Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century 9781644696996

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Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century

Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History Series Editor Lazar Fleishman (Stanford University, Palo Alto, California)

Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century Edited by Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts

BOSTON 2021

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kleespies, Ingrid, editor. | Parts, Lyudmila, editor. Title: Goncharov in the twenty-first century / edited by Ingrid Kleespies, Lyudmila Parts. Other titles: Goncharov in the 21st century | Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures and history. Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2021. | Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures, and history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021030750 (print) | LCCN 2021030751 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644696989 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644696996 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781644697009 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich, 1812-1891--Criticism and interpretation. | Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich, 1812-1891. | Russian prose literature--19th century--History and criticism. | Authors as employees--Russia. | Censorship--Russia. Classification: LCC PG3337.G6 Z6337 2021 (print) | LCC PG3337.G6 (ebook) | DDC 891.73/3--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030750 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030751 Copyright © 2021 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 9781644696989 (hardback) ISBN 9781644696996 (adobe pdf) ISBN 9781644697009 (epub) Book design by Lapiz Digital Services Cover design by Ivan Grave. On the cover: Nikolaevsky Bridge in St. Petersburg, a postcard Published by Academic Studies Press 1577 Beacon St. Brookline, MA 02446, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents

Contributorsvii Note on Transliteration and Translation  xi Acknowledgementsxii Introduction  xiii INGRID KLEESPIES and LYUDMILA PARTS Part One. The Life of Service

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Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov SERGEI GUSKOV

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Writer or Censor: I. A. Goncharov’s Service in the Departments of Censorship, and the Evolution of Professional Ethics for Censors and Writers in Russia, in the 1850s and 1860s KIRILL ZUBKOV Part Two. The Challenges of Philosophy

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“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov49 VLADIMIR IVANTSOV Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy VICTORIA JUHARYAN

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Longing, Replacement, and Anti-Economy in Oblomov95 SONJA KOROLIOV Part Three. The Challenges of Realism: Traditions and Transgressions

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“Shadows, Dead People, and Specters”: Gothic Aesthetics in Goncharov’s The Precipice115 VALERIA SOBOL

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The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal, and Heteronormativity in Goncharov’s The Precipice132 ANI KOKOBOBO and DEVIN McFADDEN Part Four. Author and Imperialist Abroad: Frigate Pallada

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“I Avoided the Factual Side . . .”: Fiction and Document in Frigate Pallada155 ALEKSEI BALAKIN A Russian Observer Catches the London Eye: Envisioning Imperial Modernity in Frigate Pallada167 INGRID KLEESPIES Who are You Laughing at? Identity, Laughter, and Colonial Discourse in Frigate Pallada193 LYUDMILA PARTS Works Cited 217 Index232 About the Editors 235

Contributors

Aleksei  Balakin graduated from the Russian Department of the St.  Petersburg State University Philological Faculty in 1994 and completed a postgraduate  course at the Institute of Russian Literature in 1998. Since 1997 he has been a research associate in the compilation of the Complete Works and Letters of I. A. Goncharov. In 2003 he defended his dissertation The Works of I. A. Goncharov: Textological Problems. Balakin has worked in the Pushkin Department at the Institute of Russian Literature since December 2004 and since May 2009 he has served as secretary of the Pushkin Committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Research in I. A. Goncharov’s Biography and Art (2018). Sergei Guskov, Candidate of Philology, is the deputy director for research at the IRLI (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the working group publishing the Complete Works of I. A. Goncharov, associate professor, and associate professor at the Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg). He received his degrees in 1988 at the philological faculty of Leningrad State University, and at the Graduate school of the Pushkin House. In 1996 he defended his thesis Korolenko and Tolstoy: The Problem of the Ethical Position of a Writer (supervisor G. Ya. Galagan). Guskov is the author and editor of numerous scientific publications on the works of I. A. Goncharov, L. N. Tolstoy, V. G. Korolenko and others. His articles have been published in such journals as Russkaia literatura, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, Izvestiia Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka, Literatura v shkole, Vestnik RFFI. Gumanitarnye i obshchestvennye nauki, and others. Vladimir Ivantsov holds a PhD in Russian studies from McGill University (2018) and a Candidate of Philology degree in Russian literature from

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St. Petersburg State University (2007). His dissertation on the concept of the underground in Russian culture from Dostoevsky to Punk Rock examines the nature, and the significance, of the concept of the underground to the art, philosophy, and life-style of the twentieth-century artist. He has published on Russian literature and culture from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, including a monograph on the contemporary Russian writer Vladimir Makanin (2008). Victoria Juharyan is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Russian and German at UC Davis. She was formerly a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh and a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Russian and a graduate school instructor at Davis School of Russian at Middlebury College. Victoria completed her PhD in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University in 2018. She also holds an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth Colleague and a BA in Literary Editing from St. Petersburg State University in Russia. Her research interests include the relationship between philosophy and literature, German Idealism and Russian Realism, nineteenth-century Russian literature, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, aesthetics, philosophy of emotion and cognition in literature, the theory of the novel, Bakhtin, Russian theater, poetry, and translation. In addition to completing a manuscript on Tolstoy’s philosophy of love titled The Cognitive Value of Love in Tolstoy: A Study in Aesthetics, Victoria is working on two other long term projects: one on Hegel’s influence on Russian literature, and the other on the eighteenth-century Ukrainian philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda. Victoria is also the co-editor of Tolstoy Studies Journal and serves on the Program Committee for Pre-1900 Russian Literature at AATSEEL. Ingrid Kleespies is associate professor of Russian Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Florida. Her areas of interest include eighteenth and nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture, Russian Romanticism, and literature of travel and empire more generally. She is the author of A Nation Astray: Nomadism and National Identity in Russian Literature (2012). She is currently completing a book entitled The Necessary Man: Petr Chaadaev and the Invention of Russian Literature that explores the outsized (if unsung) place of Russia’s

Contributors

“first philosopher” Petr Chaadaev in the nineteenth-century Russian literary canon. Her other current research examines Russian and early Soviet mythologies surrounding Siberia and the eastern “frontier.” Ani Kokobobo is associate professor and chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Literature at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Russian Grotesque Realism: The Great Reforms and the Gentry Decline (2018) and the editor (with Katherine Bowers) of Russian Writers and the Fin de Siècle: The Twilight of Realism (2015). She has written over twenty articles on nineteenth-century realism, the grotesque, and gender. Sonja Koroliov is professor of Russian and South Slavic Studies at the University of Graz in Austria. Her research interests include Russian literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the reception of the literature and ideas of classical antiquity, intersections of Russian literature with continental and analytic philosophy, Russian philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is author of a monograph on Lev Shestov (2007), editor of Emotion und Kognition. Transformationen in der europäischen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (Emotion and Cognition. Transformations in Eighteenth-Century European Literature; 2013) and co-editor (with Andrea Zink) of Muße—Faulheit—Nichts-Tun: Fehlende und fehlschlagende Handlungen in der russischen und europäischen Literatur seit der Aufklärung (Leisure—Sloth—Doing Nothing. Missing and Misdirected Action in Russian and European Literature since the Enlightenment; 2017) She is currently interested in the nexus between emotion, intention, and action and is completing a volume entitled Trägheit und Glück; zur Problematik des Handelns in der russischen Literatur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Her next project is on classical music in the Soviet Union and Russian diasporas as a mnemonic and communicative practice. Devin McFadden is a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Kansas. At KU, Devin is the Hall Center for Humanities dissertation fellow. She specializes in queer Russian literature and social and queer theory. Lyudmila Parts is professor of Russian in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University (Montreal). She is the author of In Search of the True Russia. The Provinces in Contemporary Nationalist

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Discourse (2018); The Chekhovian Intertext: Dialogue with a Classic (2008); and the editor of The Russian 20th Century Short Story: A Critical Companion (2009). Her research and teaching interests include post-Soviet culture, genre theory, and cultural representations of nationalism. She has published articles on Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstaia, Petrushevskaia, and Pelevin, on the provincial myth and national identity and, more recently, on the Russian travelogue. Valeria Sobol is professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture, empire and the Gothic, literature and science, as well as Ukrainian literature. She is the author of Febris Erotica: Lovesickness in the Russian Literary Imagination (2009); and a co-editor (with Mark Steinberg) of the volume Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe (2011). She has recently completed the book Haunted Empire: Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny (2020). Her next research project is a study of the discourse of race in post-reform Russian literature and journalism. Kirill Zubkov received his degree of Candidate of Philology from St.  Petersburg State University.  He is Associate Professor at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and a research fellow at the Institute of Russian Literature (The Pushkin House, St. Petersburg). Zubkov’s research interests include the institution of literary criticism in the nineteenth century, censorship in the Russian Empire, the history of Russian drama and the novel, and the work of Ivan Goncharov, Alexandr Ostrovskii, and Alexey Pisemskii. Zubkov is an editor of the Complete Works and Letters of Goncharov, currently in compilation by The Pushkin House. His recent book ‘The Young Editors’ of The Muscovite: Poetics. Aesthetics. Polemics (in Russian) considers the complex relations between fictive narratives, dramas, and literary criticism published in one of the “thick” literary journals of 1850s. His current research takes as its starting point the history of literary prizes in the age of Alexander II and investigates how the evolution of Russian society in the 1860s and the 1870s affects Russian drama of the period and, in turn, how this society is itself represented in works by Russian dramatists of the era. 

Note on Transliteration and Translation

All Russian names and titles in the text have been transliterated in accordance with the Library of Congress system. Use of existing translations of primary and secondary sources is indicated throughout the text, as is the authors’ use of personal translations.

Acknowledgements

We have been fortunate to work on this project with an international team of outstanding scholars who shared our excitement about rejuvenating Goncharov studies in English-language scholarship and bringing a beloved author back into the critical spotlight. Several of our authors are members of the team preparing the new complete collection of Goncharov’s works at the Russian Academy of Sciences. A special thank you goes to Krystina Steiger who translated their chapters from the original Russian. The Academic Studies Press editorial team has been unflaggingly supportive and professional, and it has been a true pleasure to work with them. We owe a special debt of gratitude to the anonymous reviewers whose thoughtful and comprehensive comments greatly enhanced the volume. This research was supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of Florida.

Introduction: Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century

Perhaps more than any of his fellow writers, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov (1812–1891) embodies the central contradictions and challenges of nineteenth-century Russian life—contradictions and challenges that continue to be felt in Russian society today. From a provincial merchant family positioned in Russia’s uncertain “middle class,” Goncharov was raised by an aristocratic godfather who introduced him to the cultural values of the nobility from a young age. Despite this upbringing, Goncharov, unlike many of his literary contemporaries, had to work for a living, which he did as a civil servant for over thirty years. In his writing he expressed the stagnation felt by many about the “old” way of life that included serfdom, but he also posed sharp questions about the uncertain and potentially destructive nature of the “new,” in this case a modernity incarnated in industrialization, technology, and capitalism. Mental illness, from, presumably, depression to paranoia, was a thread in his life and prematurely ended his literary career. Other writers like Lermontov or Tolstoy took part in Russian imperial military campaigns; Goncharov, in contrast, served as an agent of the less visible, but equally powerful economic and bureaucratic practices of Russian empire-building, particularly in his capacity as secretary to Admiral Evfimii Putiatin’s mission to open trade relations with Japan in the mid1850s. Most sensitive of all, Goncharov worked as a literary censor between 1855 and 1867, enforcing restrictions on creativity and expression, yet all the while writing his own uniquely expressive novels and working to foster Russian literary culture through official channels in an attempt to broaden its accessibility. Given the sensitive social and political zones with which his life and work intersect, it is perhaps not surprising that Goncharov remains

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something of a “sleeper” in the world of Russian letters, much like, in more literal fashion, the hero of his eponymous novel, Ilya Ilich Oblomov. Goncharov has never received the attention, scholarly or otherwise, that his peers have, an illustrious group that includes such figures as Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Indeed, to the Western reading public, it is still necessary to explain who Goncharov is, a surprising state of affairs in light of the relevance of his work to twenty-first-century concerns. Issues of gender, sexuality, consumerism, class, political extremism, mental health, economy, imperialism, globalization, and the public sphere in Russia centrally inform his work and his life. Despite this topicality, Slavists have devoted comparatively little attention to the points of convergence between Goncharov’s life and the corpus of his work. Rather, the overwhelming focus has been on his individual novels, primarily Oblomov, and to a lesser extent A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia, 1847) and The Precipice (Obryv, 1869), with even less attention to his short stories, critical essays, and 1858 travel text, Frigate Pallada (Fregat “Pallada”). Moreover, a seminal part of Goncharov’s biography has been carefully, even scrupulously, avoided in critical study: his long career of government service from 1834 to 1867 and particularly his work as a censor. His civil service career coincided with his development as a writer, however, and it is perhaps this paradox—the uncomfortable fusion of bureaucrat and author, loyal state servant and trenchant social critic— that has made Goncharov challenging to understand and contextualize. It is precisely this dilemma, however, that makes Goncharov an especially interesting figure for contemporary readers and scholars. How did he navigate the often-conflicting worlds of nineteenth-century imperial bureaucracy and a national literature that defined itself in separation from the state? How did his position at the nexus of various spheres—aristocratic, middle class, bureaucratic, urban, provincial, feudal—shape his vision of Russian modernity? What was the nature of Goncharov’s complex engagement with Realism? This volume aims to address these questions by subjecting Goncharov’s work to innovative and broad-ranging interpretation. Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century brings together a range of international scholars and invites them to view Goncharov’s texts anew through the lenses of contemporary literary and cultural theory. The readings included here move beyond the conventional psychological, Freudian approach to Goncharov’s novels, as well as the unquestioned dominance of Oblomov, in order to situate Goncharov more clearly as a writer contending

Introduction: Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century

with a range of topical issues stemming from modernization, globalization, and significant social and economic change. In so doing, Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century offers a fresh and long overdue look at Goncharov’s work that highlights its engagement with capitalism and consumerism, anxiety, gender, new technologies, and genre and narrative.1 The chapters in this volume represent a variety of novel approaches to Goncharov’s work that draw from fields such as queer studies, genre studies, and postcolonialism. These readings bring Goncharov’s work to the forefront of current discussions in cultural and literary studies and they illuminate its unique perspective on Russia’s engagement with pressing questions of identity, representation, and global and economic forces – the very questions that constitute modernity.

Transitions, Divides, Intersections: A Life in the Precarious Middle The features of Goncharov’s biography shed some light on the way he came to occupy such a complex and curiously “middle” place in Russian life and letters. Of the major nineteenth-century Russian writers, Goncharov had the more or less unique fortune to live the span of the century with its massive shifts almost exactly. A student at Moscow University in the 1830s when Russian culture was still under the sway of Romantic and German idealist thought, Goncharov had become, by the time of his retirement from government service, an established Realist writer contending with the nature of Realism and the questions it gave rise to as well as with the new materialist and positivist ideologies that emerged in Russian intellectual circles in the 1850s and 60s. Old enough to remember the Decembrist Revolt in 1825, Goncharov came of age and launched his career during Nicholas I’s long, reactionary, autocratic reign (1825–1855), yet developed his mature work during the more reform-minded rule of Alexander II (1855–1881). By the time of Goncharov’s death in 1891, he had witnessed seismic changes in Russian life, from the end of serfdom in 1861 and the increasing shift to an 1

Relatively recent significant monographs on Goncharov include Edyta Bojanowska’s study of Goncharov’s travel text, A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018); the edited volume Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, ed. Galya Diment (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998); Elena Krasnoshchekova’s Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov: Mir tvorchestva (St.  Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1997); and Milton Ehre’s biographical study Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).

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industrialized, market-driven economy to the stirrings of large-scale political unrest, as marked by the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. These are broad contrasts and shifts, but they give outline to the context of his life. These contrasts dovetail with the way in which Goncharov so firmly occupies a kind of “middle space” in the world of Russian letters—a space ironically rather sparsely populated in terms of scholarly attention.2 A Realist with Romantic origins, an author who was also a civil servant, a cautious voice for economic and social progress who yet expressed nostalgia for a premodern past as he imagined it in the world of Oblomovka, Goncharov was a man who balanced many contradictions and who was not easily categorized politically or socially, though he tended to be more conservative than many of his literary peers. In his classic biographical study, Milton Ehre identifies Goncharov as a “bourgeois” and “conventionally nineteenth-century” figure.3 In another context, these labels would be derogatory, but in this case they are at the heart of what makes Goncharov fascinating. In an era of such distinctly non-bourgeois writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or, for contrast, the materialist Nikolai Chernyshevskii, Goncharov’s affinity with what might best be described as a Victorian worldview makes him stand out. The path to Goncharov’s curiously “bourgeois” status is an intriguing one. He was born into a merchant family in Simbirsk, a provincial capital that achieved literary renown through its connection to the writers Nikolai Karamzin and Sergei Aksakov yet was still considered by Goncharov and others to be a sleepy place. Goncharov’s father, Alexander Ivanovich Goncharov, died in 1819 when he was seven years old. After his father’s death, his mother joined the family household with that of a local aristocrat and friend to the Goncharov family, Nikolai Tregubov. Goncharov’s mother, Avdotia Matveevna Goncharova, and Tregubov did not marry and the nature of their relationship remained ambiguous; their household provided an unusual setting for the young Goncharov with its combination of the material status of an old merchant family with the cultural cache 2

Little of Russia’s cultural middle entered the canon. As Julie Buckler describes, narratives about Russian literature and culture have tended to ignore “the sociocultural middle” in everything from art to demographics, despite this middle’s important role in moving nineteenth-century Russian society toward a more capitalist system. As she notes, the middle “represents a kind of conceptual outpost” in Russian historiography (Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape [Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2005], 3–8). 3 Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator, 151; see also ibid., 51.

Introduction: Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century

and liberal sentiments of a nobleman like Tregubov. It is a hallmark of Goncharov studies to note that his childhood was marked by a combination of “bourgeois practicality” and aristocratic idealism; in other words, he navigated contrasting, even oppositional, worlds from a young age.4 A de facto stepfather, Tregubov was responsible for Goncharov’s education and exposed him to the world of literature and ideas early on. His mother, in contrast, dedicated her energies to maintaining the household, though she suffered notably from suspiciousness and what today we would likely call depression. Her paranoia was part of a strain of mental illness in the Goncharov family that included lack of trust, melancholy, and apathy, to use the terms of the day. Goncharov was himself to suffer from these traits in adulthood, as did two of his three siblings. At the age of ten, Goncharov was sent to the Moscow Commercial School to be prepared for a career in the merchant class. The school environment was harsh, even by the standards of the day, and his mother eventually agreed to remove him. He was then enrolled at Moscow University. The leading educational institution for the aristocracy and raznochintsy alike, the university was a rare space of some class diversity in Russian society. In the course of his studies from 1831 to 1834, Goncharov prepared for a career in the civil service. His student days coincided with a period of remarkable intellectual intensity at the university; Goncharov’s classmates included such notable personalities as Mikhail Lermontov, Vissarion Belinskii, and Alexander Herzen. Liberal student circles were in full sway, though Goncharov did not join the more radical groups. He did, however, engage with the philosophical and social ferment of his time and in much deeper ways than previously supposed, as chapters in this volume by Vladimir Ivantsov, Victoria Juharyan, and Sonja Koroliov reveal with their explorations of the place of Platonic, Hegelian, and Schopenhauerian thought in Goncharov’s oeuvre. Goncharov and his peers would become the famous “men of the 1840s,” the generation that moved Russian culture away from Romantic idealism to naturalism and Realism, but remained generally opposed to the radical utilitarian thought of the next generation articulated by figures such as Chernyshevskii and Dmitrii Pisarev in the 1850s and 60s. On concluding his studies in 1834, Goncharov embarked on what was to be a more than thirty-year civil service career during which time 4

For example, see Diment, Goncharov’s Oblomov, 7; Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator, 14.

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he occupied different positions, including serving as a translator in the Department of Trade in the Ministry of Finance. Later he worked in the capacity of a state censor from 1855 to 1867 in the Ministry of Public Education and, when responsibility for censorship was transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, for this government body as well. Eventually, Goncharov became a member of the supreme board of oversight for all state censorship organs. He faced hostility from both friends and fellow writers for his censorship work; not coincidentally, it was during this period (1855–1867) that he began a gradual retreat from society. Typically, critics have viewed Goncharov’s civil service career as in conflict with his path as a writer and as a hindrance to his literary productivity; Goncharov himself complained of this. One of the things this volume uncovers in readings by Sergei Guskov and Kirill Zubkov, however, is how this narrative of opposition proves to be inaccurate. In reality, there was significant creative interplay between Goncharov’s work as a civil servant and his work as a writer, something that has important implications for our understanding of the Russian public sphere in the mid-nineteenth century. Goncharov’s interest in writing began in the mid-1830s at the tail end of the Romantic period and his work from the time bears the imprint of late Romanticism. His early efforts included a handful of short stories, the most notable of which is “Ivan Savich Podzhabrin” (1842). In the 1840s, Goncharov conceived of his three novels, although he only completed one in this decade. As Victoria Juharyan explores in her chapter on Hegelian dynamics in Goncharov’s work, there is reason to understand his novels as a trilogy, though they have not typically been received this way. The first novel A Common Story was published in 1847 to critical and popular acclaim. The novel portrays the ideological clash between the Romantically inclined, aspiring young writer Alexander Aduev and his pragmatic, businessman uncle, Petr Aduev, an encounter that ultimately leads to Alexander’s disillusionment and recreation in his uncle’s practical image. In 1849, the fragment “Oblomov’s Dream” was published with its depiction of the static, feudal world of the provincial petty nobility; the full novel Oblomov was published a decade later, on the eve of Emancipation, also to great success. The novel’s melancholic, apathetic, “left-over” protagonist struck a chord with the Russian readership with his psychological failure to move from the feudal world of his childhood into the urban modernity of mid-nineteenth-century St. Petersburg that he tenuously inhabits as an adult. Goncharov’s final novel The Precipice, was published in 1869, more

Introduction: Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century

than twenty years after it was first conceived. In many ways his most complex and intriguing work, it revolves around the intersection of a number of different worldviews, including the urban/provincial divide, perspectives on gender roles, and clashes between radical, artistic, and conventional moralities. Despite its richness and popularity with readers, the novel was negatively received by critics. In part, this was due to Goncharov’s alienation of his peers, but it was also provoked by what contemporaries saw as the novel’s datedness or “untimeliness” with its earlier setting (1830s and 40s) and its seeming condemnation of the radical nihilist character Mark Volokhov. As readings in this volume by Valeria Sobol and Ani Kokobobo and Devin McFadden attest, however, this critical reception widely missed the narrative innovation and challenge to Realism that The Precipice posed, as well as its interrogation of the institutions of family and marriage. In addition to his three novels and short stories, Goncharov published critical essays and the 1858 travel narrative, The Frigate Pallada. The latter recounts Goncharov’s participation in the 1852–1855 Russian state-sponsored mission to open trade relations with Japan. Chapters by Aleksei Balakin, Ingrid Kleespies, and Lyudmila Parts investigate how Frigate Pallada, like Oblomov, confronts the issue of Russia’s relationship to the wider world and its engagement with modernity, market forces, and imperialism. Their work also teases out the complexities of representation in the narrative, an unusual compilation of documentary, literary, and meta-literary features. Frigate Pallada was Goncharov’s most popular work—and the only one he did not feel conflicted about. Despite his authorial and civil service successes, Goncharov struggled to find happiness in his personal life. In letters, he frequently described himself as “apathetic” and cold, to the degree that today we imagine that he suffered from depression. As scholars have noted, Goncharov never found an easy place within the circles of his contemporary writers, most of whom were of aristocratic origin—and far wealthier and more liberal than him. While many of his peers admired his talent, writers such as Turgenev and Dostoevsky were critical of Goncharov’s bureaucratic side and what they saw as his awkward manner. He was, after all, of provincial, merchant origin and he was an outsider to the circles that defined life in St. Petersburg: civil service, aristocratic, and artistic. Romantic relationships were likewise complicated for Goncharov, despite the insight and complexity he ascribed to his female protagonists. He never married and the surviving letters from his one serious love affair afford an unnerving

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glimpse of a man struggling with his feelings. In one letter he addresses his prospective fiancée in two voices: that of a “he” who is passionately in love with her and an “I” who cynically criticizes the besotted “he” for his overblown emotion. Perhaps not surprisingly, this expression of ambivalence failed to win over the young woman in question and she married someone else. The high level of anxiety as well as more serious strains of mental illness these letters suggest came to have its most public exposure in the 1850s and 60s. In an infamous affair, Goncharov leveled accusations of plagiarism against his friend and fellow novelist Turgenev in 1859; strikingly, this transpired at the same time that Oblomov was being published serially to popular success. Ultimately, Goncharov would imply that Turgenev, whom he both admired and envied, had not only plagiarized his ideas in A Nest of the Gentry (Dvorianskoe gnezdo, 1859), but that he had also passed on Goncharov’s ideas to a number of important French writers, including Flaubert and George Sand, who made use of them in their own work. Peers who were concerned enough to investigate Goncharov’s charges found the accusations to be unfounded. In the end, the affair exposed Goncharov’s paranoia, woefully damaged his reputation, and hurt many of his personal relationships. Whether intentionally or no, Goncharov succeeded in placing himself outside the social and literary circles of his time. As his novels reveal, he tended to look at matters in a binary way—old versus new, practical versus ideal—and he struggled to resolve these tensions in his work and in life. In later years, Goncharov attained a degree of peace in his personal life, albeit in a particularly Goncharovian way. After the death of his long-time manservant, Goncharov began to live with his servant’s widow, Aleksandra Ivanovna Treigut; she maintained his household and he took on responsibility for her three children. There is a rather wonderful irony here in which Goncharov, in so doing, not only recapitulated his mother and godfather’s unconventional relationship, but also recreated the marriage he devised for Oblomov in his novel, where the aristocratic Oblomov by default joins the household of the humble and devoted Agafia Matveevna Pshenitsyna, widow of a relatively low ranking Collegiate Secretary. On the surface, Oblomov’s marriage to Agafia Matveevna seems like a terrible comedown for the sensitive, educated, potentially productive Ilia Ilich, but, as several of the chapters in this volume discuss, the ending may be less of a tragedy than we think. This certainly seems to have been the case in Goncharov’s own life, where his accidental family provided him with a degree of comfort

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and stability, despite—or perhaps precisely because of—its “unsuitable” joining of worlds. As three of the chapters in this volume are dedicated to the travel text Fregat Pallada, a brief note on Goncharov’s round-the-world travels is in order. Due to his success as a writer as well as his status as a civil servant in the Department of Trade, Goncharov was invited to serve as secretary to the 1852 government-sponsored mission officially tasked with visiting the Russian colonies in North America. The unofficial, but far more important, purpose of the trip, however, was to negotiate trade relations with Japan. The Russian government’s intent was not so much to pre-empt the Americans in this aim, but to make use of the headway gained by Commodore Matthew Perry in his simultaneous venture of 1852–1854.5 Goncharov’s travels afforded him the opportunity to witness first-hand the global empire-building contest of the European and American powers— and to participate in Russia’s own version of this process, a history generally less accounted for than that of the other imperial powers. Goncharov’s literary account of the expedition is named for the mission’s twenty-year-old ship, the Pallada (Pallas). The Pallada left St. Petersburg in October 1852 bound for the Pacific Northwest on a western route around Cape Horn. The need for extensive repairs to the ship necessitated an unplanned and lengthy stop in England, however, which meant that the crew had to change course and sail east around Africa and Asia toward North America. The expansive voyage included stops in England, Madeira, the Cape Verde Islands, the Cape Colony (South Africa), Java, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, the Bonin and Ryukyu (Okinawa) Islands, Manila, Korea, and Siberia. The Russian mission was cut short by the outbreak of the Crimean War (1853– 1856) when the Pallada was called into military service. Once Britain and France joined the war in 1854, the ship could no longer safely return to European Russia, so Goncharov and other members of the mission were brought to the port of Ayan on the Sea of Okhotsk, from where they made their way across Siberia back to St. Petersburg over the course of several months in the winter of 1854–1855. ***

5 Bojanowska, A World of Empires, 15.

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The chapters included in this volume are organized around three broad thematic categories that invite an innovative, twenty-first century approach to Goncharov’s work. The first is his civil service career and official engagement with Russian literature as both a censor and promoter of government-sponsored literary culture. The second is the complex and as-yet understudied manifestation of Realism in his work and its highly sensitive and nuanced portrayal of Russia’s modernization in the mid-nineteenth century. The third centers on the 1858 travel text Frigate Pallada as a narrative in which the seemingly contradictory contexts of writer and imperial bureaucrat collide in revealing, if not always comfortable or straightforward, ways. Like some of his fellow writers, Goncharov had to earn a living: he could rely neither on independent income nor on the earnings from his published work. He therefore held a job as a public official for most of his life. The work in the Ministry of Finance, where he spent seventeen years, was not especially taxing, and allowed the aspiring writer opportunities to meet like-minded people and start his literary career. This kind of employment was nothing unusual. When Goncharov accepted a position with the Petersburg Censorship Committee in 1856, however, the reaction among his fellow writers was strikingly negative, as prevailing opinion held the roles of writer and censor to be in opposition; one could not combine the two roles without letting one of them suffer. The two chapters that form the first part of the volume, The Life of Service, offer unique insights into Goncharov’s own views of his government career and his ways of reconciling the roles of censor and writer. Sergei Guskov and Kirill Zubkov trace Goncharov’s experience of officialdom to show that the conventional understanding of Goncharov as having been a writer despite being a government official greatly oversimplifies the more complex reality in which the two spheres were not mutually exclusive. In “Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov,” Guskov offers a new interpretation of the relationship between the author’s writing path and service career. As Guskov argues, the usual critical view in which Goncharov’s service is understood as “an eternal ulcer” corroding his existence is not confirmed by Goncharov’s biography. A closer look at his thirty-year career shows that the two sides of his personality—the writer and the civil servant—coexisted harmoniously and even beneficially. Goncharov’s status as a well-known writer promoted his career growth, while his service background provided plots and character prototypes

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for his literary work. In “Writer or Censor: I. A. Goncharov’s Service in the Departments of Censorship, and the Evolution of Professional Ethics for Censors and Writers in Russia, in the 1850s and 1860s,” Zubkov sees Goncharov’s career as a case study of the public sphere in Russia, which underwent significant transformations during the first half of the reign of Alexander II. In the beginning of this period, censorship functioned as an educational institution, but by the end of the 1860s it had become a police agency; the perception of censors’ relationship with writers changed from that of colleagues and mediators to oppressors. Both Guskov and Zubkov consider Goncharov’s service in the context of the relationship between the public sphere and the state in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century, and how this relationship evolved from the beginning Alexander II’s reign, which saw attempts at productive interaction, to the open conflict of the last years of his rule. The three chapters comprising the first section of the second part of the volume, “The Challenges of Philosophy,” explore the philosophical underpinnings of Goncharov’s work. Goncharov’s education at Moscow University’s Philological Department allowed him to develop his already broad reading interests (in contrast to his earlier studies at Moscow Commercial Academy, which, by his own admission, were a waste of time).6 Among the professors Goncharov remembers fondly is professor of Fine Arts Nikolai Nadezhdin, a noted scholar of philosophy who introduced his students to Plato and Hegel, among others. These two philosophers provide an interpretative prism for Vladimir Ivantsov and Victoria Juharyan’s chapters. In “‘Oblomovskii Platon’: The Platonic Subtext in Oblomov,” Vladimir Ivantsov reflects on a key paradox in the protagonist of Oblomov. Goncharov’s novel, considered a great work of Russian Realism, is said to present a pure example of what is called “the realistic type.” And yet, Oblomov is introduced as a unique phenomenon, standing in stark contrast to the other, more typical characters. Ivantsov argues that the mythological, philosophical, and literary roots of this character, as revealed through Goncharov’s various intertextual references, must be examined more fully to understand this paradox. In his exploration of the little-studied Platonic subtexts of Goncharov’s novel, Ivantsov sheds new light on such important 6

Vsevolod Sechkarev, Ivan Goncharov. His Life and His Works (Wurzburg: Jal-Verlag, 1974), 4–10.

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aspects of the novel as the metaphor of sleep, Oblomov’s sexuality, and the role of Stolz. Victoria Juharyan considers the three major novels by Goncharov, A Common Story (1847), Oblomov (1859), and The Precipice (1869), as a cycle informed by Hegel’s concept of history. In “Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy,” Juharyan shows that Goncharov envisioned the novels as trilogy even if the critics did not “connect them into a unity” or “see what this unity is expressing.” According to Goncharov’s own statement, the novels “are all connected by a general thread, one consistent idea—the transition from one era of Russian life to the other.” Juharyan argues that all three novels are fundamentally Hegelian and systematically build up Hegel’s notion of history as an expanding spiral. Each novel contains, expands and complicates the previous one, and, as in Hegel’s conception of history, this process manifests itself both diachronically, in the succession of historical time-periods, and synchronically, on ontological, conceptual, subjective and inter-subjective, as well as socio-historical levels. Unlike Ivantsov and Juharyan, Sonja Koroliov does not suggest Goncharov’s familiarity and dialogue with the philosophers she enlists in her reading of Oblomov: Schopenhauer and Derrida. She reevaluates the traditional binary readings of movement versus stasis and feudal versus capitalist economies in Oblomov by bringing in the concept of desire, as both a Schopenhauerian desire that necessarily both originates in and creates a lack, and a Derridean desire that leads to deferral and replacement. In “Longing, Replacement, and Anti-Economy in Oblomov,” Koroliov suggests that the concept of movement in Oblomov is more comprehensive than the conventionally perceived outward mobility, modernisation, and changing economy that are shown in opposition to an unmoving protagonist. Instead, Koroliov identifies movement in Oblomov as the movement of desire—a Schopenhauerian and indeed Derridean desire than can never find fulfilment because its very existence depends on the lack it originates from and the lack it creates. This desire is one of the features that places Oblomov firmly in the context of Sentimentalism (as does its conception of male friendship, erotic love, and traveling), but it is also a form of desire that mimics the eternal needfulness of the consumer, while at the same time invoking an idea of pointlessness that seems a precursor of existentialism and of the absurd.

Introduction: Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century

The next section, “The Challenges of Realism: Traditions and Transgressions,” further enriches the readings of Goncharov’s novels through a contemporary understanding of the complexities of Realism, in this case, through an examination of the Gothic legacy and by drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Queer studies. The two chapters that constitute this section address Goncharov’s last novel The Precipice, through analyses of how it reckons with the forces and fears of modernity, and by examining how it challenges Realist aesthetics. Valeria Sobol takes on the challenge the Gothic poses to the Realist method with its reliance on the visual as a means of knowing the world and the truth. In “‘Shadows, Dead People, and Specters’: Gothic Aesthetics in Goncharov’s The Precipice,” Sobol examines the surprising significance of the Gothic mode in The Precipice—a work whose thrust was to capture the contemporary transitional moment in Russian society but which was, paradoxically, perceived by the critics as “belated” and “untimely.” The work abounds with Gothic tropes, from the gloomy and overgrown “old house,” to the “precipice” itself and the theme of transgression associated with it. Drawing on recent studies on the role of the Gothic in Realism, Sobol reevaluates the appearance of this seemingly antiquated tradition in Goncharov’s novel, focusing on the “old house” as the paradigmatic Gothic trope. She reads the Gothic here as a literary mode that, through its focus on transgression and violation of boundaries, as well as on the past inhabiting the present, channels some of most profound anxieties of Russian modernity. Moreover, Sobol argues that, at a meta-literary level, the injection of the Gothic mode into the novel challenges the basic premises of the artistic method of Realism. If Goncharov’s novel indeed was “untimely,” it was because he was ahead of his time, rather than behind, in his search for overcoming the limits of Realist aesthetics. Ani Kokobobo and Devin McFadden focus on a challenge of a different kind in the figure of Mark Volokhov in The Precipice, whom they term ‘a queer nihilist.’ In “The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal, and Heteronormativity in Goncharov’s The Precipice” Kokobobo and McFadden make use of Queer theorist Jack Halberstam’s juxtaposition of the “time of reproduction” with “queer temporality,” or the temporality that  “flashes into view in the heart of a crisis” and differs profoundly from the uses of time in the institutions of family, hetero-sexuality, and reproduction. As they demonstrate, nihilist figures, while not strictly speaking queer, similarly fall out of reproductive time. In The Precipice, as in other anti-nihilist

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novels, political rebellion takes place within the romantic sphere; despite their negative portrayal, these nihilist characters nonetheless succeed in forging new modes of life through romantic seduction, exploitation, and artistic pursuits. The fourth section, “Author and Imperialist Abroad: Frigate Pallada,” addresses Goncharov’s 1858 travel text Frigate Pallada. Traditionally it has been less studied than the novels (partly due to its ambiguous combination of fiction and documentary), but recently Goncharov’s travelogue has sailed into the very center of critical debates on such pertinent issues as imperialism, colonialism, and globalization. Aleksei Balakin, Ingrid Kleespies, and Lyudmila Parts offer contributions that consider the text through a variety of lenses: the genre of travel writing; the interweaving of fact and fiction in the narrative; the encounter with Western imperial modernity and optical culture in London; the critical role of laughter in the Russian traveler’s encounter with others; and, more broadly, the unique dynamics of Russian imperial observation of the world both within and beyond Russia’s borders. In “‘I Avoided the Factual Side . . .’ (Fiction and Document in Frigate Pallada),” Aleksei Balakin examines the genre of Goncharov’s narrative of his journey to the shores of Japan. Goncharov repeatedly stressed that his essays were based on letters to friends that he sent to St. Petersburg. Thus, he suggests that readers perceive his book not as a documentary narrative of how the voyage went, but rather as a series of personal essays that do not pretend to be objective and fully factual. To create this effect Goncharov relies on two familiar, and, by his time, slightly outdated genres: the travelogue and the letter. Over time, however, Frigate Pallada came to be read as a documentary account and as an objective narration of the expedition and its successes and failures. Balakin argues that this perception of the book is incorrect and that the travelogue conveys both personal experience and an ideological message in which an important role is played not only by what the author describes, but, importantly, by what he omits. In “A Russian Observer Catches the London Eye: Envisioning Imperial Modernity in Frigate Pallada,” Ingrid Kleespies examines Goncharov’s response to the pervasive and wide-ranging culture of exhibition he encounters in London, the hub of empire and modernity. Stemming from a modern, industrial aesthetics of visualization, display, and evaluation that was linked to developments in the field of optics, London’s famed “exhibitionist” culture of the mid-1850s incorporated such diverse

Introduction: Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century

phenomena as museums, panoramas, moving dioramas, and technological demonstrations. The complex nature of Goncharov’s response to London visual life, and in particular his critique of a Benthamite utilitarian culture of observation and assessment that he perceives there, is the subject of this chapter. In his portrayal of English society, Goncharov crafts both a Russian and a literary response to the English “marketplace” wherein the English are ultimately shown to be consumed by their dedication to consuming information and goods; they have internalized the outward-looking colonial gaze and turned themselves into objects to be owned, evaluated, and exploited. Lyudmila Parts focuses on the role of laughter in the travelogue, a genre that literally brings one face to face with the different and the strange. In “Who are you laughing at? Identity, Laughter, and Colonial Discourse in Frigate Pallada,” she examines various functions of laughter in Goncharov’s text: it signifies social, cultural, and other differences; but most importantly, it serves the narrator in establishing himself in the role of an observer who reacts to social, cultural, and racial differences from the position of a (would-be) colonizer. Parts asserts that Goncharov develops two distinct interpretations of laughter: during the interaction with the Japanese, Goncharov’s laughter signals and bolsters the Russians’ superiority as colonizers. When the narrator finds himself to be an object of curiosity and laughter on the part of native/indigenous people he encounters in various places, the opposite interpretation comes to the fore, one where laughter is construed as barbaric and the laughing subject as developmentally deficient. This interpretive split, she suggests, might constitute the essence of colonial laughter. *** In demonstrating the fruitful intersections between Goncharov’s civil service career and literary oeuvre, in opening up new lines of investigation of his work’s rich philosophical context(s), in fleshing out the interrogation of Realism in his novels, and in illuminating his work’s critical encounter with key strains of modernity—capitalism, globalization, visual culture, imperialism—this volume brings Goncharov into fresh and overdue perspective, recovering him for contemporary readers and scholars alike. We hope that Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century will demonstrate the degree to which Goncharov’s work speaks to our own anxieties and concerns

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about many of the very same issues: consumer culture, technology, increasing globalization and the strength of market forces, the legacies of older artistic forms, assumptions around gender and heteronormativity, tensions over life in the public sphere, and the forces of history, consciousness, and identity themselves. Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts

Part One The Life of Service

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov1 Sergei Guskov

A firmly established, highly prevalent opinion exists of the relationship between “the official” and “the creative” in the life of I. A. Goncharov (as in the lives of other “writer-officials”). The gist of it is that a writer always serves of necessity, to earn a living, that official activities encroach upon his precious time, constituting a serious impediment to his creative work, and that if not for his service, the writer, in this case Goncharov, would have written significantly more, and better. Goncharov himself set his service and creative work in opposition (“. . . . always wanted and was meant to write, and yet I had to serve”);2 subsequently, several biographers remarked on the negative role of his service in his creative fate: “The conditions affecting Goncharov’s creative work must include a lack of complete freedom to write. He was not financially secure, like Tolstoy and Turgenev. . . . Therefore he was forced to work and, consequently, to devote a great deal of his time to civil service.”3 Summing up a host of similar assertions, B. M. Engel’gardt wrote: “Service was a chronic ulcer, eating away at his existence. . . .”4 However, 1 2 3 4

The study was supported by RFBR, research project no. 18-019-00598. Ivan Goncharov, Letter of April 14, 1874 to A. A. Tolstaia, in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 416. All translations are mine—KS. Anatolii Koni, “Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov,” in I. A. Goncharov v vospominaniakh sovremennikov, ed. N.K. Piksanov (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1969), 242–243. Boris Engel’gardt, “‘Puteshestvie vokrug sveta I. Oblomova’: Glavy iz neizdannoi monografii,” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 29.

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the unique, mutual success of Goncharov’s official and creative careers forces one to doubt the incontestability of these assertions (if one occupation interfered with the other, one could hardly expect that both would be successful.) According to his last official service record, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov was a public servant for over thirty years, from 1835 through 1867, with a break in 1861–1862.5 He served in the Ministries of Finance, of Education, and Internal Affairs. Through the 1840s, his career progressed slowly. However, it began to soar in the 1850s, subsequent to his involvement in the Japanese expedition commanded by Vice-Admiral E. V. Putiatin, and the publication of his Frigate Pallada and Oblomov during the same period. In the 1860s, Goncharov held such key positions as editor-in-chief of the government-run newspaper The Northern Post (Severnaia pochta), member of the Council of the Minister of Internal Affairs on Matters of Book-Printing, then later—member of the Council of the Main Directorate of Printing Affairs. Still more serious career opportunities arose: in 1859, Goncharov was offered a position as office chief of the Bureau de la presse—an unrealized government agency for moral influence on literature,6 and in 1860, authorities at the highest level discussed Goncharov’s potential appointment as chairman of the Petersburg Censorship Committee.7 Although both appointments fell through for various reasons, Goncharov had an impressive career: having descended, as we know, “from the merchantry,” the writer retired at the end of 1867, in the rank of Active State Counsellor.8 The other aspect of Goncharov’s life, his career as one of the foremost Russian writers, is no less impressive, what with: the “unprecedented”9 success of his novel A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia) (which earned Belinskii’s highest acclaim and achieved publication in The Contemporary See Mikhail Superanskii, “Materialy dlia biografii I. A. Goncharova,” Ogni 1 (1916): 176–178. 6 See Petr Pletnev, Letter to P. A. Viazemskii of February 13 (25), 1859, in his Sochineniia i perepiska v trekh tomakh (St.  Petersburg: Imperatorskaia akademiia nauk, 1885), vol. 3, 473. 7 See Ivan Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1997-2017), vol. 10, 431–432. 8 See Superanskii, “Materialy dlia biografii I. A. Goncharova,” 176–178. 9 Vissarion Belinskii, Letter to V. P. Botkin of March 15–17, 1847, in his Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976–1982), vol. 9, 634. 5

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

[Sovremennik] and seven reprints in Goncharov’s lifetime), and favorable reviews of Frigate Pallada (Fregat “Pallada”) and Oblomov. As early as in 1861, critics ascertained that Goncharov “wrote . . . two capital novels: A Common Story and Oblomov. The first of these . . . immediately placed him in the ranks of first-class Russian writers, and his Sketches of a World Cruise [Ocherki krugosvetnogo plavaniia] and Oblomov were received by journals and the public with pleasure, the like of which literary works rarely enjoyed in Russia [na Rusi].”10 How was the successful combination of two, ordinarily conflicting, life strategies realized in a single biography? How did a brilliant career, both as an official, and one of Russia’s foremost novelists, prove possible for Goncharov? The answer, it seems, lies in the close interplay in Goncharov’s life between his official activity and creative work, both on the content- and event-related levels. Service was not merely a hindrance, but also an important component of his creative work, as a source of material, plots, images, prototypes, characterizations, and stylistic originality. On the other hand, as it turns out, Goncharov’s literary gift and reputation as a distinguished writer also served, on several occasions, to further his career. There is no reason to doubt that Goncharov served of necessity and often found his service burdensome. It is equally apparent, however, that the stereotypical accounts mentioned above are one-sided, in depicting the relationship in Goncharov’s life between the official and the creative. If we consider the facts of his biography, we see that initially, the civil servant and the writer—the two sides of his persona—coexisted in complete harmony. In 1835, before contemplating literature in earnest, Goncharov arrived in St.  Petersburg with the family of recently retired Governor of Simbirsk A. M. Zagriazhskii and, apparently, thanks to an acquaintance of the latter, joined the Foreign Trade Department of the Finance Ministry.11 Many writers numbered among the officials of this agency, including P. A. Viazemskii, poet and friend of Pushkin, as the department’s deputydirector; A. M. Kniazhevich, member of the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science, and the Arts (Vol’noe obshchestvo liubitelei slovesnosti, nauk i khudozhestv [VOLSNKh]) who, as early as the 1820s, had published a literary 10 Dmitrii Pisarev, “Pisemskii, Turgenev i Goncharov (Sochineniia A. F. Pisemskogo, t. I i II. Sochineniia I. S. Turgeneva),” in I. A. Goncharov v russkoi kritike. Sbornik statei (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1958), 120. 11 See one version of these events in Andrei Tsariev “Kantseliarskii chinovnik Goncharov,” Kultura i vremia 2 (2013): 151–155.

