Word: oblomovism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fated to sound like literary echoes: charming as Christiane is, she has been met before more charmingly in the pages of Colette; Anthony, in his bedridden sloth, his antisocial despairs, his wounded intellectual cries, has slouched through a long line of novels ranging from Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov to Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night...
...Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov. New translation of a little-known but brilliant 19th century Russian portrait of a young nobleman who is too weary to live, love, or even get out of bed (TIME...
Artful Dodges. Thirtyish, and sheltered from the cradle up, the novel's hero, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, is an absentee gentleman landlord on the skids, vegetating contentedly in a St. Petersburg flat while his estates and his income go to pot. The book first finds him in bed, for Oblomov is a Russian Hamlet, except for a lower I.Q., and his daily question is: To get up or not to get up? His room is a maze of cobwebs and clutter. Friends drop in and try to lure him into making the social rounds, but he shoos them off. Parasitical...
...Oblomov is not wholly bad, or unlovable. He is tenderhearted and his daydreams are crammed with good intentions of visiting his estates, and building schools, roads and hospitals for his serfs...
Olga is only 20 but already an Ibsen-type "New Woman," independent, intelligent, indefatigable. She thinks she can reform Oblomov. He tramps the hills with her, reads poetry to her, and resolves to salvage his wasted life. But Oblomov's only school has been the nursery of self-indulgence, and he cannot bring himself to graduate. He decides, elegantly, that he should have stood in bed. The responsibilities of marriage petrify him. He pleads lack of funds and postpones the date. He develops Victorian scruples about being seen unchaperoned with Olga...