Ivan Goncharov
Encyclopedia
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was a Russia
n novelist best known as the author of Oblomov
(1859
).
); his father was a wealthy grain merchant and respected official who was elected mayor of Simbirsk several times. The Goncharovs' big stone manor in the town center occupied a vast territory and had all the characteristics of a rural manor, with huge barns (packed with wheat
and flour
) and numerous stables. His father, Aleksander Ivanovich Goncharov, died when the boy was seven years old. First his mother Avdotya Matveevna, then his godfather Nikolay Nikolayevich Tregubov, a nobleman and a former Navy officer, took it upon themselves to give a boy a good education. Tregubov, described as man of liberal views and member of the secret masonic lodge
, who knew personally some of the Decemberists, and who was one of the most popular men amongst Simbirsk intelligentsia, was later cited as the major early influence on Goncharov, especially with his sea travel stories. With Tregubov around, Goncharova could engage herself in domestic affairs. "His servants, cabmen, the whole household merged in with ours, and we formed a common family. All the practical issues now were mother's, and she proved to be an excellent housewife. All the intellectual duties were his," Ivan Goncharov remembered.
Goncharov spent the years 1820 to 1822 at a private boarding-school owned by Rev. Fyodor S. Troitsky. It was here that he learned French
and German language
s and started reading European writers' original texts that he borrowed from the Troitsky's vast library. Yet Goncharova wanted her both sons to follow their late father's steps, and in August 1822 he was sent to Moscow to join a college of commerce. There he spent eight unhappy years, detesting the dismal quality of education and nonsensically severe discipline, taking solace in self-education. "My first humanitarian and moral tutor was Karamzin," he remembered. Then Pushkin came as a revelation, with Evgeny Onegin being published as a series, capturing young man's imagination. In 1830, Goncharov decided to quit the college and in 1831 (missing one year because of a cholera
outbreak in Moscow
) he enrolled in the Moscow University's philological
faculty, where he took a special interest in literature, arts, and architecture
.
In the University with its atmosphere of intellectual freedom and lively debate, Goncharov's spirit thrived. One episode proved to be especially memorable: when his then-idol Aleksander Pushkin arrived as a guest lecturer to have a public discussion with professor M. T. Katchenovsky on the issue of Slovo o polku Igoreve
’s authenticity. "It was as if sunlight lit up the auditorium. I was enchanted by his poetry at the time, for me it was like mother's milk, his verses were making me tremble with delight. It was his genius that formed my aesthetic background - although the same, I think, could be said of all the young people of the time who were interested in poetry", Goncharov wrote. Yet, unlike Hertzen, Belinsky, or Ogaryov, his fellow Moscow University students of the time, Goncharov remained indifferent to the ideas of political and social change that were gaining popularity at the time. Reading and translating were his main occupations. In 1832, the Telescope magazine published two chapters of Eugène Sue
's novel Atar-Gull (1831), translated by Goncharov. This was his debut publication.
In 1834, Goncharov graduated from Moscow University and returned home to enter Simbirsk governor A. M. Zagryazhsky's chancellery. A year later, he moved to Saint Petersburg where he became a translator at the Finance Ministry
's Foreign commerce department. Here in the Russian capital, he became friends with the Maykov
family (he was young Apollon
and Valerian
's tutor for a while, teaching the boys Latin and Russian literature
) and joined the elitist literary circle based in their house and attended by people like Ivan Turgenev
, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Dmitry Grigorovich
. Maykovs' home-made Snowdrop almanac featured many of young Goncharov's poems. Soon he stopped dabbling in poetry altogether; some of those early verses were later incorporated into A Common Story novel as Aduev's writings, a sure sign their author stopped treating them seriously.
and Vladimir Sollogub, although tinged with comedy, was published by Moonlit Nights almanac in 1839. In 1842 Goncharov wrote and essay called Ivan Savvich Podzhabrin, a naturalist psychological sketch. Published in Sovremennik
only six years later, it failed to make an impact, being very much a period piece, but later scholars reviewed it positively, as something in the vein of a Gogol-inspired genre known as "physiological essay", marked with fine style and precision in depicting life of a common man in the city. It transpired later that in the early 1840s Goncharov was working on a novel called The Old People; manuscripts of it have been lost.