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supplement to the Son of the Fatherland (Syn otechestva), as office manager; and the future famous poet, V. G. Benediktov, as secretary to the minister of finance. Thanks to his service, Goncharov acquired a broad network of literary acquaintances, even becoming a regular at the painter Nikolai Appolonovich Maikov’s home, where his first extant literary works were published in handwritten journals. Goncharov’s literary characters were often modeled on coworkers and familiar officials.12 For instance, the recollections of one contemporary affirm, that Goncharov’s “deceased superior, Vladimir Andreevich Solonitsyn, and Andrei Parfenovich Zablotskii-Desiatovskii,” a distinguished economist, who frequented Maikov’s home, served as prototypes for Aleksandr Aduev; that “Ivan Aleksandrovich carved his protagonist out of two characters, assertive and callous, highly self-serving, moreover, dreaming only of how to move up in the world, compile a tidy sum and marry well.”13 N. G. Evstratov would later observe that the titles of the articles translated by Aleksandr Aduev resembled the headings of the Department of Agriculture’s Journal of the Ministry of State Properties (Zhurnal Ministerstva gosudarstvennykh imushchestv), whose editor happened to be Zablotskii-Desiatovskii.14 A. B. Muratov suggested that the figures of Petr Aduev and Stolz could only have emerged as a result of Goncharov’s extensive knowledge, owing to his administrative duties, of the activities of Russian entrepreneurs and higher officials.15 By and large, neither Goncharov’s work-related, official environment, nor its influence on his literary activity, have been sufficiently investigated. This topic has been examined, to some extent, in the works by B. M. Engel’gardt and T. I. Ornatskaia dedicated to the mess-hall on the frigate Pallada.16 Meanwhile, Goncharov’s relations with such colleagues as P. A. 12 See Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 633, 806. 13 Albert Starchevskii, “Odin iz zabytykh zhurnalistov (Iz vospominanii starogo literatora) (Otryvok),” in I. A. Goncharov v vospominaniiakh, 54. 14 Nikolai Evstratov, “Goncharov na putiakh k romanu (K kharakteristike rannego tvorchestva),” Uchenye zapiski Ural’skogo pedagogicheskogo instituta imeni A. S. Pushkina 2, no. 6. (1955): 178. 15 Askold Muratov, “I. A. Goncharov v ministerstve finansov,” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy o zhizni i tvorchestve pisatelia, ed. P. S. Beisov (Ul’ianovsk: Privolzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1976), 38. 16 Boris Engel’gardt, “Kaiut-kompaniia fregata ‘Pallada,’” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 74–82; Tamara Ornatskaia, “I. A. Goncharov—chlen kaiut-kompanii fregata ‘Pallada,’”in I. A. Goncharov: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii,

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

Viazemskii, A. S. Norov, A. V. Nikitenko, and P. A. Valuev remain practically unexplored. The influence of the official on the creative was not limited to prototypes; Goncharov’s service also determined other peculiarities of his work, as well as his special literary standing. As noted above, Goncharov did not follow the established Russian tradition in depicting officials: there are no sarcastic caricatures of bribe-takers, or compassionate depictions of “the little man” in his works: “In Goncharov . . . protagonists, who are officials, are depicted as cultured people, working people doing something useful, with whom the author sympathizes. And herein lies Goncharov’s originality: neither Gogol, nor Turgenev, nor Tolstoy depicted civil servants in this manner.”17 Most revealing in this sense is the comparison of Goncharov with the satirist, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. As one contemporary scholar observes: It is noteworthy that Goncharov himself, while continuing to write prose, served quite willingly. His characters in A Common Story likewise do not show any dislike of civil service. In contrast, . . . Saltykov-Shchedrin, who also served for most of his life, was far more ambivalent in his attitude toward service. . . . In Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fiction, the world of bureaucracy, often portrayed allegorically, is an ugly and nonsensical world, in which the reality of state service is not only satirized but grotesquely distorted.18

Goncharov’s perspective, atypical to Russian literature, was predetermined, of course, by the peculiarities of his artistic temperament, and his preoccupation with objectivity (his artistic credo being “sine ira”).19 But above all else, it was shaped by the professional and worldly experience he gained while serving at the Department of Foreign Trade. N. K. Piksanov observed long ago that service introduced Goncharov into a particular world, unknown to Russian belletrists of the day—Turgenev, Grigorovich, Dostoevsky—namely, the posvyashchennoi 195-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia I. A. Goncharova (Ul’ianovsk: Strezhen’, 1994), 146–156. 17 Nikolai Piksanov, “Goncharov I. A.,” in Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 17, 669 (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1930). 18 Irina Reyfman, How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016), 179–181. 19 Ivan Goncharov, “Neobyknovennaia istoriia (Istinnye sobytiia),” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 270.

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world of commerce and bureaucracy. The Department of Foreign Trade comprised the hub of Russia’s international commerce; here, foreign merchants met with major Russian exporters.  .  .  .  No doubt, it is here, in the Department of Foreign Trade, that Goncharov first gained a clear insight into the influence and the rise of the Russian bourgeoisie—not the archaic, provincial merchantry, but the anglicized bourgeoisie of the capital, who were involved in international relations. Here, an understanding was developed of the Aduev Sr. type, of “world trade,” which was later conveyed in Frigate Pallada; here, Goncharov’s conception of Andrei Stolz took root.20

The “range of ideas” associated with the department was reflected even in the emerging writer’s language. Goncharov’s stylistic diversity—a defining characteristic of his prose—is of interest within the context of the topic at hand.21 His prose is rich with the functional style, referred to as business-like or bureaucratic. Goncharov drew on his knowledge of the various styles of discourse employed in the official milieu, and his command of the clerical-bureaucratic style, to realize various creative goals. Scholars have noted the use of this particular “social dialect” in Goncharov’s early works.22 To a significant degree, the play of styles forms the cornerstone even of his first novel A Common Story (1847), which can be read either as the interaction, or struggle, between two stylistic and ideological systems, reflected, on the one hand, in the “local-provincial” or “sentimental-romantic” language of Aleksandr Aduev and on the other, in the practical, big-city, business language of his uncle, the high-ranking official Petr Aduev.23

20 Niolai Piksanov, “Belinskii v bor’be za Goncharova,” Uchenye zapiski Leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 76, no. 11 (1941): 59–60. 21 See Valentina Brodskaia, “Nabliudeniia nad iazykom i stilem rannikh proizvedenii I. A. Goncharova,” Voprosy slavianskogo iazykoznaniia 2 (1949): 137–167; Petr Bukharkin, “Stil’ ‘Obyknovennoi istorii’ I. A. Goncharova,” Voprosy russkoi literatury. Respublikanskii mezhvedomstvennyi sbornik 1 (1979): 69–76. 22 Valentina Brodskaia observes that “in the sketch ‘Ivan Savich Podzhabrin,’ the language of the characters  .  .  .  is largely saturated with social dialects, including those of the peasantry, the conversational speech of the petty bureaucracy, the petty-bourgeois vernacular, and elements of formal language.” See Brodskaia, “Nabliudeniia nad iazykom,” 162. 23 See, for instance, Boris Rumiantsev, “Vzaimodeistvie stilevykh sistem v ramkakh khudozhestvennogo tselogo,” in Tipologicheskie kategorii v analize literaturnogo proizvedeniia kak tselogo (Kemerovo: Kemerovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1993), 105–113.

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

“The phraseology of Romanticism, leading at times to grotesque exaggerations”24 constitutes the main characteristic of Aleksandr Aduev’s speech. “[A]n exalted and pathetic romantic, detached from the realities of life,”25 he imitates “the linguistic traits of the domestic, epigonic Romanticism of the 30s and the 40s”:26 “Where on earth is love? Oh, love, I thirst for love!” he said, “and will it come soon? When will these wondrous moments transpire, these sweet sufferings, the thrill of bliss, the tears . . .” “I will, at least, come away from the crowd with a heart that is broken but unmarred by baseness; a soul torn to shreds, but innocent of lies, pretense, betrayal, I will not be tainted . . .” “[H]ow many treasures I’ve discovered in my soul: where have they gone? I sent them out into the world, I surrendered the sincerity of my heart, my first secret desire—and what did I get? A rude awakening, I learned that everything is a sham, that everything is temporary, that you cannot rely either on yourself, or others,” and he began to fear others, and himself. . . .27

By contrast, simplicity, sternness, and rationalism characterize Petr Aduev’s discourse. Devoid of any distinctive stylistic markers, it is neither official jargon, nor social dialect. Rather, his speech is virtually standard. Scholars note that he ueses a specific set of words, comprising a “distinct business and official vocabulary: paper [bumaga] (meaning ‘document’), cross [krest] (‘award’), obligation [obiazatel’stvo], salary [oklad], wages [zhalovanie] etc.”28 However, the uncle’s use of clerical and business vocabulary and phraseology does not assume a satirical characteristic; rather, it serves a different purpose: its sternness and rationalism highlight Aleksandr’s “quaint” phraseology, while the depiction of romantic or mundane, domestic topics by means of clerical vocabulary creates a humorous effect. For instance, when instructing Aleksandr on how to conduct “love affairs,” Petr advises him to “act according to a well-considered plan, a method,” “maintain constant control,” and when he gets it wrong, he prepares to “handle things differently.”29 24 Efim Etkind, “‘Vnutrennii chelovek’ i vneshniaia rech’,” in Ocherki psikhopoetiki russkoi literatury XVIII–XIX vv. (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 1998), 117. 25 Brodskaia, “Iazyk i stil’ romana I. A. Goncharova ‘Obyknovennaia istoriia,’” Voprosy slavianskogo iazykoznaniia 3 (1953): 130. 26 Bukharkin,“Stil’ ‘Obyknovennoi istorii’ I. A. Goncharova,” 69. 27 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 232, 296, 392. 28 Brodskaia, “Iazyk i stil’ romana I. A. Goncharova ‘Obyknovennaia istoriia,’” 148. 29 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 303–304.

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At times, Goncharov’s texts utilize specific circumstances of his official biography to good effect. Revealing in this sense is the dialogue between the Aduev uncle and nephew, in which the latter is advised to choose a position for himself and map out an initial career plan: “So, which position would you like to fill, then?” “I don’t know, Uncle, whichever . . .” “There are positions for ministers,” said Petr Ivanych, “for their associates, directors, deputy directors, department heads, desk managers, their assistants, officials for special assignments—does it matter?” Aleksandr fell to thinking. He was confused and didn’t know which to choose. “Well, the desk manager position would be a good place to start,” he said. “Yes, fine!” repeated Petr Ivanych. “I’d familiarize myself with things, Uncle, then in a month or two I could even be a department head . . .” The uncle pricked up his ears. “Indeed, indeed!” he said, “then in three months a director and, well, in a year even a minister: so, is that it?” Aleksandr blushed and said nothing. “The department head probably told you where there’s an opening?” he later asked. “No,” the uncle replied, “he didn’t say, so we’d better leave it up to him; we’re having trouble choosing on our own, see, whereas he already knows where to put you.”30

That the uncle is being sarcastic is clear to the reader without comment, but the extent of his sarcasm is only discerned given the context of Goncharov’s own official biography. As we know, he climbed the ladder of civil service very slowly in the 1830s and 40s. Confirmed in the official position of translator in 1840 (after serving as a simple clerk for five years), Goncharov remained in this position until 1850, at which point he was designated junior desk manager. He became senior desk manager only in 1854, on his return from the Japanese expedition. At the time of A Common Story’s publication in 1848 Goncharov, after thirteen years of service, was

30 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 222.

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

still a long way from attaining the position, in which its main character expects to begin. Other instances in which Goncharov uses “departmental language” are also fairly revealing. Other instances in which Goncharov uses “departmental language” are also fairly revealing. In the 1842 humorous sketch, “Apprentice Teacher” (“Pepin’erka,” only discovered in 1997), for example, a student teacher is defined thus: .  .  .  .  teacher apprentice is a maiden—and cannot be a non-maiden; and likewise, a non-maiden cannot be a teacher apprentice. . . . In any event, if, by some chance, a non-maiden were to sneak in among the teacher apprentices, then this would constitute the sort of smuggling, on which there isn’t a single customs regulation with a stern enough ruling.31  

Or elsewhere: The apprentice teacher’s room is a free city, porto franco, where the most important secrets, even the city’s, are delivered duty-free, and where they are freely traded.32

The realia, terms, and turns of phrase marked as elements of the business-like, clerical style appear in this text because, from the 1830s to the start of the 1850s, Goncharov’s daily, official activities centered on the substance of customs regulations and cases related to thwarting illegal trade. The humor (one of Goncharov-the-writer’s distinguishing traits) as such stems from the depiction of the blissful, dreamy, romantic world of resident schoolgirls using the officialese of a customs department functionary. Similar examples abound in Goncharov’s early works. For instance, V. P. Somov, who studied Goncharov’s early works, drew attention to the persona of a bureaucrat in “Mischievous Illness” (“Likhaia bolest’,” 1838): “elements of the bookish, archaic and clerical-bureaucratic style, of everyday language, distinctly characterizing the narrator, . . . temper the enthusiastic-romantic speech and contribute to disparaging the image of the dreamers.”33 Based, among other reasons, on the similarity of stylistic features, Somov attributed to Goncharov a text from the hand-written journal Snowdrop (Podsnezhnik), entitled “What did 31 Ibid., 514. 32 Ibid., 516. 33 V. P. Somov, “Redaktsiia Podsnezhnika imeet chest’ predlozhit’, . . .” Russkaia literatura 3 (1970): 98.

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Adam and Eve Talk about when They First Met?” (“O chem Adam i Eva razgovarivali v pervoe svidanie?”). The text is entirely stylized in imitation of clerical-bureaucratic speech: Kind Sir, most estimable NN! Finding myself in the department on yesterday’s date, I learned [ill.] from my colleague, collegiate secretary Pavel Mikheevich Donoshen’ev, that some sort of journal you published, entitled Snowdrop, includes, among other things, an inquiry of the topic, nature, the course, and further developments of Adam and Eve’s conversation, upon their first meeting. Although I do not concern myself with any stories whatsoever, let alone those, on such speculative or divinatory topics as these, or deal with any part of writing, except at the behest of my superiors, and I consider any written proceedings not of the business type, but, I dare add, of the sort you educated types call literature, to be utter nonsense; but seeing as the abovestated inquiry was approved even by my desk manager, Ivan Kondrat’evich, who is distinguished in the whole of our department as an excellent official and knows the rules: I have agreed to grant the aforementioned inquiry my full consideration.34

Because Somov’s argumentation was deemed insufficient by the compilers of the first volume of the complete collection of Goncharov’s works, this composition was excluded from the main body of his texts.35 More significant, however, is the fact that Somov defined the impressive command of “bureaucratic” language as Goncharov’s unique characteristic. The frequent lexical and stylistic borrowings are an important point of intersection between Goncharov-the-writer and Goncharov-the-official. The former willingly and fruitfully uses the latter’s vocabulary, life experience, and modes of discourse, precisely thereby composing original, creative texts. One could attribute the willing use of “departmental” experience and language to the fact that early Goncharov was trying to find his own writing voice, and as many young authors, initially drew upon what was most familiar to him. However, creative devices directly associated with Goncharov’s service also crop up in his later texts. As we know, Goncharov tended to recycle images, personalities, and artistic details, in which he discovered 34 Ibid., 93. 35 See Anna Grodetskaia, “Igral li Goncharov v ‘sekretari’?,” in Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posvyashchennoi 195-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia I. A. Goncharova (Ul’ianovsk: Nika-Dizain, 2008), 288–291.

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

new facets of meaning with every new use. For instance, in Oblomov (1859), when Goncharov recreates the patriarchal-idyllic mentality to render the protagonist’s concept of civil service, he basically makes use of the same device he had used in “The Student Teacher”: Raised in the depths of the provinces, amid the warm and gentle manners and customs of his native soil, making his way, over the course of twenty years, from one embrace to the next, of family, friends and acquaintances, he was imbued with family principles, to the extent, that even his future service was perceived as some sort of family activity like, for example, languidly recording income and expenditures in a notebook, the way his father did. He assumed that, together, civil servants of the same locale made up a harmonious, close-knit family, vigilant over the mutual peace of mind and comfort of its members, that one’s attendance at the office was nowhere near a binding practice that need be observed daily, and that slush, heat or simple disinclination would always serve as sufficient and lawful grounds for not going to work. . . . He’d heard about the supervisor at home, as being a father to his subordinates, and therefore he’d formed the homiest, most jovial impression of this figure. He imagined him as something of a second father, who seemed to live only to reward his subordinates, time and again, whether they deserved it or not, and see not only to their needs, but also to their entertainment. Il’ia Il’ich thought the supervisor sympathized with his subordinate’s situation to the extent that he would thoughtfully question him about: how had he slept at night, why was he bleary-eyed, and did he have a headache? But he was bitterly disappointed on the very first day of his service.36

Goncharov also made use of his departmental experience many years later, after having retired. He drew on it, for instance, in portraying his traumatic relationship with I. S. Turgenev. His accusations against Turgenev of plagiarism, of using the plot devices of The Precipice (Obryv) in his own Nest of the Gentry (Dvorianskoe gnezdo) and other works, have received much attention from literary scholars.37 However, the form in which he 36 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 4, 55–56. 37 See Nina Budanova, “Goncharov i Turgenev: Problemy izucheniia vzaimootnoshenii (Po materialam Neobyknovennoi istorii),” in Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 180-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia I. A. Goncharova, 38–42; Valentin Nedzvetskii, “‘Personal’nyi’ roman ispytaniia (I. A. Goncharov, I.  S. Turgenev),” in his Russkii sotsial’no-universal’nyi roman XIX veka: Stanovlenie i zhanrovaia evoliutsiia (Moscow: Dialog-MGU, 1997), 132–190; Liia Rozenblium,

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delivers these accusation is more interesting than their content, in the context of discussing the official and the creative. In An Uncommon Story (Neobyknovennaia istoriia, 1875–1876), Goncharov creates a fantastic image to portray the obstacles, allegedly created by Turgenev, which hindered the promulgation of Goncharov’s works in Europe: What he, that is, Turgenev, wanted most, was for me not to write something new, ambitious, along the lines of Oblomov, Precipice. God forbid! Then, his entire crafty operation would collapse, not only here, in the eyes of his allies but, very likely, also abroad. That’s why he had to keep an eye on me, so that nothing slipped through his customs office.38

And elsewhere: How diligently all our naive people helped him! Writing down and conveying everything I say, rewriting my letters, not only to him alone, but to others, so that the dog in the manger could keep all his straw! Clever stuff! The customs office wouldn’t clear anything, and if I were writing a new, ambitious novel, they’d string it out in installments, and then Turgenev would write another series of meaningful stories, along the lines of Fathers and Sons [Ottsy i deti], Smoke [Dym]. And meanwhile, he, through his local and foreign Bobchinskiis and Dobchinskiis (like Courrière, the historian of Russian Literature), declares himself head of the new school of the realist story, knowing that the measures taken would prevent me from writing something and exposing him.39

Goncharov’s choice of such a nontrivial image to characterize his literary rival’s activity, it seems, can be directly linked to Goncharov’s official experience, especially to his many years of service in the Foreign Trade Department, which included managing various customs affairs; translating foreign-language customs documentation; and a good, overall understanding of intergovernmental trade relations, both in theory and practice. Judging from various assertions by his contemporaries, we can assume that, at times, Goncharov’s service in this department (especially toward the end)

“Dushevnaia drama Goncharova v svete psikhologicheskikh otkrytii Dostoevskogo (‘Neobyknovennaia istoriia’),” in I. A. Goncharov, Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 308–326. 38 Goncharov, Neobyknovennaia istoriia, 244. 39 Ibid., 224.

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

was emotionally distressing.40 Clearly, he found the business of Turgenev’s plagiarism still more devastating. Hence, his combination of both sources of trauma in the phantasmagoric portrayal of the “Turgenevian customs office” is understandable in the psychological sense. Even so, it remains a unique creative device. The correlation of the official and the creative in Goncharov’s biography was more complex than ordinarily represented. The two sides of his personality seem to exist in a fruitful interplay (rather than in opposition). The writer’s use of service-related experience to work out creative goals illustrates that the official Goncharov often provided help to Goncharovthe-writer. However, the opposite was also true: his literary gift and reputation largely determined the trajectory of his official career as well. This interplay is best exemplified by the story of Goncharov’s appointment in 1852 as secretary to Vice-Admiral E. V. Putiatin, on the naval expedition to the coasts of Japan. Since the secretary was required not only to keep up-to-date records, but also to chronicle the expedition, a literary talent was needed to fill the position. In a letter dated August 23, 1852 to E. A. and M. A. Iazykov, Goncharov conveyed the requirements for the position: “[T]hey need someone who would be able to write proper Russian, a man of letters.”41 On September 20 ( October 2), 1853, Putiatin himself informed A. S. Norov: “I cannot fail to mention how indebted I am to you for having recommended, and participated in, Mr. Goncharov’s appointment to the staff of our expedition. He is extremely valuable to me, both in our current dealings with the Japanese, and his depiction of all events which, in time, must be imparted to the public.”42 In turn, this new position affected Goncharov’s literary career. If not for his appointment with the expedition, what we now know as Frigate Pallada simply would not exist. Moreover, the specific nature of Goncharov’s official mission also inspired the creative peculiarities of his work. On setting sail, Goncharov had planned to incorporate the future travel impressions into the existing creative process (he was writing Oblomov at the time) and to return with “Oblomov’s journey”:

40 In Aleksandr Nikitenko’s opinion, prior to becoming a censor in 1855, Goncharov was being suffocated by the “bureaucratese.” See Aleksandr Nikitenko, Dnevnik (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1955), vol. 1, 425. 41 As cited in Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 399. 42 Efim Putiatin, Letter to Norov, as cited in Russkii Arkhiv 1 (1899): 198.

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Here’s a letter almost at the end, you’ll say, yet there’s nothing about London, about what you saw, observed. There will not be anything now, either. Is this really a letter? You still don’t understand? It’s the preamble (not even the foreword, that’s still to come) to Journey Around the World [Puteshestvo vokrug sveta], in twelve volumes, with plans, diagrams, a map of the Japanese shoreline, with a description of Port Jackson, the costumes and features of the inhabitants of Oceania. By I. Oblomov.43

However, the result was an entirely different work, whose content and tone were largely predetermined by Goncharov’s official function. Comparing the Siberian chapters of Frigate with N. S. Leskov’s “On the Edge of the World” (“Na kraiu sveta”), V. A. Tunimanov wrote, in his characteristic, ironic tone: It is possible that Goncharov simply was not aware of the negative aspects of life in Siberia and the many hardships, the Russian missionaries there had to overcome. However, even if Goncharov had known about them, this would hardly have had a substantial effect on the image of Siberia outlined in the book. This image evolved from material that was carefully selected and wellconceived. . . . Goncharov used the same method in the Siberian chapters as he had in the marine chapters, where, in fact, he avoided all the dramatic episodes of the voyage, . . . and did not even attempt to broach any conflicts and contradictions within that “Russian world” of which he was a small part for two years. He depicted an essentially ideal society, a body of “excellent, distinctive peoples and compeers.”44

B. M. Engel’gardt attributed the inconsistency between the subject matter of the sketches and the actual events of the expedition to the work’s fictional nature.45 But the exclusion of several occurrences was no less determined by the fact that Goncharov’s sketches were the official chronicle of the campaign, and that he was on a secret expedition, accompanied by all

43 Ivan Goncharov, Letter of November 20 / December 2, 1852, to E. P. and N. A. Maikov, as cited in his Fregat “Pallada”: Ocherki puteshestviia v dvukh tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1986), 628. 44 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 523. 45 See Boris Engel’gardt, Izbrannye trudy (St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii universitet, 1995), 225–269.

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

sorts of interdictions—that is, by conditions directly related to Goncharov’s service.46 Goncharov’s career in the censorship department also figures in the complex interplay of the official and the creative. The position of censor, which Goncharov accepted in 1856, presupposed a certain authority in literary circles, since the censor had to function as a mediator between state institutions, on the one hand, and between journals, publishers, and authors themselves, on the other. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, the state implemented a policy to liberalize censorship, whereby “the most outrageous”47 censors were relieved and replaced by well-educated people with close ties to literature. Having assumed a position in 1863 on the Council to the Minister of Internal Affairs on Matters of Book-Printing, Goncharov’s literary authority proved more essential still. Serving as a censor clearly influenced Goncharov’s writing. Let us refer to the single-most indisputable example of this influence. In the 1870s, he began to publish works in an new genre: literary criticism.48 On the one hand, Goncharov separated his activities as censor and literary critic.49 On the other, he realized that artistic criticism and censorship could dovetail in the evaluation of a literary work.50 At times, Goncharov’s censorial feedback included lively passages of literary criticism. All things considered, Goncharov set literary talent above the rules of censorship. In a characteristic passage from “Opinions regarding V. A. Sollogub’s ‘Parochialism’ [‘Mestnichestvo’]” of January 25, 1867, he states: “A sublime artistic talent would be able to justify  .  .  .  sensitive and bold questions, discovering in them and objectively illuminating, through creative brilliance, the invincible power of reason and truth, which even censorship could not fail to respect, but unfortunately, Count Sollogub’s play does not compensate for . . . the above-mentioned deviations from censorship with any artistic merit whatsoever.”51

46 On the ideological burden of the sketches, see Edyta Bojanowska, World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018). 47 Nikitenko, Dnevnik, vol. 1, 425. 48 “A Million Torments” (“Mil’on terzanii”) was published in 1872, “Better Late than Never” in 1879, and Four Sketches was released in 1881.   49 See Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 10, 54, 92, 163, 282. 50 Ibid., 86, 89. 51 Ibid., 261.

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The appearance of Goncharov’s first critical essay, “A Million Torments” (“Mil’on terzanii”), immediately hailed as a masterpiece, is completely inexplicable and incomprehensible, without considering his censorial experience. To the reader unfamiliar with his numerous “reports,” “opinions,” and “accounts,” Goncharov-the-critic seemed to have emerged from nowhere. In fact, however, Goncharov-the-critic had been thoroughly trained throughout his tenure as a censor.52 On the other hand, despite Goncharov’s every effort to be a liberal censor, the fact is, serving in the censorship department was detrimental to his reputation.53 An exemplary diary entry by A. V. Druzhinin on December 2, 1855 reads: “I’ve heard . . . that Goncharov is becoming a censor. It’s a mistake for one of the foremost Russian writers to accept a position of this sort. I don’t consider it disgraceful but, first of all, it consumes the writer’s time, second, the public opinion disapproves of it, and third . . . third, a writer shouldn’t be a censor.”54 In 1862, the Minister of Internal Affairs P. A. Valuev proposed that Goncharov take charge of the government-run newspaper, The Northern Post. Goncharov’s literary renown was the key reason for this request: a figure of this range was meant to (and did) contribute to increasing the number of the newspaper’s subscribers. On the other hand, only a high-ranking official could serve as editor-in-chief of a government publication, because the newspaper’s editorial board pertained to a department of the Interior Ministry. As both a famous author and a high-ranking official, Goncharov met these criteria. Serving as editor-in-chief of The Northern Post impacted Goncharov’s subsequent creative work, including his revisions to the design of The Precipice. The novel’s patriotic ending is inexplicable without considering Goncharov’s work experience during the Polish Uprising of 1863.55 The very word “newspaper” receives new connotations in his texts starting 52 For more on the influence of Goncharov’s censorial service on his creative work, see Sergei Guskov, “Materialy tsenzorskoi deiatel’nosti Goncharova kak tvorcheskii istochnik romana ‘Obryv,’” in Goncharov posle “Oblomova”: Sbornik statei (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Mariny Batasovoi, 2015), 26–39. 53 See, for instance, Alina Bodrova and Kirill Zubkov, “Dukh i detali: Praktiki tsenzurnogo chteniia i obshchestvennyi status tsenzora v predreformennuiu epokhu (sluchai I. A. Goncharova),” Welt der Slaven 65 (2020): 125–127. 54 Aleksandr Druzhinin, Povesti. Dnevnik (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 358. 55 For more on this, see Sergei Guskov, “Goncharov, Valuev i kampaniia vsepoddanneishikh pisem 1863 goda,” Russkaia literatura 4 (2019): 72–80.

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

from the 1860s. Where previously emphasis lay on the momentary, impermanent nature of the “news-printed” word (as in Oblomov, where the protagonists draw their opinions from three-year-old newspapers), following his Northern Post appointment, the emphasis shifted to the pervasiveness, authority, and might of the newspaper as a mass medium. The ascendancy of newspapers emerged as a theme in Goncharov’s literary texts: Boris Raiskii, the memoiric protagonist in Precipice, says: “Keep it down about newspapers—they’re the Archimedean lever: they’re moving the world. . . .”56 The complexity of combining the roles of author and official, the poles of literature and power, profoundly impacted the creative history of The Precipice. Conceived in 1849, according to Goncharov himself, as a novel about an artist, its design had become significantly more complicated by 1869. Among other things, the novel incorporated the topical socio-political agenda of the 1860s: nihilism, the women’s question, and patriotism. The emergence of this contemporary agenda in the novel, uncharacteristic of Goncharov-the-artist, can only be explained in relation to his official employment. In the 1860s, the official Goncharov becomes the one who implements, in the realm of literature, a state policy that imposes severe restrictions (including those self-imposed) on his own creative works, which implies a life under heavy pressure. His status as a high-ranking official demanded he exhibit unconditional loyalty, conservatism, and devotion to state institutions: “This ever-intensifying personal connection to the prevailing order greatly hindered Goncharov’s activity as a writer.”57 Evidently, the creative history of The Precipice gave rise to a role conflict between the writer and the official. On the one hand, Goncharov seemed to resolve it in favor of the writer, if only because in 1867, he retired to finish the novel. On the other, the radical change in its design could attest not only to a creative crisis, but also to a certain convergence of the two roles. Goncharov tends to reject this in An Uncommon Story, although he admits to having composed The Precipice under pressure of the authorities. He writes that representatives of the conservative camp had begun to persecute him for the fact that . . . I didn’t serve ultra-conservative goals forthrightly and directly, as an official, with my compositions, . . . I didn’t engage in overt polemics with radicalism, I didn’t write essays in newspapers or novels, berating nihilism 56 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 7, 209. 57 Aleksandr Tseitlin, I. A. Goncharov (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1950), 15.

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and supporting the fundamental principles of public order, religion, the family, the government and so forth. And all this set me off.  .  .  .  Nobody in this camp had any idea that I’d been doing things my own way for a long time, serving the cause as an artist,  .  .  .  that ultimately, there, in the novel, respect for religion is upheld in the figure of Vera, and radicalism is undermined in the figure of Volokhov—and the fallen woman is redeemed through suffering—and finally, that the novel was written sincerely, with conviction—and altruistically, at that! . . . They forget that an artist has his own particular approach, style, and that his motto is—sine ira!58

On the other hand, the democratic critics perceived the novel as a conservative, tendentious, and biased work, thus largely conditioned by the author’s official past.59 Goncharov’s civil service career, likely having contributed to his creative work in the past proved, in 1869, to be a factor in the novel’s critical failure. His censorial past, his activity on the Council of the Minister of Internal Affairs on Matters of Book-Printing, and his participation in shutting down The Russian Word (Russkoe slovo) journal predetermined the hostile stance of the revolutionary-democratic publications toward The Precipice. Post-1869, Goncharov repeatedly declared that his literary career was over. In fact, this wasn’t entirely the case. He would continue to write a good many articles, feuilletons, and memoiric sketches. But he never wrote a fourth novel, even though a letter to S. A. Nikitenko dated August 26 (September 7), 1870 affirms that Goncharov was inspired to plot a sequel to the trilogy: Last year, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, was the last time I nearly felt the inclination to start something new. The weather was grand, there was nothing troubling me, and I was on the verge of developing a plan for some sort of novel; as usual, characters, personalities, scenes, even outlines and an epilogue to The Precipice began to emerge. But the minute I came back to our autumn, I felt a weight on my shoulders, compounded with some sort of insinuations, threats, and so forth. I was utterly demoralized—and since then, I keep forgetting I’m even an author. I’m a sick, worn-out invalid, now—with the

58 Goncharov, Neobyknovennaia istoriia, 269–270. 59 For more on this, see Sergei Guskov, “Polemika, kotoroi ne bylo (iz istorii kritiki romana Obryv),” Russkaia literatura 2 (2012): 80–89.

Writer and Chinovnik: The Case of I. A. Goncharov

idée fixe that I cannot possibly get through life, except in seclusion. And that’s virtually the truth.60

Among the factors contributing to the end of Goncharov’s career as a novelist, the critical failure of The Precipice was the key factor or, at least, one that Goncharov himself cited on more than one occasion. As mentioned above, its failure was largely determined by Goncharov’s reputation and activities during his tenure as an official (such as suppressing the Russian Word and other journals). Ironically, though Goncharov’s retirement in 1867 provided him with precisely what he had been denied by his service, the time for creative work, he never got around to using it to compose a fourth novel. And this predicament further affirms the fact that Goncharov’s service played a vital role the writer’s life: while imposing numerous limitations on his literary endeavors, it also provided his material and stimulated his creativity. In all likelihood, Goncharov recognized not only the conflict, but also the link between the official and creative, as indicated, in any case, by the signature on his letters during the 1870s: namely, “retired writer and civil servant.”61 Goncharov’s biography and oeuvre comprise material that proves indispensable within the context of institutional and sociological approaches to the study of literary history. We see from his example that the interplay of literature and authority may have been more complex than typically imagined. However, Goncharov was not unique. Many writers were involved in institutional literary activity as censors, editors, or publishers. Somehow or other, this activity always correlated with their creative work. There are stranger instances still, of role conflict or, conversely, role conformism, in the fate of “writer-officials,” who combined official and creative activity.62 The problematization of these topics enables us to take into account a host of previously ignored factors (literary viewpoint and reputation, social connections, literary economics), and consider the literary system per se as open to diverse social processes. Translated by Krystina Steiger 60 Ivan Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1952–1955), vol. 8, 430–431. 61 Idem, Literaturno-kriticheskie stat’i i pis’ma (Leningrad: Khudozhestevennaia literatura, 1938), 317. 62 See Reyfman, How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks.

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Writer or Censor: I. A. Goncharov’s Service in the Departments of Censorship, and the Evolution of Professional Ethics for Censors and Writers in Russia, in the 1850s and 1860s1 Kirill Zubkov

At the end of 1855, when I. A. Goncharov agreed to become a member of the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee, his decision aroused great discontent among many of his contemporaries.2 By all accounts, this reaction was due primarily to the belief that combining the social roles of writer and censor was impossible. Goncharov personally disagreed with this perception of his social position, although he did understand the reasoning behind it. Reacting to the harsh criticism directed at him on the pages of Herzen’s The Bell (Kolokol), Goncharov wrote to A. A. Kraevskii:

1 2

The study was supported by RFBR, research project no. 18-019-00598. V. A. Kotel’nikov, “I. A. Goncharov v tsenzurnom vedomstve,” in I. A. Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2014), vol. 10, 438–439.

Writer or Censor

Although in the London periodical, as I’ve heard, they’re smearing me, and not just me, but seemingly all Russian writers, it doesn’t bother me, because I know that if I’d written the devil only knows what—even then they’d show me no mercy, on account of my rank and official capacity alone.3

Judging from this letter, Goncharov did not regard his “rank and official capacity,” and his role as a “Russian writer” as contradictory. By the mid-1870s, however, the writer’s attitude toward his own former office had changed. In his newly written An Uncommon Story (Neobyknovennaia istoriia, 1875–1876), he expressly stated that combining his censorial duties with his literary activities required a huge effort: “Writing was my passion. But I worked—of necessity (and later as a censor, no less, God forgive me!), I traveled around the world—and besides the writing, I had to worry about earning wages!”4 Goncharov emphasizes the strictly “needs must” nature of his service as a censor: “I had to work, [and] live, owing to a lack of means, in Petersburg, in a climate unfavorable to writing, for I had neither a village, nor the money, like the Tolstoys or Turgenev, to live abroad. . . .”5 Between the 1850s and the 1870s, then, Goncharov reversed his opinion on the feasibility of reconciling the roles of censor and writer. To some extent, one may attribute this reversal to Goncharov’s personal circumstances. In the 1850s, the author of A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia) and Oblomov was confident of his significance to the literary field, but following the publication of his poorly reviewed novel The Precipice (Obryv), Goncharov was not so sure. He refused to compose any new substantial works and suspected Turgenev of plagiarism and of deliberately attempting to undermine his reputation. Doubting his own literary authority, Goncharov likely felt the need to justify his job, perceived by his contemporaries as dubious. However, it seems that Goncharov’s change of heart was due to more than strictly personal, psychological reasons, or even the shift in his literary status. Indeed, to some extent it was motivated by the nature and circumstances of Goncharov’s censorship service.

3 4

5

A. Mazon, Materialy dlia biografii i kharakteristiki I. A. Goncharova (St.  Petersburg: Tipografiia tovarischestva p/f “Elektro-tip. N. I. Stoikovoi,” 1912), 30. I. A. Goncharov, “Neobyknovennaia istoria (Istinnye sobytiia),” introduction and comments by N. F. Budanova, in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 259. All translations are mine—KS. Ibid., 232.

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In this chapter I attempt to demonstrate that Goncharov’s career in censorship can be explored as a classic case that sheds light on the development of the public sphere in Russia, which underwent significant transformations during the first half of the reign of Alexander II. In the course of these transformations in the 1850s and 1860s, there was a dramatic change in the perceptions of the relationship in Russia between the literary and censorial professions which, in many respects, impacted Goncharov’s reputation and his assertions with respect to his own censorial career. This chapter comprises two sections, which correspond to the two periods of Goncharov’s service as a censor. During the first of these (1856–1860), Goncharov was a rank-and-file member of the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee, which, like most Imperial Russian censorship organizations at the time, comprised part of the Ministry of Education. The second period (1863–1867) pertains to his service in the new, reformed censorship department, now part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. By this point, Goncharov was a member of the Council of the Minister of Internal Affairs on Matters of Book-Printing, and later of its replacement, the Main Directorate of Press and Publication. These were the highest organs governing censorship in the Russian Empire, whose members were authorized to take more important and principled decisions. The nature of Goncharov’s work, however, corresponded not only to his change of status in the bureaucratic system. When he began his service, Alexander II’s government developed a new notion of the functions and place of censorship in the relationship between the state and the society. Under Nicholas I, whose reign is usually perceived as a period of particularly intensive censorship, the censor’s function had more to do with educating writers, whom the state perceived as not fully independent. Significantly, the rankand-file censors very rarely took part in such well-known “repressive” actions as, say, declaring P. Ia. Chaadaev insane. Moreover, many censors engaged in personal relationships with writers and aspired to help them. Thus, the publisher of the journal The Muscovite (Moskvitianin), M. P. Pogodin, was in friendly correspondence with his censor, while A. V. Nikitenko became co-editor of Nekrasov’s The Contemporary (Sovremennik), in order to draw on his own experience as a censor to help the publisher (although officially, the journal was not censored by Nikitenko himself, but rather by his colleague).6 6

A. S. Bodrova, “O zhurnal’nykh zamyslakh, chutkoi tsenzure i povsednevnom byte moskovskikh tsenzorov: Iz istorii rannego ‘Moskvitianina,’” in Permiakovskii sbornik (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2010), vol.  2, 350–371; V. E. Evgen’ev-Maksimov,

Writer or Censor

But after Nicholas’s death, the censor was no longer perceived as part of the educational establishment; rather, he had become a functionary of the ministry responsible for the police. As I will illustrate in this chapter, precisely this change became one of the fundamental factors determining the nature of Goncharov’s own service and attitude toward it.

Literature and the Government: The Censor as Mediator Until writing was fully established as a profession in Russia, literary work was not considered an autonomous occupation, as distinguished from public service. Therefore, combining the roles of censor and writer elicited neither surprise, nor even less so, disapproval (this, of course, does not mean that all writers who occupied censorial posts held the same views on precisely how to reconcile these roles).7 For instance, it never occurred to S. T. Aksakov’s contemporaries to criticize him for fulfilling his censorial obligations in the late 1820s and early 1830s. By the mid-1850s, however, this attitude toward literature was a thing of the distant past. Russian writers now considered working as a censor disgraceful. Their new attitude was most candidly articulated in the diary entries, frequently cited by Goncharov scholars, of A. V. Druzhinin: I’ve heard of the great reforms in regard to censorship, and that Goncharov is becoming a censor. It’s a mistake for one of the foremost Russian writers to accept a position of this sort. I don’t consider it disgraceful but, first of all, it takes up the writer’s time, second, the public opinion disapproves of it, and third . . . third, a writer shouldn’t be a censor.8

By all appearances, this reaction was largely inspired, among other things, by the advent of the “thick” journals and literary criticism in the 1830s and 1840s.9 The efforts of these publications initiated the development of a method of evaluating literary works by virtue of their aesthetic Sovremennik v 40–50 gg. Ot Belinskogo do Chernyshevskogo (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo pisatelei v Leningrade, 1934), 53‒58. 7 Many contemporaries saw nothing dishonorable even in writers collaborating with the III Department of His Imperial Majesty’s Chancellery. See A. I. Reitblat, “Russkie pisateli i III otdelenie,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 40 (1999): 158–186. 8 A. V. Druzhinin, Povesti. Dnevnik, ed. B. F. Egorov and V. A. Zhdanov (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 358. 9 Deborah A. Martinsen (ed.), Literary Journals in Imperial Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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qualities (khudozhestvennost’, in the language of Russian critics of the day), the authors’ ideological position, the journal’s agenda and profitability (that is, its potential success or failure among a given readership). Among these criteria, aligning with state policy played only a minor role: although the censor’s opinion could not be ignored, of course, it was perceived as somewhat extraneous to the actual literature. During the tightening of censorship throughout the so-called “seven dark years” of Nicholas I’s reign, the government strived to annihilate the freedom of the printed word as effectively as possible. The newly established secret Committee of April 2, 1848 demanded the censorship’s intervention in most diverse publications: its agents could voice their concerns over aesthetic matters (such as the excessively harsh satirical position of A. N. Ostrovskii toward the Moscow merchantry, for instance) and purely formal problems, such as lack of censorship permits on popular engravings (lubok).10 At the same time, the committee also monitored the censors themselves, reporting to the emperor on any “ill-intentioned” works they had overlooked. Following the death of Nicholas I, however, the government embarked on a course to liberalize censorship for a time and collaborate with the public.11 The head of the Committee of April 2, 1848, M. A. Korf, himself initiated its dissolution citing among other reasons the Committee’s excessive severity.12 The point was not only to moderate the rigorous meddling of censorship in literature, but also to establish a press and a climate of opinion corresponding to the interests of the government, namely, concerning a “positive” influence on literature.13 Among other authorities, censorship was to embody this influence, given its directive, in this climate, not only to restrict the press, but also, in one form or another, to guide it. 10 N. A. Grinchenko (introduction and comments), “Istoriia Komiteta 2 aprelia 1848 goda v dokumentakh,” in Tsenzura v Rossii: Istoriia i sovremennost’: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (St.  Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka, 2006), vol.  3, 224‒246; Charles A. Ruud, Fighting Words: Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804-1906 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 83‒96. 11 Iu. I. Gerasimova, Iz istorii russkoi pechati v period revoliutsionnoi situatsii kontsa 1850kh–nachala 1860-kh gg. (Moscow: Kniga, 1974), 9–10. 12 Grinchenko, “Istoria Komiteta 2 aprelia 1848 goda v dokumentakh,” 245. 13 V. G. Chernukha, Pravitel’stvennaia politika v otnoshenii pechati. 60–70-e gody XIX veka (Leningrad: Nauka, 1989), 6–15; N. G. Patrusheva, “Teoria ‘nravstvennogo vliianiia’ na obshchestvennoe mnenie v pravitel’stvennoi politike v otnoshenii pechati v 1860-e gg.,” in Knizhnoe delo v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX–nachale XX veka. Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka, 1994), vol. 7, 112–125.

Writer or Censor

In the mid-1850s, especially after the death of Nicholas I, a group of “liberal bureaucrats” headed by the Grand Prince Konstantin Nikolaevich sought to bridge the gap between the Russian government and literature. From their perspective, a writer could both remain part of the literary community and serve the state, which was in need of willing writers. In other words, literature was perceived as an instrument of public opinion, independent of the state, which should not be suppressed, but effectively utilized in governing the empire. Motivated by the idea that combining the roles of dedicated civil servant and talented writer was possible, Konstantin Nikolaevich initiated a so-called “literary expedition” along the banks of the Volga. The travelogues of Goncharov, who sailed aboard the Frigate Pallada in 1852–1854, served as a model both for the officials, who financed that journey, and the writers in Konstantin’s expedition, who composed literary depictions of Russia.14 Apparently, this factor greatly determined Goncharov’s reputation in official circles, which, at the start of Alexander II’s reign, endeavored to transform the department of censorship. In An Uncommon Story, Goncharov recalled that his appointment to the post of censor was linked to this general liberalization: “They talked a lot, argued about literature, dined noisily, happily—in a word, it was good. Then, even censoring grew easier. In 1856, I was offered the position of censor—and I had to accept it.”15 Revealing in this regard is E. P. Rostopchina’s letter of November 28, 1856 to A. S. Norov and P. A. Viazemskii who, at the time, held positions, respectively, as minister and deputy minister of education and were in charge of censorship. Rostopchina proposed they organize a government-run newspaper, capable of defending the position of the authorities under the conditions of openness, and recommended Goncharov as a potential editor, along with A. V. Nikitenko and N. G. Chernyshevskii (whose surname obviously appears here in relation to his involvement in The Naval Collection [Morskoi sbornik], published by the office of Konstantin Nikolaevich, head of the liberal bureaucracy). In Rostopchina’s opinion, they could “reorient both the taste and inclination of the Russian readership (chitaiushchei Rusi),” which necessitated “that the editor-in-chief not be a bureaucrat . . . , that he be a man of letters.”16 14 A. V. Vdovin, “Russkaia etnografiia 1850-kh godov i etos tsivilizatorskoi missii: sluchai ‘literaturnoi ekspeditsii’ Morskogo ministerstva,” Ab Imperio 1 (2014): 91–126. 15 I. A. Goncharov, “Neobyknovennaia istoriia,” 200. 16 [E. P. Rostopchina], “O pol’ze glasnosti. Pis’mo E. P. Rostopchinoi P. A. Viazemskomu i A. S. Norovu,” introduction by A. M. Ranchin, Literaturnoe obozrenie 4 (1991): 111.

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Goncharov was regarded by many of his contemporaries as precisely the kind of person who, regardless of his many years of service, had succeeded in remaining a “man of letters” and not a “bureaucrat.” This also determined his appointment as a censor. As we know, Goncharov accepted his post in the censorship department thanks to the influence of Nikitenko who, on November 24, 1855, wrote in his diary: I finally managed to install Goncharov as a censor. On the first of January they’re relieving three censors, the most outrageous. Goncharov will replace one of them, in the hope, of course, that he’ll be different. He’s intelligent, very discreet, [and] will be a fair and good censor. By the same token, it will rescue him from a strictly bureaucratic environment, in which he would perish.17

If becoming a censor could, in Nikitenko’s opinion, rescue Goncharov “from a strictly bureaucratic environment” then, clearly, he was invited to do so—not to fulfill the role of a bureaucrat, but to maintain a position closely related, at least, to literary undertakings. Indicative in this regard are the censorship committees’ staff changes, clearly oriented toward establishing closer ties with the literary world. There were many writers staffing the St.  Petersburg Committee during Goncharov’s tenure, including I. I. Lazhechnikov, who wrote historical novels, and A. K. Iaroslavtsov, author of a play set in the times of Ivan the Terrible. Some “outrageous” censors were relieved from their positions, including Iu. E. Shidlovskii, N. I. Peiker, and N. S. Akhmatov.18 There was a similar personnel policy in other censorship departments, where they enlisted the services of more and more writers or, at the very least, individuals not foreign to literature. Thus, the head of the Foreign Censorship Committee ended up being F. I. Tiutchev.19

17 A. V. Nikitenko, Dnevnik, introduction and comments by A. Ia. Aizenshtok (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1955), vol. 1, 425. 18 I. P. Foote, “Sankt-Peterburgskii tsenzurnyi komitet: 1828–1905. Personal‘nyi sostav,” in Tsenzura v Rossii: Istoriia i sovremennost‘: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (St. Petersburg: Rossiskaia natsional‘naia biblioteka, 2001), vol. 1, 52–53; Tsenzory Rossiiskoi imperii: Konets XVIII–nachalo XX veka: Biobibliograficheskii spravochnik (St.  Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsional‘naia biblioteka, 2013), 87, 286, 381. 19 Gerasimova, Iz istorii russkoi pechati, 16–18; I. P. Foote, “Uvol‘nenie tsenzora. Delo N. V. Elagina, 1857 g.,” in Tsenzura v Rossii: Istoriia i sovremennost‘: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia natsional‘naia biblioteka, 2006), vol. 4, 150–171.

