Background
Ivan Goncharov was born June 6, 1812 (Simbirsk, Ul'yanovsk, Russian Federation). His father Alexander and mother Avdotya belonged to the merchant class.
Ivan Goncharov
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For fans of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the classic Russian novel about an indolent aristocrat who spends most of his days in bed A Penguin Classic Written with sympathetic humor and compassion, this masterful portrait of upper-class decline made Ivan Goncharov famous throughout Russia on its publication in 1859. Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a member of Russia’s dying aristocracy—a man so lazy that he has given up his job in the Civil Service, neglected his books, insulted his friends, and found himself in debt. Too apathetic to do anything about his problems, he lives in a grubby, crumbling apartment, waited on by Zakhar, his equally idle servant. Terrified by the activity necessary to participate in the real world, Oblomov manages to avoid work, postpones change, and—finally—risks losing the love of his life. This superb translation by David Magarshack captures all the subtle comedy and near-tragedy of the original. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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(An Ordinary Story describes the coming of age of Alexande...)
An Ordinary Story describes the coming of age of Alexander Aduyev, a romantic young man from the provinces who moves to Petersburg in search of love and a career. Psychologically acute in its delineation of Aduyev’s relationship with his successful and unsentimental mentor uncle, this is a work of complexity and great charm. Featuring a stage adaptation, this edition of An Ordinary Story will enhance Goncharov’s reputation as one of the legends of Russian literary history.
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Ivan Goncharov was born June 6, 1812 (Simbirsk, Ul'yanovsk, Russian Federation). His father Alexander and mother Avdotya belonged to the merchant class.
At the age of ten Ivan Goncharov was placed in one of the gymnasiums at Moscow, from which he passed, though not without some difficulty on account of his ignorance of Greek, into the Moscow University.
During his university career he devoted himself to study, taking no interest in the political and Socialistic agitation among his fellow-students.
After leaving the University of Moscow, Ivan Goncharov entered the civil service, where he labored patiently for many years without conspicuous success. His rise to literary prominence came in 1847, when he published his first novel, A Common Story. Hailed enthusiastically by the great Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky, this work dealt with the transformation of a young provincial idealist into a somewhat vulgar and practical young man.
In 1849 Goncharov published "The Dream of Oblomov, " a short sketch that became the core of his greatest novel. In 1853 he accompanied an expedition on a 2-year voyage to the Far East. He did not enjoy the trip, but he was a perceptive reporter and his account of the journey appeared as The Frigate Pallas in 1856.
In 1858 Goncharov finished the novel Oblomov, and it was published the following year. Oblomov has become an archetypal character, the embodiment of vegetable comfort, of disinclination to action, and of lassitude. He is the dreamer rather than the doer, and he is contrasted with Shtolz, the new man, the energetic, self-willed man, who unsuccessfully attempts to inspire Oblomov to a more active existence. As a superfluous man, Oblomov is part of a gallery of great Russian fictional creations, which includes Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Mikhail Lermontov's Pechorin, and Ivan Turgenev's Rudin. The word Oblomovshchina (Oblomovism) has passed into the Russian language to signify a special kind of high-minded indolence.
Goncharov's last important novel, The Ravine, appeared in 1869. The theme of the novel, as in A Common Story, has to do with the new and the old, the ideal and the useful. The novel expresses what is perhaps the most important conflict in Goncharov's work: the conflict between a love for the patriarchal, leisurely, fixed ways of old Russia and an interest and curiosity in the liberal and radical elements that were breaking through the crust of old Russia.
Goncharov also wrote an autobiographical apologia, Better Late than Never (1870, published in 1879), in which he attempted to prove to the younger generation that he understood the spirit of his age as well as they. Among his other publications are My University Reminiscences (1870); A Million Torments (1872), a work of criticism; and Notes on Belinsky's Personality (1874). A posthumous work entitled An Uncommon Story came to light in the 1920s and confirmed the psychopathic side of his personality; it is an account of imagined plots against him and imagined attempts by others to plagiarize his work.
Ivan Goncharov died in Saint Petersburg on September 27, 1891, of pneumonia. He was buried at the Novoye Nikolskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In 1956 his ashes were moved to the Volkovo Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.
(For fans of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxa...)
(An Ordinary Story describes the coming of age of Alexande...)
(This book was converted from its physical edition to the ...)
Ivan Goncharov was the dreamer rather than the doer, and he is contrasted with Shtolz, energetic, self-willed man, who unsuccessfully attempts to inspire Oblomov to a more active existence.
Goncharov, who never married, spent his last days absorbed in lonely and bitter recriminations because of the negative criticism some of his work had received.