, was published in Sovremennik (March and April issues); it dealt with the conflicts between the excessive Romanticism of a young Russian nobleman, freshly arrived in Saint Petersburg
from the provinces, and the emerging commercial class of the Imperial capital with its sober pragmatism. The novel polarized the critics and made its author famous. A Common Story turned out to be a direct response to Vissarion Belinsky
's call for exposing a new 'curiosity type', that of a complacent romantic, common at the time; it was Belinsky who praised the novel as one of the best books of the year. The novelty term aduyevschina (after the last name of Aduyev, its main character) became popular with reviewers who saw it as synonymous with a penchant to vain romantic aspirations. Leo Tolstoy, who liked the novel too, though, used the word to describe social egotism and certain type of person's inability to see beyond their immediate interests.
In 1849 Sovremennik published Oblomov's Dream, a would-be extract from Goncharov's second novel (known under the working title The Artist at the time), which worked well on its own, as a fine short story. Again, Sovremennik stuff lauded it. Slavophiles, while giving the author credit for being fine stylist, reviled the irony aimed at the patriarchal Russian ways. The novel itself, though, appeared only ten years later, preceded by some extraordinary events in Goncharov's life.
In 1852 Goncharov embarked upon a round the world tour through England
, Africa
, Japan
, and back to Russia, on board frigate Pallada, as the secretary of Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin
, whose mission was to inspect Alaska
and other Empire's outer reaches, and also to establish trade relations with Japan
. The log-book Goncharov's duty it was to keep served as a basis for his future book. Only on February 25, 1855, by land (through Siberia
and Ural
; this leg of the journed lasted six months) he returned to Saint Petersburg. His travelogue, a chronicle of the trip, The Frigate Pallada (The Frigate Pallas; "Pallada" is the Russian spelling of "Pallas"), started to appear first in Otechestvennye zapiski (April, 1855), then in The Sea Anthology and other magazines.
The Frigate Pallada was published as a separate edition in 1858, garnered good reviews and became very popular. For a common Russian readers of the mid-XIX century the book came as a revelation, giving new insight into the world, hitherto unknown. Goncharov, a well-read man, who studied special literature on history and economics, proved to be competent and insightful writer. Goncharov warned against treating his work as some kind of political or social statement, insisting it was a subjective piece of writing, but critics praised it as a well-balanced, unbiased report, containing valuable ethnographical material, but with it, some social critique, too. Again, anti-romantic tendency here prevailed: it looked very much as polemic with those Russian authors who tended to romanticize "pure and unspoiled" life of uncivilized world. Nikolay Dobrolyubov, whose review was among the most favourable, argued that Frigate Pallada was "bearing the hallmark of an epic novelist' gift".
and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which caused resentment by some of his bosses. According to Pisemsky, for giving a permission for his A Thousand Souls novel to be published, Goncharov has been officially reprimanded. Despite of all this, Goncharov has found himself a target of many satires and got a negative mention in Hertzen's Kolokol. "One of the best Russian author shouldn’t have taken upon himself this sort of a job", critic Aleksander Druzhinin wrote in his diary. In 1856, as the official line in the publishing policy hardened, Goncharov quit the job.
In the summer of 1857 Goncharov went to Marienbad
to take some medical courses. There he wrote the novel, almost in its entirety. "It might seem strange, even impossible that in the course of one month the whole of the novel might be written... But it’s been growing me for several years, so what I had to do now was just sit and write everything down", he wrote. Goncharov's second novel Oblomov
was published in 1859
in Otechestvennye zapiski
. It has evolved from "Oblomov's Dream. An Episode from an Unfinished Novel" ("Son Oblomova"), a short story, published earlier in Sovremennik (No. 4, 1849) which was later incorporated into the finished novel as "Oblomov's Dream" ("Son Oblomova"), Chapter 9. The novel caused much discussion in the Russian press, introduced another new term, oblomovschina, to the literary lexicon and in retrospect is regarded as a Russian classic. In his essay What Is Oblomovschina? critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov provided an ideological background for the type of Russia's 'new man' Goncharov exposed. The critic argued that, while several famous classic Russian literary characters - Onegin, Pechorin
, and Rudin
- bore symptoms of the 'Oblomov malaise', for the first time ever one single feature, that of social apathy, self-destructive kind of laziness and total unwillingness to even try and lift the burden of all-pervading, killing dourness, had been brought to the fore and subjected to such a thorough analysis.