Writer or Censor

Having already distinguished himself after the tremendous success of A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia) in 1847, Goncharov took advantage of his symbolic capital in order to achieve official success. In its turn, the leadership of the censorship department, making large-scale changes to personnel, planned to use this very capital to good advantage. The involvement in censorship of a distinguished, respected writer was likely intended to help improve the department’s reputation and, by all accounts, facilitate the shift away from its exclusively conflict-ridden relations with literary circles. Having been recruited into censorship service under these circumstances, Goncharov identified with the sympathizers of the “liberal bureaucrats” and perceived his service as an opportunity to become a “mediator between the authorities and the writers’ world.”20 Considering himself a censor of the new breed, Goncharov spoke very skeptically of a colleague on the committee, referring to “the book The Gastronome’s Almanac [Al’manakh gastronoma], censored by Elagin, who practically found a lot of ‘free spiritedness’ [even] there.”21 Goncharov’s commitment to establishing a liaison between writers and censorship officials is especially clear in his letter of November 18, 1856 to the publisher Kraevskii. In this letter, Goncharov forwards an invitation to an evening hosted by G. A. Shcherbatov, the newly appointed chairman of the censorship committee and superintendent of the Petersburg educational district. Moreover, Goncharov emphasizes that Shcherbatov does not demand, but only requests Kraevskii’s company, and that representatives of various circles—writers, professors, and censors—would be present: Prince Shcherbatov asked me to ask you to visit him this Friday and to visit on subsequent Friday evenings: he wants very much to meet editors and writers, in order to establish on-going and direct personal relations with them, by the way, [as a means] of clarifying literary and journalistic matters. He also asked me to excuse him, please, for [the fact that] he, inundated in the mornings with reports and petitioners, has no opportunity to pay visits, and asks to skip these formalities. At the prince’s home you will find professors, censors, Druzhinin . . . etc.22 20 Mazon, Materialy, 32. 21 I. A. Goncharov, “Pis‘mo I. I. L‘khovskomu 25/13 iunia 1857 g.,” in his Sobranie sochinenii v vos‘mi tomakh, vol. 8 (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1977–1980), 229. 22 Mazon, Materialy,  35. Emphasis in original. Indeed, Goncharov extended the same invitation to Druzhinin on November 18, noting also that he planned to invite L. N.

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In a similar tone, Goncharov invited I. I. Panaev to Shcherbatov’s: Prince Shcherbatov instructed me to invite you, my dear Ivan Ivanovich, to visit him this Friday evening and to visit on subsequent—Fridays. Apparently, there will be other editors and writers present, all of whom he wants to meet. Only he asks to excuse him for, owing to numerous case and petitioners, he cannot pay visits. Evening is the most convenient time, he says, even to discuss journalistic matters, if need be. He asked me, which of our writers are here now (needless to say, of the presentable ones). I named P. V. Annenkov, Grigorovich, Tolstoy; he wholeheartedly invites them as well.23

In the same letter to Kraevskii, Goncharov informs the publisher that he has been appointed to censor Kraevskii’s Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye zapiski), emphasizing that he had personally asked Lazhechnikov for this assignment.24 Then again, Goncharov had informed Druzhinin that he would rather censor The Reader’s Library (Biblioteka dlia chteniia), “but Freigang wouldn’t let me.”25 Apparently, Goncharov supposed that as a censor, he would almost be doing the publisher a favor. If, in his letters to writers and publishers, Goncharov positioned himself as spokesman of the liberal-minded government’s good will, then in letters to his fellow censors, he portrayd himself as a unique voice of the literary community. On April 6, 1857, he appealed to the secretary of the censorship committee A. K. Iaroslavtsov almost as a medium capable of conveying even the voice of A. S. Pushkin (and the high-ranking officialdom): I enclose Pushkin’s works and my [official] report which, at the last meeting, I was authorized to submit. Be so kind, esteemed Andrei Konstantinovich, as to give the order, as soon as possible, to prepare the document to the Main Directorate of Censorship, so that it arrives in time for the presentation at the first session after Holy Week and so that they manage to review it in the office of the minister over the holiday. Annenkov begs this of you, as do I and Pushkin himself. Several members of the Main Directorate know about this, [and] by the way, Count Bludov is also interested.26 Tolstoy and P. V. Annenkov. See P. S. Popov (ed.), Pis’ma k A. V. Druzhininu (1850‒1863) (Moscow: Izdanie Gosudarstvennogo literaturnogo muzeia, 1948), 74, 77. 23 A. Ia. Panaeva (Golovacheva), Vospominaniia (Moscow: GIKHL, 1972), 266. Panaeva’s dating of the letter is questionable. 24 Mazon, Materialy, 35. 25 Goncharov, “Pis’mo ot 18 noiabria 1856 g,” in Popov, Pis’ma k A. V. Druzhininu, 77. 26 Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8, 485.

Writer or Censor

By definition, however, a job on the censorship committee deprived the ordinary censor of the opportunity to demonstrate his own “literary” skills. Censorship practices had remained virtually unchanged since the days of Nicholas I and had not been adapted to accommodate the censor’s “mediating function.” In this sense, censorship reform had not even begun. In his recommendations, the rank-and-file censor was obligated to conform exclusively to censorship regulations and numerous instructions and orders by the government and the minister of education. All relatively complex cases had to be submitted to the sessions of the censorship committee, which, in its turn, strived to “pass the buck,” leaving the decision to the Main Directorate of Censorship.27 With rare exceptions, when a censor had to make a relatively important decision, especially one rejecting the printing of a manuscript, he did not act on his own authority, but rather appealed to the opinion of the censorship committee, or even the Main Directorate of Censorship. In all the years of his service as a censor, Goncharov independently prohibited only a handful of works, for the most part, clearly bearing no relation to professional literature, or prompting any serious regard. These include “‘Anagramme du nom en Grec de Sa Majesté Alexandre II’ (by Mr. Papadopoulos-Vretos); ‘The Complete Collection of Russian Songs and Romances, A. N.’ [‘Polnoe sobranie russkikh pesen i romansov, A. N.’] (by Mr. Nosovich); ‘The Two-Humped Camel in Russia’ [‘V Rossii verbliud o dvukh gorbakh’] (by the merchant Nosovich); ‘Two Lyrical Poems for the Sacrosanct Coronation of Their Imperial Majesties’ [‘Dve liricheskie poemy na sluchai sviashchenneishego koronovaniia ikh imperatorskikh velichestv’] (by Mr. Krasnopol’skii); ‘Twelve Sleeping Policemen’ [‘Dvenadtsat’ spiashchikh budochnikov’] (by Shmitanovskii) [later approved under the title ‘The Twelve Sleeping Night-Watchmen’ (‘Dvenadtsat’ spiashchikh storozhei’)]; ‘Anthology of the Best Fables by Krylov, Khemnitser, Dmitriev, and Izmailov’ [‘Sbornik luchshikh basen Krylova, Khemnitsera, Dmitrieva i Izmailova’]; and ‘Poems to the Conclusion of Peace in Paris, March 18/30, 1856’ [‘Stikhi na zakliuchenie mira v Parizhe 18/30 marta

27 K. Iu. Zubkov, “Pisatel’ i tsenzor: Sluzhebnaia deiatel’nost’ I. A. Goncharova vtoroi poloviny 1850-kh gg.,” in Materialy V Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 200-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia I. A. Goncharova: Sbornik statei russkikh i zarubezhnykh avtorov (Ul’ianovsk: Korporatsiia tekhnologii prodvizheniia, 2012), 310–318.

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1856 goda’] (by Mr. Depreradovich).”28 By contrast, Goncharov appealed to his superiors regarding such works as The Complete Works of N. M. Iazykov (Polnoe sobranie sochinenii N. M. Iazykova); volume 7 of A. S. Pushkin’s Works (Sochinenia), edited by P. V. Annenkov; The House of Ice (Ledianoi dom) and The Last Novik (Poslednii Novik) by Lazhechnikov; the plays of Ostrovskii; stories by Turgenev and others—that is, those works which, in his day, were considered much more significant. This distinction had nothing to do with Goncharov’s credentials: a censor simply was not to make any important decisions whatsoever on his own initiative. Accordingly, Goncharov was chastised for personally approving A. F. Pisemskii’s novel One Thousand Souls (Tysiacha dush). Many years later, Pisemskii thanked him for the fact that the fourth part of the novel came out in undistorted form: “. . . .ou were my censorial savior and guardian: you passed the fourth part of One Thousand Souls and were chastised for it.”29 Not only liberalism, but also the censors’ excessive severity, at times over and above the stipulated censorship rules, incurred the authorities’ disfavor. When one of Goncharov’s colleagues attempted to prohibit P. V. Annenkov from reprinting several overly frivolous works by Pushkin, the higher-ups ordered him to “not get smart”30 and demanded he submit the edition for consideration by the Main Directorate of Censorship, as the oeuvre of a famous author. Judging from all these examples, it is safe to say that in the days of Goncharov’s service, the censor was not to assume too much personal responsibility for permitting or prohibiting celebrated or unique literary works. Despite the desires of the liberal reformers, the inertia of the bureaucratic machinery precluded its effective interaction with representatives of the public sphere. The liberally oriented writers enlisted into censorship found themselves in the same position as the petty officials and bureaucrats who preceded them. The only distinction was their connection to the literary community, whereby they could try at least to maintain personal relationships with the other writers. The literary community of the day was also unprepared to maintain a trusting relationship with the censors. Before the formation in 1860 of the 28 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 10, 293‒359. Provided titles are consistent with the entries in the censorship records. 29 A. F. Pisemskii, Pis’ma (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1936), 285. 30 A. M. Skabichevskii, Ocherki istorii russkoi tsenzury (1700–1863 g.) (St.  Petersburg: Tipografiia tovarishchestva “Obshchestvennaia pol’za,” 1892), 382–389.

Writer or Censor

Literary Fund, the only influential groups that determined the course of the literary process “from within” were the editorial staff of the journals. Aside from the publishers and editors of independent periodicals, Goncharov had nowhere to turn. Kraevskii or Druzhinin, who were publishing thick journals, could not but listen to the censor’s opinion. Excluding the largely enforced symbiosis, the literary community was unprepared to communicate with the government and interact with functionaries of Goncharov’s sort. Two episodes involving Goncharov provide a case in point. In a letter to P. V. Annenkov dated December 8, 1858, he wrote of an unpleasant situation in which he found himself, courtesy of his addressee: The day before yesterday, over dinner at Pisemskii’s, at the very end of a dispute about Freigang, you made a general characterization of a censor: “A censor is a civil servant, who allows himself liberty, discretionary powers and so on”—in a word, you were unflattering. It was all said with bitterness and animosity and was noticed most of all by me, of course, and then by others, and almost you yourself, it seemed, that is, it wasn’t so much the crack itself about the censor that gave me that impression, as the fact that it was made in the presence of a censor. On another occasion, over lunch at Nekrasov’s about a month ago, you made fun of me, directly, which others also noticed. I have no doubt, dear Pavel Vasilevich, that in the first instance you didn’t intend to cause me any discomfort and that the words, of course, were not directed at me, and that in the second instance, at Nekrasov’s, the careless word was also uttered as a friendly joke. But on both occasions, especially at Pisemskii’s, there were people present, complete strangers to both of us, who aren’t aware of our friendly relations or your disinclination to say anything rude and harsh to me and, as a result, they could take it as fact, from what they saw, from what happened, that is, that the title of censor is being scorned outright in the presence of a censor, who says nothing, as though it’s what he deserves. Even if the latter were true, then even in that case, I’m convinced [that] you, having no personal motive, ultimately, out of affection and for many other reasons, wouldn’t take if upon yourself to prove it to me, almost publicly and, moreover, in a manner so harsh, as to be unacceptable face to face.31

In this account, Goncharov avoids mentioning that the incident, which occurred twice, concerned not only his official position, but literary ethics 31 Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8, 256–257.

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as well. Evidently, in the opinion of the writers he describes, the censor was, by definition, excluded from their circle, even being a famous writer himself. All told, neither the censorship establishment nor the literary community possessed any elaborated forms of mutual communication within the public sphere, as opposed to the backrooms of the censorship department, nor, with few exceptions, did they aspire to establish them. Under these circumstances, Goncharov’s arrangement, whereby he could work in the fields of both literature and censorship, promoting contacts between these two social institutions, proved unrealizable. The more time passed, the less Goncharov’s two personae dovetailed in his consciousness. Thus, in a letter dated August 28 ( September 9) 1859, informing A. F. Pisemskii that the shocking content of his play, A Bitter Fate (Gor’kaia sud’bina), displeased him aesthetically, Goncharov added: . . . .I]t won’t be overly disgusting and may even be favorably received, in view of the latest trend in contemporary literature. As an old writer, I may be peering at it very timidly, but that’s my personal opinion, and I’m not defending it tooth and nail. However, I am afraid of being censured—for the drama, unless you make concessions.32

Goncharov reasoned in that letter as though he had nothing at all to do with the potential admission or prohibition of the play. Meanwhile, it is known that he subsequently played an important part in approving the play for print.33 Nonetheless, in reasoning “as an old writer,” Goncharov no longer perceives himself as a censor. Conversely, in putting himself in the shoes of a censor, the writer seemed to be “forgetting” about his own literary activity. In his consciousness, the social roles of writer and censor already were rigidly opposed. This order of things hardly suited Goncharov. Lacking the financial resources to leave his post, he attempted, whenever possible, to secure a more responsible position in the new, reformed censorship, however, unsuccessfully. In view, moreover, of the unceasing delays to censorship reforms, Goncharov temporarily left his post. When he later returned censorship, it was governed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.34 32 Ibid., 279. 33 Ibid., 509–511. 34 N. V. Kalinina, “Epizod iz zhizni romanista: kak I. A. Goncharov stal redaktorom pravitel’stvennoi gazety,” in Chiny i muzy: Sbornik statei (St.  Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo

Writer or Censor

Literary Conflicts of the 1860s: The Censor as Policeman At the start of the 1860s, the conflict between literature and the government reached another highpoint: the dissemination of revolutionary leaflets; N. G. Chernyshevskii’s arrest, obviously on trumped-up charges, as a consequence of his journalistic activities; and the start of the Polish Uprising signaled a new phase in the relations between the state and society. Under the circumstances, censorship was again being perceived as one of the government’s fundamental constituents. It was becoming increasingly clear that the roles of writer, and employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, especially a censor, were mutually exclusive. The representatives of the radical-democratic literary circles were particularly antagonistic towards the censors, as criticism of the government comprised a cornerstone of their literary program. The radicals, especially the staff of The Russian Word (Russkoe slovo) who followed along the lines of D. I. Pisarev, tended to accuse their opponents in the literary camp of collaborating with the government.35 Pisarev was of the opinion that in a healthier literary situation, a censor could not but elicit the contempt and hatred of all members of society. With French literature serving as a case in point, he contended that: Civil servants, appointed as censors, wished to remain anonymous to the public. The public was extremely annoyed with these officials, and Benjamin Constant says that in France, at the time, you wouldn’t find a single person who would venture to go outdoors, having admitted to being a censor.36

The very presence of the radicals in literature exacerbated the conflict between the writers’ circles and the government. For the radicals, any writer who had not declared his opposition to the government belonged to the enemy camp, and was to be excluded from the literary process. The censor’s only recourse was to abandon all attempts to mediate between the government and literature and unequivocally cross over to the side of the former.

Mariny Batasovoi, 2017), 332–345; K. Iu. Zubkov, “‘Mezhdu vlastiami i pisatel’skim mirom’: I. A. Goncharov i liberal’nye proekty tsenzurnykh reform,” in Chiny i Musy: Sbornik statei, (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Mariny Batasovoi, 2017), 310–331. 35 See, for example, the accusations of whistleblowing against N. S. Leskov in Pisarev’s article, “Progulka po sadam rossiiskoi slovesnosti” (1865). 36 D. I. Pisarev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Moscow: Nauka, 2001), vol. 4, 112; “Ocherki iz istorii pechati vo Frantsii” (1862).

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Even authors more moderate than Pisarev opposed the censors. Obviously, the outdated model of censorship, based on “education” and the patronizing of literature, particularly annoyed the Russian public. When the liberal Minister of Public Education A. V. Golovnin, who wanted to dispose of the censorship department, initiated a public debate on censorship reform, it immediately emerged that the overwhelming majority of writers were categorically opposed to censorship and prepared to face prosecution for their works, provided it were possible to avoid pre-publication censorship. Pisarev’s own article was written against the backdrop of this movement. The censors were aware of the writers’s antagonism. N. V. Medem, the head of the Petersburg Censorship Committee, member of the Main Directorate of Censorship, who supported pre-publication censorship and opposed reform, explained the repercussions of the writers’ ignorance of the directives regulating censorship work: Such incessantly occurring situations effect hostile confrontations between authors and censors more frequently than the mentioned scope of the censors’ procedures, and occasion the former to accuse the censors of backwardness, failing to grasp the purpose of the censorship statute, and sometimes even of unconscionability, bias, and arbitrary actions.37

Meanwhile, writers from the editorial offices of Notes of the Fatherland, The Time (Vremia), The Russian Word, The Northern Bee (Severnaia pchela), and other publications stressed the tension in the standoff between literature and censorship just as emphatically: “. . . .he greatest minds, wearied and exasperated by the humiliating struggle with censorship over every phrase, are growing cool toward science and literature, and see the authorities as the enemy.”38 By and large, writers agreed that ideally, censorship and literature should be in an equal relationship, guaranteeing fairness. In their opinion, the best means of establishing such relations would be an adversary proceeding, with the participation of representatives of both sides, or independent jurors. The writers’ collective opinion on this matter boiled down to the fact that “the present-day censor is simultaneously the accuser and the executioner,” while the writers demanded “a legitimate trial and 37 N.V. Medem, in Mneniia raznykh lits o preobrazovanii tsenzury. fevral’ 1862 (n.p., n.d.), 6. 38 Ibid., 67.

Writer or Censor

prosecutors, independent of the court.”39 At the time, however, no such form of court proceedings existed in Russia, such reforms to censorship could occur only after Alexander II’s judicial reform. Moreover, censorship in the Ministry of Internal Affairs belonged not to the judicial, but to the police department. Minister of Internal Affairs P. A. Valuev, who had become the head of the censorship department, persistently opposed the idea of censorship “mediating” between literature and the government. From his perspective, dialogue was not possible between these institutions, and a heated conflict was inevitable. When Goncharov suggested that the twelfth issue of The Russian Word in 1865 “represents a remarkable model of journalistic ingenuity—in remaining faithful to its chosen course, without provoking administrative harassment or, less so, prosecution,”40 Valuev countered Goncharov’s opinion in an indignant resolution demanding, in particular, that censors not simply go by the book, but also consciously “oppose” literature, which he characterized as an enemy of the government: Journalistic ingenuity is only useful in avoiding judicial, and not administrative penalties. Conceding to such a presupposition is impossible, unless a lack of skill and determination is presupposed on the side of the administration. The Press Council is not a trial by jury. It does not at all stand between literature and the government, but it does stand with the government. It is an arm of the government.41

This statement by the minister appeared shortly after the judicial reforms of 1864, according to which precisely a trial by jury would decide whether or not a certain publication had violated the law. According to Valuev, however, censorship could and should resort to administrative measures and had no authority to conduct adversary proceedings of its own design between writers and the government. Goncharov assured Valuev that he did not “consider the Press Council an intermediary between literature and the government.”42 On the one hand, his assurance smacked of cunning: it could be that Goncharov really did not think it possible to devote himself to this sort of mediation as a member of the Council, although he had definitely tried to do so a few years 39 Ibid., 69. 40 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 10, 205. 41 Ibid., 595. 42 Ibid., 596.

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prior, during his tenure as a censor. In the same letter, he added: “I am not renouncing my sympathy for literature, but even my fierce enemy wouldn’t accuse me of condoning its extreme and harmful manifestations: all my official and literary activities refute this.”43 Just how it would have been possible to reconcile “sympathy for literature” with Valuev’s conviction that an official had to side with either literature or the government, and that representing both sides at once was unfeasible, remains unclear. Interestingly, after a personal meeting with Valuev concerning this matter, on February 27 / March 10, 1866 Goncharov highly commended the minister in a letter to Turgenev, in communication with whom bureaucratic decorum in reference to his superiors would have been out of place: “He is very intelligent, well-mannered, this man, and the more you get to know him, the more you sympathize with him.”44 Thus, Goncharov could hardly have been vehemently opposed to Valuev’s grasp of his duties. Under Minister Valuev, high-ranking censorship personnel had to do more than simply side with the government against literature—they were required to do so dynamically, by any means possible, including those borrowed from the arsenal of literature itself, and those focused on active interference in its affairs.45 At the same time, Goncharov’s own activity grew notably more flexible. In his reviews of that period, Goncharov now openly addressed the need for “artistic criticism” of a work; assessed Ostrovskii’s creative exposure to A. K. Tolstoy (stating that, although “[captivated] by the virtues and success of Count Tolstoy’s dramas, Mr. Ostrovskii, being a first-class talent, did not yield to slavish imitation but, rather, entered into a legitimate competition with the author of The Death of Ivan the Terrible [Smert’ Ioanna Groznogo]”); or debated the extent to which the play’s chain of events justified “the depiction of the lifestyle of fallen women.”46 Evidently, 43 A. I. Gertsen, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Petrograd: GIZ, 1922), vol.  19, 5. Goncharov’s letter was never published in its entirety. My gratitude to A. V. Romanova for having kindly pointed out its whereabouts (see RGIA, f. 1282, op. 2, no. 1951, l. 205–206). 44 B. M. Engel’gardt (ed.), I. A. Goncharov i I. S. Turgenev po neizdannym materialam Pushkinskogo doma (Petrograd: Academia, 1922), 44. 45 Iu. I. Gerasimova, Iz istorii russkoi pechati, 152, 176–177. On Valuev’s interest in surreptitious control over censorship, see A. M. Garkavi, “N. A. Nekrasov v bor’be s tsarskoi tsenzuroi,” Uchenye zapiski Kaliningradskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta 13 (1966): 82. 46 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 10, 86, 281, 257. See also S. N. Guskov, “Materialy tsenzorskoi deiatel’nosti I. A. Goncharova kak tvorcheskii istochnik romana

Writer or Censor

Goncharov was trying to apply his expertise in evaluating literature to the struggle against it. While such a “creative” approach to literature was perfectly normal for, and expected of, the “censor-educator,” it seems highly unusual for the rank-and-file “censor-policeman.” A critical reading could be misused, by exploiting a work’s openness to interpretation to find a completely unacceptable implication, where there was none intended. Precisely for this reason, even the Censorship Statute of 1828 prohibited the overly broad interpretation of literary works. Naturally, there can be no talk of any serious attempts to maintain liaison between literature and censorship during this period. Thanks to his ties to both literary and official circles, Goncharov organized a reading of Polonskii’s drama Disorder (Razlad) at Valuev’s, and shortly after his dismissal, he took advantage of his old connections and helped Turgenev attain the intervention of the censorship authorities, including the Committee of Foreign Censorship, in a conflict regarding the illegal distribution of the novel Smoke (Dym).47 However, these efforts neither exceed the parameters of favors, nor evidence a fixation on mediating between literature and censorship. The personnel of the censorship department also changed accordingly. There were writers among Goncharov’s colleagues on the Council of the Minister of Internal Affairs on Matters of Book-Printing; however, they held no key positions nor, above all, were they appointed by virtue of their writerly merits. A. V. Nikitenko, for instance, an accomplished literary critic and scholar, was appointed to the Council due to his long-standing official career. Amateur writer F. M. Tolstoy had long served in the military department and joined the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a senior official, which also enabled him to become a member of the Council. There were no fewer writers among Goncharov’s coworkers; however, literary activity as such no longer played a significant role in the assignment of censorial posts. In sum, the period in which the authorities tried to employ censorship as a tool in establishing a dialogue with literature ended by the early 1860s. New directives obligated the censor to engage in the government’s fight ‘Obryv,’” in Goncharov posle “Oblomova”: Sbornik statei, ed. S. N. Guskov (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Mariny Batasovoi, 2015), 26‒39. 47 Engel’gardt, I. A. Goncharov i I. S. Turgenev, 79–80, Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8, 370–371, A. Iu. Balakin, “K istorii zaversheniia romana ‘Obryv,’” in Materialy V Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, 272.

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against freethinking writers. This fight, however, demanded that the censor possess specific literary skills: in addition to being well-versed in literature, he required the ability to skillfully read between the lines, and judge the aesthetic value of literary works. In and of itself, then, the censor’s position in mid-1860s Russia proved self-contradictory in demanding, at once, his engagement with literature, and the hostility toward it. Such censor-writers as Goncharov found themselves in a still more complicated situation. The problem was not only that literary acquaintances and affinities could, potentially, interfere with their censorial undertakings, but also that service in censorship unexpectedly began to interfere with their literary pursuits. The point here is not simply the danger posed to one’s literary reputation by being a censor. More importantly, when his activities in the official and the creative spheres began to contradict each other with particular vehemence, Goncharov found himself in a state of inner conflict. Goncharov’s series of feuilletons dedicated to city life in St. Petersburg provide a case in point. In 1863–1865, Goncharov published numerous articles on the hardships of daily life facing the St. Petersburg population in Kraevskii’s newspaper, The Voice (Golos).48 Goncharov the feuilletonist was predominantly interested in the deplorable state of the pavement, the abundance of stray dogs on the streets, the lack of control over the horses and the shortage of public toilets. The contribution of a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to this newspaper was not surprising: initially, The Voice was secretly subsidized by Valuev and had always been a popular soapbox for representatives of several ministries at once, thereby significantly mitigating relations with censorship during its early years in circulation. Moreover, the subject matter of Goncharov’s feuilletons was very typical of Kraevskii’s newspaper, in which there constantly appeared publications on the problems of the middle-class denizens of the capital.49 48 Goncharov’s human-interest stories are authenticated on the basis of his letters to Kraevskii. See Mazon, Materialy, 46–59; P. S. Reifman, “I. A. Goncharov i gazeta ‘Golos,’” Uchenye zapiski Tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 266 (1971): 222– 226. Compare also the attempt to accredit Goncharov with other articles in Golos, based on figurative and stylistic similarities to those already authenticated, in E. G. Gaintseva, “I. A. Goncharov i ‘Peterburgskie otmetki’ (K atributsii fel’etonov v ‘Golose’),” Russkaia literatura 2 (1995): 163–180. 49 V. G. Chernukha, Pravitel’stvennaia politika, 106–111; A. V. Lunochkin, “Ot sotrudnichestva k konfrontatsii: gazeta ‘Golos’ i tsenzura (1863–1883),” in Tsenzura v Rossii: Istoria i sovremennost’ (St.  Petersburg: Rossiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka, 2001), vol.  1, 77–94; Paul Anthony Russo, Golos, 1878–1883: Profile of a Russian Newspaper (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1974).

Writer or Censor

Goncharov’s commentary regarding the dogs on the streets of Petersburg50 elicited a backlash from The People’s Chronicle (Narodnaia letopis’)—a radical publication, in which Iu. G. Zhukovskii played a leading role.51 An anonymous contributor to the newspaper wrote that: A sense of great agitation has been detected amongst the dogs of Petersburg, primarily with respect to the author of “Petersburg Notes” (“Peterburgskie otmetki”) in The Voice, so tirelessly pursuing them with his frankness. Their editorial office has therefore been placed under martial law.52

Goncharov took exception to his opponent’s joke, drawing attention to its inappropriateness: Now, about the dogs. They continue to fill the streets, courtyards, the squares and often upset the pedestrians and riders, they frighten women, children (we will not tire of repeating this despite our disparagers).  .  .  .  But it’s no longer a laughing matter when, just the other day, two little girls, about four or five years old, desperately screaming and crying in sight of the whole street, only barely managed to escape from a barking dog that chased them, and hide on the porch of a church.53

The People’s Chronicle immediately continued the dispute—not only with Goncharov, but also with Golos in general. The very next day the newspaper reported: The Voice has deigned to mention the appearance of a new newspaper (The People’s Chronicle) in its practical observations section, alongside the report on the activities of the Petersburg dogs where, under the pretext of concern for the new newspaper, it directs the readers’ particular attention to the article in issue 1 of People’s Chronicle on the journal Foundation [Osnova] and suggests refraining from such witticisms in the future. The editorial board has agreed to thank [The Voice] for the honor and take its advice, that is, to insert a special section, under the heading “Spying Mice,” in which the

50 See, for example, an anonymous article in Golos, May 6, 1864. Authenticated by Mazon, Materialy, 51–52. 51 B. P. Kozmin, “Gazeta ‘Narodnaia letopis’’ (1865 g.),” in B. P. Kozmin, Iz istorii revoliutsionnoi mysli v Rossii. Izbrannye trudy (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1962), 102–107, 109–110. 52 Narodnaia letopis’, March 2, 1865. 53 Golos, March 11, 1865. Authenticated by Mazon, Materialy, 57–59.

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most remarkable features of Russian journalism will be recorded, including, of course, [those] of The Voice.54

The bickering between The Voice and The People’s Chronicle continued. The Voice countered its opponents in an anonymous feuilleton, “Daily Life” [“Vsednevnaia zhizn’”], published in issue 73 of March 14, in response to which, in issue 6 of People’s Chronicle of March 19, the section “Spying Mice” appeared as promised. But, apparently, Goncharov was no longer involved.55 The dispute between The Voice and The People’s Chronicle exemplifies the feud between the 1860s radical publications and the liberal press. The Voice perceived the activities of the People’s Chronicle as a mockery of the privations of the middle class. The latter saw these as laughable, and the Voice’s accusations as “spying”—that is, a kind of literary denunciation. By the irony of fate, Goncharov, as a member of the Council of the Minister of Internal Affairs on Matters of Book-Printing, was indeed scrutinizing the People’s Chronicle and had every opportunity to continue the polemic entirely by non-literary means.56 Moreover, Valuev eventually shut down the newspaper on April 16, that is, ninety days after its appearance, “on account of its silence on the death of the crown prince and the release of issue 13 without a black border.” Judging from well-documented records, however, Goncharov played no part in these measures.57 The radical journalists hardly suspected they were accusing a high-ranking official in the censorship department of whistleblowing. In their eyes, and those of their audience, to whom they could appeal, any literary pursuits, be they only feuilletons, and any ties to government policy in the realm of printing were irreconcilable. In this sense, the contributors to the People’s Chronicle were in complete agreement with Minister of Internal Affairs Valuev—except for their position on the opposite side of the conflict. Goncharov, who was not involved in the polemic and had stopped writing for the Voice on the themes of city life, also agreed. Although there are no direct statements by Goncharov in this regard, it is difficult to imagine him 54 Narodnaia letopis’, March 12, 1865. 55 See also A. E. Kozlov, “N. D. Akhsharumov v roli redaktora gazety ‘Narodnaia letopis’’: k voprosu o simvolicheskom kapitale imeni,” Vestnik NGU. Seriia: Istoriia, filologiia 18, no. 6 (2019): 44–45. 56 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 10, 408. 57 P. A. Valuve, Dnevnik P. A. Valueva, ministra vnutrennikh del (Moscow: Nauka, 1961), vol. 2, 36.

Writer or Censor

not seeing the absurdity in having either to engage in scandalous bickering with the very publication he was censoring, or quash the newspaper that accused him of working for the police—which, in fact, was true. The severity of the conflict between radical journalism and censorship escalated to the point, that even the censor who had previously aspired to mediate between literature and the government was unable to reconcile the two roles. Conceivably, this conflict also affected Goncharov’s work on his novel The Precipice (Obryv). As research has shown, the portrayal of Volokhov reflects Goncharov’s experience of having censored numerous radical publications, particularly the works of Pisarev.58 It is safe to assume that Goncharov was hardly thrilled with the situation in which, as a writer, he openly condemned Pisarev and, as a censor, clandestinely participated in banning the Russian Word, the journal in which Pisarev was being published. Nevertheless, this matter requires further study. In any event, the literary polemic against the radical trend in literature could not be reconciled with the war that the censorship waged on it. This experience would guide Goncharov in speaking out about his censorial work in An Uncommon Story: by the mid-1860s, being a writer and censor at the same time proved impossible.

Conclusion To conclude, the history of Goncharov’s service in the censorship departments reveals the intricate peripeties informing the correlations between Russian literature and the Russian government in the 1850s and 60s. These correlations centered not only around the ordinances and resolutions of the heads of various departments, but also around the ethics of the writers and the censors. The reformative ideas of the first years of Alexander II’s reign paved the way for revisions to the staffing of the censorship committees. If nothing else, several new censors understood the mutual relevance of literature and the state and aspired to act as intermediaries between the writing community and the government. However, the absence of fully established institutions of literature and censorship hindered the fulfillment of this intermediary mission. On the one hand, the censor could only consult individual 58 L. S. Geiro, “‘Soobrazno vremeni i obstoiatel’stvam . . .’: (Tvorcheskaia istoria romana ‘Obryv’),” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 124–129; S. N. Guskov, “Materialy tsenzorskoi deiatel’nosti,” among others.

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writers or editors, with whom he maintained trusting personal relationships, and was duty-bound to align with the highly formalized criteria of his job. On the other, the writers harbored a perfectly reasonable mistrust against the censors, and moreover, they were unprepared to organize any association capable of influencing the censors directly. Numerous attempts at censorship reform failed to even approach this fundamental problem. With the transfer of censorship to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, these obstacles were overcome: most writers were by then in a position to present a united front; while the censors, at least the high-ranking ones, were given free rein to depart from the strict interpretation of the numerous rules and approach the evaluation of literary works in a somewhat creative manner. By this point, however, the time for building trusting relationships had long since passed. The writers and the government perceived themselves as opponents; the censor was obliged, as per Valuev’s above-cited expression, to “stand with the government,” while most writers considered it shameful to cooperate with the censorship. Anyone seeking to combine these social roles was doomed to an internal conflict, as reflected in Goncharov’s evaluations, in retrospect, of his censorial role in An Uncommon Story. In a certain sense, Goncharov’s censorship service was very characteristic of the evolution of relations between the state and the public sphere in the era of Alexander II’s Great Reforms. In the early years of Alexander II’s reign, it seemed to many contemporaries that social institutions could and needed to be developed in cooperation with the state, but by the 1870s the majority had become disillusioned with this idea. One could say, of course, that Goncharov’s censorship service attests to his naivete; however, others shared the same sentiments as he. The idea of mediating between the public and the authorities proved one of the most prominent aspects of the era leading up to the Great Reforms. One need only recall the ardent hopes pinned by the government and literature alike on the conciliators, whose function was precisely to ensure cooperation between the peasant community, landed gentry, and the police authorities.59 Evidently, the figure of the censor-as-mediator also seemed promising and interesting to Goncharov’s contemporaries. At the start of Alexander II’s reign, the unique role of censor-writer naturally drew Goncharov and the liberal-bureaucrat government reformers closer together and contributed to the success of his official career. However, in 59 See, for example, the image of the conciliator as depicted in A. F. Pisemskii’s novel Troubled Seas (Vzbalamuchennoe more, 1863); and numerous articles by Shchedrin from 1862–1863, among others.

Writer or Censor

the face of the increasingly complex and intensifying social conflicts of the 1860s, there was no hope of success for such censors as Goncharov. The reasons behind Goncharov’s failure as a liberal censor are better understood when set against the European context.60 The preoccupation with censorship as mediation, for instance, could be juxtaposed with the position of several Prussian censors prior to the revolution of 1848, whom the German jurist A. F. Berner characterized precisely as “trustworthy intermediaries between the government and the educated public.”61 Indeed, in many countries, the governments enlisted the more “literarily inclined” to censorship—those eager somehow or other to comply not only with official instructions, but also with the expectations of society. Nevertheless, in Western European cultures the figure of the censor-writer, capable of acting as a mediator between the government and literary circles, existed in a fundamentally different era. They had no censorship striving to control literature. In Austria, the transition from “prohibitive” to “guidance-oriented” censorship was already underway after the revolutionary events of 1848, seeking to liberalize control over printing and ease social tensions.62 In Russia, meanwhile, censorship reform began to take shape and materialize not under sociopolitical pressure of the revolutionary movement, but upon the government’s own decision. Within the tense context of the social and literary conflicts of 1850s and the 60s, censorship could only rely on that segment of the literary community who generally supported the government. However, for the censors there was no hope of remaining unbiased arbiters, who stayed above the fray. The honorable initiatives of Goncharov and other such liberal bureaucrats were doomed to fail at the hands of censorship from the very beginning. Translated by Krystina Steiger 60 See also K. Yu. Zubkov, “‘Mezhdu vlastiami i pisatel’skim mirom,’” 330–331. 61 Cited after Robin Lenman, “Germany,” in The War for the Public Mind: Political Censorship in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Robert Justin Goldstein (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), 46. On the personnel, academic level, and literary ties of Prussian censors of the era preceding 1848, among whom were acquaintances of J. W. Goethe and F. Schiller, see also Bärbel Holtz, “Eine mit ‘Intelligenz ausgerüstete lebendig wirksame Behörde.’ Preußens zentrale Zensurbehörden im Vormärz,” in Zensur im 19. Jahrhundert: Das literarische Leben aus Sicht seiner Überwacher, ed. Bernd Kortländer and Enno Stahl (Bielefeld: Aesthesis Verlag, 2012), 162–168. 62 See Lothar Höbelt, “The Austrian Empire,” in The War for The Public Mind: Political Censorship in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Robert Justin Goldstein (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), 223–224.

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Part Two The Challenges of Philosophy

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov Vladimir Ivantsov

“You’re a philosopher, Ilia!” Andrei Stolz ironically exclaims in response to Oblomov’s bitter criticism of Petersburg high society and its petty concerns.1 It is of course customary to call someone who makes statements about the world and life in general a philosopher. However, as the Russian saying goes, “in every joke there is a bit of the truth.” Indeed, could it be that in Oblomov’s artistic universe the main protagonist represents a specific philosophical tradition? This question has been scarcely addressed in Goncharovian criticism; nevertheless, Oblomov’s narrator himself gives us the answer. Towards the end of the novel, he draws a picture of the idyllic happiness that Oblomov finally achieves living on the Vyborg Side (Vyborgskaia storona) of St. Petersburg with Agafia Matveevna Pshenitsyna, formerly a widow and now Oblomov’s wife and the mother of his son: “Peace and quiet reign over the Vyborg Side, its unpaved streets, wooden sidewalks, meager gardens, and ditches overgrown with nettles. . . . Oblomov himself was the complete and natural reflection and expression of that repose, contentment, and serene calm.”2 Oblomov realizes that “his life had not just turned out to be so simple, uncomplicated, but had been created, even meant to be so in order to show that the ideally reposeful aspect of Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov, trans. David Magarshack (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 174; I. A. Goncharov, Oblomov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1987), 138. The translation of quotations from Oblomov is based on David Magarshack’s translation with my own revisions reflecting my reading of the original Russian; pages of the original Russian are cited in parentheses. 2 Goncharov, Oblomov, 460, 465 (363, 367). 1

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human existence was possible. . . . Such was the philosophy that the Plato of Oblomovka [oblomovskii Platon] had worked out,” concludes the narrator, thus suggesting a direct parallel between Oblomov and Plato.3 Is this simply yet another expression of the narrator’s sad irony regarding Oblomov’s talent for inventing “philosophically” legitimate excuses for his laziness, similar to those with which Zakhar explains the existence of bedbugs in the apartment he is supposed to take care of (“I didn’t invent them”)? 4 Given the fact that in the novel’s plot this happy and tranquil state eventually causes Oblomov’s apoplexy and death, the sad irony is undoubtedly present here. Yet the narrator also tells us that the association between Oblomov and Plato may serve as an interpretative prism for reading the novel and its main character. Of course, Goncharov’s remarkable reference to Plato has not completely escaped critical attention. In her commentary to the “Literaturnye pamiatniki” edition of Oblomov, Liudmila Geiro has suggested that Goncharov’s comparison of Oblomov to Plato alludes to Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, which defines the true philosopher as a pure theoretician who isolates himself from ambitious, yet slavish activity of everyday life.5 In the same vein, Mikhail Otradin mentions the parallel between Plato and Goncharov’s protagonist to argue that the juxtaposition of Oblomov as a Platonic “contemplator” (sozertsatel’) to Stolz as an “active person” (deiatel’) draws on a millennial-old philosophical tradition.6 Yet neither of the scholars has considered Plato’s thought as a philosophical kernel whose intertextual sprouts grow throughout Oblomov’s entire narrative, informing various aspects of the novel’s poetics. In this chapter, I would like to draw on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of double-voiced (or double-directed) discourse, paramount in the subsequent development of intertextuality theory, to investigate the Platonic motifs in Oblomov.7

3 4 5 6 7

Ibid., 465–466 (368). The original Russian “oblomovskii Platon” traditionally translated as “Plato of Oblomovka” can also be rendered as a “Plato from the Oblomov family” or a “Plato named Oblomov.” Ibid., 20 (14). L. S. Geiro, notes to Oblomov, by I. A. Goncharov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1987), 679. M. V. Otradin, “Na poroge kak by dvoinogo bytiia . . .”: o tvorchestve I. A. Goncharova i ego sovremennikov (St.  Petersburg: Filologicheskii fakul’tet SPbGU, 2012), 106. All sources in Russian are quoted in my translation. Julia Kristeva, who first introduced the term “intertextuality,” based herself on Bakhtin’s conception of dialogism.

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

Bakhtin defines double-voiced discourse as a discourse that “has a twofold direction—it is directed both toward the referential object of speech, as in ordinary discourse, and toward another’s discourse, toward someone else’s speech.”8 In double-voiced discourse, he writes, “the author . . . makes use of someone else’s discourse [in our case, the discourse of Plato—VI] for his own purposes, by inserting a new semantic intention into a discourse which already has, and which retains, an intention of its own. . . . In one discourse, two semantic intentions appear, two voices.”9 While Bakhtin focuses primarily on discourse per se, addressing such forms of narration and “dialogization” as stylization, skaz, parody, and hidden polemics, I would like to extend the notion of “double-voicedness” to such elements of the text as motifs, symbols, plot events, and the image of a character as a whole, considering that they too represent parts of a larger discourse: that of the literary work as a whole. Thus, uncovering Platonic subtexts of Oblomov helps us identify the “double-voiced” semantics of some of these elements in Goncharov’s novel, including the motif of Oblomov’s “project,” the symbolism of the sun and of subterranean space, the protagonist’s sexuality, and, ultimately, his inability to “wake up” to a new active life. Adding a philosophical depth to the figure of Oblomov, the Platonic motifs at the same time reveal a “dialogical” (Bakhtin), in fact, a polemical aspect of the novel. As a modern-day Platonic philosopher, Oblomov appears both compelling and miserable, and in the end, it becomes obvious that through his character Goncharov questions the viability of Plato’s thought when applied to real life. First, I will talk about the general context and possible sources of Goncharov’s perception of Plato’s thought, then proceed to identifying the specific ways in which Goncharov draws on Plato’s ideas in his portrayal of Oblomov as a philosopher: the theory of Forms and their “distortion”; the concepts of utopia and love; the allegories of the sun and of the cave; and the theory of recollection. Finally, I will look at how Oblomov’s death complicates Goncharov’s view of the protagonist as a platonic philosopher. In my discussion, I will particularly focus on such Platonic dialogues as the Theaetetus, the Republic, the Symposium, and the Phaedrus.

8 9

Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 185. Ibid., 189.

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Oblomov and the Platonic Tradition As Alfred Whitehead has famously argued, “[t]he safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”10 Indeed, in European intellectual history, Plato has always been regarded as one of the most important thinkers; moreover, in nineteenth-century Russia, he was particularly praised as “a source of Eastern Christian doctrine to which the Russian Orthodox tradition belonged.”11 Plato’s Complete Works first appeared in Russian in 1841–1842, seventeen years before the publication of Oblomov.12 However, Goncharov’s close acquaintance with Plato’s thought, as well as with Greek culture in general, most likely happened even before that, namely during his study at Moscow University in the early 1830s. One of Goncharov’s favorite professors there was philosopher, literary critic, ethnographer, and journalist Nikolai Nadezhdin (1804–1856). As Goncharov wrote about Nadezhdin in his memoir: As a professor, we valued in him his inspired passionate language that introduced us into the mysterious faraway realm of the ancient world, conveying to us the spirit, everyday life, history, and art of Greece and Rome. There hardly was a topic that he would not address in his improvised lectures!  .  .  .  Whether he spoke of architectural monuments, paintings, sculpture, and, finally, works of literature, he would also cover the history of philosophy.13

Nadezhdin was virtually the first Plato scholar in Russia; in 1830, just before Goncharov entered the university, he published several essays on Plato’s philosophy in the journal Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe).14 10 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1979), 39. 11 Frances Nethercott, Russia’s Plato: Plato and the Platonic Tradition in Russian Education, Science and Ideology (1840–1930) (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 36. 12 Platon [Plato], Sochineniia Platona, trans. V. N. Karpov (St.  Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Rossiiskoi Akademii, 1841–1842). 13 I. A. Goncharov, “V universitete. Kak nas uchili 40 let nazad,” in his Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1952–1955), vol.  7, 211. Likely, it is due to Nadezhdin that Oblomov is full of references to and parallels with various myths, texts, and heroes of Greece, including Homer, Hercules, the Golden Fleece, Pygmalion, and so forth. 14 [N. I. Nadezhdin], “Platon, filosof original’nyi, sistematicheskii,” Vestnik Evropy 5 (1830): 9–18; N. [N. I. Nadezhdin], “Ideologiia po ucheniiu Platona,” Vestnik Evropy 11 (1830): 161–182; N. [N. I. Nadezhdin], “Metafizika Platonova,” Vestnik Evropy 13 (1830): 3–22; and 14 (1830): 81–94.

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

Nadezhdin considered Plato to be “the father and the pillar of genuine philosophy, . . . its perfect model for the previous and successive centuries,” an idea that was undoubtedly present in his university lectures.15 The view of Plato as an archetypal philosopher, formulated by Nadezhdin, persisted throughout the nineteenth century and certainly defined Goncharov’s perception of the author of the Symposium.16 The European tradition of viewing Plato as the perfect model of a genuine thinker, as well as the concept of the true philosopher that Plato introduced, elucidate the complex intertextual significance of Goncharov’s seemingly ironic parallel between Plato and Oblomov. Already in one of the first conversations of the protagonist with Stolz in part two of the novel, Goncharov implicitly alludes to Plato in characterizing Oblomov as a philosopher of sorts. Here Oblomov expresses his dissatisfaction with the lifestyle of Petersburg high society, which he sees as morally corrupt, and justifies his own inclination towards seclusion and somnolence. In the beau monde circles into which Stolz was trying hard to reintroduce Oblomov, he sees only [the] constant rushing about, . . . eternal interplay of petty passions, greed especially . . . ; listening to their talk makes your head spin and you just go crazy. . . . But just see with what pride, incredible dignity, and disapproving look they regard anyone who is not dressed or of the same rank and social position as they. . . . What kind of life is that? I don’t want it.17

These activities and preoccupations that, according to Oblomov, distance the representatives of his milieu from the ideal of the human being, closely replicate those listed in Plato’s Theaetetus as alien to a philosopher: Strivings of political clubs after public offices, and meetings, and banquets . . . —it never occurs to them [philosophers] even in their dreams to indulge in such things. And whether anyone in the city is of high or low birth . . . are matters to which they pay no more attention . . . , but really it is only his [philosopher’s] body that has its place and home in the city; his

15 N. I. Nadezhdin, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, ed. Z. I. Kamenskii (St.  Petersburg: RKHGI, 2000), 549. 16 See, for example, N. Ia. Grot, Ocherk filosofii Platona (Moscow: Posrednik, 1896), 186, 189. 17 Goncharov, Oblomov, 172–174 (136–137).

