Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov

“ The Volga grew darker and darker, as if the river were preparing for its icy winter sleep.
Nature does not create, but it does emphasise human melancholy. Marfinka asked herself what had happened to everybody in the house, as she looked doubtfully round her. Even her own pretty little room did not look so gay; it was as if Vera’s nervous silence had invaded it.
Her eyes filled with tears. Why was everything so different? Why had Veroshka come over from the other house, and why did she walk no more in the field or in the thicket? Where was Tiet Nikonich? ”

“ Suppose that, fearing no rival, you were to go to sleep by my side (as you do on your sofa at home) , and that my voice were to become powerless to wake you? Suppose that your present swelling of heart were to pass away, and your dressing-gown come to acquire more value in your eyes than myself? Often and often do such questions prevent my sleeping; yet I do not, on that account, trouble you with conjectures as to the future. Always I hope for better things, for, with me, happiness has cast out fear. Only for one thing have I long been sitting and waiting—namely, for happiness ”

“ Nature has endued you with a powerful weapon, Vera. The antiquated ideas, morality, duty, principles, and faiths that do not exist for me are firmly established with you. You are not easily carried away, you put up a desperate fight and will only confess yourself conquered under terms of equality with your opponent. You are wrong, for it is a kind of theft. You ask to be conquered, and to carry off all the spoils! I, Vera, cannot give everything, but I respect you.”
Vera gave him a glance in which there was a trace of pride, but her heart beat with the pain of parting. ”

“ Once upon a time he would have sunk back upon the pillow after drinking his tea, but now he had grown out of the habit, and contented himself with resting his elbow where his head had just been lying. Something in him was working strongly; but that something was not love. True, Olga’s image was still before him, but only at a distance, and in a mist, and shorn of its rays, like that of some stranger. With aching eyes he gazed at it for a moment or two, and then sighed.
“To live as God wills, and not as oneself wills, is a wise rule,” he murmured. ”

“ Why did she feel that death itself would be welcome?
“Mark!” she cried in a low voice. He did not look round, and although she repeated the cry he strode forward. “Mark!” she cried breathlessly a third time, but he still pursued his path. Her face faded, but mechanically she picked up her handkerchief and her parasol and mounted the cliff. Were truth and love to be found there where her heart called her? Or did truth lie in the little chapel that she was now approaching?
For four days Vera wandered in the park, and waited in the arbour, but Mark did not come. ”

“ Therefore one will fall to cursing life. And all because of a proud, independent striding through existence and a wilful ‘I will’! No; rather does one need to feel one’s way, to close one’s eyes, to avoid becoming either intoxicated with happiness or inclined to repine because it has escaped one. Yes, that is life. Who was it first pictured life as happiness and gratification? The fool! ‘Life is a duty,’ says Olga. ‘Life is a grave obligation which must be fulfilled as such.’” He heaved a profound sigh. ”

“ Then without a word or a glance, she took his arm, to return wearily to the old house, where they parted. Vera knew nothing of his secret suffering, of the passionate love which attracted him to her, the double love of a man for a woman, and of an artist for his ideal.
Raisky wondered what the shots meant. It need not necessarily be love that drove her to the rendezvous. There might be a secret of another kind, but the key to the mystery lay in her heart. There was no salvation for her except in love, and he longed to give her protection and freedom. ”

“ The sandy, shelving bank of the stream, a small copse which descended from the summit of that bank to the water, a winding ravine of which the depths were penetrated by a rill, a plantation of birch-trees—all these things seemed purposely to be fitted into one another, and to have been drawn by the hand of a master. Both the troubled heart and the heart which has never known care might have yearned to hide themselves in this forgotten corner of the world, and to live its life of ineffable happiness. ”

“ Vera guessed that he was deceiving himself once more. Her heart, her feminine instinct, her friendship, these things prevented Tushin from abandoning his hope; she gave what she could, an unconditional trust and a boundless esteem.
“Yes, Ivan Ivanovich, I see now that I have placed my hopes on you, though I did not confess it to myself, and no one would have persuaded me to ask this service of you. But since you make the generous offer yourself, I am delighted, and thank you with all my heart. No one can help me as you do, because no one else loves me as you do.” ”

“ Olga has kept silence, and I too have breathed not a word. So much for stolen meetings at dawn and sunset, for passionate glances, for the wizardry of song! Ah, those poems of love! Never do they end save in disaster. One should go beneath the wedding canopy before one attempts to swim in an atmosphere of roses. To think that before any preparations have been made—before even an answer has come, from the estate, or I have obtained either money or a flat—I should have to go to her aunt, and to say: ‘This is my betrothed!’ At all costs must I put a stop to these rumours. Marriage! ”

“ Warm life pulsed in Vera’s heart, and her heart was lightened. She felt as if life was streaming through her veins after an evil dream. Peace tapped at the door of her soul, the dark forsaken temple, which was now gaily lighted once more and a home of prayer. She felt that Tatiana Markovna and she were inseparable sisters, and she even began involuntarily to address her as “thou,” as she had done Raisky when her heart responded to his kindness. ”

