Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [251]
Andrey did not impose pedantic chains on his feelings and even went so far as to give free rein to his day-dreams, trying only not to lose ‘the ground under his feet’, though when waking from them he could not refrain, either because of his German nature or for some other reason, from drawing some conclusion which had a direct bearing on some of life’s problems. He was vigorous in body because he was vigorous in mind. He had been playful and full of mischief as a boy, and when not playing he was doing something under his father’s supervision. He had no time to indulge in day-dreams. His imagination was not corrupted and his heart was not spoiled; his mother carefully watched over the virginal purity of both. As a youth he instinctively conserved his powers, and it was not long before he discovered that by keeping them fresh he also kept his cheerfulness and his vigour, and helped to form that manliness of character in which the soul must be steeled if it is not to capitulate before life, whatever it may be, and look upon it not as a heavy burden or a cross, but only as a duty, and wage battle with it worthily. He devoted much careful thought to the heart and its complicated laws. Observing consciously and unconsciously the effect of beauty on the imagination and then the transition of an impression into feeling, its symptoms, its play, and its result, he became more and more convinced, as he looked around and grew experienced, that love moved the world with the power of Archimedes’ lever; that there is as much universal and irrefutable truth and goodness in it as there is falsehood and ugliness in its misuse and the failure to understand it. What is good? What is evil? What is the dividing line between them? At the question ‘What is falsehood?’ he saw in his imagination a motley procession of masks of the past and present. He contemplated with a smile, blushing and frowning in turn, the endless row of heroes and heroines of love: Don Quixotes in steel gauntlets, and the ladies of their dreams, remaining faithful to one another after fifty years of separation; the shepherds with their rosy faces and artless, bulging eyes, and their Chloes with lambs. Before his mind’s eye marquesses appeared in powdered wigs and lace, with eyes twinkling with intelligence and dissolute smiles; they were followed by the Werthers who had shot, strangled, or hanged themselves; then by faded lovelorn maidens shedding endless tears and retiring into convents, and their mustachioed heroes with wild ardour in their eyes; by naive and self-conscious Don Juans, the clever fellows who tremble at the least suspicion of love and secretly adore their housekeepers – all, all of them.
To answer the question ‘What is truth?’ he sought far and near, in his mind and with his eyes, examples of ordinary, honest, yet deep and indissoluble intimacy with a woman, but could not find it; and if he seemed to have found it, it only seemed so, and afterwards it was followed by disillusionment. This made him sink into melancholy thoughts and even give way to despair. ‘It is clear,’ he thought to himself, ‘that this blessing has not been granted in all its fullness, or else those whose hearts have experienced the bright radiance of such a love are shy! they are timid and prefer to hide rather than argue with the clever people; perhaps they are sorry for them and forgive them in the name of their own happiness for trampling into the mud the flower that cannot take root in their shallow soil and grow into a tree that would spread its branches over the whole of their lives.’
He looked at marriage, at husbands, and in their attitude to their wives he always saw the riddle of the sphinx; there