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mind, considering all these things petty and of no account, disdains them and is borne in all directions.18

Moreover, in order to illustrate the degree of their detachment from the “affairs of the earth,” Plato’s speaker, Socrates, points out that the leading philosophers “do not even know where the court-room is, or the senate-house, or any other public place of assembly.”19 This statement finds a literal correspondence in Goncharov’s novel when Oblomov thinks about such “earthly affairs” as the management of his estate, reflecting on a letter form a neighbor: My neighbor writes to me, goes into all sorts of details, and talks about the plowing and the yield of grain . . . What a bore! . . . He himself would send all the documents for the mortgage of the estate to the council. I should send him my deed of trust; I should go to the courts to have it notarized—that’s what he wants! But I don’t even know where the courts are and how to open their doors.20

Seen through the intertextual prism, this otherwise comic detail signifies Oblomov’s kinship with the ideal philosopher as portrayed by Plato. At the same time, Goncharov raises an important question of whether there can be a way for the genuine thinker to integrate himself into real life. Answering this question becomes the ultimate task of the novel.

Platonic Forms and Oblomov’s Plan The aforementioned allusions point out the most important idea that connects Oblomov’s discourse with that of Plato, precisely the juxtaposition of Oblomov’s city environment where “his body . . . has its place and home” and some completely opposite realm into which his mind “is borne.”21 Oblomov perceives “this Petersburg life of yours” as “not life,” but rather as “a distortion of the norm, of the ideal of life, which nature demands that man should regard as his aim”—a binary opposition that originates 18 Plato, Theaetetus 173d–173e, trans. Fowler. As mentioned earlier, Geiro has named the Theaetetus as a possible source of Oblomov’s Platonic subtext. However, she has not referred to any specific passages of Plato’s text, but only to its summary by philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. 19 Ibid. 173d. 20 Goncharov, Oblomov, 262 (208). 21 Plato, Theaetetus 173e.

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

in Plato’s metaphysics.22 Indeed, Oblomov’s notion of the “norm” and the “ideal of life” is similar to what Plato defines as Form or the “thing itself ” (noumenon)—an ideal proto-image of a thing (phenomenon), which may or may not come into existence. Stolz’s question: “What is this ideal, this norm of life?” prompts Oblomov to describe his imagined life in the countryside (derevnia), namely at his family estate Oblomovka.23 In addition to the perfect climate (“The weather is lovely, the sky is blue as blue can be”), the perfect food, and the equally perfect relationship between its inhabitants (“Everything is sincere”), in Oblomovka, he maintains, one’s desires are fully satisfied and one “would never see a single pale, anguished face, nor a single care.”24 In other words, Oblomov speaks of an ideal transcendental dimension clearly distinct from human reality yet contemplated mentally as its perfect model similar to Platonic Form. One important property of Form is its eternal, unchangeable nature.25 “That which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger by time, . . . nor is subject at all to any of those states of generation which attach to the movement of sensible things,” writes Plato about the eternal realm of Forms in the Timaeus.26 Unchangeability and atemporality are precisely what constitute Oblomov’s “dream chronotope,” to use Bakhtin’s term, with its perpetual cycle of the same activities whose only purpose is to maintain the peace and serenity of its inhabitants: “He sees nothing but bright days and bright faces, without a care or a wrinkle. . . . There would be eternal summer and eternal gaiety.”27 The lack of necessity to move (both to change one’s place of residence and to move one’s body) is considered one of the primary “blisses” of life at Oblomovka: “You would never have to move to 22 Goncharov, Oblomov, 172, 175 (136, 138); emphasis mine. 23 Ibid., 175 (138). 24 Ibid., 175 (138), 177 (140), 179–180 (141–142). 25 In particular, this idea is advanced in Plato’s dialogues Phaedo and Timaeus. For more on this, see Andrew Mason, Plato (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2016), under “Plato’s Metaphysics: ‘The Theory of Forms,’” https://www.proquest.com/ docview/2131002490/C7B5432656BA41FAPQ/1. 26 Plato, Timaeus, in Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), vol. 2, 38a. 27 Goncharov, Oblomov, 82 (62). According to Bakhtin, the chronotope refers to the unity of time and space as represented in literature and is closely associated with genre. Bakhtin mentions Oblomov to demonstrate how the “idyllic chronotope” changes in the age of realism. See Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004), 84, 235.

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a new apartment—that alone is worth something!”28 The motif of static, immobile existence serves as an attribute of the “genuine” Oblomov who closely replicates the Platonic Form of peace and quiet: “Oblomov himself was the complete and natural reflection and expression of this peace, contentment, and undisturbed calm.”29 Frequently Oblomov mentions that he is working on a “project” (plan) according to which his ideal vision of Oblomovka should be brought into reality. Despite the fact that Oblomov’s “project” like many other aspects of his image is imbued with irony, and we never get to see the plan being put on paper, the Platonic subtext of this motif contributes to a better understanding of its meaning. It corresponds to Plato’s belief that “things themselves constitute the mental world of proto-images for the actual world, which exists, however, not hypostatically but purely ideally in the Divine reason.”30 The realm of Platonic Forms, according to Nadezhdin, “is nothing else but a comprehensive plan [chertezh] of the future design of the world,” which Plato often compares to a work of an artist (khudozhnik).31 We hear an echo of this conception when Goncharov’s narrator notes that Oblomov “was not some petty executor of someone else’s ready-made notions; he had himself created his own ideas and he was going to carry them out.”32 It is remarkable that both the characters and the narrator use words that present Oblomov’s ideal as an act of creation of a visual artist—chertit’, risovat’ (to draw), kartina (picture).33 Of Oblomov the narrator says that “he was extracting from his imagination ready-made scenes [kartiny] that he had drawn long ago” and “himself reveled in the ideal of happiness he had depicted [narisovannogo schast’ia].”34

28 Goncharov, Oblomov, 180 (142). 29 Ibid., 465 (367). Compare with the beginning of the novel: “lying on the bed . . . was his normal condition” (ibid., 14 [8]; emphasis mine). Lying as an embodiment of unchangeability refers to Oblomov’s metaphysical “norm,” his “being itself.” 30 Nadezhdin, Sochineniia, 565. Nadezhdin’s explanations of Plato’s conception of Forms seem especially appropriate since, as mentioned earlier, it is quite likely that Goncharov learned the basics of Plato’s philosophy from him. 31 Ibid., 566. 32 Goncharov, Oblomov, 71 (54). 33 Ibid., 175 (138), 177–178 (140). 34 Ibid., 178 (140).

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

Distortion of the Ideal in Plato and Oblomov “You’re a poet, Ilia!” remarks Stolz, interrupting Oblomov’s inspired presentation of his “project.” 35 In response, Oblomov smartly offsets his ironical tone by making a more explicit reference to a Platonic conception which postulates that the world is itself a work of art much superior to those produced by humans: “Yes, a poet in life, because life is poetry. One wonders why people are so prone to distort it!”36 For an attentive reader the meaning of this phrase might appear obscure. Indeed, what does “a poet in life” exactly mean? And how can one “distort” poetry? To answer these questions, we should examine the role that distortion plays in Plato’s metaphysics, as well as consider Plato’s attitude to poets and poetry. In Plato, the realm of Forms is opposed to the sensible world as Forms represent ideal models for material things (phenomena) that we perceive through senses. A phenomenon reproduces its corresponding Form more or less exactly; however, it can never become a perfect replica of a Form. For example, Plato writes that a carpenter or any other craftsman does not produce the Form of the bed or the table, but only a bed or a table, therefore, his work would be only “some semblance” of “true existence,” that is, of the Form.37 Thus, phenomena of the sensible world always represent various degrees of “distortion” of their proto-images.38 Oblomov evokes this conception when he defines the hectic lifestyle of Petersburg citizens as “a distortion of the norm, of the ideal of life, which nature demands that man should regard as his aim.”39 When disappointed with the people around him, he exclaims to Stolz: “Where is the human being here? Where is his integrity?”, he also uses Plato’s metaphysical premises, suggesting that the present human being has fallen significantly short of his or her respective Form.40 As for poets, in the Republic, we learn that Plato does not welcome them in his ideal state. According to Plato, poetry, and art in general, as 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Plato, Republic, in Republic and Other Works, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 597a. 38 See Mason, Plato, under “Plato’s Metaphysics.” 39 Goncharov, Oblomov, 175 (138). 40 Ibid., 172 (137). Integrity is an important characteristic of Form in Plato; thus, Nadezhdin defines Form as something that is “integral, singular, whole” (Nadezhdin, Sochineniia, 565).

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long as they imitate the visible phenomenal world, which itself is already an imitation of its Form, reproduce “phantoms” and not reality: “The imitator has no knowledge . . . of what he imitates. Imitation is only a kind of play.”41 Oblomov too criticizes the “realist trend” (real’noe napravlenie) of contemporary literature that strives for imitation; and although in his words we hear Goncharov’s own thrust against the “literature of condemnation” (oblichitel’naia literatura), they sound remarkably similar to Plato: “As a matter of fact, there is no life in anything they [the writers] do—no true understanding of it. . . . Mere vanity—that’s what it is.”42 On the contrary, asserting that life is itself poetry, Oblomov reflects Plato’s idea that a genuine poet does not need to imitate life through his art, for the real artist, who “knew what he was imitating, would be interested in realities and not in imitations.”43 Clearly, Oblomov’s chief interest consists not in lauding his ideal of a “lost paradise” in words, which would be just its poetic imitation, but rather in attaining it in reality.44 We can therefore discern that a “poet in life,” according to Oblomov, is a concept similar to Plato’s “real artist” as someone who knows the original and strives to bring life closer to it, in opposition to those who “distort” it, in one way or another. Yet even from Oblomov’s point of view, we see more than just one version of his dream land. While the derevnia that Oblomov portrays in his conversation with Stolz as the “ideal of life” may be regarded as a transcendental Platonic Form, the chapter “Oblomov’s Dream” situates Oblomovka in specific coordinates of time and place: the not so distant past and a relatively precise geographical location. Is it then just another “distorted” imitation of the perfect prototype? On the one hand, Oblomov attests to the old Oblomovka’s falling short of the ideal: in the latter, he claims, his wife would not occupy herself with jams and mushrooms or slap her servant girls, and he himself “would not read last year’s newspapers [and] ride in an unwieldly old carriage.”45 On the other hand, in “Oblomov’s Dream,” the old Oblomovka merges with the ideal world of Russian fairy-tales “where there was no night and no cold, where all sorts of miracles happened, where the rivers flowed with milk and honey, where no one did a stroke of work all the year round, and fine fellows, like Ilia Ilich, and maidens more beautiful 41 Plato, Republic 602b. 42 Goncharov, Oblomov, 35 (25). 43 Plato, Republic 599b. 44 It is noteworthy that at first he is even reluctant to express it when Stolz asks him to. 45 Goncharov, Oblomov, 179 (141).

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

than words can tell do nothing but enjoy themselves all day long.”46 While being yet another instance of the narrator’s irony regarding Oblomov’s social incapability, this “double-voiced” passage at the same time points out the origins of his Platonic worldview, in which actual life appears to be a “distortion” of its “fairy-tale” model: “when he grew up, Ilia Ilich . . . would sometimes get unconsciously sad about the fact that fairy-tale was not life and life was not fairy-tale.”47 In “Oblomov’s Dream,” dreaming functions as an act of a Platonic contemplation of an ideal realm, which involves not only the character, but the narrator as well. Finally, the “Oblomov’s Dream” chapter can be seen as a Platonic Form of Oblomov itself, since as a part of an “unfinished novel” (originally entitled Oblomovshchina) it was published long before the actual structure of the novel began to take shape in Goncharov’s mind.48

Oblomov Utopia and the Solar Symbolism For our discussion of Platonic subtexts in Oblomov it is also important that Stolz defines Oblomov’s conception of ideal life as “Oblomov utopia” (oblomovskaia utopiia).49 In this statement too, we can hear Goncharov’s “double voice” containing both irony and a deeper truth about the character, which reveals itself through intertextual connections. The depiction of Oblomovka in Oblomov’s dream almost literally reflects the concept of utopia, which translates from Greek as “no place.” Indeed, Oblomovka is separated from the rest of the world, and its residents perceive such a separation as the existential condition of their prosperity: Since there was virtually no road that would go through their corner, there was no way for them to get the latest news about what was going on in the world. . . . These happy people lived thinking that everything was as it should

46 Ibid., 119 (92–93). 47 Ibid., 119 (93). 48 I. A. Goncharov, “Son Oblomova. Epizod iz neokonchennogo romana,” in Literaturnyi sbornik s illiustratsiiami. Izdan redaktsiei “Sovremennika” (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Eduarda Pratsa, 1849), 213–252. Critic Apollon Grigoriev has even gone so far as to suggest that the rest of the novel added almost nothing to what had been described in this historically first chapter. See Apollon Grigoriev, Sobranie sochinenii (Mosсow: Tipo-litografiia Tovarishchestva I. N. Kushnerev i Ko, 1915), vol. 10, 108. 49 Goncharov, Oblomov, 180 (142).

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be and were convinced that everyone else lived just like them and to live otherwise was a sin.50

Plato’s Republic provides the first example of the utopia genre in literature.51 Describing an ideal state, Plato distinguishes between three castes of citizens: workers, warriors (or guardians), and rulers (or philosopher kings). More importantly, Plato uses his model of the state structure as a metaphor for a human soul with desire, will, and wisdom corresponding with the three castes. Obviously, most of all Plato values the part that represents philosophy and wisdom in both the state and the human being, saying that it is necessary for a ruler to be a philosopher. Goncharov reflects this very idea: as a philosopher, Oblomov envisions his own utopian kingdom of Oblomovka that is enclosed and separate from the world and where everyone enjoys a happy life of tranquility and satisfied desires. In the Republic, Socrates recounts a myth according to which all men were born from the earth, whereas the distinction between different castes are defined by the fact that “God has framed” them “differently,” having mingled gold in the composition of the higher caste of rulers.52 Gold as material becomes then a metaphor for the honorable soul of a philosopher king. Like Plato, Goncharov uses the metaphor of gold to refer to Oblomov’s moral purity. As Stolz explains to Olga, they both love Oblomov for his “honest and faithful heart,” which is “his nature-given gold that he has carried through his life unharmed.”53 Oblomov himself feels that there is “a source of something good and bright . . . hidden in him like gold in the heart of a mountain.”54 Moreover, similar to Plato, Goncharov employs the mythological symbolism of gold as a marker of an otherworldly realm and its proximity to the ideal world. Thus, in Oblomovka, which itself appears like a “faraway kingdom” (tridesiatoe gosudarstvo) of folk tales, Oblomov’s old nanny tells him a story of the Firebird, a Russian version of the Golden Fleece, in the narrator’s words. Vladimir Propp writes that the archaic mythological roots of the gold symbol manifest themselves in fairy-tales so that “anything that has any kind of relationship to the faraway kingdom may acquire golden 50 Ibid., 108 (83–84). 51 Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), which gave the genre its name, draws extensively on Plato. 52 Plato, Republic 415a. 53 Goncharov, Oblomov, 459 (362). 54 Ibid., 101 (77).

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

coloring,” which is “the color of the sun.”55 Sun and sunlight play a particularly important role in both Plato and Goncharov. In book six of the Republic, Plato introduces his famous “simile of the sun” where the sun stands for the idea of the good that “sheds light” on the philosopher’s mind to allow him to see the true nature of things through genuine knowledge. The metaphorical sunlight of goodness becomes the necessary condition for a true philosopher to contemplate the realm of the beautiful and eternal. Apparently, Oblomov’s “nature-given gold,” his “honest heart,” serves him as a source of that light of “goodness” which grants him access to the sphere of Platonic Forms. It is noteworthy that the solar imagery accompanies Oblomov throughout the novel. The narrator directly states Oblomov’s love for the sun by calling it the character’s “favorite heavenly body” (liubimoe svetilo).56 Based on an analysis of the frequency with which the sun is mentioned in the novel (thirty-six times, not including indirect semantic associations), Valerii Tiupa has argued that Oblomov has a “distinct association with the sun.”57 “Oblomov’s Dream” represents “the epicenter of the recurrent solar motif ” where Oblomovka is referred to as the sun’s “favorite place,” which further supports its association with the Platonic realm of eternal Forms.58 According to Tiupa, “Oblomov himself, to a certain degree, represents a personification of the sun, a kind of ‘solar divinity,’ and that is how he appeared to Agafia Pshenitsyna”: “She understood . . . that the sun that had shone over her, had set forever.”59 Indeed, both the gold and sunshine motifs appear in the depiction of Oblomov’s life on the Vyborg Side: “From morning till evening bright sunshine filled the house. . . . Ilia Ilich lived, as it were, within a golden framework of life, in which, as in a diorama, the only things that changed were the usual phases of day and night and the seasons.”60 55 V. Ia. Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki (Moscow: Labirint, 2000), 245, 253. 56 Goncharov, Oblomov, 80 (61). 57 V. I. Tiupa, “Soliarnye povtory v romane Goncharova ‘Oblomov,’” Kritika i semiotika 14 (2010): 115. 58 Ibid., 114. 59 Ibid., 116; Goncharov, Oblomov, 480 (379). 60 Goncharov, Oblomov, 463 (366). The frequency with which the sun appears in Oblomov’s Petersburg is especially remarkable considering the city’s typical lack of sunshine. The Platonic symbolism of the sun as the light of goodness that Oblomov himself emanated becomes even more obvious after Oblomov’s death, when the narrator points out that a tall office building has been built near Pshenitsyna’s house, and it “prevented sunshine from pouring in gaily through the windows of the peaceful refuge of tranquility and indolence” (476 [376]).

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Moreover, the same fairy-tale archetype that we encounter in “Oblomov’s Dream” informs Oblomov’s perception of his life with Pshenitsyna, which seemingly suggests that at this moment in his life the protagonist finally achieves his utopian ideal: “He dreams that he has reached the promised land where the rivers flow of milk and honey, and where people eat bread they have not earned and wear gold and silver garments.”61 However, Oblomov realizes that his present setting does not exactly reflect the ideal Oblomovka, but rather represents a more mundane version of what he has dreamt of: “Thinking about his way of living . . . and getting more and more used to it, he decided at last that he had nothing more to strive for, nothing more to seek, that he had attained the ideal of his life, albeit without the poetry and brilliance with which his imagination had once endowed a plentiful and carefree life in his native place.”62 It is regarding these meditations that the narrator calls him “oblomovskii Platon” thus providing the reader with a clue to the metaphysical status of Oblomov’s last refuge. In Plato’s terms, Pshenitsyna’s house stands for nothing else than an earthly copy of the original Form of Oblomovka. In fact, Oblomov, who at first militantly rejects the idea of moving there, starts to notice similarities between the Vyborg Side and Oblomovka already during his first visit to Pshenitsyna: “Oblomov drove on admiring the nettles by the fences.”63 At first implicitly subconscious, such impressions eventually become more and more explicit (for example, Oblomov does not want the chickens to be removed from under his window because they remind him of Oblomovka) as his attachment to this place grows stronger.

61 Ibid., 372 (471). On the one hand, Oblomov’s mention of “people who eat bread they have not earned” may be perceived in light of his concept of Oblomovka as mankind’s “lost paradise” where labor simply does not exist. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the socially critical significance of the phrase, which points at Oblomov’s ideal being a product of the protagonist’s privileged position as a “nobleman” (even Pshenitsyna does not treat Oblomov as her equal), as well as at his ignorance of this problematic issue. Accordingly, it sheds critical light on Plato’s ideal state where belonging to a caste is almost unequivocally defined by birth. 62 Ibid., 465 (367); emphasis mine. 63 Ibid., 290 (230). Later Stolz voices a negative version of the same idea: “this is the same old Oblomovka, only much worse” (ibid., 383 [304]).

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

The Platonic Subtext of Oblomov’s Sexuality It is, however, not just the similarities between the Vyborg Side and the derevnia, but rather the landlady herself who causes this attachment. As we remember, Oblomov’s move to Pshenitsyna’s marks the turning point in his romantic relationship with Olga Ilinskaia, leading to its inevitable collapse. The plot suggests a clear, “single-voiced” psychological explanation of their incompatibility: while Olga expects Oblomov to change into a more energetic person and someone who will guide her through life, his idleness and fear of responsibility take over. Consequently, Pshenitsyna becomes for him the much-needed motherly figure who makes his comfort the main purpose of her existence.64 Yet the Platonic allusions allow us to discover a second “voice” beyond the juxtaposition of the two women in Oblomov’s life, one that concerns Oblomov’s sexuality and reveals Goncharov’s personal response to Plato. As the romance between Oblomov and Olga progresses, Goncharov draws our attention to the discomfort his protagonist feels about the sensual aspect of love. In part two, chapter eleven, he portrays Oblomov’s bewilderment, even fear, when one evening in the park Olga experiences an attack of the “lunacy of love” (lunatizm liubvi), which reads as a manifestation of her sexual desire: “He listened in the darkness to her heavy breathing, . . . the convulsive pressure of her fingers. He did not stir a finger or breathe. Her head lay on his shoulder and her breath burnt his cheek. . . . After some time she grew more composed and her breathing became more regular.”65 The narrator then discusses Oblomov’s unusual chastity, making the reader ponder the question, “Why had he been so mute and motionless with her the night before, though her breath was burning his cheek, her warm tears fell on his hand, and he had almost carried her home in his arms and

64 For a Freudian reading of Oblomov’s relationship with the two women, see John Givens, “Wombs, Tombs, and Mother Love: A Freudian Reading of Goncharov’s Oblomov,” in Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, ed. Galya Diment (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 90-109. 65 Goncharov, Oblomov, 265–266 (210–211). In his psychoanalytical reading of the novel, John Givens addresses Oblomov’s anxiety about sex and goes so far as to argue that this scene portrays “Olga’s orgasm . . . accomplished without recourse to Oblomov’s penis,” which “symbolically deprives Oblomov of his last sign of masculinity.” Givens, “Wombs,” 98. The Platonic subtext, however, provides us with a different perspective on the protagonist’s anxiety, one that emphasizes its cultural, rather than psycho-somatic, origins.

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overheard the indiscreet whisper of her heart?”66 The answer, however, is given much earlier. Immediately after the scene in which Oblomov, fascinated by her singing, declares his love to Olga, the narrator introduces the protagonist’s thoughts on marriage as a way to overcome sexual “passion”: “Oblomov . . . has always dreamt of a woman as his wife and never as his lover. . . . He dreamed of the smile on her lips, a smile that was not passionate, and of her eyes which were not moist with desire. . . . Yes, passion must be curbed, stifled, and drowned in marriage.”67 We learn that for Oblomov, the true purpose of love is “to find in his friend an unchanging expression of repose, an even and everlasting flow of feeling,” which he considers to be “the common ideal of everybody” and “the final solution of the relation of the sexes.”68 Here the reader once again hears the slightly ironical tone of the narrator who obviously aims to demonstrate that every aspect of Oblomov’s existence, including sexuality, bears a distinct mark of oblomovshchina. And yet, the “common ideal” of love that Oblomov depicts in this passage acquires a deeper meaning if we remember that it has millennial-old history and is associated with the concept of platonic love: a relationship based on a spiritual connection rather than sexual attraction. In a letter to his close friend Anatolii Koni, Goncharov provides his own vision of “passion” as opposed to love: [A]ll those dramas in which women appear as heroes in men’s lives are nonsense to me.  .  .  .  [A]n admirer, due to my artistic nature, of beauty in general, and of beautiful women in particular, I’ve lived through several such dramas. . . . Writhing in convulsions of passion, I nevertheless had to admit to myself how silly and comic it all was. . . . Yes, it’s a kind of syphilis which perverts one’s mind and soul, and leaves one’s nerves weakened for a long time. It’s not love (that is, a sincere and kind feeling rather than passion), which is as peaceful and beautiful as friendship.69

The striking similarity between Goncharov’s thoughts on the subject and those of his protagonist, who “would run away in horror from a woman 66 Goncharov, Oblomov, 267 (213). 67 Ibid., 201–202 (159–60); emphasis mine. 68 Ibid., 202 (160); emphasis mine. 69 I. A. Goncharov, “Pis’mo Koni A. F., 11–17 iiulia 1888 g. Dubbel’n, bliz Rigi,” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 522–523.

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

who suddenly scorched him with her gaze or uttered a moan and fell on his shoulder with her eyes closed,” allows us to argue that the Platonic understanding of love was personally appealing to the novel’s author.70 The concept of platonic love originates in Plato’s Symposium, where, in particular, we find a myth describing androgynous human beings whom Zeus cut into two halves, leaving those halves, that is, men and women, with the memories of their former wholeness. It is remarkable that Oblomov too is depicted as having some androgynous traits. The narrator points out that Oblomov’s body “seemed too effeminate for a man,” while Olga disappointingly notes his “tenderness that she had never seen in a man’s eyes” and envisions Oblomov as a Galatea for whom she herself would have to be a Pygmalion.71 In Plato, the myth of the Androgyne suggests that sensual love between humans is not an end in itself, but rather serves as a means of achieving the former union of the halves, a foundation for true happiness, which implies the disappearance of sexual desire (“passion”): “we shall do well to praise the god Love, . . . giving us high hopes for the future, that if we are pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us happy and blessed.”72 Thus, Oblomov’s vision of an ideal realm—the “lost paradise” for which he is yearning—includes a love relationship that would bring him “an even-beating, calm, and contented heart”—a dream that nearly comes true when he moves to Pshenitsyna’s.73 And even though the reader later learns that Pshenitsyna becomes Oblomov’s wife and gives birth to his son, Goncharov portrays their union as virtually platonic. After all, the kind of desire that Oblomov feels for her is quite similar to what Plato considers to be the ultimate purpose of love: to contemplate the Form of Beauty through its sensible manifestations: “All he wanted was to sit on the sofa without taking his eyes off her elbows.”74 70 Goncharov, Oblomov, 263 (160). We do not know much about Goncharov’s sexual life as he carefully kept this aspect of his biography out of the public eye. He remained single his entire life, possibly due to an unrequited feeling for Elizaveta Tolstaia (a likely prototype of Olga Ilinskaia), with whom Goncharov fell passionately in love in 1855 and who subsequently married another man. For more on this, see Vladimir Mel’nik and Tatiana Mel’nik, “‘. . . Blagoslovliaiu sud’bu, chto vstretil ee . . .’ (Elizaveta Tolstaia v zhizni avtora ‘Oblomova’),” Volga 5–6 (1996): 149–156. 71 Goncharov, Oblomov, 269 (214). 72 Plato, Symposium 193d, trans. Jowett. 73 Goncharov, Oblomov, 202 (160). 74 Ibid., 379 (301).

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Oblomov’s Cave Book seven of Plato’s Republic contains the famous episode “Allegory of the Cave”; it illustrates the distinction between true and “distorted” reality discussed earlier. Plato imagines a dark cave with its prisoners watching the shadows on its walls and mistaking them for the only true reality. When one prisoner gets released and is forced to ascend to the surface, he sees the sun and, even though initially blinded by its light, eventually realizes it to be the truth. This prisoner illustrates the role of the philosopher in gaining genuine knowledge. Curiously, Oblomov’s life with Pshenitsyna is also likened to a cave existence. During his last attempt to awaken Oblomov to a new life, Stolz calls Oblomov’s present home both a “pit” (iama) and a “burrow” (nora) and demands that Oblomov, like Plato’s philosopher, leave the “cave” and see the “true” world: “Out of this pit, this bog, into the light, into the open, where normal, healthy life is! . . . Where are you? What has become of you? Come to your senses! Is this the sort of life you have been preparing yourself for—to sleep like a mole in its burrow?”75 However, the solar symbolism that orchestrates Oblomov’s life with Pshenitsyna, makes the very association with Plato’s cave ambiguous. Unlike Plato’s prisoners, Oblomov gets to see the sun in his “cave” and not outside of it. While the subterranean imagery in this quotation reflects the point of view of Stolz, Goncharov, on the other hand, invites the reader to look at this critically to see whether the “cave” motif truly disapproves of Oblomov’s way of life. Through the many parallels with the ideal Oblomovka, including its association with the realm of the sun, it becomes obvious that Oblomov’s “cave” is much closer to his proposed “norm of life” than the “distorted” existence of his fellow Petersburg denizens, and that it is this “distorted” existence that, in the end, conforms with the original meaning of the cave in Plato. In rethinking Fyodor Dostoevsky’s notion of the underground, philosopher Lev Shestov argued that 75 Ibid., 473–474 (374). The notion of illusory existence as a play of light and shadows is also encrypted in Goncharov’s comparison of Oblomov’s life to a diorama—an entertainment model of reality combining paintings, three-dimensional objects, and special light. See ibid., 463 (366). Goncharov’s reference to the diorama in his “Foreword to The Precipice” (“Predislovie k romanu ‘Obryv,’” 1869) evokes clear associations with Plato’s cave: “Serious art is not a diorama; . . . it will refuse to reflect in its mirror the murky spots and blurred shapes that enlightened by the magic lantern move on the  wall like shadows.” I. A. Goncharov, “Predislovie k romanu ‘Obryv,’” in  his  Sobranie  sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1952–1955), vol. 8, 161.

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

the “Underground” is not at all that miserable den in which Dostoevsky had made his protagonist [of Notes from Underground—VI] live, nor is it his protagonist’s solitude. . . . On the contrary, . . . Dostoevsky retreated to solitude in order to save himself, or try to save himself, from the kind of the underground (in Plato’s terms, “cave”) in which “everyone” has to live and which everyone regards as the only real world, even the only possible world, that is, the world justified by reason. The same applies to medieval monks.  .  .  .  Monks and hermits who excruciated themselves with fasting, vigil, and similar “efforts” [trudy] were first of all trying to free themselves from being-like-everybody-else [vsemstvo].76

Shestov’s reading of Dostoevsky may be equally applied to Oblomov, even though we know that Goncharov’s character is a complete opposite of fasting, vigil, and “efforts” in general. Describing Oblomov’s life on the Vyborg Side, the narrator notes that he “was quietly and gradually laying himself down into the simple and spacious coffin he himself had made for his remaining life span, like old hermits who, turning away from life, dig their own graves in the desert.”77 Otradin has argued that this comparison allows us to regard the story of Ilia Ilich as a hagiography of sorts, one that portrays a perfect representative of Oblomov’s way of life. Having been through a series of trials and “seductions” (his attempts to prepare himself for socially useful activity . . . , service at the department, and love for Olga), Oblomov managed to remain faithful to the “truth” that had once been revealed to him.78

The Motifs of Sleep, Recollection, and Death in the Platonic Perspective In Oblomov, it is Stolz who embodies the point of view that—to use Shestov’s words—the world “justified by reason” is “the only real word.”79 Using the same notion of optical illusion as we find in Plato’s cave allegory, the narrator emphasizes Stolz’s fear of “imagination” as something that 76 Lev Shestov, Na vesakh Iova (Stranstvovaniia po dusham) (Paris: Sovremennye zapiski, 1929), 38. 77 Goncharov, Oblomov, 466 (368). 78 Otradin, O tvorchestve I. A. Goncharova, 153. 79 Shestov, Na vesakh Iova, 38.

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transcends the sensible reality: “There was no room in his soul for a dream, for anything that was enigmatic or mysterious. He regarded everything that would not stand up to the analysis of reason and objective truth as an optical illusion, a particular reflection of the rays and colors on the retina or, at most, as a fact that had not yet been tested by experiment.”80 Not only does Stolz, who is half German, represent Western ideas such as progress and efficiency, but he serves as a philosophical opponent of Oblomov-the-Plato who prioritizes the ideal and meta-empirical over the reality he is bound to live in. If, similar to the Oblomov-Plato parallel, Goncharov were to name a Greek philosopher to characterize Stolz, it would have certainly been Aristotle who famously denied the autonomous existence of Forms and found them to be inseparable from sensible phenomena. In the nineteenth century, the juxtaposition of Plato to Aristotle acquired a special ideological significance: the two philosophers were perceived as the founders of the “Eastern spiritual tradition” and the “rationalizing” tendencies of Western culture respectively.81 On the one hand, Plato appeared to have a particular affinity with the authentically Russian, in fact religious, way of philosophizing. On the other hand, some critics (for example, Ivan Kireevskii) drew direct, sometimes exaggerated parallels between Aristotle and contemporary German thought with its prioritizing of logical reason.82 It is quite likely therefore that Goncharov consciously or subconsciously drew on this contemporary discourse on Plato versus Aristotle when he juxtaposed Oblomov to Stolz to illustrate the East versus West dichotomy. This juxtaposition also allows us to uncover the philosophical “double-voicedness” of the novel’s central motif of sleep. Sleep as a static state contradicts Stolz’s idea that life and work are synonymous, and therefore a human being has to be in constant motion. From Stolz’s perspective, Oblomov’s disposition towards sleep signifies his spiritual deficiency and ultimately his spiritual death as manifested by Oblomov’s undisturbed existence on the Vyborg Side: “‘You’re done for, Ilia! . . . This house, this woman . . . the whole of this way of living . . . It’s impossible!’”83 Thus, Stolz who sees moral decline in Oblomov’s inactivity reflects Aristotle’s view on the relationship between virtue and motion: “For supposing someone to be asleep all his life, we should hardly consent to call such a man happy. 80 Goncharov, Oblomov, 162 (128–129). 81 Nethercott, Russia’s Plato, 36. 82 Ibid., 68. 83 Goncharov, Oblomov, 385, 473 (305, 374).

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

Life indeed he has, but life in accordance with the virtues he has not, and it was in this that we made the activity to consist.”84 And yet Oblomov provides a different philosophical outlook on sleep, which, further revealing the Platonic origins of his worldview, justifies his preferred mode of being and (at least partially) morally rehabilitates him in his own and the reader’s eyes. He does this, juxtaposing his literal sleep to the metaphorical one of the Petersburg beau monde, to postulate that its members are “dead, they are all asleep. . . . They argue, they discuss everything from every possible point of view, but they are bored, they are not really interested in the whole thing: you can see they are fast asleep in spite of their shouts!”85 From this perspective, Oblomov’s “sleep addiction” becomes a way of escape from the “distorted,” imperfect reality and paradoxically makes him more awake to the true ideal of life. Oblomov’s passionate statement echoes a passage from the Republic in which Socrates invites his collocutor Glaucon to reconsider the notion of sleep as a state: Is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object? I should certainly say that such an one was dreaming. But take the case of the other, who recognizes the existence of absolute beauty . . . —is he a dreamer, or is he awake? He is wide awake.86

It is remarkable in this respect that Oblomov’s realm of “beauty in itself ”— his Oblomovka—appears first as a dream, second as a “picture” that he mentally “draws” comfortably lying on his sofa (as if sleeping), and finally— as a vision in a strange somnolent-like state depicted in part four, chapter nine. The latter deserves special attention. The scene that we encounter just two pages down from Goncharov’s explicit mention of Plato can be best explained through a reference to Plato’s notion of recollection: There are rare and brief and dream-like moments when a man seems to be living over again something he has been through before at a different time and place. . . . The same thing happened to Oblomov now. . . . He sees before 84 Aristotle, Great Ethics 1.4.1185a10–14, trans. St. George Stock. Vladimir Kantor uses this quotation as an epigraph to his сhapter on Oblomov, in V. K. Kantor, Russkaia klassika, ili Bytie Rossii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2005), 312. 85 Goncharov, Oblomov, 173, 175 (137–138). 86 Plato, Republic 476c–476d.

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him the big, dark drawing-room in his parents’ house, lighted by a tallow candle, and his mother and her visitors sitting at a round table; they are sewing in silence; his father is walking up and down the room in silence. The present and the past had merged and intermingled.87

According to Plato, a human being has the ability to recover through the senses the knowledge of the higher reality that his or her soul acquired in a discarnate state before the person was born.88 In other words, through recollection one can contemplate eternal Forms, which in Plato constitutes the nature of true wisdom. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates says that “a man who employs such memories rightly is always being initiated into perfect mysteries and he alone becomes truly perfect.  .  .  .  Few then are left which retain an adequate recollection of them; but these when they see here any likeness of the things of that other world, are stricken with amazement.”89 Using the idea of recollection to postulate the immortality of the soul, Plato argues that a soul separated from the body after death becomes able to ascend to the divine world and to see the truth again.90 Accordingly, Oblomov recognizes an earthly instance of the eternal Oblomovka (the Form of Oblomovka in Plato’s terms) in Pshenitsyna’s house, thus recollecting the “lost paradise” to which only the soul can return when it gets separated from the body. The Platonic subtext explains the role of this episode in the novel’s plot. It is precisely the proximity of the physical death of his body that allows Oblomov’s soul to recollect and literally see the ideal realm that it once knew. And yet, Goncharov presents Oblomov’s death not as a positive outcome but rather as a “double-voiced” phenomenon similar to many other aspects studied here. It ironically suggests that Oblomov’s striving for unchangeability characteristic of the realm of Forms ultimately proves fatal for his body; his struggle against time to achieve the transcendental ideal paradoxically accelerated the passing of the time of his material existence. Moreover, the fact that Oblomov anticipated death with the existential dread of a mere mortal shows that his attachment to the imperfect earthly reality was no less strong than his yearning for the realm of the eternal and absolute. Thus, in the character of Oblomov, Goncharov ultimately 87 Goncharov, Oblomov, 471 (372). 88 The conception of recollection is formulated in Plato’s dialogues Meno, Phaedo, and Phaedrus. 89 Plato, Phaedrus 249c–250a, trans. Fowler. 90 Plato, Phaedo 80d–81a.

“Oblomovskii Platon”: Platonic Subtexts in Oblomov

portrays the platonic philosopher as a paradoxical figure, both happy and tragic, whose knowledge of the ideal world dooms him to perishing in the real one.

Conclusion In Goncharov’s Oblomov, the narrator’s seemingly ironical parallel between Oblomov and Plato points out an important source of the novel’s philosophical subtext. The allusions to Plato reveal the “double-voiced” nature of multiple elements in Oblomov, inviting us to reconsider the meaning of the novel’s fictional events, of the characters’ and narrator’s words, and of symbolic images in light of Plato’s thought. Plato’s metaphysics corresponds to the peculiar ontological status of Goncharov’s protagonist who finds himself “on the threshold of two worlds”: the real and rapidly transforming modernity, which Oblomov sees as ephemeral, and the imagined unchangeable realm of “Oblomovka paradise” that he advocates for as the only true life.91 As a platonic philosopher, Oblomov represents a juxtaposition of the comic and the serious, even tragic “voices,” as his death becomes the paradoxical result of his striving for the ideal. Thus, Goncharov demonstrates that, although in many ways compelling, an idealistic worldview modeled on Plato may ultimately prove inadequate when applied to real life.

91 “Na poroge kak by dvoinogo bytiia” (the title of Otradin’s book on Goncharov) is a line from Fedor Tiutchev’s 1855 poem “Oh, my prophetic soul” (“O veshchaia dusha moia . . .”).

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Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy Victoria Juharyan

In vain did I wait that someone, besides me, would read between the lines, and coming to love the images, connect them into a unity and see what this unity is expressing. But this did not happen. Belinskii could have done this, but he wasn’t there  .  .  .  and as for me, I don’t see three novels; I only see one. They are all connected by a general thread, one consistent idea—the transition from one era of Russian life to another.1 Ivan Goncharov, “Better Late than Never,” 1879

Ivan Goncharov’s first two novels A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia, 1847) and Oblomov (1859) were both successful partly due to the reviews from two prominent critics: Vissarion Belinskii and Nikolai Dobroliubov. Belinskii, Goncharov’s university friend, as well as an influential and well-known Hegelian, died less than a year after reviewing A Common Story, and Dobroliubov died two years after writing his famous article “What is Oblomovism?”2 When Goncharov’s third novel The  Precipice (Obryv,  1869) came out, it was received with awful 1 2

Ivan Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1997–2017), vol. 6, 444, 449. Alexander Mihailovic argues that Dobroliubov critiques Oblomov “from a perspective that one would have to call Hegelian.” Alexander Mihailovic, “‘That Blessed State’: Western and Soviet Views of Infantilism in Oblomov,” in Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, ed. Galya Diment (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998). 53.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

“condemnation.” According to Goncharov himself, this was because his former critics and champions had died and there was no one left to appreciate his work. To give an example, one of the reviews, by Mikhail SaltykovShchedrin, was titled “Street Philosophy” (a derogatory term, similar to the English “kitchen philosophy”) and blamed Goncharov for misrepresenting the generation of the 1860s. Ten years later, when Goncharov published “Better Late than Never” (Luchshe pozdno, chem nikogda), he specifically mourned the fact that Belinskii had died, and that Belinskii alone would have been able to discern the unifying principle of the trilogy. “To look for influences, echoes of Hegel in Russian literature is not even necessary: they strike the eye!” Dmitrii Chizhevskii writes in his 1930 book Hegel in Russia (Gegel’ v Rossii).3 Addressing the Russian proclivity for Hegelian ideas of “analysis and synthesis,” or “wholeness,” “dialectic and concreteness, and the related notion that truth is a merging of real and ideal,” in her book on Tolstoy, Donna Tussing Orwin calls “all thinking Russians in the 1850s” “children of the Hegelian forties,” and, referencing Chizhevskii, points out that “nowhere else, in fact was the Hegelian tradition as uninterrupted as in Russia.”4 In the context of this intellectual history, Chizhevskii discusses how Hegel’s ideas were adopted, adapted and developed by Russian thinkers such as Stankevich, Belinskii, Turgenev, Herzen, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. The writer whose name rarely comes up in relation to Hegel, however, is Ivan Goncharov.5 Yet, when Goncharov attended Moscow University between 1831 and 1834, Hegel’s thought was ubiquitous. The institution was “a hotbed for cultivation of German romantic idealism” and “several of the faculty, including Goncharov’s influential professor of fine arts, Nikolai Nadezhdin, drew the bulk of their ideas from the German philosophers and especially from Fredrich Schelling.”6 Moreover, Lermontov, Belinskii, Herzen, Stankevich, and Aksakov were among Goncharov’s classmates and some of them “formed now-famous 3 4 5

6

Dmitri Chizhevskii, Gegel’ v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2007), 249. Donna Tussing Orwin, Tolstoy’s Art and Thought, 1847–1880 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 15. Only in the past decade have some studies of Goncharov’s connection to Hegel appeared. Ilya Kliger has explored this connection in “Genre and Actuality in Belinskii, Herzen, and Goncharov: Toward a Genealogy of the Tragic Pattern in Russian Realism,” Slavic Review 70, no. 1 (2011); and “Hegel’s Political Philosophy and the Social Imaginary of Early Russian Realism,” Studies in East European Thought 70, nos. 3–4 (2014). Milton Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 17.

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philosophical circles for the study of German idealism—first Schelling and later Hegel—which continued to thrive and attract the leading minds of the age after their university days.”7 I argue that Hegelian thought forms the “unifying thread” of Goncharov’s trilogy that he referred to in “Better Late than Never,” something that explains why Goncharov specifically rues Belinskii’s passing in this later critical essay. In Goncharov’s view, Belinskii was the only person who would have understood the Hegelian project of the trilogy. One of Belinskii’s essays of literary criticism that popularized Hegelian philosophy in Russia was titled “A View of Russian literature of 1847” and included a review of Goncharov’s first novel A Common Story, which Belinskii read as realism’s dialectical manifestation, and, in a letter to Botkin, called “a frightful blow on romanticism, dreaminess, and provincialism.”8 Belinskii had been consumed by Hegelian ideas since at least 1841: The development of humankind is a continuous progressive movement, without any backwards return. Humanity moves in circles (i.e. moving forward, continuously returns back), but not in simple circles—in spirals (!)— and in its movement comprises many circles, from which the subsequent one is always wider and more extensive than the previous one . . .9

He recapitulates Hegel’s schematic view of history as a spiral, a view already present in the works of Romantic thinkers and writers and worked out by Hegel on historical as well as subjective grounds—in other words, on the individual level as well as the level of political and historic events (broadly understood). This paper’s argument is not an influence study per se; but rather an examination of how Hegelian historical consciousness illuminates the way history — subjective, as well as social and political — is presented in Goncharov’s works. In this chapter, I attempt to accomplish the critical task Goncharov hoped Belinskii would have done were he alive when Goncharov published the third novel. 7 Ibid. 8 Vissarion Belinskii, Letter to V. P. Botkin of March 15–17, 1847, in his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v trinadtsati tomakh (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo AN SSSR, 1953–1959), 12: 353. 9 Idem, “Rimskie elegii. Sochinenie Gete, Perevod Strugovshchikova,” in Vissarion Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v trinadtsati tomakh (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo AN SSSR, 1953–1959), vol.  5, 235–236. See Victor Terras, Belinskij  and  Russian Literary Criticism: The Heritage of Organic Aesthetics (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974).

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

I argue that the structure of Goncharov’s trilogy embodies the “Hegelian Conception of History as the Developmental Structure for Subject and Spirit,” which Belinskii would have surely identified. The unifying thread of Goncharov’s trilogy is Hegel’s notion of history as an expanding spiral.10 Each succeeding novel contains, expands, and complicates the previous one; as in Hegel’s conception of history, this structure manifests itself both diachronically, in the succession of historical time periods, and synchronically, on ontological and conceptual, subjective and intersubjective, and socio-historical levels. Each subsequent novel in the trilogy recapitulates the previous one yet broadens its scope, forming a whole with an expanding trajectory, and only as a whole does the trilogy convey an all-encompassing sense of history that repeats itself within a circular progression. In Goncharov’s novels, similar narrative strategies seem to be at work. They are salient in how each succeeding historical epoch is seen as the necessary result of the previous one. They are also notable in how each novel enlarges the scope of narration, looking not just at different epochs, but also panning back, allowing the reader access to the persistent structures, but now from different, expanding perspectives. These different frames are revealed first, in a single consciousness (A Common Story), then in the socially constructed self-consciousness (Oblomov), and finally within Spirit, in the social and historical world (The Precipice). The novels also roughly correspond to the Hegelian categories of Original History, Reflexive History, and Philosophic History. In an indication that Goncharov conceived of his novels as a trilogy, I would note that he had already begun planning his third novel by the end of 1840s while he was still writing Oblomov. The fact that all three of the novels’ titles start with ob strongly suggests that that they are meant to be understood as some kind of a continuum. Goncharov claims that the trilogy is bound by a unifying thread, a consecutive idea, Russian’s transition from one epoch to the next one, change in an ever-expanding context.11 In “Better Late than Never,” Goncharov insists on their commonality: “I mentioned above that I see one novel, not three. They are all connected with one unifying thread, one consecutive idea—transition from one epoch of the Russian life I lived to the next—and the reflection of their 10 See Chizhevskii, Gegel’ v Rossii, and Terras, Belinskij and Russian Literary Criticism. 11 Not collapse or decay (the third law of thermodynamics, the doomed Newtonian world) but a different sense of “embodied substance,” more spiritual and Aristotelian.

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phenomenon in my depictions, portraits, scenes and minute details.”12 He saw each of the novels as reflecting a particular historical moment, a decade of Russian life: A Common Story illustrates, in the example of Aleksandr’s transformation into his uncle, the defeat of Romanticism by the so-called Realism of the 1840s. Oblomov describes the ensuing decade of disillusionment, the epoch of “sleep,” while The Precipice depicts the “awakening” of the 1860s. Before turning to Goncharov’s trilogy to identify Hegelian threads and structures, I will first clarify what I mean by a Hegelian approach to history. This will allow me to articulate the ways in which Goncharov adapts an essentially Hegelian view of history in his narratives. After this brief introduction, the chapter will present one section for each of the novels: “A Common Story: Dialectical Antinomies of Opposing Worldviews”; “Oblomov: From Determinate Negation to Re-Cognized Unity and Synthesis”; “The Precipice: Dialectics of Art in Accelerated Motion of Synthetic Sublation”; and close with a concluding coda.

