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By Root 2302 0

of them has clear, calm eyes,’ Oblomov went on. ‘They all infect each other by a sort of tormenting anxiety and melancholy; they are all painfully searching for something. And if only it were for truth or their own and other people’s welfare – but no, they turn pale when they learn of a friend’s success. One man’s only worry in the world is to be present in court tomorrow; his case has been dragging on for five years, the other side is winning, and for five years he has had only one desire, one thought in his head: to trip up the other man and erect his own welfare on his ruin. To go regularly to court for five years and to sit and wait in the corridor – that is the aim and the ideal of his life! One man is depressed because he has to go to his office every day and stay there for five hours, and another man is sighing deeply because such bliss has not fallen to his lot – –’

‘You’re a philosopher, Ilya,’ said Stolz. ‘Everyone is worrying, you alone want nothing.’

‘That sallow-faced gentleman in glasses,’ Oblomov went on, ‘kept asking me if I had read the speech of some French deputy, and glared at me when I told him that I did not read the papers. And he kept talking and talking about Louis-Philippe as though he were his own father. Then he kept pestering me to tell him why the French ambassador had left Rome. Do you expect me to load myself every day with a fresh supply of world news and then to shout about it all week till it runs out? To-day Mahomet-Ali dispatched a ship to Constantinople and he is racking his brains wondering why. To-morrow Don Carlos has a setback and he is terribly worried. Here they are digging a canal, there a detachment of troops has been sent to the East: good Lord, it’s war! He looks terribly upset, he runs, he shouts, as though an army was marching against him personally. They argue, they discuss everything from every possible point of view, but they are bored, they are not really interested in the whole thing: you can see they are fast asleep in spite of their shouts! The whole thing does not concern them; it is as if they walked about in borrowed hats. They have nothing to do, so they squander their energies all over the place without trying to aim at anything in particular. The universality of their interests merely conceals emptiness and a complete absence of sympathy with everything! To choose the modest path of hard work and follow it, to dig a deep channel – is dull and unostentatious, and knowing everything would be of no use there, and there would be no one to impress!’

‘Well, Ilya,’ said Stolz, ‘you and I have not scattered our energies in all directions, have we? Where is our modest path of hard work?’

Oblomov suddenly fell silent.

‘Oh, I’ve only to finish – er – my plan,’ he said. ‘Anyway, why should I worry about them?’ he added with vexation after a pause. ‘I’m not interfering with them. I’m not after anything. All I say is that I can’t see that their life is normal. No, that is not life, but a distortion of the norm, of the ideal of life, which nature demands that man should regard as his aim.’

‘What is this ideal, this norm of life?’

Oblomov made no answer.

‘Now, tell me,’ Stolz went on, ‘what sort of life would you have planned for yourself?’

‘I have already planned it.’

‘Oh? Tell me, what is it?’

‘What is it?’ said Oblomov, turning over on his back and staring at the ceiling. ‘Well, I’d go to the country.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘My plan isn’t ready. Besides, I wouldn’t have gone by myself, but with my wife.’

‘Oh, I see! Well, why not? What are you waiting for? In another three or four years nobody will marry you.’

‘Well, it can’t be helped,’ said Oblomov, sighing. ‘I’m too poor to marry.’

‘Good heavens, and what about Oblomovka? Three hundred serfs!’

‘What about it? That isn’t enough to live on with a wife.’

‘Not enough for two people to live on?’

‘But what about the children?’

‘If you give them a decent education, they’ll be able to earn their own living. You must know how to start them in the right direction – –’

‘No,