The main character, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, was compared to Shakespeare
's Hamlet
who answers "No!" to the question "To be or not to be
?". Fyodor Dostoyevsky, among others, considered Goncharov a noteworthy author of high stature. Anton Chekhov
is quoted as stating that Goncharov was "...ten heads above me in talent." Turgenev
, who fell out with Goncharov after the latter accused him of plagiarism (specifically of having used some of the characters and situations from The Precipice, whose plan Goncharov had disclosed to him in 1855, in Home of the Gentry
and On the Eve
), nevertheless declared: "As long as there is even just one Russian alive, Oblomov
will be remembered!"
, embraced the well-publicized the idea that "the government itself has come now to lead the progress", and found himself in opposition to the revolutionary democrats' camp. In the summer of 1862 he became an editor of Severnaya potchta, an Interior ministry's official newaspaper. A year later he returned to the censorship committee. Second time round, Goncharov proved to be a harsh censor: he's brought serious trouble upon Nekrasov's Sovremennik and Russkoye slovo, where Dmitry Pisarev was becoming now a leading figure. Condemning openly both 'nihilistic' tendencies and what he called "pathetic, imported doctrines of materialism
, socialism
and communism
", Goncharov has found himself under heavy criticism from democratic headquarters. In 1863 he became a member of the State publishing council and two years later joined the Russian government's Department of publishing. All the while he was working on his third novel; again it was previewed by extracts: Sophia Nikolayevna Belovodova (which he himself later subjected to heavy criticism), Grandmother and Portrait.
In 1867, Goncharov retired from his post as a government censor and devoted all of his time to working on his third novel. The Precipice
, a book he once called "my heart's child", took him twenty years to finish. Towards the end of this tormenting process Goncharov was despairing of ever finishing it, speaking of the novel as a "burden", and "insurmountable task" that totally blocked his development and made him unable to move any further as a writer. In a letter to Turgenev he confessed that, having finished part 3, entertained the idea of abandoning the whole thing altogether.
In 1869 The Precipice was published in Vestnik Evropy
(##1-5), the story of a romantic rivalry among three men, which provided a condemnation of nihilism
in defence of the religious and moral values of old Russia. Later critics came to see it as final part of the trilogy, each book introducing a character typical to a Russian high society of a certain decade: first Aduev, then Oblomov and finally Raisky, a gifted man, aborted in his artistic development by the "lack of direction". According to scholar S.Mashinsky, as a social epic, The Precipice was superior to both A Common Story and Oblomov.
The novel was highly successful, but this time the left press turned against its author. Saltykov-Schedrin in Otechestvennye zapiski (The Street Philosophy, #6, 1869), compared it unfavourably to Oblomov. While the latter "had been driven by ideas that's been prompted to it's auther by the best men of 1840s", The Precipice featured "just a bunch of people wandering to and fro without any sense of direction, their lines of actions having neither beginning nor end", according to the critic. Yevgeny Utin in Vestnik Evropy argued that Goncharov, like all writers of his generation, has lost touch with the new Russia and its people. Much controversy has been caused by the Mark Vookhov character which, as the leftist critics argued, had been brought out in order to condemn 'nihilism' once again and, therefore, had made the whole novel 'tendentious'. Yet, as Vladimir Korolenko
wrote later, "Volokhov and all things related to him will be forgotten, as Gogol’s Correspondence has been forgotten now, while huge characters will remain in history, towering over all of those spiteful disputes of old".
's Woe from Wit
. Goncharov also wrote short stories: his Servants of an Old Age cycle dealt with life in rural Russia; akin to it were his short storis of the time ("Irony of Fate", Ukha" and others). In 1880 the first edition of Complete Goncharov was published. Years later, after the writer's death, it transpired that he's burnt many of his latter years manuscripts.
Towards the end of his life Goncharov wrote memoirs entitled An Uncommon Story
, in which he accused his literary rivals, above all Turgenev
, of having plagiarized his works and prevented him from achieving European fame. The document which some saw the product of an unstable and unhappy mind, some regarded as an exceptionally valuable, albeit controversial piece of writing, was not published until 1924.
Goncharov, who's never married, spent the rest of his days absorbed in lonely and bitter recriminations because of the negative criticism some of his work received. He died in loneliness, in St. Petersburg
on September 24, 1891, of pneumonia
. He was buried at the Novoe Nikolskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra
. In 1956 his ashes were moved to the Volkovo Cemetery
in Leningrad
.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n novelist best known as the author of Oblomov
Oblomov
Oblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature...
(1859
1859 in literature
The year 1859 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*George Eliot's novel Adam Bede is accused of being the "vile outpourings of a lewd woman's mind" in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and was consequently withdrawn from libraries.*30 April - Charles Dickens's...