The Hegelian Conception of History as the Developmental Structure for Subject and Spirit Hegel delivered lecture courses on the philosophy of history at the University of Berlin five times between the winter term of 1822–1823 and the winter term of 1830–1831.13 Numerous commentators—Houlgate and Taylor among others—agree that, for Hegel, historical change is marked by the transformation of conceptual presuppositions.14 When a set of conceptual presuppositions reveals a fundamental contradiction, a new historical form necessarily emerges as the result of this failure, as, for example, in the way Hegel sees “the moral view of the world” turning into “dissemblance or duplicity” until they are both sublated in “conscience,” which synthesizes the ‘beautiful soul’ with evil and its forgiveness.”15

12 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, vol. 6, 444, 449. 13 Joseph McCarney, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel on History (London: Routledge, 2000), 7. 14 Stephen Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 4–5. 15 G. F. W. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 364, 410.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

Hegel insists that Spirit is necessarily embodied (“substance is equally subject”). Thus, for him, the succession of historical forms emerging from contradictions between conceptual presuppositions is also present on the level of the subject. In other words, this confrontation and resolution are manifested in the consciousness of finite individualized beings. For this reason, Hegel’s philosophy of history is greatly clarified by The Phenomenology of Spirit (1806), which he considered an introduction to his entire philosophical system (in addition to philosophy of history, The Phenomenology of Spirit includes Hegel’s philosophy of nature, logic, and aesthetics). To demonstrate how historical change accompanies changes in the subject, in The Phenomenology, Hegel uses three different frames through which historical change can be observed. The first frame focuses on the level of conceptual presuppositions observed in a single consciousness; the second one situates these conceptual presuppositions within the intersubjective context of the self-conscious being; and the third one centers on how these conceptual presuppositions play out on the level of Spirit (Geist), that is, on the social and historical platform. Interestingly enough, in Hegel’s introduction to Philosophy of History, he describes three different perspectives that any historian can adopt in relation to his subject matter, essentially repeating the tripartite pattern of historical forms discussed above. In Original History, the historian has a direct, immediate relationship to the events he describes; he is immersed in them. In Reflective History, the historian is removed in time from the past he recounts in his history. In Philosophical History, the historian focuses on the persistent structures present in history, on what stays the same while everything else changes, and on the necessary aspects of those changes themselves. Thus, in Hegel’s historiographical analysis, subjectivity corresponds to three sorts of historical accounts: the self corresponds to Original History; the self-other relationship corresponds to Reflective History; and a historian who presents a Philosophical History necessarily synthesizes these previous forms by focusing on the unfolding Spirit of history itself. In the frames of consideration in The Phenomenology and in the groupings in The History of Philosophy, temporal distance—the dilatory space between the events, and the historian’s description of those events—serves a determining role. In The Phenomenology, distance determines the scope of narration, its focus. In The Philosophy of History, distance is used to classify different historical genres. From the perspective

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of The Philosophy of History, The Phenomenology itself could be viewed as an example of philosophical history. It is revealing that the dynamic distance of philosophical history here is achieved by what can be called novelistic means. The observing phenomenological consciousness corresponds closely to our sense of the narrator’s role in a novel. That narrator describes the experience of the “natural consciousness” (the character), allowing the reader to witness similar structures at work from various perspectives. I should reiterate that, for Hegel, history “happens” on both the social, objective level, and on the personal, subjective level. That is to say, one can witness the progress of history by examining social institutions (for example) and that this historical process is also reflected on subjective level of individual consciousness. On the level of the subject, conceptual changes occur and movement is created due to both intersubjective contradictions and internal contradictions. In this way, the scope of the spiral expands not only from one historical form to another but also from conceptual transformations inside a singular consciousness to the role of these transformations in self-consciousness, the level of the subject, and, finally, to how such transformations in various subjects play out historically. On the most basic level of consciousness, the subject first sees the world as an independent external reality and the other as its opposition, its negativity. This opposition, of course, will reveal a contradiction (showing that the other is in fact itself) and lead to a transformation. As Charles Taylor writes, “The notion that the world is posited will allow Hegel to use a language in which he talks not just of things being identical with their other, but of things turning into their other.”16 With this Hegelian notion of Original History, Reflexive History, and Philosophical History” in mind, we can see how each decade represented in Goncharov’s narratives is distinct, yet also repeats patterns found in the previous one. Each novel examines these different yet analogous decades from various perspectives. The first novel looks at a particular conceptual switch within one consciousness; the second novel shows how such changes affect the overall life of a self-conscious being; and the third shows how such changes play out in a community. In short, each novel in the trilogy describes events of a particular decade in Russia’s history (the 1840s, 50s, and 60s), and each novel has a particular narrative frame 16 Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 109.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

that forms a unit as an expanding spiral. When read as an intentional series, the trilogy reveals an overall expanding trajectory that forms a unit—a systematic view of history akin to Hegel’s historic-philosophical paradigm.

A Common Story: Dialectical Antinomies of Opposing Worldviews The plot trajectory of Goncharov’s novel A Common Story follows the first movement of the Hegelian dialectic—namely, a shape of consciousness turning into its opposite as the novel traces the transformation of its idealistic protagonist Aleksandr Aduev into his antipode—the pragmatic uncle Petr Aduev. It is significant that one could translate the title variously: An Ordinary Story/History, A Common Story/History, or The Same Old Story. This double meaning of “story” / “history,” which is lost in translation, is crucial here as it hints at the subjective and communal levels of historical conception at work. A Common Story begins with the anticipation of change, with the upcoming disruption of the current unity between the subject and its surroundings as young Aleksandr Aduev prepares to leave his idyllic country life with “traditional” values to try to realize his dreams in the big and relatively progressive city of St. Petersburg. Seeking advice and patronage in the new and promising world, Aleksandr approaches his successful and pragmatic uncle Petr in the city. Their extreme opposition is emphasized throughout the novel. The uncle tells Alexander that he should not have come: “Your nature, it seems, is not such as to get accustomed to the new order. . . . You are a dreamer, and there is no place here for dreamers. . . . Here all your notions need to be turned upside down.”17 The uncle observes that there is a “great difference” between himself and his nephew in terms of temperament and character. Aleksandr is resistant to change and does not consider reconciliation with his pragmatic and “realist” uncle possible. He, too, sees a difference between them but interprets it as a difference between two contradictory worldviews: “My uncle,” he writes to a friend, “is very prosaic. . . . It is as if his spirit is chained to the earth and never rises to a pure reflection, isolated from earthly squabbles, of the phenomena of the spiritual nature of man. For 17 Ivan Goncharov, A Common Story, in his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, vol.  1, 62–63.

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him heaven is inseparably bound to earth, and he and I, it seems, will never merge our souls completely.”18 In a Hegelian and dialectical manner, the novel is “the history of the abolition of this difference”: by the end the nephew and the uncle switch positions.19 This transformation of the nephew into the uncle happens not only on the level of the plot but also stylistically, on the level of language. Petr, who claims to call things by “their proper names,” often makes fun of Aleksandr’s inflated language “of a professor of aesthetics,” and the uncle’s “simple language” is continuously contrasted with the nephew’s “wild talk.” V. B. Brodskaia reads the novel as an opposition of two styles of speech, and U. V. Mann in his study of “the natural school” calls this opposition the “dialogic conflict” of the novel, which is, of course, also dialectical in nature.20 Even the characterization of “the professor of aesthetics” connects us to Hegel in multiple ways. As Galya Diment notes in her discussion of similarities between Aduev and young Goncharov himself, “Aduev also shares [with Goncharov] three years at Moscow University. While there, Aleksandr is said to have worshipped the eloquence of ‘our great, unforgettable Ivan Semionych,’ whose rhetorical style closely resembles that of Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin, young Goncharov’s own beloved professor of esthetics.”21 Nadezhdin was a noted Schellingian, who had lectured extensively on Hegel’s logic, aesthetics, and philosophy of history in general. Nadezhdin’s influence is present here not only in this homage through the “great, unforgettable Ivan Semionych,” but also through Goncharov’s intricate incorporation of the philosophy he had learned partially from Nadezhdin into his novels. Speaking as a “professor of aesthetics” is presented as a negative trait from the perspective of the uncle, but this “wild talk” is not only how Aleksandr communicates, but also what Goncharov analyzes. As Milton Ehre argues, the novel “is only apparently the story of two characters diametrically opposed to each other. Actually, it is a novel 18 Ibid., vol. 1, 65. 19 Milton Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973), 114. 20 V. B. Brodskaia, “Iazyk i stil’ romana I. A. Goncharova ‘Obyknovennaia istoriia,’” Voprosy slavianskogo  iazykoznaniia 3 (1953); Iu. V. Mann, “Filosofiia i poetika ‘natural’noi shkoly,’” in Problemy tipologii russkogo realizma, ed. N. L. Stepanov and U. R. Fokht (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), 246. 21 Galya Diment, The Autobiographical Novel of Co-Consciousness: Goncharov, Woolf, and Joyce (University of Florida Press, 1994), 25–26.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

where one character recapitulates the history of the other. The uncle’s “common story” took place before the novel began.”22 The earlier stage of youthful enthusiasm already contains the seeds of pragmatism that will grow over time, and as the nephew assumes the role of the uncle, the latter is reminded of his past romantic self. In a sense, the uncle and the nephew turn out to have been the same all along, and the difference between them is only a temporal one. Their stories are the same but have taken place at different historical junctures. Over the course of the novel the nephew is alienated from his romantic self and becomes more like his uncle, but the uncle turns out to have already undergone the same process in his youth. Mann suggests that the difference lies in the appearances, the level of expression—that is to say, in their self-presentation and linguistic style. The dialogic conflict turns out to be dialectical in nature. The novel is replete with conceptual oppositions that switch positions: poetry and prose; romanticism and realism; idealism and materialism; transcendental and earthly pragmatic concerns, and so on. By the end of the novel the opposition between these poles is challenged as positions switch. Petr’s wife Lizaveta Aleksandrovna seems to occupy a space in the middle between uncle and nephew when it comes to the realm of emotion. Her unhappiness pushes Pёtr to reevaluate his life priorities. Perhaps she could have embodied a kind of resolution or synthesis of their contrasting states, but the novel only demonstrates this second stage of the dialectic, namely the move from thesis to antithesis, or in Hegel’s own terminology, from unity to alienation, without providing any synthesis or consciously regained unity. It is not until the next novel of the trilogy that unity emerges, becoming part of the next novel’s plot. As can be seen from even a brief list of the antipodes that collide in the novel, they concern character and worldview as well as historical tendencies of the decade and epochs of prevailing aesthetic forms and theories. A Common Story can be read as a parody of the often-misinterpreted Hegelian notion of “reconciliation with reality” for no reconciliation, in fact, takes place. The novel does not even present a synthesis, and only showcases the dialectic from thesis to antithesis or from unity to alienation, in Hegel’s own terminology. The subsequent novels will zoom out, maintaining this dialectical change within its fabric and structure, but encompassing more. Oblomov 22 Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator, 127.

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will not only introduce a nuanced reorientation from external and discursive representation to a much more internal and even potentially anti-discursive exposition, but will also offer synthesis at the end. The Precipice will go so far as to end with a crucial phase, one that is not fully achieved even within The Phenomenology itself—namely, mutual recognition.

Oblomov: From Determinate Negation to Re-Cognized Unity and Synthesis Goncharov’s second novel in the trilogy, Oblomov, expands the scope of narration: it will show not only how disenchantment follows alienation diachronically but also how, synchronically, opposing notions interact on a more complex, subjective and intersubjective levels, and how they construct the self-consciousness of the hero. Oblomov’s departure from his idyllic family estate is only glossed over, as this episode was already dealt with in detail in the previous novel with Aleksandr’s departure. We find Oblomov in St.  Petersburg, already disappointed both with his youthful aspirations and with the urban conditions. We have moved from the decade of “dreamers” (1840s) of A Common Story to the decade of “sleepers” (1850s). The Precipice, according to Goncharov, is set in the decade of “awakening,” namely the reformative (1860s). Oblomov’s narration is also more internally focused. Its plot does not trace the hero’s socialization and transformation into “everyman,” as in A Common Story, but instead focuses on the protagonist’s resistance to accepting the values of society with its prefabricated identities. Oblomov’s intersubjective relations, the distinctions between him and the “others” (drugie) are not simple and programmatic. In other words, the dialectic is once again woven through the fabric of the novel in addition to providing its overall structure. As a dialectical hero, Oblomov himself turns his views upside down, one moment feeling his superiority over the others, the next lamenting his inferiority, and in the next part of the novel, in fact, trying to be like these others. When his serf Zakhar dares to compare him to “others” because these others work all the time, run around without stopping, and humble themselves in front of superiors, Oblomov is offended. Yet only a few pages later, he arrives at a diametrically opposed definition of the others: “‘the other’—hardly sleeps,” he notes yawning, “‘the other’ is

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

amused by life, goes everywhere, sees everything, everything triggers his curiosity . . . And I! . . . . am not ‘an other!’”23 In addition to recognizing a difference between himself and the others, Oblomov recognizes a difference within himself: “All this, after all, I could have  .  .  .  after all, I can write, it seems; I used to write, it happened, not only letters, but things much smarter! Where did that all disappear to?”24 What the narrator calls one of the clearest and “most conscious moments in Oblomov’s life” is not only the recognition of an unrealized potential but also an internal contradiction, a difference within his own identity, between the self and the not-self. Hegel, who had defined identity as self-consciousness, writes: “Identity is at the same time self-relation, and what is more, negative self-relation; in other words, it draws distinction between it and itself.”25 This is a temporal self-difference that Oblomov recognizes, very much in accordance with Hegelian dialectic and difference within primary and secondary qualities of real and normative essences: “The internal relationships of an entity may secure for it enough determinacy for its parts to be different from each other, but not for it to be different from some other entity to which it is otherwise unrelated. This seems to be one of the points of Hegel’s curious argument against the suggestion that there are two different worlds, one of which is the inverse of the other.”26 It is the realization of this distinction, of a contradiction within himself, that drives Oblomov to question his identity (and to contextualize it through his dream) and to attempt to connect with his previous more active self. “Contradiction is the very moving principle of the world,” writes Hegel.27 Oblomov realizes this contradiction, the difference between himself and his past self. His closest friend, Stolz, also verbalizes this gap. Oblomov then moves from the “inactive” part one of the novel to the activity of parts two and three, where he again reads and writes, attends social gatherings, courts Olga, and even travels out of town and moves to another apartment. He now begins to act in the manner of his guests, whom he had earlier criticized heavily in his mind for their “meaningless” running around and their pretense of activity. This activity, when Oblomov becomes aware of 23 Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov, trans. S. Pearl (New York: Bunim & Bannigan, 2006), 129. 24 Ibid. 25 Hegel, “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, or The Lesser Logic,” in William Wallace, The Logic of Hegel (Frankfurt am Main: Outlook Verlag GmbH, 2018), 163. 26 Michael Inwood, Hegel (New York: Routledge Press, 2002), 124. 27 Hegel, “Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences,” 174.

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it, reveals another contradiction, that between his physical activities and spiritual aspirations. In other words, he comes to realize that he does not desire what Stolz and Olga wish for him. This contradiction is of a different sort. Previously the gap was between two temporally removed selves, and brought up the question of what made these two selves with such different characteristics into a single individual. Now the gap is between the inner self and the outer expression. The question is: What makes this active social engagement the correct way to live if it does not correspond to and does not reflect Oblomov’s own desires? If the realization of the previous contradiction had moved Oblomov outwards and into attempts at transforming himself into a certain opposite, the realization of the contradiction between his inner and outer lives moves him to revert to his former self. This is not a return without a difference, of course, but a unity, mediated by experience, a regression that is also temporal progress. Oblomov breaks things off with Olga, whose ultimate goal was to change her lover, to prevent him from the sedentary and peaceful life he enjoyed so much and to make him more like his mobile and energetic friend Stolz. Oblomov gives up his hopes of realizing himself according to Olga’s and Stolz’s expectations, moves to the Vyborg Side, and dons his dressing gown, the infamous symbol of his sluggish domestic existence. He marries his widowed landlady, who takes care of him like his mother and the nannies took care of him in Oblomovka. It is also important to remember that, in addition to realizing his own dreams of an idyllic domestic life, Oblomov becomes a source of happiness for his wife, Agafia Matveevna, and her children, whom he accepts equally together with the son Agafia bore him. Moreover, Oblomov himself was now the very embodiment, the true and perfect personification of peace, quiet, contentment and tranquility. As he examined and contemplated his existence, as he settled deep into it, he had finally concluded that he had nowhere further to go, nothing further to seek, that he had achieved his ideal, although without the poetry, without the grace and distinction with which his imagination had sometimes invested it when he used to dream of a seigneurial, spacious style of life on his ancestral country estate amidst his peasants and retainers.28

28 Goncharov, Oblomov, 418.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

Admittedly, Oblomov dies shortly after this realization, but he dies a happy man, in his preferred state, which is sleep.29 Why is a man who dies having realized all his dreams and ideals considered by his friends as well as readers and critics alike a failure? Why is that the case, even if Oblomov spends the last part of his life in a way of life that he has chosen and that corresponds to his inner nature? The answer to this question is circular: it is precisely because of the lack of this recognition that Oblomov’s agency is not successful. As Hegel reminds us, the subject’s own identification with his actions (or the lack thereof) is not sufficient. This correspondence has to be recognized by his community (in the first instance, by the narrator who is telling the story) for the agency to be successful. It is possible to assume that the non-Stolz narrator understands better; consider how telling it is that he is described as also having “sleepy eyes” at the very end of the book.30 The lack of equilibrium between Oblomov’s own self-realization and the narrator’s valued judgement of it (Stolz’s perspective) gives more responsibility and agency to the reader, requiring him to recognize both the novel’s narrative structure and Oblomov’s agency. Oblomov is all too often read as a “plot-less” novel about the eponymous protagonist’s purported “laziness” and his “inability” to deal with the outside world. The novel, in fact, is said to be an antithesis to a Bildungsroman. According to Diment and many other Goncharov critics, Oblomov has a relatively simple structure and plot, yet is successful despite the looseness of its plot. Dmitrii Pisarev, Goncharov’s contemporary writer and social critic claims that not only is Oblomov inactive due to his own nature, but that the novel itself has almost no events or action in it, and its plot can be summarized in two or three lines. If we consider the structural and philosophic similarities between the novel and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, we can challenge this pervasive interpretation. Oblomov is a philosophical novel about movement and becoming, rather than stagnation, and Oblomov’s seeming lack of agency is, in fact, agency in and of itself. Looking into the dialectic nature of Goncharov’s thought and the questions of awakening, transformation, and death, we might suggest that while in 29 Before we deem Oblomov’s agency unsuccessful, we also have to consider the book’s place within the trilogy. Whereas the first novel showed the most basic step of the dialectic of oppositions collapsing into each other, Oblomov demonstrates the unfolding of the dialectic in the subject formation, and only the third novel expands its scope wide enough to demonstrate how this plays out in the society at large. 30 The narrator’s “sleepy eyes” are generally understood to recall Goncharov himself, who was aware that people compared him to a sleepy-eyed fish.

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The Phenomenology “the discussion progresses from ‘Consciousness’ to ‘Absolute Knowing,’ as Hegel tries to teach us how dialectical thinking is possible, and what it might ultimately achieve,” in Oblomov the plot is moving from Oblomov’s struggle to deal with the outside world (‘consciousness’ stage and into self-consciousness), to Oblomov’s death. Goncharov attempts to show how the symbiosis of opposites is possible (perhaps even necessary), and what it might ultimately achieve—a philosophical novel about the very nature of dialectical progression. Oblomov does in fact “develop” and “progress” in a way similar to how Hegel’s hero consciousness progresses through failure and success, moving from determinateness to self-reflection and back to determinateness circling through the dialectic, where a return is not simply “regress” but implies progress as well. Georg Lukács discusses Oblomov as an example of the “Romanticism of Disillusionment.”31 For Lukács, the novel is the epic of the world abandoned by God, a world that has lost the subject’s unity with it. The novel forms that emerge as a consequence of this alienation rely on a discord between the subject and the world: either the soul is narrower than the world (“Abstract Idealism”) or the soul is “wider and larger than the destinies which life has to offer it” (“Romanticism of Disillusionment”).32 The latter is: a purely interior reality which is full of content and more or less complete in itself enters into competition with the reality of the outside world, leads a rich and animated life of its own and, with spontaneous self-confidence, regards itself as the only true reality, the essence of the world: and the failure of every attempt to realize this equality is the subject of the work.33

Lukacs’s theory and classification is inherently Hegelian, of course. Lukacs himself acknowledges that he wrote The Theory of the Novel during his intellectual turn from Kant to Hegel. Both the emergence of the novel as a result of an alienated world after the unity of the epic world and the outward and inward directionality of “Abstract Idealism” and “Romanticism of Disillusionment” are dialectically constructed. Not surprisingly, the next category is “Attempted Synthesis.” We could see how Goncharov’s trilogy could be interpreted as following these three types of novels. But we could 31 Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971), 112. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

also argue that Oblomov could be read as an “Attempted Synthesis” as well, if we acknowledge that Oblomov finds realization in the world on his own authentic terms and regains unity in a self-conscious manner. This realization, however, is often ignored because it remains outside the main narrative frame due to that frame’s specific construction. As in A Common Story, Hegelian notions such as identity/difference and negation are at the heart of character development in Oblomov. Before Oblomov’s dream, the ending of part one provides the protagonist with a personal history and suggests reasons for his current disenchanted state. He is first introduced to the reader as “non-distinct” and then developed as a character through determinate negation. For Hegel, determinate negation yields positive content, which means that by determining what something is not, we delineate what it is: “For it is only when it is taken as the result of that from which it emerges, that it is, in fact, the true result; in that case it is itself a determinate nothingness, one which has a content.”34 Soon after Oblomov’s struggles to wake up at the beginning of the novel, guests begin to arrive, one after another. Whereas A Common Story is mostly composed of drawing room conversations, the entire part one of Oblomov takes place in the protagonist’s study. However, instead of one contrasting worldview of Aleksandr’s uncle, Oblomov is presented with multiple different perspectives. His five guests, each representing a particular social “type,” express their characters in conversation, in the course of which, and by negating each worldview in his mind, Oblomov develops his own character, for himself and for the reader. He resembles neither the social butterfly Volkov nor the careerist Sudbinskii, neither the garrulous journalist Penkin nor the opportunistic Tarantiev. Importantly, he is nothing like Alekseev, a man of no distinct features: as Hegel has shown, determinate negation does yield a positive content. In the process of rejecting the worldviews of his guests, Oblomov builds up his own. The way Oblomov’s character is developed reflects Hegel’s view that self-consciousness is socially constructed and that it is through intersubjective relations that a person becomes aware of his identity. Oblomov’s rejection of activity is not mere negativity, just as Hegel’s Spirit, in negating and overcoming contradiction, produces a positive, something that exceeds the sum of the two opposed concepts.

34 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 51.

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The Precipice: Dialectics of Art in Accelerated Motion of Sublation The Precipice, the longest and most complicated novel of the trilogy, incorporates themes and elements from the previous novels. However, as part of an expanding spiral, it offers a change of perspective. It also deals much more explicitly with the themes introduced more latently in the previous novels: subject and identity construction (Bildung or anti-Bildung), the relationships between form and content, intergenerational conflict, various art forms, and the ebb and flow of human energy and interest in life. More self-conscious both in form and content, The Precipice is also much more concerned with itself: it is a self-referential meta-novel, which writes itself through Raiskii’s failure to write. The protagonist of The Precipice, Raiskii, is often viewed as the reincarnation of Oblomov, the way Oblomov is seen to be the reincarnation of Aduev, albeit at different time periods. Goncharov himself writes in the preface to the novel: All the characters—Aduev, Oblomov, Raiskii, and others comprise one character, hereditarily reincarnated—and in Grandmother the whole old Russian life was reflected with barely verdant fresh sprouts of Vera, Marfenka . . . someday I’ll point out this connection myself, but now I only regret that I did not clarify everything at an earlier time.35

To complicate the matter, Goncharov distributes Oblomov’s signature qualities among many different characters in The Precipice (as Hegel does with “shapes of consciousness” in The Phenomenology). He thus shows how the same states of consciousness can manifest themselves differently in different subjects and how the “rigid immobile forms” of apparent oppositions are much more multiform than first meets the eye. The Precipice opens with an introduction of two gentlemen: Boris Pavlovich Raiskii and Ivan Ivanovich Aianov. The descriptions of Raiskii’s appearance remind the reader of the opening paragraphs of Oblomov. But whereas Oblomov’s facial expressions never lose their softness, even as they fluctuate between worry and boredom, changeability is Raiskii’s defining trait.36 In terms of behavioral characteristics, Aianov at first seems to be the complete opposite 35 “Predislovie k romanu ‘Obryv,’” in I. A. Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1952–1955), vol. 8, 141–169. 36 It is important to note that Raiskii is only a few years older than Oblomov: they are both in their mid-thirties.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

of Oblomov, and shows many traits of Oblomov’s guests: he attends parties like Volkov, and has an official position but hardly works like Sudbinskii. But within the same opening pages, we find out that Aianov refuses to leave Petersburg, like Oblomov. Just like Oblomov, he has health issues from sedentary life and has been prescribed by a doctor to travel to some spring waters, yet refuses to travel. In his article “The Intentions, Issues and Ideas of the Novel The Precipice,” Goncharov writes: “In a true work of art . . . people themselves have to recur in various types under the influence of this or that nature, customs, and upbringing, so that some constant and determinate image of a form of life appears and people of this form appear in various kinds and examples.”37 In The Precipice, Goncharov also crafts Sofiia, Raiskii’s cousin and romantic interest, as another reincarnation of Oblomov, albeit one apparently devoid of emotions. Raiskii claims that Sofiia has withdrawn from life into the past of her ancestors and is sleeping her life away. Moreover, Sofiia herself repeats—almost verbatim—certain views expressed by Oblomov. She also contrasts herself with the others that have to work and worry. But while Oblomov had articulated this sentiment to his serf, Sofiia expresses it to Raiskii, who talks back, telling her that her political views are problematic. Familiar attributes and characteristics, situations and conversations persist in this playfully congested manner, preventing the reader from clearly mapping the characters of this novel onto those of the previous ones.38 Raiskii’s friend Leontii, the bookworm of the novel, also looks to the past for inspiration and ideals: he loves antiquity so much, he perceives his own promiscuous wife as a Roman statue, and argues that antiquity already knows all the forms modernity might need. Raiskii wonders if Leontii fails to believe in progress and development—his own favorite concepts: How can I not believe? I believe! All this rubbish and trifle that modern man has crumbled into will disappear: all this is preparatory work, collecting and a mixing of not yet cognized material. These historical crumbs will gather and be molded by the hand of fate again into one mass, and colossal figures will pour out of this mass again over time, an even, whole life will flow 37 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 6, 527. 38 Moreover, both the characteristics and the situation are complicated in The Precipice. Whereas in Oblomov the protagonist’s qualities were mostly treated as personal attributes (for example, how Oblomov relates to his own thoughts), now they attain an external, social significance (how enthusiasm or indifference affect the social relations of the characters).

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again, which will subsequently form a second antiquity. How not to believe in progress! We lost the path, lagged behind great examples, lost many of the secrets of their being. Our business now is to gradually climb the lost path again and to achieve the same strength, the same perfection in thought, in science, in rights, in mores and in one’s social economy  .  .  .  wholeness in virtues and, perhaps, in vices! The baseness, the little things, and the rubbish—everything will turn pale: a man will straighten himself and will again stand on his iron legs . . . That is progress!39

Like many German Romantics and German idealists such as Hegel, Leontii views antiquity as a lost paradise with a unity (tsel’naia zhizn’), from which modernity has been alienated, but which can—and will—be regained. When Raiskii expresses surprise that Leontii is the “same old student,” who nurtures “life that has outlived itself,” Leontii points out that he “nurtures people who have outlived themselves” whereas Raiskii nurtures “ideals and patterns/forms (obrazy) that have never lived” and claims that art also feeds on antiquity.40 Raiskii himself sees Leontii existing within “the simplicity of life forms,” within “a narrow frame.”41 Raiskii’s concern with aesthetics is also intricately connected with his concern with love. In his lectures on aesthetics, Hegel writes: “As this subjective spiritual depth of feeling, love does not occur in classical art, and when love does make its appearance there, it is generally only a subordinate feature in the representation or only connected with sensuous enjoyment.”42 In the production of Romantic art, by contrast, love, Hegel claims, plays “a preponderating role.”43 Raiskii fluctuates between these two domains: the realm of classical art in which form and content correspond and produce only sensuous pleasure and Romantic art in which love is a decisive factor and a driving force. Raiskii is facing a problem that Belinskii had identified in his review of A Common Story: the Romantic’s and idealist’s inability to love due to the dynamic of preconceived notions about love and its cerebral rather than emotional nature. A theoretical approach to love, related to idealism, theory, program, etc., which Hegelian

39 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 6, 207–208. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 222. 42 G. F. W. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010), 563. 43 Ibid., 562.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

dialectics is meant to sublate, according to Belinskii, impedes its practical realization. As Belinskii writes, Every kind of love is true and wonderful in its own right as long as it is in the heart and not the mind. But Romantics are especially inclined towards cerebral love. First they come up with a program of love and then they look for a woman worthy of them, and in consequence of her absence love someone else in the meantime: it costs them nothing to command themselves to love for they do everything with their head and not their heart. They need love neither for happiness nor for pleasure, but for the justifications of their lofty theories of love in action. They love by the book and most of all fear any digressions from a single paragraph of their program. Their main purpose is lofty love that never condescends to the level of ordinary people.44

Raiskii’s “program” or love narrative is so heavily based on Pygmalion and Galatea that, when feeling defeated, he gives up both on his novel and Romantic notions of love and turns to sculpting, a classical form of art. At the end of Oblomov we meet the narrator of the book, to whom Stolz tells Oblomov’s life story; in The Precipice we might similarly wonder if the book we are reading may be the very novel Raiskii is struggling to write. The Precipice has the widest scope and most complicated plot of the trilogy and it ends with an event that Goncharov himself considered the culmination of the trilogy. Ilya Kliger points out that “The reception history of The Precipice has repeatedly highlighted the fact that the very sections of the novel Goncharov believed to be crucial have been almost unanimously condemned by its critics.”45 What saves Vera from her paralyzing bout of melancholy is the grandmother’s own confession that she had gone through a similar experience in her youth.46 This event reminds us of the ending and the overall trajectory and plot of A Common Story, where Aleksandr and his uncle exchange roles as we learn about the uncle’s past. But there is an essential difference between what happens between Aleksandr and his uncle and between Vera and grandmother. Aleksandr and the uncle never acknowledge the validity of the other’s 44 Vissarion Belinskii, “Vzgliad na russkuiu literaturu 1847 goda,” in his Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh (Moscow: OGIZ, GIKHL, 1948), vol. 3, 766-857, 823. 45 Ilya Kliger, “Resurgent Forms in Ivan Goncharov and Aleksandr Veselovsky: Toward a Historical Poetics of Tragic Realism,” Russian Review 71, no. 4 (2012): 4. 46 We could consider here the (dialectical) importance of melancholy in relation to sloth (Oblomov) and acedia.

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position, but through the negation of their own position end up in the place of the other. While in A Common Story, the nephew finds out about the uncle’s past, in The Precipice, it is the matriarch of the novel who confesses that she had had a love life similar to her niece Vera’s. In A Common Story, the realization of shared experience did not bring reconciliation, but in The Precipice there is forgiveness following this confession. Moreover, if in Oblomov, the return to the world of his childhood was achieved only through the similarity between ways of life in Oblomovka and The Vyborg Side apartment, in The Precipice Raiskii is actually back at his childhood home Malinovka, and involved within his community. Ehre argues that The Precipice “concludes with the most extensive, if not the most convincing, synthesis in Goncharov’s fiction.”47 Crucially for this analysis, this is not just the conclusion of the third novel, but the resolution of the trilogy towards which each individual novel was moving by building up on the previous one and widening its scope to arrive at a totalizing and all-encompassing synthesis at the end. In his early Christian writings, in a little piece titled “Love,” Hegel claims that love can break down the opposition between subject and object and introduce unity to life. A certain disappointment in the power of love to break down all opposition led Hegel to the idea of dialectical motion and development. He renames “Life” as “Spirit” and “Love” as “Mutual Recognition,” casting it as only a possibility, which never takes place and only drives the dialectic forward. What takes place between Vera and the Grandmother is mutual confession and recognition. Mutual recognition is a potentiality in sections of The Phenomenology such as the master and slave dialectic, pleasure and necessity, the law of the heart and the frenzy of self-deceit and so on, which are all moments in a larger dialectical progression, i.e. that they are all historical, not merely free-floating concepts. In the large section titled “Morality,” also a stage in The Phenomenology that has the analogue of the final synthesis in confession, Hegel describes the very possibility of a mutual confession that remains impossible in the context of recognition. Here consciousness is split into yet another duality of extremes: acting and judging consciousnesses. When the acting consciousness confesses (“I am wicked”), instead of recognizing oneself in the other’s actions (“I am wicked too”), the judging consciousness 47 Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator, 245.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Unifying Thread of Goncharov’s Trilogy

judges (“You are wicked!”).48 The action of the judging consciousness relies on hypocrisy, “because it passes off such judging, not as another manner of being wicked, but as the correct consciousness of the action, setting itself up in this unreality and conceit of knowing well and better above the deeds it discredits, and wanting its words without deeds to be taken for a superior kind of reality.”49 The acting consciousness, however, perceives this judging precisely as another manner of being wicked and judges it as such, thus the confession remains one-sided and the situation is reversed. This transforms the acting consciousness into a judging consciousness and the positions are switched, not unlike with Aleksandr and his uncle. However, Vera’s confession is followed by a similar and reciprocal confession from the Grandmother, presenting the ultimate synthesis of the trilogy. This reciprocity and crucial moment of synthesis does not only restore unity of identities in difference but functions as an expansion that reinforces the structural architectonics of the Hegelian expanding spiral.

Conclusion Goncharov was convinced that contemporary critics failed to notice the unifying Hegelian thread of the three novels. He bemoaned the fact that Belinskii, who had written a positive review of the first novel in the trilogy, had not lived to see the publication of the final two parts. Today, critics rarely consider Goncharov’s novels as a trilogy; when they do read it as a trilogy, they usually privilege one novel over the other two. In addition, recent studies have tended to dismiss the particular sense of history at work in Goncharov’s trilogy: Ehre, in Oblomov and his Creator claims that Goncharov’s characters “drift out of time and history.” 50 Diment in Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion similarly comments on Goncharov’s “remarkable lack of historical perspective.” Here, I have sought to demonstrate that far from “lacking historical perspective,” Goncharov’s work has a very particular—and very Hegelian— philosophy of history at its core, one that can only be articulated by examining each novel in the context of the trilogy. The compositional history of the trilogy as well as Goncharov’s later remarks attest to this 48 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 405. 49 Ibid. 50 Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator, 12.

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underlying structure of an expanding spiral and the trilogy’s unified diachronic and synchronic dialectical development. What is intriguing about Goncharov’s treatment of history is its adherence to the notion that historical change transpires in a pre-determined manner: each historical period can find its cause in the preceding period, each repeats its predecessor and unfolds from the latter’s contradictions, revealing a very Hegelian, dialectical understanding of historical change, which operates within substance as well as subject. This figuring of history as an Archimedean spiral is clear even from the titles, which all begin with the letter “O” (in Russian ob).51 These circles are inscribed into each story’s title. When placed together in three dimensions, they articulate a curve, which comprises a spiral.

51 The titles, all three starting with ob, do tend to hint that by the time he was writing Oblomov he was already thinking of some kind of a continuum, which he then upheld with Obryv.

Longing, Replacement, and Anti-Economy in Oblomov Sonja Koroliov

Oblomov is a character whom we do not necessarily associate with movement. As Russian literature’s most famous homebody and couch potato, he notoriously needs more than a hundred pages to get out of bed and into his slippers. He never goes out, not even on a holiday, and never travels.1 He is forced to move out of his flat, but, once he finds himself in his new accommodation, he stays put and there seem to be no circumstances urgent enough to lure him away. Even his death appears to be a consequence of his all too sedentary lifestyle. Immobility and stagnation are not just a matter of personal choice with Oblomov, though; as the research rightly suggests, a lack of mobility, both of people and goods, also characterizes the social class and even the economic system Oblomov stands for—the self-contained, feudal, agrarian society described in Oblomov’s dream is significantly defined by its utter lack of travel, mobility, and the movement of trade.2 It is fitting that Oblomovka, 1

2

This, of course, needs to be qualified by one notable exception: under the extraordinary circumstances of his courtship of Olga, he does leave his flat and even moves to a dacha for some time. However, even under these circumstances, his long-term intentions are focused on a long and peaceful future of staying at home, as we can infer from the images of his ideal life he describes to his friend Stolz. See for example Anne Lounsbery, “The World on the Back of a Fish: Mobility, Immobility, and Economics in Oblomov,” Russian Review 70, no. 1 (January 2011): 43–64.

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both the protagonist’s birthplace and dream hideaway, is remote and not on the railway. There is, however, movement in Oblomov—a movement that drives on the plot and our interest in it, that even makes for suspense, but also one that, by its nature, defines both the tragic and the comic plight in which we find this sympathetic character. I will call this the movement of desire, based on a specific, Oblomovian “economy of desire,” a concept which I will explain in the course of this chapter. I would like to argue that in Oblomov, a number of different aspects of desire are intertwined: a) longing or craving for the absent, as a remnant of the Sentimentalist discourse that runs through the novel; b) Schopenhauerian desire that necessarily originates in a lack and will necessarily create a new lack that will create a new desire; c) metonymy, defined as a fixation on the part of a whole, as well as the disappointment with the part for its not being the whole; d) Derridean desire, in which Oblomov is subject (or subjects himself) to a series of instances of différance—a deferral that in its very occurrence creates and plays out difference; and e) the consumer’s desire for certain goods and services with a view to (re)producing a certain lifestyle.3 These different forms of desire all feed into Oblomov at one point or another; interestingly, they are combined in the central character of the novel economically, that is, in a way as to indicate their essential connectedness and expose what I would like to call their common existential ground. The basic concept that enables this melting together is indefiniteness.4 The  con3 In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer describes the human condition as one necessarily based on lack that, in its fulfilment, creates new lack: “Of its nature the wish is pain; attainment quickly begets satiety. The goal was only apparent; possession takes away it charm. The wish, the need appears again on the scene under a new form; if it does not, then dreariness, emptiness and boredom follow. . . .” Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), §57, 313–314. Derrida on the other hand develops the concept of difference by (among other things) reference to present and past, which are ultimately both denied. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1997). It will become apparent that this quasi-temporal aspect is especially relevant in Oblomov. I argue for this view, as well a more general relevance of Derridean thinking, at a later stage in the text. 4 Leonhard Fuest chooses the term “indecisiveness,” which foregrounds the ethical/ action-related aspect but has wider implications: “. . . eine Unentschiedenheit, die so unheimlich, wenn nicht gar ungeheuerlich ist, daß sie bis heute und über den heutigen Tag hinaus die Moderne heimsuchen wird” (“An indecisiveness that is so eerie, if not even monstrous, that it will haunt modernity now and far beyond the present day,”

Longing, Replacement, and Anti-Economy in Goncharov’s Oblomov

cept of indefiniteness here encompasses various aspects. Next to  the action-related aspect, which casts Oblomov’s idleness primarily as a consequence of indecisiveness, there is also a more general aspect that seems to deny the possibility of definite judgement, planning and acting altogether. We find reflections of this in the shapeless, violent movement of Schopenhauer’s “will,” but also in Derrida’s denial of a finite meaning. Thus, indefiniteness undergoes some transformations in its Schopenhauerian and Proto-Derridean versions within the novel, but it is also—quite aside from Oblomov—a philosophical entity that connects postmodernity to Schopenhauer.5 Some aspects of postmodern thought in the wake of Schopenhauer are arguably prefigured in Goncharov’s thought and have flowed into his conception of the protagonist. I will show how Sentimentalist, superficially Schopenhauerian and metonymic desire enters into Oblomov’s actions and, to some extent, drives the novel’s plot; subsequently, I will demonstrate that while the Derridean model seems to fit individual instances of desire best, a Schopenhauerian framework is necessary to explain Oblomovian desire and the Oblomovian form of existence at a deeper level.

Sentimentalism When we look at the basic settings of the story, it is, first and foremost, the Sentimentalist paradigm that seems to be most explicative. Oblomov’s basic emotional state is one of longing, in the Sentimentalist sense. Sentimentalist longing is produced by the remoteness of the object of longing—the abandoned home, the remote or unattainable lover, the beautiful but temporally or spatially distant landscape.6 All of these objects of desire flow together in Oblomov’s imagination of his future married life in a rustic hideaway styled after his home village Oblomovka as he translation mine). Leonard Fuest,  Poetik des Nicht(s)tuns: Verweigerungsstrategien in der Literatur seit 1800 (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2008). 5 In Schopenhauer und die Postmoderne, Wolfgang Schirmacher argues convincingly for Schopenhauer as a founding figure of postmodernity, one of the first to cut at the roots of the subject-object structure and thus at the basis of metaphysics. Wolfgang Schirmacher, “Schopenhauer und die Postmoderne,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 42, no. 164 (1) (1988); Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 71–81. 6 Albrecht Koschorke, Körperströme und Schriftverkehr: Mediologie des 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Fink, 1999).

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remembers it and as it appears in his dream. His image as Sentimentalist lover is not just a function of his relationship with Olga—in fact, the relationship is not Sentimentalist enough for him, which is part of why it runs into problems—it is far more dependent on his friendship with Stolz. This attachment to his old friend and childhood companion is the most Sentimentalist relationship in the novel. It is so in two ways. First, this relationship is largely defined by absence and longing. Stolz is something of an eternal traveler who only comes home for short periods of time. When he finally settles, it will be in Crimea, that is, half abroad and not within reach for Oblomov. Second, their friendship is deeply idyllic: formed in childhood, it is based on complete mutual candidness, knowledge, and acceptance of each other. Despite their extremely different outlooks on life, Oblomov’s and Stolz’s communication is barrier-free in the way Rousseau intended it.7 As we shall see, Oblomov’s love relationship with Olga sits uneasily within this framework, which can be explained to a large extent by her insistent presence. Viewing Oblomov’s behavior from a Schopenhauerian viewpoint, it is clear that presence cannot lead to satisfaction, because satisfaction always creates a new lack. As soon as he seems to be within reach of a kind of tangible happiness he veers away: minutes after proposing to Olga and realizing that she loves him and is prepared to marry him, he envisages an alternative relationship with her—one in which they would not marry, but would engage in an affair that would not be accepted by society—and tries to obtain an agreement from her for that too. In contrast, Oblomov’s opinions are represented as nonSchopenhauerian, at least where economic and business life is in question. This becomes clear from a conversation between Oblomov and Stolz in part two, chapter four: ‘But one day you will stop working, won’t you?’ Oblomov remarked. ‘I shall never stop. Why should I?’ ‘When you have doubled your capital,’ said Oblomov. ‘I won’t stop even when I have quadrupled it.’

7

Mario Einaudi, The Early Rousseau (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 12. By eliminating mediation and establishing the immediacy of personal transparency, Rousseau believes he is setting up the necessary conditions for the existence of nonalienated man.

Longing, Replacement, and Anti-Economy in Goncharov’s Oblomov

‘So why,’ said Oblomov after a pause, ‘do you work so hard if it is not your intention to get enough money to last you your lifetime and then retire to the country for a well-earned rest?’8

Clearly, Oblomov does think that there is such a thing as the end of wishing and striving, a repose from the eternal movement described in The World as Will and Representation.9 Oblomov himself, however, is depicted as someone dissatisfied in a different way: his desire is certainly insatiable, but this seems to be due not so much to its quantitative expansion and waning, as Schopenhauer would have it, but to is very structure, which could be described as metonymic.

Metonymy Oblomov’s metonymic longing focuses on a part standing for the whole. There are, of course, two sides to this kind of longing. On the one hand, the desirous subject concentrates his/her wishes on the part and takes possession of it. On the other hand, the subject is also dissatisfied with the part because, being a part, it also expresses the absence of the whole and its own deficiency with respect to the whole. The protagonist’s own name, as has often been pointed out, is etymologically based on the word oblomok (a piece broken off), and metonymy seems to be one of the ordering principles of his way of relating to the outer world. This is visible even from the very first scenes. First of all, Oblomov only uses one of the rooms of his apartment, and even most of that remains largely unused, as he mainly inhabits only his bed. The way the apartment itself is ordered makes it a kind of oblomok in its own right. It contains some seemingly elegant if slightly heavy furniture that could be a reminder 8 Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov, trans. David Magarshack (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1954), 182. 9 Sigrid McLaughlin points out that the high point of Schopenhauer’s popularity in Russia was in the last third of the nineteenth century and thus too late to be relevant for Oblomov. However, clearly, information about Schopenhauer had already been circulating much earlier than that, even though it is hard to follow up with any precision. Sigrid McLaughlin, Schopenhauer in Russland: Zur Literarischen Rezeption bei Turgenev (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984). So far, research on Schopenhauer and Goncharov has focussed primarily on questions of free will and determinism, see Yvonne Pörzgen, “Willensfreiheit versus Oblomovščina,” in Ivan A. Gončarov. Neue Beiträge zu Werk und Wirkung, ed. Anne Hultsch (Cologne: Böhlau, 2016). I will argue for another connection in this chapter.

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of the more prosperous times at Oblomovka, but it is quite clear that the inhabitant regards this room with complete indifference and not as his real home.10 Similarly, Oblomov’s servant Zakhar, whom he summons several times without having an actual instruction for him, is also an oblomok. Zakhar practices metonymy himself: for him, Oblomov’s perceived capriciousness, along with his own old jacket that bears some resemblance to his former uniform, are highly valued parts of the old life (“the old splendor”) at Oblomovka, of which most parts, such as the portraits from the old mansion, are lost or cast away in some attic: That was why his grey coat was so dear to Zakhar. He saw in it a faint reflection of past glory, of which he was also reminded by something in Oblomov’s face and manner which recalled his parents, Zakhar’s old master and mistress, and by his whims, at which the servant grumbled both to himself and aloud, but which he respected for all that as a manifestation of his master’s will and his master’s rights.11

For Oblomov, on the other hand, Zakhar’s presence itself works as a metonymic pointer towards his highly sheltered childhood during which Zakhar had looked after him, dressed him, and so forth. He therefore seems to need Zakhar’s presence almost physically. However, he is also looking for the state of affairs in which everything takes shape of itself, automatically, as if by magic. Like in the land of the fairy-tale figure Militrisa Kirbitevna, he would like everything—food, cleanliness, comfort—to come into being and be at his disposal without effort—kak-nibud’—and Zakhar exhibits his deficiency in that respect by always arguing and making it hard for Oblomov to obtain what he wants. In this way, Zakhar too proves to be only a part broken off from the whole Oblomovka system, and thus a positive token but at the same time a negative reminder of the absence of that system. In a very similar way, Stolz represents the plans, dreams, interests, and infatuations of Oblomov’s youth and works as a pointer towards them— in this case, a rather explicit and stern one. However, dissociated as he is 10 See part one, chapter one: “The owner himself, however, was so utterly indifferent to the furniture of his study that he seemed to be wondering who on earth could have dumped all that junk there” (Goncharov, Oblomov, 15). Ingrid Kleespies argues very convincingly that Oblomov cannot really leave for a journey because he is displaced/ not properly at home in the first place. Ingrid Kleespies, A Nation Astray: Nomadism and National Identity in Russian Literature (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012). I will discuss the importance of this aspect at later stage. 11 Goncharov, Oblomov, 17.

