Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [55]
‘But, good Lord, I haven’t washed! I haven’t done a thing!’ he whispered. ‘I was going to put down my plan on paper, and I haven’t done so. I haven’t written to the police inspector or the Governor. I began a letter to the landlord, but haven’t finished it. I haven’t checked the bills – or given Zakhar the money – a whole morning wasted!’
He sank into thought. ‘What’s the matter with me? And would the “others” have done that?’ flashed through his mind. ‘“Others, others” – who are they?’
He became absorbed in a comparison of himself with those ‘others’. He thought and thought, and presently an idea quite different from the one he had been expounding to Zakhar was formed in his mind. He had to admit that another one would have managed to write all the letters so that which and that would never have clashed with one another, that another would have moved to a new flat, carried out the plan, gone to the country.…
‘Why, I, too, could have done it,’ he reflected. ‘I can write well enough. I have written more complicated things than ordinary letters in my time! What has become of it all? And what is there so terrible about moving? It’s only a question of making up one’s mind! The “others”,’ he added a further characteristic of those other people, ‘never wear a dressing-gown’ – here he yawned – ‘they hardly ever sleep, they enjoy life, they go everywhere, see everything, are interested in everything.… And I – I am not like them!’ he added sadly and sank into deep thought. He even put his head out from under the blanket.
It was one of the most clear-sighted and courageous moments of Oblomov’s life. Oh, how dreadful he felt when there arose in his mind a clear and vivid idea of human destiny and the purpose of a man’s life, and when he compared this purpose with his own life, and when various vital problems wakened one after another in his mind and began whirling about confusedly, like frightened birds awakened suddenly by a ray of sunlight in some dark ruin. He felt sad and sorry at the thought of his own lack of education, at the arrested development of his spiritual powers, at the feeling of heaviness which interfered with everything he planned to do; and was overcome by envy of those whose lives were rich and full, while a huge rock seemed to have been thrown across the narrow and pitiful path of his own existence. Slowly there arose in his mind the painful realization that many sides of his nature had never been awakened, that others were barely touched, that none had developed fully. And yet he was painfully aware that something good and fine lay buried in him as in a grave, that it was perhaps already dead or lay hidden like gold in the heart of a mountain, and that it was high time that gold was put into circulation. But the treasure was deeply buried under a heap of rubbish and silt. It was as though he himself had stolen and buried in his own soul the treasures bestowed on him as a gift by the world and life. Something prevented him from launching out into the ocean of life and devoting all the powers of his mind and will to flying across it under full sail. Some secret enemy seemed to have laid a heavy hand upon him at the very start of his journey and cast him a long way off from the direct purpose of human existence. And it seemed that he would never find his way to the straight path from the wild and impenetrable jungle. The forest grew thicker and darker in his soul and around him; the path was getting more and more overgrown; clear consciousness awakened more