A difficult book to review, this, due to the fact that everything hinges upon how the reader feels about...Oblomov! I, for one, agree that he is a sympathetic, tragic figure, a fellow one couldn't help but liking if you met in person. But, then, what of this traditional political take on Oblomov, which Lenin begin in his speeches, of accusing the Tsarist state and its lackeys of Oblomovism (an English word now, as well as Russian), thereby somehow appropriating the book as an attack on that society, and Oblomov himself as its most decadent symbol? For my part, I don't think we should make too much of it, like all political appropriations of the literary, it oversimplifies and makes a stick figure out of a complex character. But, some will ask, oversimplifying again, that if Oblomov is not a symbol of decadence, is he then a heroic symbol of times swept into oblivion, an indictment, as Wordsworth puts it, of "getting and spending" by which "we lay waste our powers"?
I would say, again, that both are oversimplifications. But I would posit, after finishing the book, and spending a certain amount of time, very much a la Oblomov, contemplating this figure, that the latter view is nearer the mark. Oblomov is the dreamy, poet in all of us who would rather lie under Shakespeare's Greenwood Tree, who "doth ambition shun", who would not be bothered with, to switch plays, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
In all the above I am, for the most part, in agreement with the other reviewers. What I am in (very strong) disagreement with them about is the love between Olga and Oblomov, which one reviewer describes as "long-winded" and another as "adolescent". I suppose both reviewers would say the same thing of Henry James, whose writing this part of the novel most resembles. It is only here that the Goncharov's writing approaches high art. If one is going to dismiss this section as "adolescent" or "long-winded", one might as well toss Henry James, Pushkin, Shelley, Keats, and every other Romantic poet or writer into the rubbish bin with it. And I ask these reviewers, where would the novel be without it? --- It would be a comedy rather than a tragedy (or tragicomedy). It would lack all depth. We would know nothing of Oblomov's splendid soul. It wouldn't be regarded as literature, and we wouldn't be reading it today.
Well, I've said enough. You will enjoy this book and take to Oblomov if you have a bit of the poet in you, if you have a soft spot for what Canadian poet/songwriter Leonard Cohen calls the "Beautiful Loser", or if you simply admire someone who would rather nap than deal with the world.
I'll let Oblomov have the last word about what he is: "Yes, a poet in life, because life is poetry. People are free to distort it if they like!"
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imanol lopez santaclara
Un libro que recomiendo.Lo tendré siempre en mi memoria.
Reviewed in Spain on September 21, 2022