Longing, Replacement, and Anti-Economy in Goncharov’s Oblomov

from the dreamy and idealistic days and surroundings of their youthful friendship, Stolz, even though he remains a good friend, is reduced to the rather unflattering role of a successful tradesman; there is a point about class here. Compare this passage from part two, chapter four: “If you give them a decent education, they’ll be able to earn their own living. You must know how to start them in the right direction—’ ‘No, sir, it’s no use making workmen out of gentlemen,’ Oblomov interrupted dryly.”12 At a later point, we are told that Oblomov had tried to view even his workplace as a metonymically simplified replica of a family. Oblomov’s love relationships seem to be equally built on metonymy. In the case of Olga, it is her voice and her singing that first attract him towards her. With Agafia, we find repeated instances of an “elbow fetish”: Oblomov likes watching her when she works with her sleeves rolled up. Interestingly, however, in both cases, the metonymy is not really sexual. While Olga’s singing excites Oblomov’s emotions, in his later encounters with Olga there is little left that could be associated with this singing. And even Agafia’s elbows don’t seem to be metonymically preempting Agafia, the whole woman—they are, more than anything else, a signal of food being prepared, a promise of enjoyment that seems to be all the more effective for being not very distinct. We only see the movement of her elbows, nothing more concrete, like her chopping vegetables or kneading dough. This fits quite well with Oblomov’s representation of his imagined future life with his wife, where we see the wife as an indistinct female figure in a loose blouse and with a bonnet about to fall off. We do not see the face of this imagined wife; she is merely a dreamy presence in white. Olga, on the other hand, is all face: Her exquisite nose was slightly aquiline; her lips were thin and for the most part tightly closed; a sign of concentrated thought. Her keen, bright, and wide-awake blue-grey eyes which never missed anything, shone, too, with the same light and thought. The brows leant a peculiar beauty to her eyes: they were not arched, they had not been plucked into two thin lines above the eyes—no, they were two brown, fluffy, almost straight streaks, which seldom lay symmetrically: one was a little higher than the other, forming a tiny wrinkle above it which seemed to say something, as if some idea was hidden there.13 12 Ibid., 176. 13 Ibid., 192.

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That is why Olga’s first appearance as the bearer of a beautiful voice is so important: as she sings and Oblomov admires her singing, her whole appearance becomes less distinct, its otherwise all-too-defined features seem obscured as by a veil: “The dusk had hidden the outlines of Olga’s face and figure and had thrown, as it were, a crêpe veil over her; her face was in the shadow; only her mellow but powerful voice with the nervous tremor of feeling in it could be heard.”14 This lack of clarity—the opposite of the “Enlightenment” Stolz had been planning to subject Oblomov’s life to—turns out to be both a prerequisite for Oblomov’s way of relating to the world, and his greatest hindrance on the way to fulfilling any of his plans.

Amorphousness, Deferral, Replacement, Différance One could thus argue that Oblomov’s desire in fact fails to be metonymic in the proper sense, because the connection of the part and the whole breaks down for him—he never arrives at a fixed or defined whole but prefers to enjoy “the nervous tremor of feeling” (nervnaia drozh’ chuvstva)—the rather directionless, shapeless, transmission of feeling.15 This goes hand in hand with a temporal factor: the receding whole Oblomov never arrives at frequently seems to be something in which a distant, unclear past and a distant, unfathomable future appear to flow together, as in his idea of Oblomovka’s past and future, or of his future family life, colored by the pleasurable feelings he remembers from his childhood, or in his merging together the “wife” and “mother” role in his love inclinations. In a certain way, we can make sense of these two aspects by recourse to Derrida, where they are intertwined in the concept of différance. Although the word itself combines the meanings of difference and deferral/postponement, it is, in the first place, the obliteration of differences that Derrida is concerned with, in particular the differences he calls the “conceptual oppositions of metaphysics.” These are the very oppositions that Kant considers part of our necessary apriori concepts that order our perception and prevent it from being an amorphous, Dolby-surround type of non-experience: “all 14 Ibid., 195. 15 It is fitting that Oblomov’s two “friends” who visit him in the first part of the novel, Tarantiev and Alekseev, are cast as false doppelgängers. They mirror Oblomov not as a character but as an accumulation of psycho-physical inclinations: Alekseev as an exact replica, Tarantiev as a sort of antidote that pleasantly excites him by talking loudly and a great deal and thus meeting the need of a little bit of bustle and movement around him, without having to move himself.

Longing, Replacement, and Anti-Economy in Goncharov’s Oblomov

the conceptual oppositions of metaphysics, to the extent that they have for ultimate reference the presence of a present, (signifier/signified; sensible/ intelligible; writing/speech; speech [parole] / language [langue]; diachrony/ synchrony; space/time; passivity/activity etc.) become non-pertinent.”16 In a second step, Derrida adds a temporal aspect by including past and future and extending différance between the two concepts of anticipation and trace. However, this temporalization is equally a de-temporalization and a deconstruction of time: if anticipation were privileged, the irreducibility of the always-already-there and the fundamental passivity that is called time would risk effacement. On the other hand, if the trace refers to an absolute past, it is because it obliges us to think a past that can no longer be understood in the form of a modified presence, as a present-past. Since past has always signified present-past, the absolute past that is retained in the trace no longer rigorously merits the name ‘past’. Another name to erase, especially since the strange movement of the trace proclaims as much as it recalls: différance defers-differs [differre]. With the same precaution and under the same erasure, it may be said that its passivity is also its relationship with the “future.”17

In addition, Derrida also argues for the writing as a textual condition that supports deconstruction and difference; he is in agreement with Plato, but in disagreement with everyday assumptions of writing as fixation or clarification.18 Interestingly, Oblomov too relies on writing in his postponements, and, although we are not talking about literary writing (on which much of Derrida’s philosophy is based), in his case, too, the writing does not help to clarify or enlighten: the deferral of fulfilment is often dependent on a piece of writing that replaces, points to, but also, one might add, misrepresents the actual or imminent situation. Thus Oblomov’s perception of his estate is based on a letter from his administrator—a letter that constantly gets lost in the folds of his bedclothes, on the floor of his room, and 16 Immanuel Kant,  Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Derrida, Positions, 41. 17 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 66–67. 18 Derrida’s argument against Plato, who preferred the spoken word to the written, is based on the wider range of possible meanings and the lack of fixation that Derrida praises in the written text. Where Plato points out that a spoken word can be supported by its author as a child is supported by its father, Derrida prefers the written word precisely because it is elusive, lacks explanation and cannot be traced back to a proper source.

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so forth, and that does not give him a lot of useful information about the actual situation on the ground. Equally, his potential response—his plans for various improvements in Oblomovka—encompasses a fanciful range of measures that are in no way adapted to the realities of that remote location. Oblomov’s energy exhausts itself in finding the meaningless letter, assuring himself of the letter’s presence, as he assures himself of Zakhar’s presence without giving him any actual instructions. A letter enters into his relationship with Olga too. Unable to rationalize what is going on during his actual meetings with her, he takes recourse to a long letter (which she refuses to take seriously). Olga, on the other hand, prefers to listen to the live and almost real-time reports from Zakhar who keeps her updated about Oblomov’s eating, sleeping, and lounging habits. This is in keeping with how Olga is consistently depicted as unambiguously present. Before the character appears on the scene, we hear very little about her, there are no special expectations raised, and there is no poetic introduction. From her entrance on, however, we are led to feel (with Oblomov) her excruciating presence, which is expressed in her glances, her curiosity, her questioning, and her insistence on keeping Oblomov near her, not to let him slide away. Her decision to “take the lead” in the relationship is part of this asymmetry which casts her in an active role opposite Oblomov as her rather amorphous “material”: “But he was a kind of Galatea whose Pygmalion she herself had to be.”19 It is this constant, all-too-defined presence, from which Oblomov ultimately flees to the Vyborg side and to a version of his old life. And it is unsurprising that towards the end, when Oblomov literally fails to cross the bridge in her direction, he does it not through a positive decision to leave her but, again, through a series of deferrals and postponements. As he postpones one meeting or errand from Friday to Saturday, then to the following Wednesday, and so forth, he not only increases the distance between himself and Olga—he also ironically mirrors the traditional postponement inherent in the preparation of a folklore wedding. Oblomov acts as both the impatient suitor who craves for the full possession of his object, and as the coy bride who defers the moment of enjoyment. However, this inversion of gender roles and timing is only one of the factors that complicate Oblomov’s patterns of desire and make it difficult to predict his movements. The second, more important factor is the 19 Goncharov, Oblomov, 233.

Longing, Replacement, and Anti-Economy in Goncharov’s Oblomov

specific, convoluted nature of his longing, which performs a double take on Derridean différance. As I have pointed out, almost any action undertaken by Oblomov is one of deferral and postponement: he searches for the administrator’s letter but never replies to it, he designs plans for his estate but never follows up on them, he seeks a passport but never leaves the country, he proposes to his beloved Olga but never gets around to marrying her. In these cases, it is the instrument of deferral—often a piece of writing—that actually also replaces the uncompleted transaction itself. However, there is also in Oblomov a more fundamental replacement that cuts even deeper at the roots of the economy of desire we find depicted there. The most prominent example is, again, Oblomovka. As many commentators have pointed out, Oblomov longs for the peaceful, unrestrained life of Oblomovka, a life of abundant food, sleep, and free time, of good companionship and a feudal estate with great numbers of serfs engaged in producing and arranging this abundancy. When Oblomov describes the future life he would like to imagine for himself, Stolz identifies this image with old Oblomovka, at the times of the fathers and grandfathers: “You are describing to me the same sort of thing our fathers and grandfathers used to do.”20 However, this is not Oblomov’s intention. Almost offended, he answers: “‘No, I’m not,’ Oblomov replied, almost offended. ‘How can you say it’s the same thing? Would my wife be making jams or pickling mushrooms? Would she be measuring yarn and sorting out home-spun linen? Would she box her maids’ ears? You heard what I said, didn’t you? Music, books, piano, elegant furniture?”21 So, the Oblomovka Oblomov pictures for himself is not the original, reactionary, feudal, backward and rough location of old times—it is one that combines some features of the old life with modern elegance and education. As such, it is also a place that would—economically speaking—be more like Adam Smith’s concept of a moderately industrialized society, not an agricultural one. It encompasses both agricultural products, like the local milk and cream, and manufactured products such as fine furniture, and it is situated both in nature (with a view of the adjacent fields) and a cultivated garden landscape (including even a greenhouse where peaches can be picked). It is rustic, yet not anti-urban.22 It is distinctly Russian but 20 Ibid., 179 21 Ibid. 22 With the exception of a Rousseauist anti-urbanity that focuses on sociability. This point has also been addressed before, see Ronald LeBlanc, “Oblomov’s Consuming

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not anti-Western (for instance, the chef is meant to learn his trade at the English Club or with an ambassador). This Oblomovka is a hybrid, poeticized place that cannot be identified with anything the real Oblomovka ever was or could be in future. It is something of a Rousseauist utopia. Fittingly, Stolz exclaims: “Why, you are a poet, Ilia!” and Oblomov replies: “Yes, a poet in life, because life is poetry.”23 Thus, we have a replacement of the old Oblomovka that is a) rather different from what it replaces and b) replaces something that cannot really be the original, because it never existed in that way. So Oblomov’s place of future repose and happiness is a trace of a trace, a projection of a projection. Something very similar happens in his relationship with Olga. At the start, he considers a romance with her improbable. However, when she actually loves him back, he does not simply rejoice in the fulfilment of his wishes. He builds an escape in two ways. One is the fall back on chivalrousness which is expressed in the long and convoluted letter meant to “give her back her freedom.” The second is his fantasizing: as soon as he seems to be within reach of a kind of tangible happiness he veers away: as we have already seen, after proposing to Olga, he envisages an alternative relationship with her, an illicit affair against the rules of society, but Olga refuses to follow a train of thought which she considers deeply unnecessary. Here again, Oblomov is not satisfied with what is at hand—mainly because it is at hand. The same pattern obtains on various other levels, such as his planning for his estate, which is very sophisticated in theory but fails to address the most pressing practical problems, or in his preparations for his journey which are so complex that the journey itself never takes place. It seems clear that this hovering on the point of desire, this metonymic longing and consistent denial of fulfilment coagulate into a very definite feature of the otherwise Galatean Oblomovian character. The statement that he is a “poet of life” is very telling in this context. It bridges the gap and the traditional dichotomy between “poetry” and “life,” between the aesthetic and the ethical, and it points towards the impossible. The metonymies along which Oblomov’s desire is structured thus turn out to be illusory ones, because the original “whole” is unavailable. If, then, the Passion: Food, Eating and the Search for Communion,” in Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, ed. Galya Diment (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998). A harmonious way of socializing that is free from envy, malice, competition and schadenfreude is an important element in Oblomov’s image of an ideal way of living. 23 Goncharov, Oblomov, 178.

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object of Oblomov’s desire, his ideal home, is the elusive, ever-receding sphere of the poetic, this throws light on the argument brought forward by Kleespies that Oblomov cannot leave because he is never properly at home. She describes Oblomov as a character who is severed from his point of origin and whose various homes, even his last one in the suburbs, are only intermediate stops he cares little for because they are never “the real thing.”24 If we additionally read Oblomov with Derrida, the protagonist’s plight appears only further exacerbated because it becomes clear that the point of origin is itself a chimera. Interestingly, it is not just Oblomov who suffers from replacement: Olga wants to replace him by a better version of himself, then replaces him with Stolz, and Stolz and Olga together mirror Oblomov in a certain sense by also replacing their former lives by retiring to a marginal (holiday) location. Looking back to Schopenhauer, one might even be tempted to enlarge the perspective and see in this plight an aspect of the human condition, of human existence as an unsatisfactorily finite entity within the infinite: The human individual finds himself in endless space and time as finite, and consequently as a vanishing quantity compared with these. He is projected into them, and on account of their boundlessness has always only a relative, never an absolute when and where of his existence.  .  .  .  His real existence is only in the present, whose unimpeded flight into the past is a constant transition into death, a constant dying.25

Studies of possible influences of Schopenhauer on Goncharov tend to concentrate on more traditional ethical topics such as the un-changeability of character.26 However, when we read Oblomov with Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation in mind, another point seems more conspicuous: in Schopenhauer’s opposition between the amorphous waxing and waning of the ‘will’ on the one hand, and the defined, clear, visually impressive world of individuation on the other, in which we live but which is only a projection without proper reality, Oblomov seems to be hovering in a strange place in between. He flees from individuation, as evidenced by his rejection of Olga’s attempts at “defining him,” and he is also vastly tolerant, not to say careless, in the choice of people and things he surrounds himself with. Like the movement of the “will,” Oblomov, as a poet of life, 24 Kleespies, A Nation Astray, 113–144. 25 Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 57. 26 Pörzgen, “Willensfreiheit versus Oblomovščina,” 140.

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produces beautiful images that lack reality. As an individual character within the sphere of individuation, he must be unsuccessful, but he is aware of the unreality of this sphere, of its intrinsic lack of life and value. From this perspective, Oblomov would be an especially prominent example of a character instinctively more conscious than others of the futility of human existence.

Economy In the context of the Derridean/Schopenhauerian aspect, it is also interesting to look at how this will reflect on economy in the novel. In principle, Oblomov’s being led from desire to desire, without satisfaction, could result in a replica of the perfect consumer. And indeed, if all his plans were to be realized, it would amount to a significant range of consumption of both goods and services—from building materials to fine furniture, from exotic plants to delicate foods, and so forth. However, if we look closely at the things Oblomov needs or might need in various circumstances, it becomes clear that he is not a functioning part of any kind of economy. In contrast to Anne Lounsbery who places Oblomov squarely within the traditional feudal system based on serfdom, sedentariness, large self-subsistent estates, and a minimum of movement and trade, I would argue that Oblomov cannot be grouped with any economic system at all. The reason is to be found in the admixture of “poetry” at every stage of Oblomov’s plans. When Oblomov fantasizes about his future rustic life in an Oblomovkalike location, things seem to dematerialize: every flower or fruit he picks, every piece of buttered toast and cup of tea becomes imbued with a remote, dream-like quality, which at once makes it unmarketable. As he reacts to Stolz’s demand that he “paint” his ideal of life, his reply exemplifies this dreaminess in a number of ways: both formally—through ample use of subjunctives, exclamation, unfinished sentences (“What a kiss! What tea! What an easy-chair!”)—and in content, by introducing the motif of (day-) dreaming into the dream itself: “we walk along quietly, dreamily, in silence or thinking aloud, day-dreaming . . .”27 This effect obtains also in the novel’s perspective on other characters, such as Stolz who turns out to be rather less pragmatic than his introduction would suggest, seeing that his actual trade, the goods he trades, his partners 27 Goncharov, Oblomov, 177.

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in trade, or any other details, are hardly mentioned. It is much more the aesthetic or the “poetry” of his endless, perpetual movement and work the novel focuses on. Thus, material goods, and transactions involving them, are modified in such a way in Oblomov as to make them intangible, turn them into something that is twice removed: a) by not being directly in the plot, and b) on account of the aforementioned change of ‘quality’. This makes Oblomov a Derridean text in one more way: in La Fausse Monnaie (Counterfeit Money), Derrida distinguishes between le present and le don. The present in this sense is both something present and something given that, in its givenness, becomes part of a give-and-take, of a transaction. Even if we do not give another present in return, we might thank the giver, and that too will make the exchange a transaction. In economic terms, this give-and-take is the basis of any trade among humans. Le don, on the other hand, is something given freely—it does not require a gift in return, and no thanks. It is something that falls out of any transactions and therefore out of time, and that should go unnoticed.28 This seems to be precisely the kind of goods Oblomov is after: as mentioned in the beginning, he is in search of a state of bliss in which everything comes about effortlessly and as if by magic, like in the fairy-tales he has been told by his nanny. This state of bliss has often been defined by commentators as a kind of return to the motherly womb—a state in which the subject has not yet been divided from its origin, and where there is no giving and taking but rather a barrier-less communion and symbiosis.29 But it is also a state of don—a state where good things come about of their own accord, timelessly and with ease, with no hardship or labor involved, and with no need to feel an obligation. So is Oblomov, speaking in terms of economy, just an unconscious consumer who couldn’t care less about the labor his serfs have to engage in to produce the goods he enjoys? It seems certain that he is a bad consumer in terms of an economy based on marketing: even though he appears to like good food and has ideas about employing a gourmet cook, on many occasions he pays no attention to branding and the differences of products and has no reason to choose one product over another. He will smoke a cigar of 28 Jacques Derrida, Given Time. I. Counterfeited Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 29 John Givens, “Wombs, Tombs, and Mother Love: A Freudian Reading of Goncharov’s Oblomov,” in Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, ed. Galya Diment (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 93.

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poor quality as happily as a good one, maybe without noticing, is satisfied with a simple roast if there is nothing else on offer, and does not mind being surrounded by a set of run-down old furniture. But that just means that he is relatively blind to the developments of an ever more refined market economy. He could still be a perfect subject of feudalism and exploitation. I would argue that even in a feudal economy, however, Oblomov is a character displaced. Despite Stolz’s joking address of his friend as barin, an old-style landowner, Oblomov cannot properly fill that role. He does accept Zakhar’s services as his due, but the relationship with Zakhar functions as a symbiosis rather than a landowner’s relations with a serf. On a broader level, Oblomov has no concept of ownership, and—what is even more virulent in making him an anti-consumer—he is unable to take possession of anything, to make anything really his own, be it his half-uninhabited flat in St. Petersburg, his estate in the country, or even the woman he is in love with. Taking possession, however, seems to be a prerequisite of consuming—any kind of consumption is based on taking possession, at least for a short period of time, of food, objects, services, and so forth. For Oblomov, this would mean breaking out from his passiveness, especially in a feudal framework where production and consumption are as closely intertwined as is described in “Oblomov’s Dream.” However, for Oblomov, becoming active is not worthwhile. He is instinctively aware that the things he wishes for are elusive, dreamy entities; to be a real consumer he would need to long for material, tangible things that he could be satisfied with for a certain time, so that he might subsequently want more of the same, or of something better. Oblomov’s wants, however, can never be satisfied,30 and there is no quantitative or qualitative improvement in the “real world” that could change that. In some sense, the structure of the novel, especially in the first parts, reflects this in that it plays with the concept of quantity itself and stands it on its head: it is Oblomov that entertains the reader for hundreds of pages without even getting out of bed, and it is Oblomov that does all the relevant talking. The protagonist is the subject and object of a rich 30 Even his stay in the final accommodation on the Vyborg Side and his marriage to Agafia are no exception to this. The satisfaction Oblomov seems to find here is only a shadow of the satisfaction originally longed for, just as Vyborg is only a shadow of Oblomovka. Despite sharing many of its features (cf. Lounsbery, “The World on the Back of a Fish,” 48f), it lacks one important feature Oblomovka has: its iconicity and consequent irresistible lure in the protagonist’s setup of wishes and imaginations. One could say that the house on the Vyborg Side cannot be the satisfaction because it was never desired in the first place.

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and varied narration, even though he has spent all his life inside his flat. Stolz, on the other hand, with all his rich experience of people and foreign countries, seems to have hardly anything to say.

Conclusion Is Goncharov presenting a critique of any kind of consumption, then? I would like to argue that the economic side of his thinking goes much further than that. For Goncharov, any economic or social system is based on certain actions and responses. In Oblomov, Goncharov has included some characters that fit the system they are set in perfectly, respond to it in the proper way and are satisfied with it (such as Stolz or Oblomov’s parents). In his more developed characters, however, Goncharov focuses on what happens when humans are unable or not prepared to fit in, on human dissatisfaction in the face of systemic necessities, and on the resulting dissonance between human motivation and the system it is inserted in. The revolutionary power of Oblomov’s idleness seems to lie precisely in his withdrawal from and resistance to systemic requirements. All the different variants of desire mentioned in the first part of this chapter are also variants of Goncharov’s experimentation with lack—and with the thought that no matter what the economic and social system will be, lack will always be part of the human condition. Thus Oblomov’s longing is not only not in keeping with a labor-based consumer economy—it is incompatible with it. It denies the very possibility of tangible satisfaction. It is anti-economic in a radical sense.

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Part Three The Challenges of Realism: Traditions and Transgressions

“Shadows, Dead People, and Specters”: Gothic Aesthetics in Goncharov’s The Precipice1 Valeria Sobol

When Ivan Goncharov’s last novel The Precipice (Obryv), was finally published in its entirety in 1869, after two decades of the writer’s intermittent work on it, the novel was met with a mixed reaction: while popular with readers, The Precipice was received rather negatively by both conservative and radical literary critics.2 One of the recurrent criticisms of the novel, particularly stressed by left-leaning critics, was its untimeliness (nesvoevremennost’) and belatedness (zapozdalost’). In the sixth issue of 1869, Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye zapiski) published an anonymous article penned by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin under the title “Street Philosophy (On the Occasion of Chapter 6, Part V, of the Novel The Precipice),” which concluded with the dismissive characterization of the novel as an “awkward and 1

This chapter is based on a paper presented at the symposium “What is Russian about Russian Realism?” at New York University in November 2017. I would like to thank the conference organizers, Ilya Kliger and Anne Lounsbery, for inviting me to this event and all the participants for their comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to the volume’s editors, Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts, for their useful feedback on the earlier draft of this chapter, as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their recommendations. 2 E. A. Krasnoshchekova, Goncharov: Mir tvorchestva (St.  Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Pushkinskogo fonda, 2012), 379.

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untimely feat” (nelovkii i nesvoevremennyi podvig).3 Later the same year, a more detailed review of The Precipice appeared in the journal, written by A. M. Skabichevskii who argued that Goncharov was trapped in the past, in the “gray old time” (sedaia starina) of the time period when the novel was conceived (the late 1840s) and therefore failed to grasp the contemporary moment; the article was titled, characteristically, “Old Truth” (Staraia pravda).4 N. V. Shelgunov, in his review of The Precipice under the damning title “Talented Talentlessness” (Talantlivaia bestalannost’, 1869), published on the pages of the journal Work (Delo), traced Goncharov’s belatedness (zapozdalost’) throughout his oeuvre; it was apparent, the critic insisted, even in his first novel A Common Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia) but was particularly striking in The Precipice, a novel full of “shadows, dead people, and specters” (teni, pokoiniki, prizraki).5 Shelgunov described the temporal incongruity of Goncharov’s last novel through the imagery of Gothic fiction—a literary mode that captured the European reader’s imagination almost a hundred years before Goncharov’s completion of The Precipice and that explored dark secrets of medieval castles, their haunted chambers and dungeons, as it also probed the depths of human psyche with its transgressive desires and tested the boundaries of rationality. Inaugurated by the appearance of Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764, the genre reached its peak in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, with the publication of Ann Radcliffe’s tremendously popular works, Matthew G. Lewis’s scandalous The Monk (1796), and, later, Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), to name just a few most influential examples. The explosion of Gothic fiction during this time period is typically interpreted as a literary response to the horrors of the French Revolution and the uncertainties of the Napoleonic era, although this highly adaptable literary mode has proven capable of tapping into cultural anxieties in various historical and 3 4 5

[M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin], “Street Philosophy (On the Occasion of Chapter 6, Part V, of the Novel The Precipice),” in I. A. Goncharov v russkoi kritike: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1958), 234. A. M. Skabichevskii, “Staraia pravda,” in I. A. Goncharov v russkoi kritike: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1958), 308. N. V. Shelgunov, “Talantlivaia bestalannost’,” in I. A. Goncharov v russkoi kritike: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1958), 265. For an illuminating discussion of the circumstances that produced each individual journal’s harsh criticism of Goncharov’s novel, see S. N. Guskov, “O nekotorykh motivakh kritiki ‘Obryva,’” Bibliotheca Slavica Savariensis 12 (2012): 397–404.

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geographical contexts.6 The vogue for the Gothic genre and its ubiquitous presence on the literary market made it a subject of travesties and parodies, most notably in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818). In Russia, where the Gothic was first explored by Nikolai Karamzin in his 1793 story “The Island of Bornholm” (Ostrov Borngol’m) and then swept the literary scene in the form of numerous translations and adaptations during the first decades of the nineteenth century, a mocking recipe for a “novel à la Radcliffe” appeared as early as 1816.7 In other words, describing Goncharov’s novel in 1869 in the language of Gothic aesthetics was supposed to further stress the obsolete quality of The Precipice. The novel itself, moreover, abounds in traditional Gothic tropes— from the gloomy and overgrown “old house” and the family curse haunting the present to the central symbol of the novel, the “precipice” itself, and the theme of transgression associated with it. The protagonist Raiskii’s quasi-incestuous sexual attraction to his “sisters” (in fact, distant cousins), Marfenka and Vera, adds to the arsenal of familiar Gothic conventions. Finally, the nihilist Mark Volokhov’s effect on the novel’s heroine Vera is evocative of the vampire tradition (and anticipates Bram Stoker’s Dracula [1899]): as a result of night-time encounters with him, lit by the moonlight, the heroine becomes paler, weaker, thinner, and suffers from heavy lethargic sleep. The entire atmosphere of The Precipice, as Milton Ehre has observed, is filled with “suspense, tension, and dramatic confrontation, 6

7

The body of research on the Gothic literary tradition is vast. This summary is based on several major studies of the Gothic, such as David Punter, The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day (London: Longman, 1980), Fred Botting, Gothic: The New Critical Idiom, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2014), and Andrew Smith and William Hughes (eds.), Empire and the Gothic: The Politics of Genre (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). The author of this “recipe” was Orest Somov. See Alessandra Tosi, Waiting for Pushkin: Russian Fiction in the Reign of Alexander I (1801–1825) (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 84–85. On the reception and adaptation of the Gothic genre in Russia, see Vadim Vatsuro’s seminal monograph Goticheskii roman v Rossii (Moscow: NLO, 2002); and, more recently, N. D. Tamarchenko (ed.), Goticheskaia traditsiia v russkoi literature (Moscow: RGGU, 2008). For analyses of the adaptations of the Gothic mode to the Soviet and post-Soviet contexts, see Eric Naiman, Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), ch. 4; Muireann Maguire, Stalin’s Ghosts: Gothic Themes in Early Soviet Literature (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012); and the recent cluster on the Russian Gothic published by Russian Literature in 2019. The cluster focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first century. See Kevin M. F. Platt, Caryl Emerson, Dina Khapaeva, “Introduction: The Russian Gothic,” Russian Literature 106 (2019): 1–9.

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atypical of Goncharov’s earlier fiction” but very typical, I would add, of the Gothic literary tradition.8 However, instead of joining the ranks of Goncharov’s critics and dismissing the Gothic as yet another testimony to the novel’s “belatedness,” I approach the Gothic stratum of the novel as a manifestation of Goncharov’s engagement with pressing contemporary issues, both social and aesthetic. In this chapter I read the Gothic as a literary mode that, by focusing on transgression and violation of boundaries, as well as on the past inhabiting the present, channels some of most profound anxieties of mid-century Russia, specifically the tension between the forces of tradition (“the old”) and those of progress and change (“the new”). This tension became particularly charged by the time of the novel’s publication, following the Great Reforms of the late 1850s and early 1860s and the concomitant polarization of the Russian society along generational, as well as ideological, lines: conservatives and progressives, liberals and radicals, the generation of the 1840s and that of the 1860s, or, to use the famous formulation of Goncharov’s perceived rival Ivan Turgenev, “fathers” and “children.” However, in The Precipice, this clash between the old and the new is not limited to the political sphere alone; as I will demonstrate in the second half of this chapter, this conflict informs the novel’s aesthetic program as well. Goncharov’s recourse to the Gothic mode complicates the seemingly clear-cut ideological binaries of the transitional moment in Russian history he was trying to capture, just as it signals a crisis of Realism in the aesthetic realm. In his article on the connections between Goncharov’s last novel and Aleksandr Veselovskii’s historical poetics, Ilya Kliger investigates the paradox of what he calls “tragic realism” in The Precipice —the work’s attempt to grapple with the challenges of modernity through the use of archaic poetic forms, while remaining, at least on the surface, in the framework of the nineteenth-century Realist novel.9 While it is true that The Precipice is replete with references to classical antiquity and specifically Attic tragedy, perceptively analyzed in Kliger’s article, I would argue that another important “antiquated” layer of the novel comes from the Gothic tradition. These two modes, the “classical” and the “Gothic,” are not necessarily in contradiction: Skabichevskii, for example, saw the “outdatedness” of the novel in 8 9

Milton Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 238. Ilya Kliger, “Resurgent Forms in Ivan Goncharov and Alexander Veselovsky: Towards a Historical Poetics of Tragic Realism,” The Russian Review 71 (2012): 2–19.

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the fact that it presents to us a social order characteristic of “either some medieval feudal world or the ancient classical one.”10 The original meaning of the term “Gothic” was precisely “medieval”—hence Walpole’s subtitle “A Gothic tale” to his novel The Castle of Otranto set sometime between the late eleventh and mid-thirteenth century. Skabichevskii’s comparison of the despotic aunts of Sofia Belovodova (the protagonist’s distant cousin, a beautiful young widow) to the Spanish Inquisition and the narrator’s likening of their house to a convent also invoke the predominant setting of Gothic novels in Catholic Southern Europe, and specifically, in abbeys, monasteries or convents.11 Moreover, Skabichevskii interprets the long history of Goncharov’s work on this novel as essentially a Gothic project, a manifestation of the dread the specters of the new provoked in the writer: “With the passage of time, when Goncharov, as most of his contemporaries, became disturbed by various ghosts, he decided to express his horror in relation to these mirages.”12 While traditionally the Gothic—with its emphasis on the irrational sphere, its frequent incorporation of the supernatural element, and its exotic locale—is considered a polar opposite to Realism, recent trends in scholarship offer a more complex picture. In her study How Novels Think: The Limits of British Individualism from 1719–1900, Nancy Armstrong characterizes Realism “as the other side of the gothic,’ and suggests that “the two exist . . . in a mutually defining relationship.”13 Armstrong views the history of the novel in general as inextricable from the history of the modern subject, specifically a liberal individual. “To produce an individual,” she argues, “it was . . . necessary to invalidate competing notions of the subject as idiosyncratic, less than fully human, fantastic or dangerous”— and these competing notions rather accurately describe typical figures of 10 Skabichevskii, “Staraia pravda,” 284. 11 For example, the plots of Radcliffe’s novels unfold primarily in Southern Europe; large portions of Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer depict the cruelty of Spanish inquisition; and Lewis’s The Monk is set in Madrid, “where superstition reigns with despotic sway” (Matthew G. Lewis, The Monk [New York: Grove Press, 1993], 35). This setting was viewed as the epitome of medieval superstition and barbaric backwardness, which the rational Protestant North had supposedly successfully overcome. For an insightful analysis of the locale in Gothic fiction, see Robert Mighall, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s Nightmares (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 12 Skabichevskii, “Staraia pravda,” 281. 13 Nancy Armstrong, How Novels Think: The Limits of British Individualism from 1719– 1900 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 3.

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Gothic fiction.14 She argues that, as the family model replaces that of an ideal liberal society in the novel, all alternatives to nuclear family and traditional gender boundaries are displaced into the realm of the uncanny and the monstrous. In the last chapter, “The Necessary Gothic,” she focuses specifically on Stoker’s Dracula, reading the figure of the vampire as “rejecting the limits of a realism designed to maintain the autonomy of nation, family, and individual.”15 In the Russian context, the Gothic legacy in Russian Realism has recently received increasing scholarly attention. Katherine Bowers’s 2011 dissertation and a series of articles have uncovered a consistent reliance of many Russian Realist writers on Gothic tropes, imagery, and even master plots. The evocation of the widely read and therefore easily recognizable Gothic tradition, according to Bowers, creates an effect of anxiety and even terror, whose goal is to alert the reader to the social tensions underlying the narrative and to the hidden danger of particular social types depicted in the Realist novel. One of Bowers’s examples is Goncharov’s Oblomov, where the juxtaposition of the idyll of Oblomovka to the imaginary disturbing Gothic landscape implicitly subverts the pastoral ideal of Oblomov’s dream. In addition, Bowers analyzes the novel in the context of the “fall of the house” Gothic tradition focusing on the imagery of fear, specter, and decline, associated with the novel’s protagonist.16 I find Goncharov’s later novel The Precipice to be another (and perhaps even more striking) case of the pervasive presence of the Gothic legacy in Russian Realism in general and in Goncharov’s oeuvre in particular. While, as I mentioned above, the novel incorporates a number of Gothic conventions, for the purposes of this chapter I will focus my analysis on one key image—the “old house.”17 Immediately related to the traditional Gothic 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 139. 16 Katherine A. Bowers, “Shadows of the Gothic: Adapted Terror in Russian Fiction, 1792–1905” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2011); idem, “The City through a Glass, Darkly: Use of the Gothic in Early Russian Realism,”  The Modern Language Review 108, no. 4 (2013): 1199–1215; idem, “The Fall of the House: Gothic Narrative and the Decline of the Russian Family,” in Russian Writers and the Fin de Siècle: The Twilight of Realism, ed. Katherine Bowers and Ani Kokobobo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 145–161. For an analysis of the Russian imperial Gothic, see my Haunted Empire: Gothic and the Russian Imperial Uncanny (Ithaca: Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2020). 17 In her discussion of The Precipice, Krasnoshchekova briefly notes the connection of the “old house” to the atmosphere of the Gothic novel, when discussing Vera as a

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castle, a paradigmatic trope of Gothic fiction, the old house also functions as an important chronotope of Goncharov’s The Precipice in its own right. More importantly, as I will demonstrate, the portrayal of the old house in The Precipice thematizes the dichotomy of the old vs. the new, one of the central concerns of the novel. The old house appears in the novel for the first time in part I, in the section that describes young Raiskii’s trip, during his student years, to his estate Malinovka run by his “grandmother” (in reality, his great-aunt), the novel’s matriarch Tatiana Markovna.18 The idyllic landscape of Malinovka, as Raiskii would refer to it later, is disrupted by two elements: the precipice (or the ravine) of the title, where, according to a local legend, a jealous husband murdered his wife and her lover and then killed himself, his ghost still haunting the ravine and its surroundings;19 and the old house where Raiskii himself grew up but which is now uninhabited. The new little house (domik) is described as a wooden structure basking in sunlight and associated with life; this is where the family lives, the flowers grow, and the swallows nest. In contrast, the old stone house (another connection to the Gothic castle) is gray, heavy, gloomy, “almost always in the shade,” and empty.20 As is often the case with the “forbidden” part of the castle or chamber in the Gothic novel, the visit to the old house, on which Raiskii insists, is discouraged: Grandma gives him the keys only reluctantly and warns one of her two young great-nieces, Marfenka, that the house is too frightening to visit. The description of their visit continues to build Gothic associations, and it is not only little Marfenka who is terrified: Raiskii entered the hallway with dread and trepidation and fearfully glanced into the adjoining room: it was a hall with columns, which had two sources of light, but the windows were so covered with dust and mold that the room had two dusks, instead of two lights. . . . After the hall, two gloomy, smokestained drawing-rooms followed. In one of them were two statues wrapped Romantic character in contrast to “classical” Sofia and “idyllic” Marfenka (Goncharov: Mir tvorchestva, 419–420). 18 Tatiana Markovna is referred to as “Grandma” (babushka) throughout the novel, even though she is a great-aunt (dvoiurodnaia babushka) to Raiskii, as well as to Marfenka and Vera. 19 The novel’s title has been most commonly translated as “The Ravine” or “The Precipice,” with the former version stressing the murky low area of the obryv and the latter focusing on the threat of the fall itself. 20 I. A. Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1952–1955), vol. 5, 62.

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in covers, like two ghosts, and old, also covered, chandeliers. Everywhere there were darkened, massive armchairs and tables, made of oak and black wood, with brass decorations and inlaid woodwork.  .  .  .  In the bedroom stood an enormous bed, like a magnificent coffin, covered with brocade. Raiskii could not imagine how people used to sleep in such a catafalque: it seemed to him that no living human being could fall asleep here. . . . On the walls there were portraits: you cannot escape them—their eyes follow you everywhere. The entire house is imbued with dust and emptiness. In the corners some rustle seems to be heard. Raiskii made a step, and in the corner, it seemed, somebody made a step. “Granma was telling the truth: it’s frightening here,” he said with shudder.21

Like a typical Gothic castle, the old house is described as a horrifying, dark, and gloomy place, haunted by apparitions and uncanny doubles and invoking deadliness, void, and decay. The motif of a portrait with piercing eyes is a nod both to Gogol’s “The Portrait” and the opening chapters of Maturin’s Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.22 Significantly, this Gothic setting has a very different effect on the novel’s future female protagonist, six-year-old Verochka: in contrast to her younger sister and to Raiskii, Verochka shows no fear of the house but intensely and joyfully explores it until she discovers a vast library collection that keeps Raiskii occupied till the end of his visit of the estate. Not surprisingly, then, when Raiskii comes back to Malinovka some fifteen years later, he finds that Vera has moved into the old house with which she clearly felt an affinity as a little girl (notably, Grandma refers to the house as her “tower,” which stresses its connection to the Western literary tradition). Marfenka, again, is scared to visit it and comments on Vera’s bravery: “How is she not terrified here alone? I would have died! . . . She is so fearless! She is capable of going to the graveyard alone at night, over there, can you see? She pointed out to [Raiskii] from the window a mass of crosses that crowded on the hill. . . .”23 Importantly, just as Vera is not afraid 21 Ibid., vol. 5, 79–80. Emphasis mine. 22 Several scholars have explored the connection between the opening chapters of Maturin’s Gothic novel and Gogol’s novella. For one of the earlier treatments of this subject, see M. P. Alekseev, “Ch. R. Met’iurin i ego “Mel’mot Skitalets,” in Angliiskaia literatura. Ocherki i issledovaniia (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991), 206–293. 23 Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, 239.

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of the old house and the graveyard, she is not frightened by the ravine—the ultimate site of transgression and uncontrollable passions. The old house most fully realizes its Gothic potential in part V of the novel that describes the aftermath of Vera’s “fall”—her succumbing to her passion for the nihilist Mark Volokhov and giving herself to him in the ravine. The “grandma” Tatiana Markovna, the guardian of the traditional order, reads this event in Gothic terms, as a manifestation of a family curse. As we learn later through local gossip, forty-five years earlier Grandma experienced her own “fall” as an unmarried girl, and now she blames this earlier transgression for Vera’s demise, which she also interprets as the disintegration of her entire “realm” of stability and order. This disintegration is vividly captured in the grandma’s dystopian nightmare, which clearly follows “the fall of the house” scenario analyzed by Bowers. In this nightmare, the village, the garden, the lively new house—everything declines, while the old house, as gloomy, terrifying, and empty as ever, is haunted by Vera’s ghost, whose howling is mixed with that of the wind.24 In Grandma’s guilty subconscious, the house resists the power of time and the cosmic decay surrounding it and continues to harbor the dark family secret, which, like Vera’s ghost, does not go away. The old house’s powerful hold on the family’s past is overcome only in the cathartic moment of Grandma’s confession of her past “sin” to Vera that occurs in part five, chapter ten of the novel. This moment is depicted in anti-Gothic terms, as it were: as Vera is wasting away after her “fall,” gnawed by an acute disappointment, guilt, and the fear of Grandma’s moral condemnation, she is confronted with the sinister darkness of the old house but, as usual, experiences no fear: “her nerves were dead, and she would not have frozen with horror if an apparition appeared before her from the corner, or if a thief or a murderer would have snuck into the room.”25 The scene continues to build a suspenseful atmosphere typical of English Gothic novels, as the door begins to open slowly, then squeaks, and a female figure appears, “like an apparition,” in which Vera, however, quickly recognizes Tatiana Markovna. The external paraphernalia of a Gothic encounter are immediately dispelled, stressing thereby the depth of Vera’s inner distress. However, the suspenseful build-up does mark this moment as the novel’s climactic point, which leads to the subsequent resolution of Vera’s subplot. 24 Ibid., vol. 6, 329–330. 25 Ibid., vol. 6, 341.

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After Tatiana Markovna’s vague confession of her own “sin,” Vera leaves the old house, follows Grandma to the new one, and her slow convalescence begins.26 With the dark family secret revealed, the ghosts of the old house are exorcised, and its horrors are tamed. In fact, at the end of the novel, the old house is completely demystified: we learn that Tushin, the positive and practical hero of the novel, who is in love with Vera, brings an architect and starts planning its remodeling. So far we have observed the rather conventional portrayal of the old house in the novel as deeply linked to an ancient transgression and family history, very much in the tradition of the Gothic castle with its peculiar temporality, where the past continues to haunt the present and therefore never recedes.27 In this sense, then, it is indeed a somewhat surprising appearance of a seemingly antiquated literary tradition in a novel whose thrust was to capture the contemporary transitional moment in Russian society. The categories of “old” and “new,” however, are frequently reversed or at least complicated in the novel. Vera’s attachment to traditional Gothic topoi—a haunted castle/house and a graveyard—reveals this complexity. While Vera is associated with the forces of the new, at least for the majority of the novel, the “graveyard” or cemetery (kladbishche) is used throughout The Precipice as a metaphor for the stifling past, holding its sway over the present, or for stasis more generally: this term, for example, is applied to the provincial Volga town adjacent to Raiskii’s estate Malinovka and is extended to all provincial Russian towns: “It is not a town but a graveyard like all such towns.”28 In an earlier scene of the novel, when still in St. Petersburg, Raiskii uses this metaphor to describe the world of traditional values that have enslaved another distant cousin he pursues romantically, Sofia. Like 26 Ehre also observes that as a result of this move, Vera “abandons her seclusion in the old house and rejoins the domestic nest,” thus being reintegrated into the family as a social formation and guarantee of order (Oblomov and His Creator, 245). 27 See Mikhail Bakhtin’s characterization of the chronotope of a Gothic castle: “The castle is saturated through and through with a time that is historical in the narrow sense of the word, that is, the time of the historical past. The castle is the place where the lords of the feudal era lived (and consequently also the place of historical figures of the past). . . . And finally legends and traditions animate every corner of the castle and its environs through their constant reminders of past events. It is this quality that gives rise to the specific kind of narrative inherent in castles and that is then worked out in Gothic novels.” The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 245–246. 28 Ibid., vol. 5, 187.

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Vera, she lives in an old dark house filled with “faded” ancestral portraits, which Raiskii associates with the repressive traditional order, “the rules,” which Sofia faithfully follows. 29 Unlike Vera, “the rebellious daughter” surrounded by “the emblems of traditional authority,” as Ehre describes her,30 Sofia for the most part conforms to the tradition and half-jokingly refers to the family portraits as her backers: “You see how many are in favor [za] of my rules.”31 The “old house” in Malinovka, in contrast to Sofia’s house, is linked not to the old generation with their traditional principles or to the young heroine obedient to authority (Marfenka) but to the defiant Vera who is seeking a new cause and a new life and falls for the “new man,” the nihilist Mark Volokhov. In the case of Vera, then, the Gothic connotations of the graveyard and the old house emphasize her revolt against conventional values rather than her being enslaved by tradition and the old. In fact, it is when Vera leaves the old house and moves to the new one that she enters the world of traditional values. At the same time, as Ehre argues, “Vera’s abandonment of ‘the old house’ with its portraits of her aristocratic ancestry in order to move into ‘the new house’ . . . provides another suggestion that Russia’s ‘sound future’ will be unlike her ‘feudal past.’”32 The “old house” (and the Gothic mode that it embodies) thus exhibits profound ambiguity, as the site of the ancient family curse, feudal darkness, and ancestral authority, but also of transgression, rebellion, and a breakaway from tradition. Vera’s favoring of the spaces associated with stasis and tradition, despite her longing for joining the new people, is not the only example of the destabilization of the “old/new” binary in The Precipice. The figure of the “wolf ” (in Russian, volk) Volokhov further problematizes the “old/ new” dichotomy. As Ani Kokobobo has demonstrated, Goncharov portrays

29 The description of the aunts’ house where Sofia lives is more compressed and less overtly Gothic than Vera’s “old house,” but it contains the same motifs, including a comparison of furniture items to coffins (or, in this case, sarcophaguses): “Their house was old, long, with two stories, with a blazon on the pediment, with thick, massive walls, recessed small windows and long piers. The house consisted of an endless enfilade of brocade-upholstered rooms; dark heavy carved cupboards with old china and silverware, like sarcophaguses, stood along the walls next to just as heavy sofas and chairs in the rococo style. . . .” Ibid., vol. 5, 20. 30 Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator, 244. 31 Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, 29. 32 Ibid., 247.

