya Oblomov, Stolz told him the story told on the pages of the novel.

Women's Portal Flero

Part one

I

Ivan Goncharov Oblomov

Oblomov's bathrobe

Part one

I

The history of the creation of "Oblomov"

Composition of the novel

Summary of the novel by I. A. Goncharov "Oblomov"

Part one

Part two

Part Three

Part four

RELATED ARTICLES

Ivan Goncharov
Oblomov