, impossible to change his rooms although the ceiling is
falling to bits, and impossible not to lie on the sofa most of the
day; but the reason of this obstinate inertia is not mere physical
disinclination, it is the result of a mixture of seething and
simmering aspirations, indefinite disillusions and apprehensions, that
elude the grasp of the will. Oblomov is really the victim of a dream,
of an aspiration, of an ideal as bright and mobile as a
will-o'-the-wisp, as elusive as thistledown, which refuses to
materialize.

The tragedy of the book lies in the effort he makes to rise from his
slough of apathy, or rather the effort his friends encourage him to
make. Oblomov's heart is made of pure gold; his soul is of transparent
crystal; there is not a base flaw in the paste of his composition; yet
his will is sapped, not by words, words, words, but by the inability
to formulate the shadows of his inner life. His friend is an energetic
German-Russian. He introduces Oblomov to a charming girl, and together
they conspire to drag him from his apathy. The girl, Olga, at first
succeeds; she falls in love with him, and he with her; he wants to
marry her, but he cannot take the necessary step of arranging his
affairs in a manner which would make that marriage possible; and
gradually he falls back into a new stage of apathy worse than the
first; she realizes the hopelessness of the situation, and they agree
to separate. She marries the energetic friend, and Oblomov sinks into
the comforts of a purely negative life of complete inaction and
seclusion, watched over by a devoted housekeeper, whom he ultimately
marries.

The extraordinary subtlety of the psychology of this study lies, as
well as in other things, in the way in which we feel that Olga is not
really happy with her excellent husband; he is the man whom she
respects; but Oblomov is the man whom she loves, till the end; and she
would give worlds to respect him too if he would only give her the
chance. Oblomov often defends his stagnation, while realizing only too
well what a misfortune it is; and we sometimes feel that he is not
altogether wrong. The chapter that tells of his dream in which his
past life and childhood arise before him in a haze of serene laziness
is one of the masterpieces of Russian prose. The book is terribly
real, and almost intolerably sad.

Goncharov's third and last novel deals with the life of a landed
proprietor on the Volga, and its main idea is t