174
PARTISAN REVIEW
next-door
neighbo~
and Bazarov's parents live just across the river.
But there is no city man's scorn in this survey. It is a native's
satire about something
unde~tood
rather than a tourist's sarcasm
against something discovered. Because of this and because of Gon–
charov's inherent method of understatement, he is usually called a
nostalgic defender of the Old Russia. Lest there be any doubt about
where he stood, he gives a silent answer at the beginning of the next
chapter by drawing back the curtain on Oblomov, again snoring in
bed
in
his flat on Gorohovy Street. Here is the logical result and
the sum total of the rural gentry way of life.
At the beginning of Part II we have Andrey Ivanitch Stolz. We
might have expected
him.
From all outward appearances he seems
to be the inevitable contrast, the obvious antithesis to Oblomov. He
is one of those half-Germans, brought up by an ambitious father to
be energetic, progressive, intelligent, successful; he is "all bone, muscle
and nerve," and his life is as athletic as Oblomov's is supine. On the
face of it this could be the great point of failure in Goncharov's
scheme of
characte~.
Stolz, with all his patent virtues of industry
and energy, could easily become more of a lesson than a man.
Commonplace criticism sets out to find commonplace errors.
Most of Goncharov's critics are content to think of
him
as simple
and naive. They cannot comprehend the brilliant mistakes that under–
lie his apparent successes and the calculated successes beneath his
most obvious errors. Prince Mirsky, usually so discerning, speaks for
them all when he takes Stolz for what he manifestly seems to be:
"It is here that Goncharov's intellectual and moral insufficiency
comes out: Stolz is hopelessly uninteresting and flat . . . in trying
to endow the hero of work, Stolz, with all he could imagine of ef–
ficient virtue, (Goncharov) only revealed his own smallness."
Now that we know what Stolz is, we can predict his role. He
will
have no patience with Oblomov; he will be the scornful illustra–
tion, the obvious whip to beat the dust out of the poor sluggard's
dressing-gown. In doing this he will become "hopelessly uninteresting
and flat." Goncharov has made a wrong move and the critics know it.
Actually, Goncharov was moving in an entirely different direc–
tion. This is not Stolz's role at all.
As
the story progresses, we begin
to see that there exists between Stolz and Oblomov the most subtle
