170
PARTISAN REVIEW
lish, but a part of every man's domain. They are ageless too, or
rather, the particular imagination of each age gives them a new life–
span.
Russian literature's richness comes from its multiplicity of such
universals and modem criticism has made us aware of the continuing
modernity of such great images as those of Pierre, Raskolnikov,
Prince Myshkin or Anna Karenina. However, there is a great deal
left to discover.
The nineteenth-century Russian imagination, as it overflowed
into the novel, was obsessed with the idea of The Superfluous Man.
Given a name by Turgenev and coming originally from a fusion of
the Hamlet-idea and the Quixote-idea, he appears in countless dis–
guises. Each one, however, seems partial and incomplete, too limited
for the demands of the concept. Finally there had to be a writer who
could actually recreate the idea with all its complication of tragedy
and comedy into a novel. And there was.
More than ever before we are living in the time of The
Superfluous Man. He is the grandchild of the hero, no longer be–
lieving that he can shape events but reluctant to surrender his human
role and become a cog. He becomes an unwilling exile and his anguish
is felt everywhere in our literature. We despise him and love him
as we despise and love ourselves. Suddenly we come across a fine
portrait of
him
in a forgotten Russian novel and the distance of
time and space seems to disappear because he is so much a part of
today or tomorrow.
IIya IIyitch Oblomov is lying abed in his flat on Gorohovy
Street. No one could say for certain whether he is awake or asleep but
the half-closed eyes in
his
bland soft face gaze idly at the room and its
furniture. The heavy pretentious furniture covered with dust, the
cobwebs festooning the pictures, the flies buzzing at the window,
the page of an opened book already turning yellow with age. It is an
indeterminate moment between sleep and death.
But later he may wake up and call for his servant, a clumsy,
stupid, cross-grained man named Zahar. He
will
ask him for some–
thing to
drink,
some kvas. He may put on his dressing gown and
even think of writing a letter to the bailiff of his estate, but in the
very moment of sitting up or of reaching for the pen, sleepiness will
