Ivan Goncharov - Oblomov

Oblomov

Translated by DAVID MAGARSHACK
with an Introduction by MILTON EHRE

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Oblomov was first published in 1859
This translation first published in 1954
Reprinted with a new Chronology, Introduction and Further Reading 2005
1

Translation copyright 1954 by David Magarshack
Chronology, Introduction and Further Reading copyright 2005 by Milton Ehre
All rights reserved

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EISBN: 9781101492147

1812 6 June (Old Style): Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), son of Alexander Ivanovich and Avdotya Matveyevna, the second of six children, four of whom survived. His paternal grandfather achieved gentry status in the middle of the eighteenth century through military service, but the family continued as merchants in a prosperous grain trade. Memoirists recall Goncharovs mother as severe and suspicious; Ivan, who loved her deeply, remembered an intelligent and caring woman. His father was successful and respected he was several times elected mayor, though in despotic Russia the position offered limited responsibility. He was pious and melancholic. A grandson described a psychically sick and unstable family. Goncharov suffered from depression and for a period harboured paranoid enmity, most notoriously towards his friend and fellow novelist Ivan Turgenev.

1819 Father dies when Ivan is seven; education of children is assumed by Nicholas Tregubov, a boarder and a retired naval officer of aristocratic lineage and liberal views. His cosmopolitan background is in stark contrast to the traditionalism of a merchant family. The author remembers him as embodying everything that is expressed by the English word gentleman, but is also critical of his genteel impracticality and abstract idealism.

Ivan and his brother Nicholas are the first Goncharovs to receive a formal education. At the age of eight Ivan is sent to a boarding school run by a priest; he encounters literature (writing in the Goncharov household was limited to business papers), studies French and German.

1822 Enters Moscow Commercial School; the school offers a broad curriculum in liberal arts and sciences, but the teachers are inferior to those in schools for the gentry and the discipline is harsh.

1831 Enrolls at Moscow University. Among his classmates, besides the outstanding poet and novelist Mikhail Lermontov, are men who were to shape the intellectual life of their era and the future of Russian thought: Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen, Nicholas Stankevich, Konstantin Aksakov. Romanticism and German philosophical Idealism are in vogue; Goncharov does not participate in the famous discussion circles at the university. In the forties the Moscow circles split into camps of Westernizers and Slavophils.

1834 Graduates Moscow University.

1835 Begins 33-year career in the government bureaucracy. Moves to St Petersburg. Becomes a habitu of the Maykov salon; the Maykovs were a cultured aristocratic family among its members were distinguished artists and poets. Goncharov shares their love of art for its own sake rather than for political ends.

18368 His first known literary works appear in the Maykovs family journal.

1840s Plans his three novels. All three deal with a young man seeking his place in the world, a reason for regarding them as a trilogy. According to the novelist, A Common Story is conceived in 1844, written in 1845 and finished the following year.

18468 Work on Oblomov begins, probably in 1847.

1847 A Common Story is published.

1849 Oblomovs Dream is published. Plans The Precipice.

18525 Secretary to the admiral on an official journey to Japan and the Far East. Returns through Siberia.

1855 Falls in love with Elizaveta Tolstoy, whom he first met at the Maykovs in the early 1840s. She is the only known romantic relation of Goncharovs life. She chooses someone else; he never marries.

18557 His account of his journey to the Far East, The Frigate Pallas: Notes of a Journey, is published as individual sketches.

1856 Begins service as a government censor.

1857 Summer: Writes bulk of the novel Oblomov.

1858 The Frigate Pallas: Notes of a Journey