).
Biography
Ivan Goncharov was born in Simbirsk (now UlyanovskUlyanovsk
Ulyanovsk The city is the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin , for whom it is named.-History:Simbirsk was founded in 1648 by the boyar Bogdan Khitrovo. The fort of "Simbirsk" was strategically placed on a hill on the Western bank of the Volga River...
); his father was a wealthy grain merchant and respected official who was elected mayor of Simbirsk several times. The Goncharovs' big stone manor in the town center occupied a vast territory and had all the characteristics of a rural manor, with huge barns (packed with wheat
Wheat
Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...
and flour
Flour
Flour is a powder which is made by grinding cereal grains, other seeds or roots . It is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many cultures, making the availability of adequate supplies of flour a major economic and political issue at various times throughout history...
) and numerous stables. His father, Aleksander Ivanovich Goncharov, died when the boy was seven years old. First his mother Avdotya Matveevna, then his godfather Nikolay Nikolayevich Tregubov, a nobleman and a former Navy officer, took it upon themselves to give a boy a good education. Tregubov, described as man of liberal views and member of the secret masonic lodge
Masonic Lodge
This article is about the Masonic term for a membership group. For buildings named Masonic Lodge, see Masonic Lodge A Masonic Lodge, often termed a Private Lodge or Constituent Lodge, is the basic organisation of Freemasonry...
, who knew personally some of the Decemberists, and who was one of the most popular men amongst Simbirsk intelligentsia, was later cited as the major early influence on Goncharov, especially with his sea travel stories. With Tregubov around, Goncharova could engage herself in domestic affairs. "His servants, cabmen, the whole household merged in with ours, and we formed a common family. All the practical issues now were mother's, and she proved to be an excellent housewife. All the intellectual duties were his," Ivan Goncharov remembered.
Goncharov spent the years 1820 to 1822 at a private boarding-school owned by Rev. Fyodor S. Troitsky. It was here that he learned French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
s and started reading European writers' original texts that he borrowed from the Troitsky's vast library. Yet Goncharova wanted her both sons to follow their late father's steps, and in August 1822 he was sent to Moscow to join a college of commerce. There he spent eight unhappy years, detesting the dismal quality of education and nonsensically severe discipline, taking solace in self-education. "My first humanitarian and moral tutor was Karamzin," he remembered. Then Pushkin came as a revelation, with Evgeny Onegin being published as a series, capturing young man's imagination. In 1830, Goncharov decided to quit the college and in 1831 (missing one year because of a cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
outbreak in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
) he enrolled in the Moscow University's philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
faculty, where he took a special interest in literature, arts, and architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
.
In the University with its atmosphere of intellectual freedom and lively debate, Goncharov's spirit thrived. One episode proved to be especially memorable: when his then-idol Aleksander Pushkin arrived as a guest lecturer to have a public discussion with professor M. T. Katchenovsky on the issue of Slovo o polku Igoreve
The Tale of Igor's Campaign
The Tale of Igor's Campaign is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language.The title is occasionally translated as The Song of Igor's Campaign, The Lay of Igor's Campaign, and The Lay of...
’s authenticity. "It was as if sunlight lit up the auditorium. I was enchanted by his poetry at the time, for me it was like mother's milk, his verses were making me tremble with delight. It was his genius that formed my aesthetic background - although the same, I think, could be said of all the young people of the time who were interested in poetry", Goncharov wrote. Yet, unlike Hertzen, Belinsky, or Ogaryov, his fellow Moscow University students of the time, Goncharov remained indifferent to the ideas of political and social change that were gaining popularity at the time. Reading and translating were his main occupations. In 1832, the Telescope magazine published two chapters of Eugène Sue
Eugène Sue
Joseph Marie Eugène Sue was a French novelist.He was born in Paris, the son of a distinguished surgeon in Napoleon's army, and is said to have had the Empress Joséphine for godmother. Sue himself acted as surgeon both in the Spanish campaign undertaken by France in 1823 and at the Battle of Navarino...
's novel Atar-Gull (1831), translated by Goncharov. This was his debut publication.
In 1834, Goncharov graduated from Moscow University and returned home to enter Simbirsk governor A. M. Zagryazhsky's chancellery. A year later, he moved to Saint Petersburg where he became a translator at the Finance Ministry
Ministry of Finance of the Russian Empire
Ministry of Finance — one of the Russian Empire's central public institutions, in charge of financial and economic policy.Ministry was established on 8 September 1802, and reorganized in 1810-11.By the end of 19th century, it consisted of a:...
