Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [93]
‘Passion,’ people round him said – ‘passion justifies everything, and you in your egoism are taking care only of yourself: we shall see who you are doing it for.’
‘Well, it must be for someone,’ he said thoughtfully, as though gazing into the distance, and continued to disbelieve in the poesy of passions, refusing to admire their stormy manifestations and devastating consequences, but, as always, regarding an austere conception of life and its functions as the ideal aim of man’s existence. The more people argued with him, the more obstinate he became, and lapsed, in discussions at any rate, into puritanical fanaticism. He used to say that ‘the normal purpose of a man’s life is to live through his four “ages” without sudden jumps and carry the vessel of life to the very end without spilling a single drop, and that a slowly and evenly burning fire is better than a blazing conflagration, however poetical it might be’. In conclusion, he added that he would have been happy if he could prove his conviction in his own case, but that he could not hope to do so because it was most difficult. As for himself, he steadily followed the path he had chosen. No one ever saw him brooding over anything painfully and morbidly; he was not apparently tormented by pricks of conscience; his heart did not ache, he never lost his presence of mind in new, difficult, or complicated situations, but tackled them as old acquaintances, as though he were living his life over again – as though he were visiting old familiar places once more. He always applied the right method in any emergency as a housekeeper chooses the right key for every door from the bunch hanging at her waist. Persistence in the pursuit of a certain aim was a quality he valued most; it was a mark of character in his eyes, and he never denied respect to people who possessed it, however insignificant their aims might be. ‘These are men,’ he used to say. Needless to say, he pursued his aims fearlessly, stepping over every obstacle in his way, and only relinquishing them when a brick wall rose before him or an unbridgeable abyss opened at his feet. He was incapable of the kind of courage which makes a man jump across an abyss or fling himself at a wall with his eyes shut, just on the off chance that he may succeed. He first measured the wall or the abyss, and if there were no certain way of overcoming the obstacle, he turned back, regardless of what people might say about him. Such a character could perhaps not be formed without the mixed elements of which Stolz’s character was composed. Our statesmen have always conformed to five or six stereotyped models; they look lazily and with half-closed eyes about them, put their hand to the engine of State, and drowsily move it along the beaten track, following in their predecessors’ footsteps. But soon their eyes awaken from their sleep, firm striding steps and lively voices were to be heard.… How many Stolzes have still to appear under Russian names!
How could such a man be intimate with Oblomov, whose whole existence, every feature, every step was a flagrant protest against everything Stolz stood for? It seems, however, to be an established fact that while extremes do not necessarily, as it was formerly believed, give rise to a feeling of mutual sympathy, they do not prevent it. Besides, they had spent their childhood and schooldays together – two strong ties; then there was the typically Russian, big-hearted affection lavished in Oblomov’s family on the German boy, the fact that Stolz had always played the part of the stronger, both physically and morally, and, finally and above all, there was in Oblomov’s nature something good, pure, and irreproachable, which was deeply in sympathy with everything that was good and that responded to the call of his simple, unsophisticated, and eternally trustful nature. Anyone who once looked, whether by accident or design, into his pure and childlike