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this character as a “grotesque hybrid,” a “part-monster and part-animal.”33 The monstrous, animalistic, and vampiric Volokhov, who defies the notion of the nuclear family, is precisely that alternative subject that threatens the modern individual (Vera) as discussed by Armstrong. Such a subject is produced not only by the aesthetics of Grotesque Realism analyzed by Kokobobo but also by the Gothic mode, as Armstrong showed using the example of British fiction (both aesthetic traditions can overlap, of course). Volokhov’s monstrosity was frequently noted by the critics of The Precipice. Shelgunov, for example, observed with sarcasm that the novel sets up Volokhov’s entry in such a way that “the reader [is] prepared to see “something very horrible, impossible, shocking, something like a mastodon or an ichthyosaur” and “a monster” (chudishche).34 The supposedly “new” man then exhibits atavistic and archaic characteristics and is linked to the seemingly outdated tradition of Gothic monstrosity. The tension between the old and the new was, in fact, at the heart of the Gothic tradition. As David Punter puts it, “Gothic stood for the old-fashioned as opposed to the modern; the barbaric as opposed to the civilized; crudity as opposed to elegance. . . . Gothic was the archaic, the pagan, that which was prior to, or was opposed to, or resisted the establishment of civilized values and a well-regulated society.”35 However, precisely because of its focus on the irrational sphere and its association with medieval “barbarism,” Gothic literature was revolutionary at its time, revealing the limitations of Enlightenment’s optimism and scientific rationalism. Thanks to this ambivalence, the Gothic mode thus was a particularly apt literary means for Goncharov to grapple with the complexity of the transitional moment in Russian society, that “struggle between the old and the new” which, as both Goncharov and his critics have repeatedly emphasized, was the central conflict of his novel.36 The rich potential of the Gothic mode to signal transgression and rebellion against the established (“old”) ways is realized at the novel’s metaliterary level as well. While some critics saw in The Precipice Goncharov’s attempt at a more conventional nineteenth-century Realist novel, compared to his earlier fiction, I argue that the injection of the Gothic mode into the work 33 Ani Kokobobo, Russian Grotesque Realism: The Great Reforms and the Gentry Decline (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2018), 27–28. 34 Shelgunov, “Talantlivaia bestalannost’,” 252, 255. 35 Punter, The Literature of Terror, 6. 36 See, for example, Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8, 88, 96.

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challenges the basic premises of the artistic method of Realism.37 The abundance of Gothic tropes in the novel, invoking the hidden, the unsaid, and the repressed, suggests an alternative to Realist aesthetics with its reliance on presence, detail, and the visual. Several scholars of Realism, from Peter Brooks to Molly Brunson, have stressed the “visual dominant” of literary Realism, its dependence on “our sense of sight as the most reliable guide to the world as it most immediately affects us.”38 Goncharov’s literary talent was universally perceived as intensely visual, often at the expense of analytical thought or a progressive agenda. For example, Vissarion Belinskii’s review of his first novel A Common Story, states: “The main power of Mr. Goncharov’s talent is the elegance and refinement of his brush, the precision of the picture [vernost’ risunka].”39 In his review of The Precipice, Shelgunov echoes (and quotes) this view, stressing the insufficiency of the writer’s “drawing talent” (risoval’nogo talanta), reduced to tableaux vivants and lacking a progressive message.40 Goncharov himself agreed with Belinskii’s characterization, describing his talent as the “unconscious” type, carried forward by his ability to draw: When I draw a picture, I rarely know at that moment what the meaning of my image, portrait or character is: I only see it alive before myself—and I watch whether I draw accurately; I see the character in interaction with others, and therefore I see the scenes and draw those other [characters], sometimes well before they appear in the novel, without fully foreseeing how all these parts of the whole, scattered in my mind, will come together.41

In The Precipice, this talent of visualization is given to the protagonist Raiskii, a gifted dilettante, who not only starts as a painter, before he moves to literature (and then to sculpture), but also manifests striking perceptiveness to every minute visual detail in his surroundings since his childhood years—a trait that continues during his university studies where he 37 Ehre, in particular, argues that The Precipice is more rooted in contemporary social reality, as was typical of nineteenth-century fiction, compared to A Common Story and Oblomov (Oblomov and His Creator, 240–241). 38 Peter Brooks, Realist Vision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 3. See also Molly Brunson, Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840–1890 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016). 39 V. G. Belinskii, “Vzgliad na russkuiu literaturu 1847 goda,” in I. A. Goncharov v russkoi kritike: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1958), 52. 40 Shelgunov, “Talantlivaia bestalannost’,” 235–245. 41 Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8, 70.

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perceives history as a live picture unfolding before his very eyes, rather than a causal sequence of events: “And why does he need to reason when he can see it anyway?”42 The characters’ reliance on visualization, however, is challenged precisely by the ultimate Gothic trope of the novel, the already familiar “old house.” Interestingly, even in their first appearance in the novel, the two houses are opposed not only in terms of light versus dark, life versus death, plenitude versus emptiness, as I mentioned before, but also in visual terms: Tatiana Markovna liked to see an open space before her eyes, one that would not look like a slum but would have sunshine and the scent of flowers. From the other side of the house, facing the yards, she could see all that was going on in the courtyard, the servants’ quarters, the kitchen, the hayricks, the stable, and the cellars. She had all of this right before her very eyes. The old house alone stood in the depths of the courtyard, like a film on one’s eye [kak bel’mo v glazu], gloomy, always in shadow, gray, weathered here and there, with boarded windows, a porch overgrown with grass, and heavy doors fastened by heavy bolts.  .  .  .  By contrast, the sun streamed from morning to night on the new house, and the trees retreated from it in order to give it space and air.43

While the new house offers an open and almost panoptical view of the household (really, of Grandma’s realm), the old house, compared to a film on one’s eye, obstructs vision.44 I read this simile as a metaliterary comment on the challenge the Gothic poses to the Realist method with its reliance on the visual and the present as a means of knowing the world and the truth. Notably, when visiting Vera’s room in the old house, Raiskii expects to read her personality in terms of her surroundings which he already “paints” in his mind, in the best traditions of Realist aesthetics. ‘Let’s go to Vera’s room: I want to see [it]!’ said Raiskii. ... In his mind, Raiskii had already drawn a picture of that room: he imagined the furniture, décor, engravings, trinkets, and for some reason everything was not like Marfenka’s but different. 42 Ibid., vol. 5, 89. 43 Ibid., vol. 5, 62. Emphasis mine. 44 “Bel’mo v glazu” is also an idiomatic expression referring to something irritating, annoying, a thorn in one’s side, but here the literal meaning is clearly significant as well.

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With curiosity, he crossed the doorway, looked around the room, and . . . his expectations were thwarted. There was nothing there.

What follows is a minimalist description of Vera’s modest and simple room, which ends with a characteristic explosion of negative constructions: And that’s it. Not a single engraving, nor a book, nor a trinket that would indicate the owner’s taste or disposition. ‘Where does she have everything?’ Raiskii asked. ‘She has nothing.’

Marfenka explains to Raiskii that Vera locks her desk drawer and carries the key with her, and then fearfully suggests, “Let’s go, dear brother: it reeks of emptiness here. How is she not terrified here alone?”45 In his book on Romantic Realism, Donald Fanger points out that all four writers of this mode that he examines in this study (Balzac, Dickens, Gogol, and Dostoevsky) “make a person’s habitation as deeply revelatory of character as his face; houses, apartments, and rooms are all charged with meaning” (this principle is realized most literally in Gogol’s famous description of Sobakevich’s house in Dead Souls where each object “seemed to say ‘And I am, too, Sobakevich!’”).46 The great Realist Tolstoy used a more metaphoric identification of the room décor with the character’s outer and inner state, past or present, as in the case of Kitty Shcherbatskaia’s “pretty little pink room, decorated with little dolls as young, pink and cheerful as Kitty had been just two months earlier.”47 In contrast to these techniques, Vera’s room is emphatically silent about its resident’s personality or state of mind. Shelgunov saw in this scene Goncharov’s attempt to create an effect of mystery to pique the reader’s curiosity, which is certainly valid—Vera is “dark and mysterious” to Raiskii (and the reader) for much of the novel.48 However, I argue that this scene serves a metaliterary function as well: 45 Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, 238–239. 46 Donald Fanger, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism: A Study of Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965; Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 263. Page numbers refer to the 1998 edition. N. V. Gogol’, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976–1979), vol. 5, 92. Fanger also refers to this passage in Gogol in his Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism, 23. 47 L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1928–1965), vol. 18, 130–131. 48 Shelgunov, “Talantlivaia bestalannost’,” 252. The characterization of Vera as “dark and mysterious” belongs to Ehre (Oblomov and His Creator, 237).

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the Gothic void, which terrifies Marfenka so much, challenges the Realist excess and reveals Goncharov’s testing of the limits of Realist epistemology and aesthetics. Goncharov explicitly enters debates on Realism in his belated (!) response to critics of The Precipice, which appeared ten years after the novel’s publication with the characteristic title “Better Late than Never” (1879). The article ends with a vigorous invective against what he calls “neorealism,” with its tendentiousness, its emphasis on rationality and its denial of the realm of fantasy and imagination.49 The photographs (snimki) of life and nature offered by neorealists, Goncharov insists, will remain dry and lifeless theoretical constructions but not true works of art, for “artistic truth and the truth of reality are not one and the same.”50 This artistic truth is impossible to grasp and express without the use of creative imagination, which, Goncharov feels, is neglected in the contemporary emphasis on straightforward mimesis. In his insistence on artistic truth as a criterion of a truly Realist literary work and in his transhistorical application of the term “Realism,” Goncharov anticipates the decadents’ and symbolists’ attack on nineteenth-century positivism and “vulgar utilitarian” realism and naturalism, as in Merezhkovskii’s programmatic article “On the Reasons for the Decline of and on the New Tendencies in Contemporary Russian Literature” (1893). In this article, Merezhkovskii also echoes Goncharov’s view on Realism in his critique of the “crude photographic precision of experimental shots (snimki)” and argues instead for exploring the unsaid, the unconscious, and the symbolic—all of which, as we have seen, appear in the Gothic stratum of The Precipice.51 Significantly, Merezhkovskii singles out Goncharov, along with Gogol, as the symbolist writer par excellence and credits him and Turgenev for instinctively and unconsciously “discovering a new form . . . of ideal art in the era of crude realism.”52 Contemporary scholars, too, have commented on the forward-looking nature of Goncharov’s The Precipice by focusing on its innovative narrative technique and its polemical, metaliterary compositional devices. 49 For a detailed analysis of Goncharov’s polemics with the radical “anti-aesthetics” of the 1860s both in The Precipice and in the article “Better Late than Never,” see K. Iu. Zubkov, “‘Obryv’ I. A. Goncharova i ‘antiestetika’ 1860-kh godov,” Russkaia literatura 2 (2015): 155–166. 50 Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8, 106. 51 D. S. Merezhkovskii, L. Tolstoi i Dostoevskii. Vechnye sputniki (Moscow: Respublika, 1995), 538. 52 Ibid., 540.

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Krasnoshchekova observes, “While Oblomov concludes the trajectory of the Russian novel (from the 1840s to the 1860s), in The Precipice we clearly see the desire of the mature writer to explore the new artistic horizons.” She sides with those scholars who see the features of the future twentieth-century novel in The Precipice, specifically its elusive protagonist, symbolic motifs, and its novel-within-the novel technique (Raiskii is writing a novel whose fragments are included in The Precipice).53 Kirill Zubkov points out that in The Precipice Goncharov asserts the ability of the “traditional” novelistic form to engage with pressing topical concerns, but the writer addresses them mostly through the novel’s very structure, thus “taking a step towards the twentieth-century novel.”54 As I have demonstrated in this article, Goncharov’s polemical use of the Gothic mode in The Precipice contributes to the novel’s innovative poetics. In my reading of the Gothic aesthetic in Goncharov’s last novel, the Gothic reemerges as an intensely modern, rather than antiquated, literary mode that signals the crisis of the dominant literary paradigm. In his adaptation of traditional literary forms, Goncharov was indeed untimely—not because he was outdated but because he was ahead of his time.

53 Krasnoshchekova, Goncharov: Mir tvorchestva, 376–377. She refers to the following study: Alexandra Lyngstad and Sverre Lyngstad, Ivan Goncharov (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974). 54 Zubkov, “‘Obryv’ I. A. Goncharova i ‘antiestetika’ 1860-kh godov,” 166.

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The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal, and Heteronormativity in The Precipice Ani Kokobobo and Devin McFadden

Among a generation of Russian realists that included writers like Leo Tolstoy, Fedor Dostoevsky, and others, Ivan Goncharov is understood as the most conservatively inclined of them all. This perception is mostly based on the fact that Goncharov served the Russian empire in a number of official capacities, including as a censor. His aesthetic philosophy also seems to be quite conventional. Milton Ehre argues although Goncharov was conspicuously silent on the topic, his artistic method was at least partly aimed at the radical men of the 1860s, such as Chernyshesvkii, Pisarev, and their followers. Goncharov referred to the new generation of men as “neo-realists” or “ultra-realists” and viewed their realism as tendentious, and lacking in poetry due to a narrow focus on sterile topical concerns. Ehre points out that despite Goncharov’s belief in the importance of “truth” in art, he insisted that this truth could not be “mathematical truth.” Instead, Goncharov endeavored for a type of “artistic truth,” inseparable from the “tones” and “illuminations” of the imagination, and that deviated from the “truth of reality.”1 In his own art, Goncharov countered the ultra-realism of Chernyshevskii and Pisarev with his own brand of realism that aimed 1

Milton Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 72.

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

to capture permanent social fixtures and types. As he argued, the focus of literature should be phenomena and people of the past, “settled, stable, and formed over a long period of time.”2   This perspective on realism, which may be seen as countering Dostoevsky’s emphasis on a “new word” that would capture the chaos of the contemporary, was arguably conservative in nature—aimed at replicating and preserving the fixtures of Russian society. And yet, as we show in this chapter, Goncharov’s actual writing does not live up to the abstract ideas he presents in his theoretical works. In particular, Goncharov’s depiction of the family as well as gender and sexuality therein, are hardly normative in nature. If we understand the traditional family as a heterosexual, child-producing unit, then there are a number of non-heteronormative features in the author’s vision of love, especially in his longest novel The Precipice (Obryv). Conceived during the 1840s with a cast of characters situated in the 1830s, adapted over time to reflect the historical realities of the 1860s, The Precipice is eminently historical and artistically fluid in nature. Despite Goncharov’s emphasis on the “settled, stable, and formed,” the novel’s creative history evidently replicates and reflects late nineteenth-century Russian history, which was hardly stable. While Russia changed, so did The Precipice, as Goncharov revised the narrative to capture inchoate historical phenomena. In this context, the most significant historical intrusion into the novel was the character of Mark Volokhov, a nihilist and man of the 1860s, retroactively transplanted into an earlier era.  Despite this significant historical element in its creative history, The Precipice nonetheless navigates some of the more challenging historical questions of its present delicately. In most Russian anti-nihilist novels of the 1860s, rebellion did not frequently take place within the political sphere, but was rather redirected into the social and romantic realms.3 From this perspective, the nihilists were contained in their political actions, but allowed anti-social refusals of society. So although they could not spark revolutions, they engaged in new modes of life in the Russian novel, such as romantic seduction, exploitation, and so on. Goncharov followed this aesthetic trend in The Precipice where Mark is able to seduce Vera, but then loses her when she eventually marries a member of the gentry. As we argue, even though Goncharov seemingly gives the novel a proper ending by foiling Mark’s 2 3

Ibid., 74. Novels by Pisemskii, Leskov, Krestovskii, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and others.

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romantic designs, the author nevertheless articulates an alternative mode of living and being in the novel. Through Mark and other relationships in the text, Goncharov presents a form of queer non-heteronormativity. Using the example of Volokhov and a number of relationships from The Precipice, we consider how Russia’s new men subscribe to alternative and subversive lifestyles outside the bounds of traditional family. As we argue, although not strictly speaking queer in terms of overt sexual orientation, Mark and other nihilist figures in general fall out of reproductive time. Through his negativity, and through nihilism as a stance, Mark stands as a naysayer to the family institution. He eventually “loses” when the novel ends with the conventional family institution reinforced, but his negative stance on heteronormativity is echoed through a series of other, non-heteronormative relationships, such as the friendship between Raiskii and Leontii or Leontii and Volokhov. Many of these other relationships are largely platonic and are not given the importance and legitimization that the marriage of Vera to Tushin receives at the end of the novel. They are nonetheless deeply emotionally significant and provide a positive and productive spectrum to Mark, whose larger philosophy is traditionally perceived as negative. In what follows, we consider the social rebellion encompassed in the anti-nihilist genre at large, then explore Mark Volokhov’s particular rebellion, and conclude with ways in which Goncharov reinforces this rebellion through his depiction of marriages and relationships.

The Anti-Nihilist Novel The “nihilists,” or the “new men of the 60s,” were so influential in Russia during the 1860s that this entire period is sometimes identified as a “nihilist milieu” in their honor. Nihilists came from mixed social backgrounds, normally identified with the raznochintsy group, and some of their better-known representatives were Nikolai Chernyshevskii, Nikolai Dobroliubov, and Dmitrii Pisarev. Of course, the label “nihilists” was somewhat of a misnomer when applied to a group of people that “believed blindly and violently in their own ideas.”4 As Nikolai Berdiaev has argued, for many young men of the 60s, “materialism was turned into a peculiar sort of dogmatic

4

Charles Moser, Antinihilism of the Russian Novel of the 1860s (The Hague: Mouton, 1964).

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

theology” and science became an “object of faith.”5 The nihilists were devoted to positivism and science and used the tools they provided to direct their negativity outside themselves—to what they saw as the failures of Russian society and the nothingness that occupied its core. As they argued, nihilism was not inherent to them, but rather characteristic of all society and social customs. In fact, anti-nihilist writers who always domesticated nihilist actions and situated them in the private sphere, may well have been right in that the purpose of nihilism was itself more social than political. In 1883, Sergei Kravchinskii suggested that nihilists were less focused on political revolution and wholesale destruction and more focused on personal and cultural revolution. In his words, nihilism is “a passionate and powerful reaction, not against political despotism, but against the moral despotism that weighs upon the private and inner life of the individual.”6 If there were social expectations for how individuals were supposed to live their lives, including marriage, and other traditional institutions and politics of respectability, then nihilists were primarily social offenders. Russian writers depicted them in this manner, first, because they could not depict outright political rebellion (with the exception of Dostoevsky in Demons), and second, because they viewed transgressions to fundamental social values as even more dangerous than revolutions. From this perspective, one of the most famous nihilists in Russian literature, Ivan Turgenev’s Bazarov, was similarly focused on being a social naysayer, as much against the conventions of society as he was politically motivated. According to the words of the young Arkadii, who embraces Bazarov’s nihilism and friendship: “A Nihilist is a man who declines to bow to authority, or to accept any principle on trust, however sanctified it may be.”7 These words imply political ideology, but they also hint at Bazarov’s deep social impropriety that begins with his aggressive smoking at the start of the novel and continues with his various confrontations with Pavel Kirsanov. Indeed, in the context of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (Ottsy i deti), although the nihilists do not attempt a political revolution, they aim at familial and social evolution within the confines of the gentry estate. They fail miserably at this latter 5 6 7

Nikolai Berdiaev. The Origin of Russian Communism (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 46. Michael Alan Gillespie, Nihilism before Nietzsche (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 140. Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, trans. Rosemary Edmonds (New York: Penguin, 1973), 111.

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enterprise; in fact, eventually, Arkadii is incorporated into the traditional family institution through marriage, whereas Bazarov, before he is spurned by Odintsova, seems to be ready to give himself to the traditional gentry’s lifestyle with her. In Bazarov’s story we see a typical anti-nihilist plot: a nihilist directing his rebellion against the social rather than political structures of the period. Turgenev foils Bazarov’s attempts, but with his commitment to literary objectivity and resistance to ideological dogma in art, the author was also hard-to-pin down in his positions. If Fathers and Sons was supposed to be a typical anti-nihilist work that reinforced the virtues of the status quo at the cost of the intrusive social outsider, it did not convincingly pull off this mission. The conservative critic Mikhail Katkov exclaimed that Turgenev “should be ashamed of lowering the flag before a radical, or saluting him as an honourable soldier.” “There is concealed approval lurking here,” wrote Katkov, “this fellow, Bazarov, definitely dominates the others and does not encounter proper resistance.”8 For Katkov, even Turgenev’s mild social approval of Bazarov was politically dangerous. Others on the right—like Nikolai Strakhov—were more sympathetic, and some on the left were critical, but notably, the nihilist Pisarev adored the novel and saw himself in Bazarov. All in all, as these mixed responses suggest, the notion that Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons was a properly anti-nihilist narrative that decried the younger generation, while reinforcing the traditional status quo, is dubious at best. In fact, most anti-nihilist novels were never quite as tendentious as the political orientation of the genre suggested. Goncharov’s last novel The Precipice, is no exception. When it came out in 1869, it was received by critics quite negatively. In Goncharov’s case, it was critics on the left who were most negative, and who accused the author of reactionary conservatism. Goncharov, who once described the novel as “my life . . . in short, all my personal life,” was so devastated by this response that he never wrote another major novel again.9 Yet looking back at The Precipice, particularly in light of how much it truly was a labor of love for Goncharov, one is tempted to question the conservatism the author is often decried for. In fact, rather than seeing The Precipice as merely a tendentious anti-nihilist hack job, we may see it as a broader meditation on normativity, 8 9

Isaiah Berlin, Fathers and Children: Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament (New York: Penguin, 1973), 37. Galya Diment, “Introduction,” in Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, ed. Galya Diment (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 35.

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

what it means to be a conventional person, and more importantly, how we define normative families and relationships. Although, much like Turgenev, Goncharov’s tried to be a reader’s writer, and give his readers the proper conventional endings that he thought they sought, there is more to The Precipice than the traditional finale. In fact, some of the more cherished individuals and relationships in Goncharov’s novels are profoundly non-normative in nature. Before even looking at textual evidence in the novel proper, the most obvious hints that this is the case can be found in Goncharov’s life, which had far from conservative or normative roots. In fact, the author was quite the proponent of women’s rights and critical of existing gender relation dynamics in the Russian empire.10 The major female heroine in the novel, Vera, was based on the historical Ekaterina Maikova, who was the wife of one of Goncharov’s closest friends, Vladimir Maikov. In 1869, the same year that The Precipice was published, she joined a commune in the Caucasus. This decision came after Ekaterina had left her husband, had a child with someone else, and became involved in a number of radical causes of her time, including women’s suffrage movements.11 As we can learn from his letters to Maikova, originally, Goncharov had intended to keep the novel’s plot much closer to the reality of her life. As he wrote: My initial idea was that Vera, attracted to her man, should follow him and abandon her nest, and with her maid should travel through all of Siberia. . . . She would have followed him and partaken in his fate, would have been full of perfectly passionate devotion to him, and, if they had no children, would have sought to make herself useful to others all the while, of course, sharing his views. 12

Goncharov’s remarks above suggest that rather than adopting the traditional ending of the anti-nihilist genre, whereby the heroine follows a conventional life path that results in marriage and children, the author had intended to give his favorite novel a rather non-normative conclusion. In keeping with the historical Maikova, Vera would leave her social setting with the nihilist character Mark and follow him to Siberia. In the process, she would even be open to renouncing childbirth. From this perspective, in a plot turn that is reminiscent of the non-normative life of heroine Vera 10 Diment, “Introduction,” 36. 11 Ibid., 34. 12 Ibid., 35.

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Pavlovna from Chernyshevskii’s What is to Be Done? (Chto delat’?) (1863), Goncharov wanted his Vera to choose passion and a vocation over the traditional woman’s path. As we know, the author eventually moved away from this more radical plotline into a traditional anti-nihilist story. Even so, some elements of the originally radical outcome remained. In part, this move was due to the repressive reality of tsarist Russia—as a progressive woman, Maikova did not engage in direct political revolution; instead, her rebellion, just like that of the fictional Bazarov, unfolded along social and romantic lines. In The Precipice, Goncharov embedded this same social rebellion in the figure of his nihilist hero, Mark Volokhov and more broadly through other novelistic subplots: such as dysfunctional marriages and the privileging of friendships and same-sex relationships over the traditional marital ideal. Through his non-traditional stance about society and relationships, Mark Volokhov comes to embody a rebellion of alternatives and queer otherness. And since Volokhov’s scope as a character in The Precipice is minor, we can also measure his footprint in the novel through Goncharov’s larger aesthetic rebellion against normativity and marriage at large.

The Naysayer as a Queer Thinker As was the case with Turgenev’s Bazarov, Goncharov’s Volokhov is portrayed as a social deviant more than a political revolutionary. On a most basic level, Volokhov is inherently an outsider in the world of The Precipice. As Goncharov himself admitted, the character was deeply problematic for him because he belonged to a later era, whereas the rest of the novel dated to an earlier period. Already in this duality, Mark appears as a hybrid character and an outsider of sorts, a man of the 60s and a nihilist in the earlier, idealistic milieu of the 1830s and 40s of The Precipice. Mark’s otherness is palpable in the novel; we learn from very early on that he is a person “with no roots” in the local community and is generally quite negative and judgmental about those around him. He has mane-like hair and there’s something outright animalistic about his behavior.13 Mark shows no concern for social propriety but prioritizes his own physical needs throughout the narrative. We know that one of Mark’s greatest social trespasses in 13 Ani Kokobobo, Russian Grotesque Realism: The Great Reforms and the Gentry Decline (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2018), 38–40.

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

the novel is that he steals apples from Tatiana Markovna’s garden, simply because he wants to eat them. There are multiple occasions when Mark visits different characters in the novel, hungry or thirsty, and expects them to extend him hospitality. At one point, while in the company of Raiskii, Mark wants to “storm the inn” because he is hungry and he thinks no one will open if they know it is him asking. At other times, we know that he enters people’s homes through windows either at night, or when not dressed in proper attire.14 “He had been out hunting, and had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours,” writes the narrator about Mark on one of these occasions. Another time Mark comes back from fishing, asks for a change of clothes, and proceeds to change right in front of everyone else, with no concern for propriety. Whereas others may plan for financial means, Mark lives his life naturally and simply takes what he wants to satisfy his physical and mental needs. He relies on those around him for help. So the local landowner, Leontii, is someone he visits in hopes that he will be fed, and when that does not work, he relies on his new acquaintance, Raiskii. On his first encounter with Mark, Raiskii feeds him, gives him a place to sleep, and lends him money. When Raiskii tells Mark that he can take his apples whenever he likes, Mark refuses the permission. “[W]hy should I need your permission?” he says, “I am accustomed to do everything in this life without permission. Therefore, I will take the apples without your permission, they taste better.”15 The code at play in these actions seems strikingly naturalistic and anti-social in nature. Whatever social conventions there are about property and boundaries, Mark has no interest in them. Ultimately, even before we are exposed to Mark’s negativity about relationships and marriage, his position as a nihilist and the general positionality of the nihilist as such suggest potential parallels between nihilists and queer, non-heteronormative figures. Queer theorists like David Halperin, Lee Edelman, and Jack Halberstam have articulated broader contours of queer identity as a kind of oppositionality to the norms rather than as a strictly sexuality-based identity. As David Halperin argues, “Queer is by 14 Ivan Goncharov, The Precipice, trans. M. Bryant (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1916). The original Russian edition: Ivan Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1952–1955), vols. 5, 6, and 7. Citations will refer to both languages; volume number and pages of the original Russian are given in parentheses. 15 Goncharov, The Precipice, 75 (vol. 5, 27).

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definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative.”16 Likewise, Lee Edelman defines queerness as a kind of undermining of normativity. Edelman presents us with an anti-social figure known as the sinthomosexual, who, like the nihilist, is a perpetual naysayer in the face of the social. The sinthomosexual is someone whose existence ‘forsakes all causes, all social action, all responsibility for a better tomorrow or for the perfection of social forms.’” In queering the status quo and the social order,” in “repudiating the social,” this figure envisions the “undoing of civil society” by “insist[ing] on disturbing, on queering, social organization as such.”17 If, on some level, queering means divesting from society as well as heteronormativity and the family, then this kind of divestiture is precisely what the Russian nihilists had in mind. Nihilists, described in The Precipice as the “new-born strength of the world,”18 sought fundamental change and institutional reorganization. They wanted a new reality and had only distaste for existing institutions. In his refusal to behave in socially conventional ways or to engage in financial accumulation, Mark embodies this broader contrarian identity. He is an aimless person who refuses to use doors, feed, or advance himself in conventional ways. In this sense, he represents the opposite of the model of activity, accumulation, and social advancement that figures like Stolz in Oblomov or Tushin in The Precipice exemplify. Although condemned by traditional figures like Tatiana Markovna in The Precipice, at least in the novel’s beginnings Volokhov’s contrarian unwillingness to play by social convention, his illegitimacy, general otherness, and unproductivity, are more endearing than objectionable. Although Goncharov makes the effort to present traditional heroes like Stolz and Tushin, the fact that Raiskii identifies as closely as he does with Mark is a tell-tale sign that the character may be far closer to the creator than we traditionally assume. After all, it is the indolent couch-potato, Oblomov, or the rambling, do-nothing artist, Raiskii—who, like Mark, embody queer oppositionality—that are Goncharov’s main heroes, rather than the conventionally masculine doers. 16 David Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 62. 17 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 110. 18 Goncharov, The Precipice, 169 (vol. 5, 190).

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

Probably the best way to assess the author’s appreciation for these new men is by seeing the extent to which he considers them as more than negative thinkers. In a more recent book in which queer otherness emerges as a broader position vis-à-vis society, Jack Halberstam describes queerness in terms that invoke negative thinking, as “nonbelievers outside the cult of positive thinking . . . failures and losers, the grouchy, irritable whiners who do not want to ‘have a nice day’ and who do not believe that getting cancer has made them better people.” “Relieved of the obligation to keep smiling through chemotherapy or bankruptcy,” writes Halberstam, “the negative thinker can use the experience of failure to confront the gross inequalities of everyday life in the United States.” Halberstam considers negative thinkers as individuals who are familiar with conventional failure, and, as a result, are not “unduly optimistic” or “mired in nihilistic critical dead ends” but know how to fail well and learn how to fail better.19 The negativity that Halberstam identifies is therefore a kind of other positivity. In nineteenth-century Russia, nihilists were often dismissed as negative thinkers despite their belief in science. In The Precipice, for all the ways in which Mark breaks with convention, there is something appealing about his authentic way of being in the world. While others are better social players than he is, Mark articulates an alternative and a refusal to advance according to social standards. Aside from barging into the homes of others, Mark also does not subscribe to the social expectations of purpose and productivity. He never has any money and is fed by the “market gardener” which whom he lives. He asks the artist Raiskii for money at one point and makes it clear he will never return the loan. Rather than finding this mode of living off-putting, however, Raiskii, who is still trying to find himself, is relieved to find fellowship in Mark: “‘Thank God,’ he [says] to himself, that I am not the only idle, aimless person here.”20 In thinking about himself and his artistic preoccupation, which situate him outside of society, Raiskii mentions that he sees something similar in Mark. “[H]e wanders about, reconciles himself to his fate, and does nothing,” says Raiskii, and wonders if Mark is the “victim of secret discord.”21 As Mark himself explains, thus helping further define this other, more negative mode of living and being: “with us Russians everyone is an artist. They use the chisel, paint, 19 Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 24. 20 Goncharov, The Precipice, 77 (vol. 5, 272). 21 Ibid.

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strum, write poetry, as you and your like do. Others drive in the morning to the courts or the government offices, others sit before their stalls playing draughts, and still others stick on their estates—art is everywhere.”22 This idea of everyone being an artist of sorts, even if Mark does not fully see himself as belonging to the category, suggests the possibility of a way of living that is not conventionally productive, but still positive despite appearing aimless and negative to those invested in more conventional success.

Refusing Heteronormativity in the Anti-Nihilist Plot Volokhov’s position on love and marriage, which he expresses brazenly to Vera during their secretive love affair, epitomizes how his nihilist beliefs are interlocked with a queer notion of love turned against heteronormativity and society at large. Volokhov and Vera meet regularly at the bottom of the town’s precipice in order to exchange books, as Volokhov provides her with “radical” reading materials, such as the works of the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and she offers him intellectual companionship. Volokhov is impressed with Vera’s independent thinking and sharp wit; and soon after, they begin an affair. Halfway through the novel, their conversations turn to the subjects of marriage, love, and nature, as Vera becomes inquisitive about the future of their relationship while also negotiating Raiskii’s and Tushin’s mounting romantic pursuits. In many ways, this discussion about the future also begins their separation, as Vera asks Mark for some type of reassurance about the future of their relationship, which he is unable to give. In fact, during their final meeting together in the precipice, when Vera seeks commitment, Volokhov delivers what we might characterize as a queer reading of love and happiness, which runs against heteronormativity and spells the end of their relationship. Similar to other nihilists of the 1860s, Volokhov equates marriage with “old traditions.” He makes this point multiple times throughout the novel, but the idea is emphasized when he compares Vera to her elderly grandmother for suggesting marriage to him. As Mark says to Vera: “Your grandmother speaks through you, but with another voice. That was all very well once, but now we are in a flood of another life where neither authority nor preconceived ideas will help us, where truth alone asserts her power.”23 In these remarks, 22 Ibid., 70 (vol. 5, 271). 23 Ibid., 217 (vol. 5, 257).

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

not only is Mark describing marriage as a dated practice, but he indicates that in the new world order advocated by the nihilists, there is no place for such customs or preconceived notions. Here, he condemns the marriage institution to be a tradition of the past in order to make space for his own nihilist convictions, which signal potential for a “new world order.” Mark takes his denigration of marriage one step further when he affirms that marriage oppresses and confines women, as marriage “only lays its ban on women.”24 Aside from positioning the marriage tradition as obsolete and at the root of gender inequality, Mark is also able to advance his own understanding of love as a remedy and alternative to heteronormativity. In this way, Volokhov adopts the positionality of the sinthomosexual, who undermines social norms and institutions. For Mark, this stance is not outright negative as he comes to formulate a different stance on love. He articulates a version of love as based on equality and reciprocity in response to Vera’s notion that love must depend on duty, sacrifice, and eternal commitment: In love I recognize solely the principle of reciprocation, as it obtains in nature. The law that I acknowledge is to follow unfettered our strong impression, to exchange happiness for happiness . . . Is sacrifice necessary? Call it what you will there is no sacrifice in my scheme of life . . . Here I will stay so long as I am happy, so long as I love. If my love grows cold, I shall tell you so, and go wherever life leads me, without taking any baggage of duties and privileges with me.25

What Volokhov appears to be describing is a non-normative type of relationship that is not focused on commitment or monogamy. In fact, it calls to mind queer relationships that philosopher Michel Foucault finds best described through “friendship.” In an interview with the French magazine Gai Pied in 1981, Foucault elucidates how queer relationships offer equality, as they do not abide by the societal constraints, norms, and expectations that heteronormative relationships must. Foucault explains: They face each other without terms or convenient words, with nothing to assure them about the meaning of the movement that carries them toward each other. They [queers] have to invent, from A to Z, a relationship that is

24 Ibid., 218 (vol. 6, 67). 25 Ibid., 217 (vol. 6, 68).

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formless, which is friendship: that is to say, the sum of everything through which they can give each other pleasure.26

While Volokhov is not sexually queer, his position on love mirrors the queer position through its non-normative characteristics which call for a “formless,” equal exchange. By proclaiming love to be based on equality and reciprocity, Volokhov is also positively reaffirming his political and social beliefs at the expense of the principles of the world around him. This becomes clearer when Volokhov stipulates the relationship between love and nature to Vera, whom he believes has lost touch with this understanding of human life and become tied to social conventions about duty, privilege, and responsibility. Volokhov, on the other hand, has a more scientific, metaphysical understanding. He explains that “love is not a concept merely, but a driving force, a necessity, and therefore is mostly blind. But I am not blindly chained to you.”27 Volokhov is explaining to Vera how love is impartial, as it is an objective phenomenon of the world, and how humans have a subjective experience of this world, where they can demarcate between objective forces in nature and their own individual realities. What he is suggesting is that love is something that we cannot control as human beings, but we have the capacity to understand it and act accordingly in our own lives. This is also why he responds to Vera that he does not believe ideas like “never” and “always,” because people can only control so much of their environment, especially when it comes to love. He explains: “‘Never!’ He repeated angrily, with a gesture of impatience. “What lying words those are, ‘never’ and ‘always.’ Of course ‘never,’ does not a year, perhaps two, three years, mean never? You want a never-ending tenderness. Does such a thing exist?”28 He perceives Vera and her beliefs on marriage and monogamy as being irrational and mystical, as he goes on to remark that “if I conceived myself to be an angel . . . I might say ‘for our whole lives.’29 Effectively, in the final moments of their last meeting, Volokhov makes his position absolute by declaring that he does not believe in “unending love.” When Vera tries to counter, Volokhov replies with a more critical depiction of heteronormativity, as he relies on its failings to makes 26 Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life,” interview with R. de Ceccaty, J. Danet, and J. Le Bitoux, in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rainbow, trans. Robert Hurley and others (New York: The New Press, 1997). 27 Goncharov, The Precipice, 215 (vol. 6, 66). 28 Ibid., 214 (vol. 6, 65). 29 Ibid.

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

sense of his queer vision of love. He argues, “That is where the germ of disintegration lies, in that men want to formulate principles from the driving force of Nature, and thus to hamper themselves hand and foot. Love is happiness, which Nature has conferred on man.”30 Volokhov is thus critiquing the human desire to create rules and institutions to give shape and structure to love when it is as amorphous as happiness. Volokhov’s view of love as formless resonates with Foucault’s understanding of queer relationships. He asserts that there should be no normative laws and institutions that try to govern love, as it is ungovernable, as well as non-hierarchical and co-created between lovers. In this context, Volokhov and Vera must end their affair, as she wants to formalize their relationship, but that goes against all of his convictions. He cannot subsume his beliefs because that would compromise his political and social integrity, which comes with a counter-cultural stance. This position is something that Vera cannot accept, and throughout the novel, she likens his disposition to that of a wolf. For example, during one of their first encounters, Vera tells him that “you are a real wolf; you are forever disparaging, detracting, or blaming someone, either from pride or . . . or by way of cultivating the ‘new strength.’”31 By comparing Volokhov to a wolf, Vera is labeling him a societal sinthomosexual, an aggressive outsider, who destroys heteronormativity. She pinpoints the intersection between Volokhov’s nihilism and his notion of love. Vera even mentions that if she were stronger, she might be able to coerce some form of commitment from him, but he roundly denies this: “You would have to be stronger than I, but we are of equal strength. This is why we dispute and are not of one mind. We must separate without bringing our struggle to an issue, one must submit to the other.”32 Like the sinthomosexual, or, in this case, the wolf, Volokhov must obliterate all societal ideals and structures in order to affirm and reinforce his notions of love. This includes his relationship with Vera, who seeks all the heteronormativity that he stands against. This is why Volokhov’s nihilism is fused with a queer interpretation of love, as it is undoubtedly liberating, yet defined by the heteronormativity of the world.

30 Ibid., 215 (vol. 6, 66). 31 Ibid., 170–171 (vol. 6, 203). 32 Ibid., 220 (vol. 6, 269).

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The Misadventures of Marriage and Traditional Relationships in The Precipice Even though Volokhov is an outsider in The Precipice, which skews his attitude, his negative perspective toward marriage fits with a broader critique of heteronormativity in the novel. From this perspective, moving beyond the individual and the space, we can note that the very notion of the precipice itself becomes a vantage point from which Goncharov interrogates heteronormativity. For one, the fact that the precipice is a space where a jealous man has been buried after two murders and a suicide, already sets up an understanding of heterosexuality and the heterosexual marriage as toxic and violent. As we learn: “a man wild with jealously, a tailor from the town, had killed his wife and her lover there in the midst of the thicket, and had then cut his own throat.”33 It is in this space of violent passion that Vera and Mark also carry out their affair outside. Their relationship leads to great pain for Vera, which is problematic in itself, but the precipice as such provides a locus and a storyline through which the institutions of heteronormativity in mainstream society are questioned. Although not quite so dramatic, there are a number of relationships above the precipice that echo the questions about marriage raised by the history of the precipice. The most notable relationship is Leontii’s failed marriage. Leontii is Raiskii and Volokhov’s friend, the town’s schoolteacher who is married to Uliana Andreevna. Leontii and Uliana’s marriage dramatically falls apart halfway through the novel, but it is does not come as a complete surprise. Since Uliana is first introduced in the novel, their marriage is subtly questioned by members of the town. When Raiskii first visits them, Uliana remarks that she does not like his grandmother and implies that she gossips too much. She states, “Don’t believe her. I know she will tell you all sorts of nonsense—about Monsieur Charles.”34 Or later, when Raiskii returns to their house late at night, sees a shadow near their house, and pauses because “he was afraid to sound the alarm until he knew whether it was a thief or an admirer of Uliana Andreevna’s, some Monsieur Charles or other.”35 There was always suspicion surrounding Leontii and Uliana’s marriage, especially about Uliana’s fidelity. These reservations already resonate with Volokhov’s position on love and marriage: that there is no such thing as 33 Ibid., 33 (vol. 5, 75). 34 Ibid., 58 (vol. 5, 207). 35 Ibid., 73 (vol. 5, 267).

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

unending love and that marriage goes against the forces of Nature and love. Volokhov’s position is confirmed later in the novel when Leontii and Uliana’s marriage fails because Uliana runs off to Moscow with the Frenchman Charles. When Tatiana Markovna informs Raiskii of this he replies that “her relations with Charles . . . were no secret to anybody except her husband.”36 The more shocking news is that Uliana wrote to her husband and told him “to forget her, not to expect her return, because she could no longer endure living with him.”37 Uliana is blatantly stating that she no longer loves Leontii, and echoes Volokhov by demanding their separation. Suspecting that this news has crushed his friend, Raiskii races to his house to find Volokhov caring for Leontii. Volokhov explains the tragic condition in which he found Leontii: “I was pleased to hear it, and came at once to congratulate him, but I found him with not a drop of blood in his face, with dazed eyes, and unable to recognize anyone. He just escaped brain fever. Instead of weeping for joy, the man has nearly died of sorrow.”38 Leontii is devastated by Uliana’s departure, but this is not just heartbreak for him, it is “death.” Raiskii tries to convince Leontii to get rid of her letter and to not take the news too dramatically, but Leontii refuses. He replies, “She is not here, and that is what constitutes my illness. Besides, I am not ill, I am dead. Take me to her, and I shall rise again. And you ask whether I will take her back again! You, a novelist, don’t understand simple things like that!”39 These views are what is really destroying Leontii, rather than specifically Uliana. While some characters in The Precipice, like Mark, Raiskii, or even Uliana, do not appear like the marrying kind and opt away from marriage, there are others, like Leontii, who decidedly are. Leontii still holds the heteronormative view that love is eternal, and marriage is binding till death and suffers greatly from the betrayal of love itself and the loss of a wife. In some ways, the kind of love he presents, is exactly what Volokhov warns Vera about with marriage: how it can be a form of imprisonment, as it can work against the formless and objective nature of love. Vera’s marriage to Tushin at the end of the novel resonates with Volokhov’s interpretation of marriage, albeit in a quite different way than Leontii’s. As Vera and Volokhov’s relationship begins to deteriorate due to his inability to give her any form of official commitment, she begins spending time with 36 Ibid., 186 (vol. 6, 212). 37 Ibid., 187 (vol. 6, 213). 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., 191 (vol. 6, 215).

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Ivan Tushin, who is a neighboring landowner. Tushin is a respectable man, but very basic and unpretentious: “His character lay bare to the daylight, with no secret, no romantic side. . . . Men of his type, especially when they care nothing for the superfluous things of life, but keep their eyes fixed undeviatingly on the necessary, do not make themselves noticed in the crowd and rarely reach the front of the world’s stage.”40 Vera and her family deduce that Tushin is pursuing Vera for marriage, and Vera is not put off by his company. Even though Vera can be comfortable with Tushin, she does not feel the passion and love that she does with Volokhov. She knows just this, as after spending time with Tushin there “were days when unrest suddenly came upon her, when she went hastily to her room in the old house, or descended the precipice into the park, and displayed a gloomy resentment if Raiskii or Marfenka ventured to disturb her solitude.”41 She comes out of these spells and still courts Tushin even though she felt something missing. She does this because he can offer her everything that Volokhov cannot: duty, trust, and commitment. She knows he will abide by marital laws; he will be secure. For instance, while arguing with Raiskii about the nature of men, she declares that all men are like tigers, except Tushin. She states, “Tushin is a genuine Russian bear. You may lay your hand on his shaggy head, and sleep; your rest is sure, for he will serve you all his life.”42 Vera does not love Tushin, but she agrees to marry him because she desires the safety of marriage. In a less than conventional touch, Tushin is willing to marry her despite being well-aware of her history, presumably out of deep and insistent love. From this perspective, Vera’s marriage to Tushin also reaffirms Volokhov’s point that marriage is unequal and another form of captivity. In fact, the only marriage in the novel that seems promising is the one that has an air of childhood innocence. It is genuine, but receives less interest from others in the novel. This is the marriage of the “young” Marfenka and the “youthful” Vikentev. Their first interaction in the novel evokes child play and is thoroughly unthreatening. Vikentev presents Marfenka with some flowers of which she jokes. She runs outside and Vikentev chases after her “and a few moments later Tatiana Markovna heard a gay waltz in progress and a vigorous stampede, as if someone were rolling down the steps. Soon the two of them tore across the courtyard, 40 Ibid., 144–145 (vol. 6, 105). 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 195 (vol. 6, 230).

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

Marfenka leading, and from the garden came the sound of chattering, singing and laughter.”43 Moreover, when Marfenka and Vikentev express feelings for one another, they both are embarrassed by what they are doing. It is very dark outside and they both are scared. As they are listening to the nightingales, “[Marfenka’s] hand sought Vikentev’s, but when he touched hers she drew it back.”44 Vikentev struggles to relay his feelings to Marfenka, who, at this point, still seems oblivious of what is happening. Finally, Vikentev uses the nightingale singing as a metaphor for his love of her. He explains to Marfenka that “[the nightingale] is singing of love, of my love for you,”45 and then kisses her hand. Although Marfenka reciprocates his feelings, she stops him altogether because neither his mother nor her grandmother knows and they need consent. While this is somewhat typical of the time, their extreme caution speaks to their own awareness that they perhaps do not have complete adult agency in the novel. Their guardians express this view too, as when Marfenka’s grandmother and Vikentev’s mother meet to decide if they will marry, they both conclude that “if we hadn’t wished it we should not have allowed them to go and listen to the nightingales.”46 As we know, Goncharov idealized childhood and considered it as a golden age prior to the competitiveness of adulthood.47 Even though Marfenka and Vikentev’s marriage is real and happy, because the two are repeatedly depicted as youthful, we are encouraged to see them as an exception rather than the rule. In this sense, through them Goncharov manages to depict a positive marriage, but does so within the confines of the happier era of childhood.

Conclusion: The Friendship Way While the other marriages in the novel are not as lurid as Vera and Volokhov’s relationship, they do function as examples of Volokhov’s critique of the heterosexual marriage institution or they are not treated as “real” marriages, like Marfenka and Vikentev’s. Through these subtle reverberations of Volokhov’s convictions in the novel, we can begin to question to what extent Goncharov truly affirms the marriage institution in The 43 Ibid., 96 (vol. 5, 321). 44 Ibid., 153 (vol. 6, 120). 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 159 (vol. 6, 125). 47 Ehre, Oblomov and his Creator, 15.