's Foreign commerce department. Here in the Russian capital, he became friends with the Maykov
Maykov
Maykov , or Maykova is a Russian last name and may refer to:*Nikolay Maykov , a Russian painter*Apollon Maykov , a Russian poet, son of Nikolay...
family (he was young Apollon
Apollon Maykov
Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov was a Russian poet.He was born into the artistic family of Nikolay Apollonovich Maykov, a painter and an academic. In 1834 the family moved to Petersburg. In 1837-1841 Maykov studied law at Saint Petersburg University. At first he was attracted to painting, but he soon...
and Valerian
Valerian Maykov
Valerian Nikolayevich Maykov was a Russian author and literary critic, son of painter Nikolay Maykov, brother of poet Apollon and novelist Vladimir Maykovs...
's tutor for a while, teaching the boys Latin and Russian literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
) and joined the elitist literary circle based in their house and attended by people like Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Dmitry Grigorovich
Dmitry Grigorovich
- Early life :Grigorovich was born in Simbirsk, where his family were members of the landed gentry. His father was Russian and his mother French. From 1832 to 1835 he studied at several French and German private schools in Moscow...
. Maykovs' home-made Snowdrop almanac featured many of young Goncharov's poems. Soon he stopped dabbling in poetry altogether; some of those early verses were later incorporated into A Common Story novel as Aduev's writings, a sure sign their author stopped treating them seriously.
Literary career
It was in one of Maykovs' Snowdrop compilations that Goncharov's first piece of prose appeared, a satirical novelet called Evil Illness (1838), ridiculing romantic sentimentalism and 'void fantasizing'. Another mini-novel, A Fortunate Blunder, a "high-society drama" in the tradition set by Marlinsky, Vladimir OdoevskyVladimir Odoevsky
Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky was a prominent Russian philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" on account of his keen interest in fantasmagoric tales and musical criticism.-Life:...
and Vladimir Sollogub, although tinged with comedy, was published by Moonlit Nights almanac in 1839. In 1842 Goncharov wrote and essay called Ivan Savvich Podzhabrin, a naturalist psychological sketch. Published in Sovremennik
Sovremennik
Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that...
only six years later, it failed to make an impact, being very much a period piece, but later scholars reviewed it positively, as something in the vein of a Gogol-inspired genre known as "physiological essay", marked with fine style and precision in depicting life of a common man in the city. It transpired later that in the early 1840s Goncharov was working on a novel called The Old People; manuscripts of it have been lost.
A Common Story
In 1847, Goncharov's first novel, A Common StoryA Common Story
A Common Story is a debut novel by Ivan Goncharov written in 1844-1846 and first published in the 1847 March and April issues of Sovremennik magazine.- Background :...
, was published in Sovremennik (March and April issues); it dealt with the conflicts between the excessive Romanticism of a young Russian nobleman, freshly arrived in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
from the provinces, and the emerging commercial class of the Imperial capital with its sober pragmatism. The novel polarized the critics and made its author famous. A Common Story turned out to be a direct response to Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...
's call for exposing a new 'curiosity type', that of a complacent romantic, common at the time; it was Belinsky who praised the novel as one of the best books of the year. The novelty term aduyevschina (after the last name of Aduyev, its main character) became popular with reviewers who saw it as synonymous with a penchant to vain romantic aspirations. Leo Tolstoy, who liked the novel too, though, used the word to describe social egotism and certain type of person's inability to see beyond their immediate interests.
In 1849 Sovremennik published Oblomov's Dream, a would-be extract from Goncharov's second novel (known under the working title The Artist at the time), which worked well on its own, as a fine short story. Again, Sovremennik stuff lauded it. Slavophiles, while giving the author credit for being fine stylist, reviled the irony aimed at the patriarchal Russian ways. The novel itself, though, appeared only ten years later, preceded by some extraordinary events in Goncharov's life.
In 1852 Goncharov embarked upon a round the world tour through England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and back to Russia, on board frigate Pallada, as the secretary of Admiral Yevfimy Putyatin
Yevfimy Putyatin
Yevfimy Vasilyevich Putyatin was a Russian admiral noted for his diplomatic missions to Japan and China which resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Shimoda in 1855.-Early life:...