“ The love beheld in that vision was a love which, unfading and indestructible, expressed itself on the features of husband and wife only during seasons of mutual sorrow, and shone forth only in slow, silent glances of mutual sympathy, and voiced itself only in a constant, joint endurance of the trials of life as he and she restrained the tears, and choked back the sobs, which those trials called forth. ”

“ Do you even know what an artist is?”
Raisky made no answer.
“An artist ... is a man who borrows money from you, or chatters foolish nonsense, and drives you to distraction.... Artist! ... These people lead a wild gipsy life, are destitute of money, clothes, shoes, and all the time they dream of wealth. Artists live on this earth like the birds of heaven. I have seen enough of them in St. Petersburg: bold rascals who meet one another in the evening dressed in fantastic costumes, lie upon divans, smoke pipes, talk about trifles, read poetry, drink brandy and declare that they are artists. ”

“ You have altered, grown thinner. Is it not, by your conception of love, a matter of indifference whether you choose a companion in me, or from the poor quarter of our town, or from a village on the Volga. What has induced you to come down here for a whole year?”
“Examine your own fallacy, Vera,” he said, looking at her gloomily. “Love is not a concept merely, but a driving force, a necessity, and therefore is mostly blind. But I am not blindly chained to you. Your extraordinary beauty, your intellect and your free outlook hold me longer in thrall than would be possible with any other woman.” ”

“ A year and a half later Oblomov was sitting in his dull, murky rooms. He had now grown corpulent, and from his eyes ennui peered forth like a disease. At intervals, too, he would rise and pace the room, then lie down again, then take a book from the table, read a few lines of it, yawn, and begin drumming with his fingers upon the table’s surface. As for Zakhar, he was more seedy and untidy than ever. The elbows of his coat were patched, and he had about him a pinched and hungry air, as though his appetite were bad, his sleep poor, and his work three times as much as it ought to have been. ”

“ In about ten days Marfinka returned in company with her fiancé and his mother. Vikentev and she brought their laughter, their gaiety and their merry talk into the quiet house. But within a couple of hours after their arrival they had become quiet and timid, for their gaiety had aroused a melancholy echo, as in an empty house. A mist lay on everything. Even the birds had ceased to fly to the spot where Marfinka fed them; swallows, starlings and all the feathered inhabitants of the park were gone, and not a stork was to be seen flying over the Volga. ”

“ At the table his mother and her guests were sitting over their needlework, while his father was silently pacing up and down. Somehow the present and the past had become fused and interchanged, so that, as the little Oblomov, he was dreaming that at length he had reached the enchanted country where the rivers run milk and honey, and bread can be obtained without toil, and every one walks clad in gold and silver.
Once again he could hear the old legends and the old folk-tales, mingled with the clatter of knives and crockery in the kitchen. ”

“ You are sorry for a poor unfortunate girl and want to raise her up again. I understand your generosity, Ivan Ivanovich, but I will have none of it.”
“Vera Vassilievna,” he said, kissing her hand. “I could not esteem anybody under compulsion. If I give anyone a greeting in the street, he has my esteem; if he has not my esteem, I pass him by. I greet you as before, and because you are unhappy my love for you is greater than before. You are enduring a great sorrow, as I am. You have lost your hopes of happiness,” he added in a low, melancholy tone. ”

“ To go forward or to stand still? To go forward would mean divesting, not only his shoulders, but also his intellect, his soul, of his dressing-gown; it would mean sweeping away, not only from his chamber walls, but also from his eyes, the dust and the cobwebs. Yet how was he to take the first step necessary? Where was he to begin? He remembered Schtoltz’s words: “Go to Oblomovka, and there learn what sowing and grinding mean, and why the peasant is poor or rich. Walk the fields, attend the local elections, visit the mills, and linger by the river wharves.” ”

“ She gave no answer, but her eyes wandered lovingly over the trees and the rising ground, and finally rested on the dazzling mirror of water.
“It is a beautiful place,” admitted Raisky, “but the view, the river bank, the hills, the forest—all these things would became tedious if they were not inhabited by living creatures which share our feelings and exchange ideas with us.”
She was silent.
“Vera!” said Raisky after a pause.
“Ah!” she said, as if she had only just heard his remarks, “I don’t live alone; Grandmother, Marfinka....” ”

“ Never a false note has that heart sounded; never a particle of mire has there clung to his soul; never a specious lie has he heeded; never to the false road has he been seduced by any possible attraction. Even were a whole ocean of evil and rascality to come seething about him, and even were the whole world to become infected with poison and be turned upside down, Oblomov would yet refuse to bow to the false image, and his soul would remain as clean, as radiant, and as without spot as ever. ”

“ There was no one with whom she liked more to drink coffee, no one to whom she gave her confidence in the same degree; they shared the same liking for household management, the same deep-rooted self-esteem and the same respect for family tradition.
Of Tushin himself there was little more to say than was revealed on a first occasion; his character lay bare to the daylight, with no secret, no romantic side. He possessed more than plain good sense, for his understanding did not derive from the brain alone, but from the heart and will. ”