Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [1]
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 habitué 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.
1836–8 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.
1846–8 Work on Oblomov begins, probably in 1847.
1847 A Common Story is published.
1849 ‘Oblomov‘s Dream’ is published. Plans The Precipice.
1852–5 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 Goncharov’s life. She chooses someone else; he never marries.
1855–7 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 is published as a book.
1859 Oblomov is published. Goncharov accuses Turgenev of plagiarism.
1860 A committee of prominent figures from the literary community finds no basis for the accusation.
1867 Retires from government service.
1869 The Precipice is published.
1878 Assumes responsibility for Alexandra Treygut, the wife of his manservant, and her three children, upon her husband’s death.
1890 Suffers a stroke.
1891 Dies after a brief illness. Leaves most of his estate to Alexandra Treygut and her three children.
INTRODUCTION
Ilya Ilich Oblomov belongs to a line of outsized comic heroes who make us laugh and yet touch our sympathies – Don Quixote