, whose mission was to inspect Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
and other Empire's outer reaches, and also to establish trade relations with Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. The log-book Goncharov's duty it was to keep served as a basis for his future book. Only on February 25, 1855, by land (through Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and Ural
Ural
Ural may refer to one of the following:*Ural Mountains*Ural *Ural River*Ural Federal District*Ural economic region*Urals oil, a reference oil brand*Ural Automotive Plant*Ural-4320, Ural-375D and Ural-5323, Soviet and Russian military trucks...
; this leg of the journed lasted six months) he returned to Saint Petersburg. His travelogue, a chronicle of the trip, The Frigate Pallada (The Frigate Pallas; "Pallada" is the Russian spelling of "Pallas"), started to appear first in Otechestvennye zapiski (April, 1855), then in The Sea Anthology and other magazines.
The Frigate Pallada was published as a separate edition in 1858, garnered good reviews and became very popular. For a common Russian readers of the mid-XIX century the book came as a revelation, giving new insight into the world, hitherto unknown. Goncharov, a well-read man, who studied special literature on history and economics, proved to be competent and insightful writer. Goncharov warned against treating his work as some kind of political or social statement, insisting it was a subjective piece of writing, but critics praised it as a well-balanced, unbiased report, containing valuable ethnographical material, but with it, some social critique, too. Again, anti-romantic tendency here prevailed: it looked very much as polemic with those Russian authors who tended to romanticize "pure and unspoiled" life of uncivilized world. Nikolay Dobrolyubov, whose review was among the most favourable, argued that Frigate Pallada was "bearing the hallmark of an epic novelist' gift".
Oblomov
Throughout the 1850s Goncharov was working on his second novel, but the process was slow for many reasons. In 1855 he took the post of a censor in the Saint Petersburg censorship committee. In this capacity he's done a lot of good: helped publish important works by Ivan Turgenev, Nikolay Nekrasov, Aleksey PisemskyAleksey Pisemsky
Aleksey Feofilaktovich Pisemsky was a Russian novelist and dramatist who was regarded as an equal of Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoevsky during his lifetime, but whose reputation suffered a spectacular decline in the 20th century. A realistic playwright, along with Aleksandr Ostrovsky he was...
and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which caused resentment by some of his bosses. According to Pisemsky, for giving a permission for his A Thousand Souls novel to be published, Goncharov has been officially reprimanded. Despite of all this, Goncharov has found himself a target of many satires and got a negative mention in Hertzen's Kolokol. "One of the best Russian author shouldn’t have taken upon himself this sort of a job", critic Aleksander Druzhinin wrote in his diary. In 1856, as the official line in the publishing policy hardened, Goncharov quit the job.
In the summer of 1857 Goncharov went to Marienbad
Mariánské Lázne
Mariánské Lázně is a spa town in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. The town, surrounded by green mountains, is a mosaic of parks and noble houses...
to take some medical courses. There he wrote the novel, almost in its entirety. "It might seem strange, even impossible that in the course of one month the whole of the novel might be written... But it’s been growing me for several years, so what I had to do now was just sit and write everything down", he wrote. Goncharov's second novel Oblomov
Oblomov
Oblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature...
was published in 1859
1859 in literature
The year 1859 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*George Eliot's novel Adam Bede is accused of being the "vile outpourings of a lewd woman's mind" in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and was consequently withdrawn from libraries.*30 April - Charles Dickens's...
in Otechestvennye zapiski
Otechestvennye Zapiski
Otechestvennye Zapiski was a Russian literary magazine published in St Petersburg on a monthly basis between 1818 and 1884. The journal served liberal-minded readers, known as the intelligentsia...
. It has evolved from "Oblomov's Dream. An Episode from an Unfinished Novel" ("Son Oblomova"), a short story, published earlier in Sovremennik (No. 4, 1849) which was later incorporated into the finished novel as "Oblomov's Dream" ("Son Oblomova"), Chapter 9. The novel caused much discussion in the Russian press, introduced another new term, oblomovschina, to the literary lexicon and in retrospect is regarded as a Russian classic. In his essay What Is Oblomovschina? critic Nikolay Dobrolyubov provided an ideological background for the type of Russia's 'new man' Goncharov exposed. The critic argued that, while several famous classic Russian literary characters - Onegin, Pechorin
A Hero of Our Time
A Hero of Our Time is a novel by Mikhail Lermontov, written in 1839 and revised in 1841. It is an example of the superfluous man novel, noted for its compelling Byronic hero Pechorin and for the beautiful descriptions of the Caucasus...
