Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [115]
flights of inspired fancies, there was always a woman in the foreground of his dreams, a woman who was his wife and sometimes – his mistress. The woman he saw in his dreams was tall and well-shaped, with her arms serenely folded on her breast, her eyes gentle yet proud, sitting leisurely under a clump of trees overhung with ivy, or stepping lightly on a carpet or a sandy path, her hips swaying, her head gracefully poised on her shoulders, and her eyes looking dreamily ahead; she was his ideal, the embodiment of a life full of enchantment and grave repose, she was the personification of rest itself. He dreamed of her first, smothered in flowers, standing at the altar wearing a long veil, then at the head of the marriage-bed with bashfully lowered eyes, and, finally, as a mother among a group of children. He dreamed of the smile on her lips, a smile that was not passionate, but sympathetic to him as her husband and indulgent to others; he dreamed of her eyes which were not moist with desire, but yielding only to him, and shy, even severe, to others. He never wanted to see her in a state of agitation, to hear of ardent dreams, sudden tears, languorous longings, exhaustion, followed by a frenzied burst of joy. He wanted neither moonlight nor sadness. She must not turn pale suddenly, faint, or experience shattering outbursts of emotion. ‘Women like that,’ he used to say, ‘have lovers, and they give you no end of trouble: doctors, watering-places, and all sorts of fancies. You will not be able to sleep in peace!’ But beside a wife who was proud, shy, and serene a man could sleep care-free. He goes to sleep confident that when he wakes he will meet the same gentle and kind gaze; and twenty or thirty years later, in response to his affectionate look, he would meet the same gentle and softly gleaming ray of sympathy in her eyes. And so to their dying day! ‘Why, isn’t it the secret aim of every man and woman to find in his or her friend unfailing repose, an even and everlasting flow of feeling? That is the norm of love, and the moment we deviate from it, change or grow cold, we suffer; so that my ideal must be the common ideal of everybody, mustn’t it?’ he thought. ‘Is not that the crowning achievement, the final solution of the relations of the sexes?’ To give passion a legitimate outlet, to show the direction in which it should flow, like a river, for the benefit of a whole country is the common problem of mankind, it is the very pinnacle of progress to which all advanced people like George Sand are striving but invariably go astray. Once it is solved, there can be no more unfaithfulness, nor coolness, but an even-beating, calm, and contented heart and, therefore, a full and happy life and everlasting moral health. There are cases of such a state of blessedness, but they are rare; they are pointed out as phenomenal. One has to be born for it, people say. But perhaps one ought to be educated for it, try to achieve it consciously. Passion! All this is very well in poetry or on the stage, where actors strut about in cloaks and with daggers and then – the murderers and the murdered – go and have supper together. It would be a good thing if passions, too, ended like that, but they leave nothing but smoke and stench behind, and no happiness! And the memories are nothing but shame and tearing of hair.
Finally, if such a misfortune, if passion, should overtake you, it would be like finding yourself on a terribly rough and hilly road where horses slip and the rider is exhausted, but your native village can already be seen in the distance: you must not lose sight of it and must do all you can to get out of the dangerous spot as quickly as possible.… Yes, passion must be curbed, stifled, and destroyed by marriage.… He would have run away in horror from a woman who suddenly scorched him with her gaze, or uttered a moan and fell on his shoulder with her eyes closed, then came to and threw her arms about his neck in a tight embrace. That could be like a firework, like an explosion of a barrel of gunpowder; and afterwards? Deafness, blindness,