The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

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СКАЧАТЬ were none. Ever since the day when Schtoltz had cleared him of debt, and Tarantiev and Tarantiev’s friend had taken themselves off for good, every adverse element had disappeared from Oblomov’s existence, and there surrounded him only good, kind, sensible folk who had agreed to underpin his existence with theirs, and to help him not to notice it, nor to feel it, as it pursued its even course. Everything was, as it were, at peace, and of that peace, that inertia, Oblomov represented the complete, the natural, embodiment and expression. After passing in review and considering his mode of life, he had sunk deeper and deeper therein, until finally he had come to the conclusion that he had no farther to go, and nothing farther to seek, and that the ideal of his life would best be preserved where he was—albeit without poetry, without those finer shades wherewith his imagination had once painted for him a spacious, careless course of manorial life on his own estate and among his own peasantry and servants.

      Upon his present mode of life he looked as a continuation of the Oblomovkan existence (only with a different colouring of locality, and, to a certain extent, of period). Here, as at Oblomovka, he had succeeded in escaping life, in driving a bargain with it, and ensuring to himself an inviolable seclusion. Inwardly he congratulated himself on having left behind him the irksome, irritating demands and menaces cf mundane existence—on having placed a great distance Between himself and the horizon where there may be seen flashing the lightning-bolts of keen pleasure, and whence come the thunderpeals of sudden affliction, and where flicker the false hopes and the splendid visions of average happiness, and where independence of thought gradually engulfs and devours a man, and where passion slays him outright, and where the intellect fails or triumphs, and where humanity engages in constant warfare, and leaves the field of battle in a state of exhaustion and of ever-unsatisfied, ever-insatiable desire. Never having experienced the consolations to be won in combat, he had none the less renounced them, and felt at ease only in a remote corner to which action and lighting and the actual living of life were alike strangers.

      Yet moments there were when his imagination stirred within him again, and when there recurred to his mind forgotten memories and unrealized dreams, and when he felt in his conscience whispered reproaches for having made of his life so little as he had done. And whenever that occurred he slept restlessly, awoke at intervals, leaped out of bed, and shed chill tears of hopelessness over the bright ideal that was now extinguished for ever. He shed them as folk shed them over a dead friend whom with bitter regret they recognize to have been neglected during his lifetime. Then he would glance at his surroundings, hug to himself his present blessings, and grow comforted on noting how quietly, how restfully, the sun was rising amid a blaze of glory. Thus he had come to a decision that not only was his life compounded in the best manner for expressing the possibilities to which the idealistic-peaceful side of human existence may attain, but also that it had been expressly created for and preordained to, that purpose. To others, he reflected, let it fall to express life’s restless aspects; to others let it be given to exercise forces of construction and destruction; to each man be allotted his true métier.

      Such the philosophy which our Plato of Oblomovka elaborated for the purpose of lulling himself to sleep amid the problems and the stern demands of duty and of destiny. He had been bred and nourished to play the part, not of a gladiator in the arena but of a peaceful onlooker at the struggle. Never could his diffident, lethargic spirit have faced either the raptures or the blows of life. Hence he expressed only one of its aspects, and had no mind either to succeed in it, or to change anything in it, or to repent of his decision. As the years flowed on both emotion and repining came to manifest themselves at rarer and rarer intervals, until, by quiet, imperceptible degrees, he became finally interned in the plain, otiose tomb of retirement which he had fashioned with his own hands, even as desert anchorites who have turned from the world dig for themselves a material sepulchre. Of reorganizing his estate, and removing thither with his household; he had given up all thought. The steward whom Schtoltz had placed in charge of Oblomovka regularly sent him the income therefrom, and the peasantry proffered him flour and poultry at Christmastide, and everything on the estate was prospering.

      Meanwhile he ate heartily and much, even as he had done at Oblomovka. Also, he walked and worked sluggishly and little—again, as he had done at Oblomovka. Lastly, in spite of his advancing years, he drank beer and vodka à raisin with complete insouciance, and took to sleeping ever more and more protractedly after dinner.

      But suddenly a change occurred. One day, after his usual quota of slumber and day dreams, he tried to rise from the sofa, but failed, and his tongue refused to obey him. Terrified, he could compass only a gesture when he tried to call for help. Had he been living with Zakhar alone, he might have continued to signal for assistance until next morning, or have died, and not been found there till the following day; but, as it was, the eyes of his landlady had been watching over him like the eyes of Providence itself, and it cost her no skill of wit, but only an instinct of the heart, to divine that all was not well with Oblomov. No sooner had the instinct dawned upon her than Anisia was dispatched in a cab for a doctor, while Agafia Matvievna herself applied ice to the patient’s head, and extracted from her medicine chest the whole armoury of smelling-bottles and fomentations which custom and report had designated for use at such a juncture. Even Zakhar managed to get one of his boots on, and, thus shod, to fuss around his master in company with the doctor, the mistress of the house, and Anisia.

      At length, blood having been let, Oblomov returned to consciousness, and was informed that he had just sustained an apoplectic stroke, and that he must adopt a different course of life. Henceforth, vodka, beer, wine, coffee, and rich food were, with certain exceptions, to be prohibited, while in their place there were prescribed for him daily exercise and a regular amount of sleep of an exclusively nocturnal nature. Even then these remedies would have come to nothing but for Agafia Matvievna’s watchfulness; but she had the wit so to introduce the system that the entire household involuntarily assisted in its working. Thus, partly by, cunning and partly by kindness, she contrived to wean Oblomov from his attractive indulgences in wind, postprandial slumber, and fish pasties. For instance, as soon as ever he began to doze, either a chair would be unset in an adjoining room, or, of its own volition, some old and worthless crockery would begin flying into splinters, or the children would start making a noise, and be told, fortissimo, to be gone. Lastly, should even this not prove effective, her own kindly voice would be heard calling to him, in order to ask him some question or another.

      Also, the garden path was lengthened, and on it Oblomov accomplished, morning and evening, a constitutional of some two hours’ duration. With him there would walk the landlady—or, if she could not attend, one of the children, or his old friend, the irresponsible and to every man both humble and agreeable Alexiev. One morning Oblomov, leaning on the boy Vania’s arm, slowly paced the path. By this time Vania had grown into almost a youth, and found it hard to restrict his brisk, rapid step to Oblomov’s more tardy gait. As the elder man walked he made little use of one of his legs, which was a trace of the stroke which he had recently sustained.

      “Let us go indoors now, Vaniushka,” he said; wherefore they directed their steps towards the door. But to meet them! there issued Agafia Matvievna.

      “Why are you coming in so early?” she inquired.

      “Early, indeed? Why, we have paced the path twenty times each way, and from here to the fence is a distance of fifty sazhens; wherefore we have covered two versts in all.”

      “And how many times do you say you have paced it?” she inquired of Vania.

      He hesitated.

      “Do not lie, but look me straight in the face,” she continued, fixing him with her gaze. “I have been watching you the whole time. Remember next Sunday. Possibly I might not let you go to the party that night.”

      “Well, mother,” the boy said at length, “we have paced the path only twelve times.”

      “Ah, you rogue!” СКАЧАТЬ