, and Rudin
Rudin
Rudin is the first novel by Ivan Turgenev, a famous Russian writer best known for his short stories and the novel Fathers and Sons. Turgenev started to work on it in 1855, and it was first published in the literary magazine "Sovremennik" in 1856; several changes were made by Turgenev in subsequent...
- bore symptoms of the 'Oblomov malaise', for the first time ever one single feature, that of social apathy, self-destructive kind of laziness and total unwillingness to even try and lift the burden of all-pervading, killing dourness, had been brought to the fore and subjected to such a thorough analysis.
The main character, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, was compared to Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
who answers "No!" to the question "To be or not to be
To Be or Not to Be
To Be or Not to Be can refer to:* To be, or not to be, the soliloquy from Hamlet* To Be or Not to Be , directed by Ernst Lubitsch* To Be or Not to Be , a remake produced by Mel Brooks...
?". Fyodor Dostoyevsky, among others, considered Goncharov a noteworthy author of high stature. Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
is quoted as stating that Goncharov was "...ten heads above me in talent." Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
, who fell out with Goncharov after the latter accused him of plagiarism (specifically of having used some of the characters and situations from The Precipice, whose plan Goncharov had disclosed to him in 1855, in Home of the Gentry
Home of the Gentry
Home of the Gentry is a novel by Ivan Turgenev published in the January 1859 issue of Sovremennik. It was enthusiastically received by the Russian society and remained his least controversial and most widely-read novel until the end of the 19th century...
and On the Eve
On the Eve
On the Eve is the third novel by famous Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, best known for his short stories and the novel Fathers and Sons. Turgenev embellishes this love story with observations on middle class life and interposes some art and philosophy....
), nevertheless declared: "As long as there is even just one Russian alive, Oblomov
Oblomov
Oblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature...
will be remembered!"
The Precipice
Being a traditional liberal at heart, Goncharov greeted the 1861 reformsEmancipation reform of 1861
The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of liberal reforms effected during the reign of Alexander II of Russia. The reform, together with a related reform in 1861, amounted to the liquidation of serf dependence previously suffered by peasants of the Russian Empire...
, embraced the well-publicized the idea that "the government itself has come now to lead the progress", and found himself in opposition to the revolutionary democrats' camp. In the summer of 1862 he became an editor of Severnaya potchta, an Interior ministry's official newaspaper. A year later he returned to the censorship committee. Second time round, Goncharov proved to be a harsh censor: he's brought serious trouble upon Nekrasov's Sovremennik and Russkoye slovo, where Dmitry Pisarev was becoming now a leading figure. Condemning openly both 'nihilistic' tendencies and what he called "pathetic, imported doctrines of materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
, socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
", Goncharov has found himself under heavy criticism from democratic headquarters. In 1863 he became a member of the State publishing council and two years later joined the Russian government's Department of publishing. All the while he was working on his third novel; again it was previewed by extracts: Sophia Nikolayevna Belovodova (which he himself later subjected to heavy criticism), Grandmother and Portrait.
In 1867, Goncharov retired from his post as a government censor and devoted all of his time to working on his third novel. The Precipice
The Precipice (Ivan Goncharov)
The Precipice is the third novel by Ivan Goncharov, first published in January-May 1869 issues of Vestnik Evropy magazine. The novel, conceived in 1849, took twenty years to be completed and has been preceded by the publication of the three extracts: "Sophja Nikolayevna Belovodova" , "Grandmother"...
, a book he once called "my heart's child", took him twenty years to finish. Towards the end of this tormenting process Goncharov was despairing of ever finishing it, speaking of the novel as a "burden", and "insurmountable task" that totally blocked his development and made him unable to move any further as a writer. In a letter to Turgenev he confessed that, having finished part 3, entertained the idea of abandoning the whole thing altogether.
In 1869 The Precipice was published in Vestnik Evropy
Vestnik Evropy
Vestnik Evropy was the major liberal magazine of late-nineteenth-century Russia; it lasted from 1866 to 1918....
(##1-5), the story of a romantic rivalry among three men, which provided a condemnation of nihilism
Nihilist movement
The Nihilist movement was a Russian movement in the 1860s which rejected all authorities. It is derived from the Latin word "nihil", which means "nothing"...
in defence of the religious and moral values of old Russia. Later critics came to see it as final part of the trilogy, each book introducing a character typical to a Russian high society of a certain decade: first Aduev, then Oblomov and finally Raisky, a gifted man, aborted in his artistic development by the "lack of direction". According to scholar S.Mashinsky, as a social epic, The Precipice was superior to both A Common Story and Oblomov.
The novel was highly successful, but this time the left press turned against its author. Saltykov-Schedrin in Otechestvennye zapiski (The Street Philosophy, #6, 1869), compared it unfavourably to Oblomov. While the latter "had been driven by ideas that's been prompted to it's auther by the best men of 1840s", The Precipice featured "just a bunch of people wandering to and fro without any sense of direction, their lines of actions having neither beginning nor end", according to the critic. Yevgeny Utin in Vestnik Evropy argued that Goncharov, like all writers of his generation, has lost touch with the new Russia and its people. Much controversy has been caused by the Mark Vookhov character which, as the leftist critics argued, had been brought out in order to condemn 'nihilism' once again and, therefore, had made the whole novel 'tendentious'. Yet, as Vladimir Korolenko
Vladimir Korolenko
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko was a Ukrainian-Russian short story writer, journalist, human rights activist and humanitarian. His short stories were known for their harsh description of nature based on his experience of exile in Siberia...
wrote later, "Volokhov and all things related to him will be forgotten, as Gogol’s Correspondence has been forgotten now, while huge
Later years
Goncharov was planning to write a fourth novel, set in the 1870s, but it never materialized. Instead he became a prolific critic himself, writing theater, literature reviews, his Myriad of Agonies (1871) still regarded as one of the best essays on GriboyedovAlexandr Griboyedov
Aleksander Sergeyevich Griboyedov was a Russian diplomat, playwright, poet, and composer. He is recognized as homo unius libri, a writer of one book, whose fame rests on the brilliant verse comedy Woe from Wit , still one of the most often staged plays in Russia...
's Woe from Wit
Woe from Wit
Woe from Wit is Alexander Griboyedov's comedy in verse, satirizing the society of post-Napoleonic Moscow, or, as a high official in the play styled it, "a pasquinade on Moscow."The play, written in 1823 in the countryside and in Tiflis, was not passed by the censorship for the stage, and...
. Goncharov also wrote short stories: his Servants of an Old Age cycle dealt with life in rural Russia; akin to it were his short storis of the time ("Irony of Fate", Ukha" and others). In 1880 the first edition of Complete Goncharov was published. Years later, after the writer's death, it transpired that he's burnt many of his latter years manuscripts.
Towards the end of his life Goncharov wrote memoirs entitled An Uncommon Story
An Uncommon Story
An Uncommon Story is an autobiographical literary memoir by Ivan Goncharov, written in 1875-1876 and first published in 1924...
, in which he accused his literary rivals, above all Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
, of having plagiarized his works and prevented him from achieving European fame. The document which some saw the product of an unstable and unhappy mind, some regarded as an exceptionally valuable, albeit controversial piece of writing, was not published until 1924.
Goncharov, who's never married, spent the rest of his days absorbed in lonely and bitter recriminations because of the negative criticism some of his work received. He died in loneliness, in St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
on September 24, 1891, of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
. He was buried at the Novoe Nikolskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra
Alexander Nevsky Lavra
Saint Alexander Nevsky Lavra or Saint Alexander Nevsky Monastery was founded by Peter I of Russia in 1710 at the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg supposing that that was the site of the Neva Battle in 1240 when Alexander Nevsky, a prince, defeated the Swedes; however, the battle...
. In 1956 his ashes were moved to the Volkovo Cemetery
Volkovo Cemetery
The Volkovo Cemetery , is one of the largest and oldest non- Orthodox cemeteries in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Until the early 20th century it was one of the main burial grounds for Lutheran Germans in Russia...
in Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
.
Major works
- A Common StoryA Common StoryA Common Story is a debut novel by Ivan Goncharov written in 1844-1846 and first published in the 1847 March and April issues of Sovremennik magazine.- Background :...
(Обыкновенная история, 1847) - Ivan Savich Podzhabrin (1848)
- The Frigate Pallada (Фрегат "Паллада", 1858)
- "Oblomov's Dream. An Episode from an Unfinished Novel", short story, later Chapter 9 in the 1859 novel as "Oblomov's Dream" ("Сон Обломова", 1849)
- OblomovOblomovOblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature...
(1859) - The PrecipiceThe Precipice (Ivan Goncharov)The Precipice is the third novel by Ivan Goncharov, first published in January-May 1869 issues of Vestnik Evropy magazine. The novel, conceived in 1849, took twenty years to be completed and has been preceded by the publication of the three extracts: "Sophja Nikolayevna Belovodova" , "Grandmother"...
(Обрыв, 1869)