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Precipice. There are no successful marriages in the novel, but we see a number of productive and successful friendships Foucault, in a statement we have already cited describes queer relationships as formless and quintessentially friendship-based. In The Precipice we see a number of these formless relationships, which ultimately prove far more enduring than the purportedly binding romantic relationships. From early in the novel we are introduced to the friendship between Raiskii and Leontii, which the narrator describes as “an intimate friendship”48 and which sustains both throughout the narrative. We know that the two became friends at university, and that they connected despite the fact that Leontii is a poor student and the son of a deacon rather than a member of the gentry: “Raiskii felt himself drawn to this young man, at first because of his loneliness, his reserve, simplicity and kindness; later he discovered in him passion, the sacred fire, profundity of comprehension and austerity of thought and delicacy of perception – in all that pertained to antiquity.”49 The feeling of attachment is reciprocated by Leontii who is “devoted to Raiskii” and his “vivacious temperament.”50 When back in the countryside, Raiskii spends considerable time with Leontii who also becomes friends with Mark Volokhov. In fact, for a time, it even appears that Mark and Raiskii might also become friends on the basis of their intellectual connection. When Leontii’s wife leaves him, Mark is the one who supports him in his despair, ensuring that he is fed and does not do anything to harm himself. Eventually, it is Raiskii who joins in to assume the role of caretaker. Together both Raiskii and Mark illustrate the value and consistency of friendship and its persistence and unconditional nature at a time when other connections peter out. Similar friendships emerge throughout the novel between Vera and the Pope’s wife who share their “congenial spirit,” as well as between members of the older generation, like the relationship between Tatiana Markovna and Tiet Nikonich Vatutin. In a novel that seems to reaffirm traditional values and marginalize nihilists, the obviously negative light cast on marriage undermines these broader messages. It is friendship, the alternative to the heteronormative relationship that ultimately proves the most sustainable form of a relationship in the novel. It is friendship that comes with no strings attached and lasts strictly as long as it is enjoyed. This is the relationship type Mark 48 Goncharov, The Precipice, 38 (vol. 5, 88). 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid.

The Queer Nihilist—Queer Time, Social Refusal

seems to be advancing, both in general, and in his relationship with Vera. Although on the surface Goncharov appears to foil these ideas and reinforce traditional institutions, he also manages to give Volokhov a platform and a voice in the novel: Mark is not a mere naysayer but, rather, the articulator of a queer alternative of deinstitutionalized relationships with balanced power dynamics.

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Part Four Author and Imperialist Abroad: Frigate Pallada

“I Avoided the Factual Side . . .”: Fiction and Document in Frigate Pallada Aleksei Balakin

1 This chapter examines how closely the professed epistolary form of Frigate Pallada (Fregat “Pallada”) is bound to the work’s aesthetic construction, and the extent to which this form effects the selection and perspective of the facts, whose witness the author happened to be. The question proves highly significant in that, while Goncharov considered his book a fictional work, rather than a documentary account of his expedition, most historical-literary studies of Frigate Pallada take the facts it sets forth at face value, frequently rendering them as absolute, without subjecting them to further verification.1 However, such faith in the factual aspect of Frigate Pallada could lead to an inaccurate, if not altogether false, interpretation of Goncharov’s text. Like any work situated at the junction of the documentary and fictional 1

See, for instance, recent studies by Svetlana Kurilo, “Kosmo-Psikho-Logos Britanskoi imperii i ee afrikanskikh i aziatskikh kolonii v traveloge I. A. Goncharova ‘Fregat Pallada,’” in Aktual’nye problemy lingvistiki i literaturovedeniia. Sbornik materialov V (XIX) Mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii molodykh uchenykh (Tomsk: Obshchestvo s ogranichennoi otvetstvennost’iu “CTT,” 2018); and Ekaterina Shevchugova, “Sibirskii tekst I. A. Goncharova (po knige ‘Fregat Pallada’),” Sibirskii filologicheskii forum 2, no. 6 (2019): 4–21.

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genres, Goncharov’s cannot be considered a reliable historical source. Every fact recorded in such texts intricately interacts with the general artistic aim of the entire work, or a component part thereof. Within the structure of a literary text, the depiction of an actual event, or the account of a wellknown fact (or its omission), have completely different functions than they would in a patently documentary text. The reader of this kind of text should always be on the alert and remember that under the guise of an honest and simple-minded observer, there may lie a biased and tendentious publicist. It cannot be said that the author intentionally “distorted” reality in his work. In her study of Herzen’s Past and Thoughts (Byloe i dumy), L. Ia. Ginzburg notes that “one of the most significant” problems facing researchers of such texts is “the question of the authenticity of real-life material and the creative reworking of this real-life material.”2 The literary scholar of Frigate Pallada must inevitably confront the same problem.3 Even as Goncharov was only just setting sail, he knew full well he would have to write a book about the voyage. He later recalled: “this book was, so to speak, my obligatory literary account of the journey. That is why I was taken [along], to render an account—be it poorly or well. . . .”4 He got down to the book during the expedition. On March 14 (26), 1854, Goncharov informed his dear friends, the family of still-life artist N. A. Maikov: “I gave it a go, and to my astonishment, a certain desire to write ensued, so I filled an entire portfolio with travel notes [on] the Cape of Good Hope, Singapore, Bonin-Sima, Shanghai, Japan (two parts), the Ryukyu Islands—I have everything written down and in such order, they’re ready to print. . . .”5 Thus we note that a significant portion of the book was already written and arranged and, moreover, that Goncharov refers to it not as letters, but as “travel notes.” Only subsequently would he determine the epistolary form of Frigate Pallada. 2 3

4 5

Lidiia Ginzburg, “Byloe i dumy” Gertsena (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1957), 56; cf. Iurii Lotman, Karamzin (St.  Petersburg: Iskusstvo, 1997), 493. All translations are mine—KS. Boris Engel’gardt was among the first scholars to address the fictional aspect of Frigate Pallada. See Boris Engel’gardt, “Puteshestvie vokrug sveta I. Oblomova,” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000). Ivan Goncharov, “Neobyknovennaia istoriia,” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S. A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 261. Ivan Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1997–2017), vol. 15, 211.

“I Avoided the Factual Side . . .”: Fiction and Document in Frigate Pallada

Goncharov returned to St. Petersburg from the voyage on February 25, 1855, and by April 5 the first excerpt of the travel notes, the chapter on the Ryukyu Islands, was already published in the corresponding issue of the Fatherland Notes (Otechestvennye zapiski). This publication included a short author’s preface, in which Goncharov is still fumbling with the generic designation of his future book, most of which was already completed: The author had neither the opportunity, nor the intention, to depict his journey as an inveterate tourist or seaman, even less so as a scholar. He merely kept . . . a journal and, from time to time, sent it off in letterform to his friends in Russia. . . . But now these friends have notified the author, in chorus, that he must, it seems, present the account of his journey to the public. He pleaded in vain, that he hadn’t prepared the sketches for the public, that he’d merely been writing hasty notes about what he’d seen, and gone into details more about himself,  .  .  .  that ultimately, he’d not even managed to compile all the fragments he’d sent out at various times to various places, so it was impossible to submit the entire journal, in proper sequence, from the beginning. . . . If readers regard this journal from the same perspective as that of the author himself and his friends, then occasionally . . . he’ll continue to publish subsequent chapters of the journal.6

We should note that the future book is called here a “journal,” and that its having been written in the form of letters to friends is mentioned only in passing. Conceptually, his short preface could be classified as an “inverted preface,” in which the author deliberately misleads his readers as to the objectives and scope of his work. It generally serves to emphasize, by frustrating readers’ expectations, any ideas a normal reading could overlook, or to attempt in advance to remove the work from the literary category in which the reader and critic would logically presume it belongs. It was essential for Goncharov to emphasize that he was traveling neither as a scholar nor as a professional writer, and was not obligated to report on his journey in the traditional form. This was also emphasized in the foreword to the first autonomous publication of Frigate Pallada by I. I. L’khovskii, Goncharov’s closest friend at the time. Indisputably, L’khovskii simply paraphrased Goncharov’s own view of his book. One particularly interesting excerpt states:

6 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 80–81.

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. . . .ot modesty alone moved Mr. Goncharov to entitle the account of his journey “Letters to Friends, Travel Notes”; he told the truth and, moreover, he’d already characterized his composition to some extent by its very title and form. Indeed, despite the completeness of some episodes and the patently sophisticated language, the heartfelt tone of the story, the abundant details, conveying the author’s persona sincerely and unpretentiously, the occasional allusions to the circumstances of his private life, the fact of his own name stealing into print at times, and finally, the very laxity and evasiveness in some segments—all of this illustrates that the author wrote to actual, not imaginary friends, as well as his reluctance to assume the obligatory role of any specialized traveler. . . . Above all else, Mr. Goncharov shared the outcome of his travel impressions and observations with his friends; he later offered them to the public in all but original form, that is, in the form of letters, simple, cordial, nonchalant, but unparalleled in their sophisticated language, and studded with details, whereby interest in the topic itself, in the journey, invariably pales beside the unexpected presence in intimate correspondence of poetic creativity. From a limited range of objects amenable to observation, the author paid exceptional attention to what attracted him with a special intensity, as a man and a consummate national poet, from nature . . . to the simple sailor. . . .7

Goncharov was pleased with L’khovskii’s foreword; on August 1, 1858 he wrote to him thus: “You, better than anyone, understood how my travel notes must be regarded; I wanted you to spell it out to others—and you provided an example of splendid friendship and literary tact.”8 Precisely what did L’khovskii understand, and what did Goncharov want to convey to the public?

2 Goncharov was well aware of exactly what the educated public expected from his travel book. At the time of his departure on the round-the-world expedition, the generic traits of “travel” narratives were delineated in rhetorics textbooks, studied by the future readers of Goncharov’s book. 7 8

Ivan Goncharov, Fregat “Pallada”: ocherki puteshestviia Ivana Goncharova v dvukh tomakh (St. Petersburg: A. I. Glazunov, 1858), vol. 1, i–iv. Ivan Goncharov, “Pis‘ma k I. I. L‘khovskomu (1857–1860),” in Literaturnyi arkhiv, ed. I. A. Gruzdev (Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1951), vol. 3, 136.

“I Avoided the Factual Side . . .”: Fiction and Document in Frigate Pallada

These included the Textbook of Russian Literature (Uchebnaia kniga rossiiskoi slovesnosti), by the authoritative philologist and pedagogue of the day N. I. Grech, on the basis of which, as the poet A. N. Maikov recalls, Goncharov introduced him to the rudiments of literary competence in the 1830s.9 This poetics textbook offers a rather detailed paragraph on the poetics of travel, entitled “Descriptions of Travel, etc.” (“Opisaniia puteshestvii i pr.”), which states: In depicting travels, countries, locations, buildings and so on, one is required to convey a distinct and accurate image of these objects, influencing the reader’s intellect and imagination; one must, so to speak, transport him to those places, to those beings and things we are depicting. This requires great artistry. One must choose excellent topics, pass over in silence the insignificant, which could spoil the elegance of the picture; one must maintain clarity and order, contribute to an overview of the whole, represent an exact likeness of objects, observe variety in style, without violating the unity thereof; employ clear, fresh, lively, powerful language. The most appropriate style of representation is the middle style, though it often adopts the power and eloquence of the high style.10

Thus, we see what classroom poetics expected of the travelogue; we also see that Goncharov consciously made no mention of this approach and, evidently, departed from it. It should be recalled that by the time Frigate Pallada was published, travelogue as a literary genre was in decline, its poetics seemingly exhausted. Having brilliantly emerged as Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler (Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika), the Russian travelogue instantly attracted talented emulators, as well as epigones, who had practically exhausted its generic possibilities by 1830.11 Many travelogues were composed in epistolary form—a standard device which, by the mid-nineteenth century, was perceived solely as a conventional element of poetics, an obligatory tribute See Aleksei Balakin, Razyskaniia v oblasti biografii i tvorchestva I. A. Goncharova (Moscow: LitFakt, 2018), 230. 10 Nikolai Grech, Uchebnaia kniga rossiiskoi slovesnosti, ili Izbrannye mesta iz russkikh sochinenii i perevodov v stikhakh i proze, s prisovokupleniem kratkikh pravil ritoriki i poetiki, i istorii rossiiskoi slovesnosti (St.  Petersburg: Nikolai Grech, 1819), vol.  1, 237–238. 11 On the importance of the artistic achievement of Karamzin’s Letters for the author of Frigate Pallada, see Elena Krasnoshchekova, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov: mir tvorchestva (St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1997), 153–167. 9

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to the traditional genre.12 The image of the traveler himself was perceived with the same degree of conventionality, given that literary works of this sort frequently engaged in the “literaturization of the author’s persona.”13 Parodic journeys were already cropping up, the most famous of these being A. F. Veltman’s The Wanderer (Strannik). By the 1850s, the travelogue was regarded an unreservedly peripheral genre which, nevertheless, continued to appeal to the public. N. G. Chernyshevskii accurately distinguished the reasons for this continued interest, in a review of an autonomous publication of V. P. Botkin’s Letters About Spain (Pis’ma ob Ispanii), in which he wrote: Next to works of poetry, travels constitute the most popular branch of literature across the board. . . . In fact, by incorporating elements of history, statistics, administrative sciences, natural history, and bordering in form on so-called light reading, like a story about the personal adventures, sentiments and thoughts of an individual in his encounters with others . . . , travel combines the richest and most intriguing content in the most lighthearted form. Travel is part novel, partly a collection of anecdotes, part history, part politics, part natural history. It gives every reader everything, he hopes to find.14

The above excerpt appeared in the February 1857 issue of The Contemporary  (Sovremennik). The censor assigned to this issue was Goncharov,15 who must have taken note of the cited lines. His Frigate Pallada was set to appear in print within a few months. It appears that Goncharov did not want his book to be perceived as “part novel, partly a collection of anecdotes, part history, part politics, part natural history.” By insisting on the existence of actual letters and maintaining that his friends had obliged him to publish them, Goncharov revealed more than his customary sense of mistrust and caution.16 Indeed, these 12 See Tatiana Roboli, “Literatura ‘puteshestvii,’” in Russkaia proza, ed. Boris Eikhenbaum and Iurii Tynianov (Leningrad: Akademiia, 1926), 44. 13 Ibid., 47. 14 Nikolai Chernyshevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v piatnadtsati tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1948), vol. 4, 222. 15 See Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 10, 396. 16 Goncharov spoke of this even in the foreword to the 1879 publication of Frigate Pallada: “He accepted the epistolary form, not as that most convenient for travel sketches: letters were indeed being written and sent from various locations to these friends or those. . . .” See Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 82. Immediately

“I Avoided the Factual Side . . .”: Fiction and Document in Frigate Pallada

assertions also reveal a distinct literary position and, apparently, an affinity for the aesthetic views of V. G. Belinskii. Much has been written about Belinskii’s influence on Goncharov. What’s more, Goncharov closely monitored contemporary journalism in the late 1830s and ’40s, especially The Fatherland Notes (Otechestvennye zapiski). Given that Belinskii’s ideas ran counter to the traditional perception of travel literature, which of them could Goncharov have adopted? The March 1841 issue of The Fatherland Notes began publishing a cycle of essays by P. V. Annenkov, entitled “Letters from Abroad” (Pis’ma iz-za granitsy). They introduced the Russian reader to the state of contemporary Europe and, therefore, they piqued the public’s interest. Clearly, Goncharov read them as well: the first chapter of Frigate Pallada comprises an interesting interchange with the first of Annenkov’s published letters, accompanied by an editorial note typical, by all appearances, of Belinskii.17 The characteristic text states: There is hardly anything in literature more boring than a travelogue. . . . And it’s very natural: the traveler who wants to portray a country systematically, must inevitably repeat commonplaces, already repeated a hundred times before him, copy out extracts from itineraries, talk about things he hasn’t seen for himself and, in general, lend his composition the character of a detached statistical description. . . . But the simple, fragmented sketches of the traveler are often incomparably more interesting than completed stories and descriptions. These sketches, often lacking any apparent continuity or connection to one another, yield a more truthful conception of the country and its people, than all the systematic travels in the world: rather than describe countries for you, their authors transport and set you down, so to speak, in its [sic] way of life. . . . What is best about Mr. Annenkov’s letters, after Goncharov’s death, there appeared a short annotation, whose author had written: “Goncharov made it into the Foreign Trade Department thanks to this department’s vice-director, the poet and friend of Pushkin, P. A. Viazemskii. All of Goncharov’s letters from abroad, which he’d asked to be retained, were addressed to his colleagues in the department: the Assistant to the Director of the Chancellery N. F. Kozlovskii and the Head of the Third Desk of the Third Section, A. A. Sredin. These letters were read and numbered in the department, and when Ivan Aleksandrovich returned, they were given to him, to be polished and printed.” See V. S. Lialin, “Malen’kaia khronika,” Novoe vremia 5596 (September 27, 1891): 3. 17 While sailing past Bornholm Island, both Annenkov and Goncharov recall N. M. Karamzin’s story “The Island of Bornholm” (“Ostrov Borngol’m”) with the same sentiments.

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is that they were written not for publication and could sooner be called improvisations, than compositions.18

Bearing these words in mind, we refer to another text by Belinskii— published exactly a year after the above cited commentary in the review of V. M. Stroev’s Paris in 1838 and 1839 (Parizh v 1838 i 1839 godakh). Here the critic elaborates his requirements of the travel genre, as outlined in the editorial notes to Letters from Abroad. Belinskii asserts: For travel to be interesting, one need only look at things plainly and, without chasing after the sensational, faithfully convey the author’s impression of the most ordinary and mundane. . . . Whoever has eyes with which to see, ears with which to hear, and the intellect, with which to appreciate the seen and heard—will now understand where to pay special attention, to what, and from which angle to look at an object common to many countries. . . . Do not recount the number of streets, do not acquaint us with their names: all this is frivolous, insignificant, and hard on the memory; rather, tell us how they teem with the city’s lively population. . . . Walls mean nothing: only people are important. . . .19

One cannot help but notice the proximity of Belinskii’s views to Goncharov’s literary position regarding Frigate Pallada. This position permitted him not to observe the generic canons of the travelogue which, at the time, were quite strictly defined in the rhetorics books, as noted above. He established his own rules for his work and wanted the public to regard and evaluate it according to these rules. By qualifying Frigate Pallada publicly as a collection of letters to friends, Goncharov aligned his work with a distinct literary category.

3 In the first half of the nineteenth century, the letter was regarded a distinct literary genre with its own rules and characteristics. In part, these characteristics were also defined in the rhetorics manuals, including the above-mentioned book by N. I. Grech, which were studied by more than 18 Cited after Pavel Annenkov, Parizhskie pis’ma, ed. I. N. Konobeevskaia (Moscow: Nauka, 1983), 501; emphasis mine. 19 Vissarion Belinskii, Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976–1982), vol. 4, 509–510.

“I Avoided the Factual Side . . .”: Fiction and Document in Frigate Pallada

a single generation of readers. The peculiarities of the epistolary genre are specified thus: Letters . . . .omprise conversation or discourse with those who are absent. They take the place of verbal conversation but comprise the discourse of only one party. A verbal conversation possesses the properties of an unprepared, spontaneous, straightforward composition—and these same qualities comprise the requisites of any good letter. . . . Letters can generally be divided into letters on everyday topics and those Belletristic. The first, or personal letters, comprise discourse, addressing the absentee under the various circumstances of social life; the latter comprise the substance of narratives, descriptions or reflections, in the mere form of a letter. . . . Friendly letters are easiest of all, for they engage both the mind and the heart: in these letters one should avoid excessive sensibility, which can easily become cloying. . . . Literary letters . . . comprise a different sort of composition, in the mere form of a letter, which is chosen to give the Author more freedom in arranging and expressing his thoughts. The topic of Literary letters may comprise narratives on inessential occurrences, descriptions (chiefly of the journey) . . . etc. All of these topics are set forth in letters, without observing the strict rules of Science, but rather with ease and simplicity, the requisite properties of letters.20

No doubt, Goncharov remembered Grech’s observations, in choosing the form of his book. At the same time, he persistently professed—either in his own, or in L’khovskii’s words—to be publishing friendly letters, specifically, with no pretensions to their literariness. Apparently, however, it was imperative that Goncharov assert the genre of his work, not simply to avoid potential admonishment for stylistic negligence. He would hardly have feared the critics, who might accuse him of not observing the established, 20 Grech, Uchebnaia kniga rossiiskoi slovesnosti, vol.  1, 52–54, 56, 58–59. Cf.: “Friendly letters comprise the sort of composition, the crux of whose perfection consists in natural simplicity and freedom, both in the invention and arrangement of thoughts, and in the very expressions themselves.  .  .  .  However, whatever can be the topic of conversation between friends, can also be the content of letters of this sort.” See Ivan Rizhskii, Opyt ritoriki, sochinennyi i prepodavaemyi v Sanktpeterburgskom Gornom uchilishche (St. Petersburg: Pri Korpuse chuzhestrannykh edinovertsev, 1796), 197, 199. For analogous formulations, see also Aleksei Merzliakov, Kratkaia ritorika, ili Pravila, otnosiashchiesia ko vsem rodam sochinenii prozaicheskikh (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1828), 45; Nikolai Koshanskii, Chastnaia ritorika (St.  Petersburg: Imperatorskaia akademiia nauk, 1832), 19, 32–33.

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textbook rules, according to which travel ought to be depicted. Readers, however, were perfectly entitled to demand, from a depiction of sailing the world, the factual integrity deemed intrinsic to the travel genre by default. But a simple sticking to the facts was not Goncharov’s artistic aim, for which reason, it seems, he persistently refers to his book as a collection of friendly letters, sent to print practically without revision. In so doing, he attempted to ward off any potential criticism of Frigate Pallada for inaccuracies and omissions—which would have been far more difficult, if he were regarded a “singer, albeit ex officio, of the expedition.”21

4 To cite a prime example of the tendentious selection and presentation of facts in Frigate Pallada, we will address its outwardly dispassionate concluding chapters, which recount Goncharov’s tour of Eastern Siberia, from Ayan to Irkutsk. It would seem that once the writer had left the frigate, the journey had ended, and he had every right to end the book. It was all the more so since its autonomous publication bore the qualifying subtitle of “travel sketches,” while, Goncharov ironically wrote that, “having stepped onto our shores,” he “suddenly transformed from a traveler to a mere passerby. . . .”22 However, he supplemented the book with three chapters of roughly a hundred pages, comprising a detailed account of his wanderings along the rivers and muck of Eastern Siberia, and his sojourn in Yakutsk. What was his purpose, and why did he stop on arriving in Irkutsk, even though he could have continued to depict his further travels? In the Siberian chapters of his book, Goncharov seems to serve as a vehicle for the ideas of the Eastern Siberia’s Governor-General N. N. Muravyov, who welcomed him with open arms. In the 1840s, there were two conflicting views among Russia’s senior-most officials as to the value of the further exploration and settlement of Siberia and the assimilation of the Pacific’s eastern shores. Several influential officials, including the Russian Foreign Minister K. V. Nesselrode, the Finance Minister F. P. Vronchenko, and L. G. Seniavin, Director of the Foreign Ministry’s Asiatic Department, insisted that Eastern Siberia was expendable, and that its further exploration could complicate relations with England and 21 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 2, 82. 22 From a letter to A. A. Kraevskii, dated mid-September 1854, Yakutsk. See Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 15, 235.

“I Avoided the Factual Side . . .”: Fiction and Document in Frigate Pallada

undermine trade with China. Initially, even Nicholas I supported this view. However, various young senior officers insisted that Russia advance to the East, develop lines of communication, and open new harbors. Putiatin supported the idea, and Muravyov was one of its principal defenders. Upon Goncharov’s arrival on the Pacific shore, the ministerial battle was still in full swing and its outcome unclear. Thus, it seems he became Muravyov’s mouthpiece, enthusiastically telling of Eastern Siberia’s beautification and riches, its inhabitants’ courage and patriotism, and the region’s indispensability to Russia. However, many of the “facts” he reported are undocumented. As it turns out, Goncharov remained silent about failures23 and understated hardships and problems, while emphasizing and lauding the enthusiasm and achievements of the Siberian people. Under the guise of an impartial “passerby,” ostensibly conveying an artless account of his observations along the way, Goncharov proved a tendentious publicist, who surreptitiously instilled into the minds of his readers unambiguous ideas, in no way approved, moreover, by all top-level officials,. Other chapters of Frigate Pallada also reveal Goncharov’s selective representation of the facts. A careful juxtaposition of his book with others’ personal diaries and letters, as well as with official documents of the period, could reveal much of what the writer consciously “retouched” and veiled in the text, and that which a cursory reading could leave unnoticed. Goncharov did indeed write letters to friends on his voyage (around thirty remain extant) and utilize them in preparing Frigate Pallada. It is readily apparent, however, that his letters differ from the text of the book, in terms of their formulation, focus, and interpretation of events. Goncharov consistently tempers abrasive passages, omits the constant complaints of spleen and ill-health, and significantly mitigates depictions of the voyage’s hardships and perils. Real letters from the voyage comprised the seed that subsequently sprouted a remarkable flower; but the book’s definitive text resembles those letters about as much, as a flower does the seed whence it sprouted. B. M. Engel’gardt, drawing on the actual documentation of E. V. Putiatin’s expedition, had already pointed out that “the real story . . . of the expedition has almost nothing in common with Goncharov’s 23 Such as the failure, noted by E. Bojanowska, to steer the frigate into the mouth of the Amur River. See Edyta M. Bojanowska, A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate  “Pallada” (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 200.

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‘candid  to  the point of good humored’ narrative,” and that his book was “primarily a literary work, constructed in keeping with a strictly determined literary and artistic design, and nowhere near the straightforward account of a traveler.”24 Engel’gardt was the first to raise the issue concerning the importance—critical both to the philologist studying Goncharov’s biography and oeuvre, and the historian of the Russian fleet and diplomatic activity—of distinguishing between the factual and conceptual layers in Goncharov’s book. In reference to Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler, Iu. M. Lotman wrote: Researchers . . . see in this book documented evidence of a real journey by the writer, forgetting that the Letters are a literary work comprising all the characteristic elements of an creative text: in terms of intention and invention, the combining and transposing of real impressions to accommodate highprincipled artistic objectives, [and in terms of] composition and generic rules, stylization, censorial considerations, etc. In order to qualify as a source of biographical information, the Letters must undergo a complex process of deciphering. Then, many truisms may have to be reconsidered.25

Lotman’s observations could equally apply to Frigate Pallada. Beneath the surface of unassuming letters to friends lies an ideology-driven and tendentious “message,” in need of thorough and painstaking deciphering. Goncharov could not have written openly of complex diplomatic intrigues, backroom conflicts between various ministries, shifts in political agendas, or conspiracies between various high-standing officials. Behind his outwardly dispassionate figures of speech, however, lie deliberate “figures of silence,” whose disclosure and investigation could reveal that which only the writer’s best informed and most scrutinizing contemporaries could have perceived. Translated by Krystina Steiger

24 Boris Engel’gardt, Izbrannye trudy, ed. Askol’d Muratov (St.  Petersburg: SanktPeterburgskii universitet, 1995), 250. 25 Lotman, Karamzin, 29.

A Russian Observer Catches the London Eye: Envisioning Imperial Modernity in Frigate Pallada Ingrid Kleespies

The Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street, where an infinite variety of ingenious models are exhibited and explained, and where lectures comprising a quantity of useful information on many practical subjects are delivered, is a great public benefit and a wonderful place, but we think a people formed entirely in their hours of leisure by Polytechnic Institutions would be an uncomfortable community. . . . There is a range of imagination in most of us, which no amount of steam-engines will satisfy. Charles Dickens, “The Amusements of the People,” 18501 Now that we can visit any portion of the globe by taking a cab or an omnibus to Leicester Square, who wants a [ship] to travel in? The world, as it is, has taken a house in London and receives visitors daily. Henry Morley, “Our Phantom Ship on an Antediluvian Cruise,” 18512

When Goncharov visited London in 1852, it was at a historical moment that might be characterized as the heyday of visual forms of entertainment and information display in the British capital. Ranging from museums and moving dioramas to such peculiarities as the enormous mapparium Wyld’s 1 Household Words, March 30, 1850, 13. 2 Ibid., August 16, 1851, 492.

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Great Globe (described above), such displays organized London urban culture. As Richard Altick describes in his seminal study of the shows of London in the first half of the nineteenth century, “no English trait was more widespread throughout the entire social structure than the relish for exhibitions.” This was a relish that cut across class lines and was linked to something of a democratizing impulse in early Victorian society due to the exhibitions’ mandate of jointly entertaining and educating the population at large.3 That Goncharov responds to this culture of exhibition and a corresponding aesthetics of visualization, display, and evaluation in his treatment of London in Frigate Pallada (Fregat “Pallada”) is readily apparent, though it has been surprisingly unexplored.4 The nature of his response, and in particular his critique of a Benthamite utilitarian rhetoric of observation and assessment, is the subject of my discussion here. In his portrayal of London and of English society, Goncharov reacts both as a Russian and as a writer to what he perceives as the English “marketplace” where the English are consumed by their dedication to visually consuming information and goods. As I will argue, Goncharov’s English have internalized the globally directed British colonial gaze, with the result that they have turned themselves into utilitarian objects to be assessed and exploited. In this section of Frigate Pallada, Goncharov takes perspective on an English modernity in large part defined by a reliance on optics and he does so by deploying some of its very own scopic tools, including such devices as the kaleidoscope, the panorama, and the moving diorama. While readers should not overlook the fact that Goncharov’s critique of English society is partly colored by the anti-English sentiment felt after Russia’s defeat

3 4

Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978), 3. Among more recent scholarship, Edyta Bojanowska (A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018]) and Susanna Lim (“Whose Orient is it? Frigate Pallada and Ivan Goncharov’s Voyage to the Far East,” SEEJ 53, no. 1 [2009]: 19–39) address Goncharov’s engagement with globalization and imperialism. As Bojanowska has shown, earlier scholarship, particularly Soviet, tended to overlook the overarching imperial thrust of the narrative, not to mention the basic matter of Goncharov’s own participation in the Russian imperial project. Elena Krasnoshchekova considers Goncharov’s schema of civilizational classification in Frigate Pallada and his use of binaries of sleep/wakefulness and childhood/adulthood in assessing the peoples of the world (Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov: mir tvorchestva [St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1997]).

A Russian Observer Catches the London Eye

in the Crimean War (1853–1856), I wish to bring attention to how this critique functions in broader terms as a trenchant interrogation of aspects of Western modernity itself.5 As Goncharov declaims in the opening section of his travel account: “London is preeminently an instructive city. . . . At every step beckon open doors of places where you can see or hear something interesting: a machine, a rare object, or a lecture on natural history. There are establishments where they show all the newest inventions: the effects of steam, model airplanes, the motions of various machines.”6 His comment begs the question, what is an “instructive city?” What does it instruct its inhabitants in? How does one live in a city configured as a display or exhibit? These are some of the central questions I consider in my examination of Goncharov’s representation of London. Before moving to a close look at the narrative, however, I will briefly consider some crucial contexts to Frigate Pallada, including the new prominence of optics and the study of vision in European life in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the visual culture of early 1850s London, and the presence of utilitarian thought in English society—a discourse notably criticized by Charles Dickens, among others.7 As I argue, Goncharov’s “London” is inflected by elements of a discursive “Dickensian London” based on the English writer’s journalistic work and novels like The Pickwick Papers (1836), Dombey and Son (1848), Bleak House (1853), and Hard Times (1854).8 The London of Frigate Pallada is Dickensian less in a 5

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As Bojanowska notes, Frigate Pallada’s criticism of the English meshed well with the Russian public’s post-war sentiment (World of Empires, 12–13). Goncharov prepared the London chapter after his return to Russia in 1855 and some of the critical passages were added just before publication in 1858 (ibid., 42). Ivan Goncharov, The Frigate Pallada, trans. Klaus Goetze (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 33. Emphasis mine. Dickens’s critique of utilitarianism is well-noted. See, for example, Adelene Buckland, “‘The Poetry of Science:’ Charles Dickens, Geology, and Visual and Material in Victorian London,” Victorian Literature and Culture 35, no. 2 (2007): 679–694; Kathleen Blake, Pleasures of Benthamism: Victorian Literature, Utility, Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Dominic Rainsford, “Victorian Moral Philosophy and Our Mutual Friend,” Dickens Quarterly 27, no. 4 (2010): 273–291; Paul Schacht, “In Pursuit of Pickwick’s Hat: Dickens and the Epistemology of Utilitarianism,” Dickens Studies Annual 40 (2009): 1–21; and Andrea Borunda, “Mechanical Metaphor and the Emotive in Charles Dickens’ ‘Hard Times,’” The Victorian 3, no. 2 (2015): 1–10. Milton Ehre notes that Goncharov greatly admired Dickens, whom he could read in the original (Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973], 273), as does Boris M. Engel‘gardt in “Puteshestvie vokrug sveta I. Oblomova,” in I. A. Goncharov. Novye materialy i issledovaniia, ed. S.

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specifically intertextual way, though some such moments occur, than it is Dickensian in terms of its engagement with a critique of utilitarianism and of certain harsh realities Dickens perceived in the social marketplace. In crafting his version of the city, Goncharov draws on this literary “London,” quite familiar to his readers; this is a “London” that is meant in part to be understood as modern, capitalist, and peopled by inhabitants motivated by a drive to own, evaluate, and exploit all things, from goods to each other. I do not argue here that Goncharov is uniformly critical of the English; rather, I highlight an important strain of critique that informs this section of the narrative and that has been overlooked.9 This critique in part stems from the narrator’s position as a participant in the Russian imperial project, in competition with the British over the establishment of global trade networks, especially in Asia. However, it also draws from Goncharov’s status as a Realist writer deeply engaged with key aspects of modernity, including, on the one hand, industrialization and the growth of a market economy, and, on the other, the aesthetic and philosophical dilemmas of literary representation in the age of photography and other breakthroughs in representational visual technology.10 There are important insights to be gained from a close examination of the terms of Goncharov’s critique of English life, aspects of which transcend the immediate post-war context to form a coherent response to what Goncharov and others understood as an imperialist, market-driven, utilitarian, and mechanized English worldview.11 A. Makashin and T. G. Dinesman (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 29. In his 1879 critical essay “Better Late than Never,” Goncharov praised Dickens as the master “teacher of novelists” (Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh [Moscow: Pravda, 1972], vol. 6, 489). Dickens was widely read in nineteenth-century Russia; his work was translated nearly simultaneously with its publication in English. See Julia Palievsky and Dmitry Urnov, “A Kindred Writer: Dickens in Russia, 1840–1990,” Dickens Studies Annual 43 (2012): 209–232; and Henry Gifford, “Dickens in Russia: The Initial Phase,” in Tolstoi and Britain, ed. W. Gareth Jones (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1995), 61–65. 9 For example, Bojanowska considers Goncharov’s response to the English to be one of admiration and envy, or ressentiment (World of Empires, 46). While ressentiment is certainly present, the specific elements of Goncharov’s critique are important to examine, especially in the London section. 10 As Anne Lounsbery demonstrates, the growth of a market economy and the development of capitalism in Russia were seen as urgent concerns in this period and they were discussed intensively in the Russian press at the time Goncharov was writing both Frigate Pallada and Oblomov (“The World on the Back of a Fish: Mobility, Immobility, and Economics in Oblomov,” The Russian Review 70, no. 1 [2011]: 43–64). 11 Ehre notes that Frigate Pallada is an ambivalent text due to Goncharov’s conflicting views about England: Goncharov saw it as “the model of the future,” but also expressed

A Russian Observer Catches the London Eye

How did developments in the fields of vision and perception help to shape modern imperial culture in England and elsewhere?

Seeing, Measuring, Utilizing: Nineteenth-Century Optics The early nineteenth century saw a number of seminal developments in the field of optics across Europe, but especially in England, home to key inventions such as the panorama painting in 1787, the kaleidoscope in 1816, the stereoscope in 1838, and, simultaneously with Louis Daguerre in France, William Fox Talbot’s production of photography in 1839—these technologies are all mentioned in Frigate Pallada where they help to shape the visual dynamics of the text. The invention of devices like the kaleidoscope was part and parcel of what Jonathan Crary calls a “reorganization of vision” during this period that led to the creation of “a new kind of observer” in the public at large.12 The scientific focus on the mechanics of perception, and on vision itself as an object of evaluation and study, proceeded in large part from the pressing need to develop more efficient processes of industrial labor and production; information about what workers could perceive, and for how long, was critical to this goal. While items like the kaleidoscope and stereoscope were novel sources of popular entertainment, they were also important tools related to developments in understanding the workings of the human eye. Along with the camera, these tools made it possible to see the world in new ways, and particularly in ways that highlighted the power of vision itself. They also played a part in configuring the modern individual as someone in whom the roles of observer/spectator, “subject of empirical research and observation,” and “element of machine production” were all combined.13 In this context, practices of scientific classification and evaluation blurred with forms of entertainment—as well as with the processes of production and consumption. Taking a cue from Benjamin’s analysis of nineteenth-century consumer culture, it is hardly surprising that the age witnessed the rise of such “spectacular” phenomena as the museum, the misgiving about the “totally rationalized” world full of “mechanical men” that it seemed to represent, one in which “human spontaneity” might be lost (Oblomov and His Creator, 153). Likewise, Lounsbery notes the presence of nostalgia for the feudal, Oblomovian world in Oblomov, despite what she argues is the general endorsement of economic development and change in the novel (“The World on the Back of a Fish”). 12 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), 2–3. 13 Ibid., 112.

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zoo, technological exhibits, and the department store—phenomena that appear in Goncharov’s London.14 Devices such as the camera both emerged from and helped to shape a way of comprehending the world that was motivated by acts of comparison, measurement, and assessment. As scholars have noted, it is hardly a coincidence that disciplines of human science, such as physiology and anthropology, emerged in Europe in this period.15 Human life and culture could be examined in new ways and these new modes of investigation had clear imperial and industrial implications. In this vein, scholars have also noted the link between the rise of utilitarian thought in the late eighteenth century and the development of European colonial practice: territory, goods, and people came to be understood in an unprecedented way in terms of their potential for exploitation.16 A Russian traveler in London such as Goncharov could hardly be unaware of this ambient web of utilitarian and imperial forms of observation. Further, he could hardly fail to be aware of his own position as both an observer of the English and as the object of the measuring English gaze.

The Exhibitionist City: London’s Urban Optics Perhaps more than anywhere else at the time, there was a very great deal to see in early 1850s London, from the British Museum, the Polytechnic Institution, Wyld’s Great Globe, the zoos, numerous wax works exhibits, multiple panoramas and moving dioramas, to the renowned shop displays—to name just a few of the prominent forms through which 14 Benjamin describes a series of equivalent “dream spaces” traversed by the nineteenthcentury observer that include the art museum, arcade, botanical garden, wax museum, casino, train station, and department store (Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 23). 15 On this shared history, see, for example: Christopher Pinney, “The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography,” in Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 74–95; idem, Photography and Anthropology (London: Reaktion Books, 2011); and David MacDougall, “Anthropology and the Cinematic Imagination,” in Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame, ed. Christopher Morton and Elizabeth Edwards (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009), 55–63. 16 For example, see Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Anna Plassart, “James Mill’s Treatment of Religion and the History of British India,” History of European Ideas 34, no. 4 (2008): 526–534; J. Majeed, “James Mill’s ‘The History of British India’ and Utilitarianism as a Rhetoric of Reform,” Modern Asian Studies 24, no. 2 (1990): 209–224.

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technology, information, and goods were placed on display for domestic and foreign visitors alike. London’s exhibitions were driven in part by profit, but they were also motivated by the prevailing Benthamite faith in “rational amusement,” or the use of entertainment to provide public instruction, particularly in the sciences and technology. As Altick notes, the “Benthamite conviction that popular enlightenment was key to the happy society” led to a belief that exhibitions were a critical component of popular education.17 The emphasis on popular education derived from the growing sense that Britain’s success “rested upon science and its practical applications. There had to be more inventors, more technicians, more ordinary workers (‘mechanics’) who understood the scientific rudiments of their various manufacturing occupations so that they would be more efficient and productive. ‘The people’ in a word had to be taught science.”18 It is precisely this discourse of “rational entertainment” aimed at producing competent industrial workers that shapes the “display London” that Goncharov encounters in 1852. It is a city where the visualization of information is privileged, in the form of presentations of domestic technology, representations of travel, and displays about Britain’s colonies, including the actual exhibition of colonized peoples.19 Such an urban landscape would have been novel for Goncharov in 1852: the emphasis on “rational entertainment” that defined early 1850s London was not present in the Russian capitals of St.  Petersburg and Moscow, at least not to anywhere near the same degree. As Katia Dianina describes, Russia’s own age of museums and exhibitions did not fully begin until the 1860s—there were relatively few formal institutions, displays, or public museums before then.20 London’s display culture, then, was some17 Altick, Shows of London, 227. 18 Ibid., 368. Emphasis mine. 19 Ibid., 368–372. Altick notes the horrifying exhibitions of various non-European peoples in this period, including the “Aztec Lilliputians” and Saartjie Baartman, the Khoikhoi woman known as the “Hottentot Venus” (ibid., 268–275). 20 While Dianina notes that “many institutions of visual display in Russia opened their doors to the public” in the years 1851–1900, it was not until “the culturally rich 1860s” that museums and exhibitions began to proliferate due to the Great Reforms. Among these were the Imperial Hermitage (1852), the Polytechnical Museum (1877), the Historical Museum (1883), the Tretiakov Gallery (1893), and the Russian Museum (1898). See Katia Dianina, “Museum and Message: Writing Public Culture in Imperial Russia,” Slavic and East European Journal 56, no. 2 (2012): 173–195, quotations from 173–174. Dianina also describes the establishment of the St.  Petersburg Passage (Passazh) in 1848, a covered shopping arcade and cultural center meant to compare

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thing markedly different for a Russian visitor. In contrast to the Russian capitals, the year 1851 witnessed the largest number of shows and other sights ever in London due to the opening of the Great Exhibition, housed in the famous Crystal Palace. Altick’s partial description of some of the less prominent shows available in London that year is useful for the sense it gives of the scale and variety of the city’s show culture: Elsewhere, Gordon Cumming’s African adventure exhibition shared the St.  George’s Gallery with the Jerusalem panorama; in Sloane Street an industrious flea show, also borrowing its theme from the news, featured “the fleas in California, digging, washing, and sifting gold,” supplemented by lectures on the solar eclipse illustrated by the oxyhydrogen light; General Washington’s successor as the largest horse in the world, a steed named Goliath, was at the old Burlington Mews; and in Oxford Street, . . . Dr. Kahn continued to dispense information on anatomy and sexual physiology. The original Apollonicon . . . was to be heard at the Royal Music Hall. . . . Adjoining it, under the name of the “Grand Exhibition of Art,” was a miscellaneous show . . . which afforded a retrospective view of the whole range of popular attractions from the century’s first fifty years: “Articles of vertu, and divers mechanical curiosities, originally belonging to George IV, when Prince of Wales,”  .  .  .  an automaton female organist  .  .  .  , an automaton singing bird in a case of pure gold; some miniature wax busts of British worthies; an egg hatchery; tapestries representing Scriptural and other subjects; and cosmoramic views of the private apartments in Windsor Palace. At Savile House, in addition to several panoramas, were the Kaffirs, Cantelo’s incubator . . . and the Lapland Giantess, “the largest female ever known.”21

It is striking that Goncharov does not mention the Crystal Palace in Frigate Pallada. It had closed by the time of his visit, but its presence loomed large in the London imagination.22 In fact, there are a number of major sights Goncharov could have seen but does not mention in the pages of Frigate Pallada, such as the famous Colosseum entertainment hall, Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, the Vauxhall pleasure garden, or the Polytechnic with those found in London and Paris (“Passage to Europe: Dostoevskii in the St. Petersburg Arcade,” Slavic Review 62, no. 2 [2003]: 237–257, 239–240). 21 Altick, Shows of London, 463–464. I would note the unfortunate lumping together of African peoples, an inhabitant of the far North, and an egg incubator in this list. 22 The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was held at the Crystal Palace from May to October 1851. It was reopened in 1854.

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Institution.23 As I will discuss in more detail below, he pays only cursory attention to one of London’s most notable sights, Albert Smith’s wildly popular moving diorama show “Ascent of Mont Blanc.” These absences ask the reader to pay particular attention to those London sights Goncharov does describe. Notably, he experiences Wellington’s funeral on the day he arrives (November 18, 1852) and sees the scaffolding erected for the funeral crowd (itself a popular sight); he describes visits to the British Museum, Regent Street, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, the National Gallery, Wyld’s Great Globe, zoological gardens, the Waterloo panorama painted in honor of Wellington’s death, as well as “Ascent of Mont Blanc.” He also notes visiting markets, inns, theaters, “castles, parks, squares, and the stock exchange,” “official edifices,” “various amusing exhibits,” the shops, the houses, and the suburbs, and, finally, he observes English women and “the whole crowd.”24 Many of the institutions and diversions Goncharov lists featured human and natural science components; all of them were central components of what might be called London’s visio-scientific entertainment complex. Many of these diversions, such as panoramas, dioramas, and Wyld’s Globe, (which I will discuss below) were also in their time immersive, three-dimensional experiences—or approximations thereof—that allowed for “embodied spectatorship” and the creation of a “panoramic consciousness.”25 23 Though Goncharov does not list the Polytechnic Institution by name, it is likely that he visited it. See I. A. Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1997–2017), 555. Commentary to this volume provides details on the sites Goncharov visited, as well as excerpts from other Russian travelers’ descriptions (ibid., 550–562). 24 Goncharov also refers to the Royal Panopticon of Science and Art, which opened its doors only in 1854. (See Phyllis Hartnoll and Victor Glasstone, “Alhambra,” European Route of Historical Theatres, https://www.theatre-architecture.eu/db.html?theatreId=1034, accessed May 6, 2020.) Presumably Goncharov includes it because it was a sensation when it did open, though he could not have visited it himself (he may have seen the building’s design, published in 1852). Labeled “An Institution for Scientific Exhibitions, and for Promoting Discoveries in Arts and Manufactures,” it featured a rotunda with an elaborate fountain, as well as a rooftop photography studio reached by means of a motorized elevator. Exhibits included a live display of a diver with underwater breathing equipment, an “aurora borealis” apparatus, a “thunder house,” gas cookstove, cork hats, sewing machine, biscenascope, and mechanical devices named the “Euphantine” and the “Musical Narrator” (Altick, Shows of London, 490–491). 25 Alison Griffiths, “‘Distempered Daubs’ and Encyclopaedic World Maps: The Ethnographic Significance of Panoramas and Mappaemundi,” in in Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame, ed. Christopher Morton and Elizabeth Edwards (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009), 27–53, in particular 28–29. She notes that

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Not everyone delighted in the atmosphere of “rational entertainment” and the push to train the English public in rudimentary science for the sake of increased efficiency and profit, however. Perhaps the most famous critic was Charles Dickens, whose work depicted the dehumanizing effect of such policies.26 Several of his novels offer stark commentary on the utilitarian strains of British life: The Pickwick Papers (1836) satirizes the effort on the part of elites to motivate the public to self-educate (the Pickwick Club itself is a thinly veiled parody of the real Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge); Dombey and Son (1848) portrays the ruinous effect of treating everything, including marriage, as a financial proposition; Bleak House (1853) has been described by D. A. Miller as “a dark rendering of a panoptical world”; and, finally, Hard Times (1854) portrays the relentless destruction caused by the application of a utilitarian calculus to all aspects of life, especially education.27 As these novels were popular with Russian readers of the 1850s, it is easy to imagine that Goncharov’s portrayal of London as a city caught up in the throes of utilitarian “progress” and technology had a familiar Dickensian ring.28 Space does not permit a lengthy discussion of utilitarian thought in Russia here, but it should be noted that Goncharov came of age in the 1830s and 40s and, like others of his generation, navigated the shift from Romanticism to Realism. He admired the literary critic Vissarion Belinskii but rejected much of Belinskii’s legacy in the work of later figures such as Nikolai

“panoramas provide us with a unique way of accessing the interface between popular culture, the legacy of colonialism, and immersive visual technologies” (ibid., 28). 26 Also notable was William Makepeace Thackeray, whose work was well received in Russia, in part for his similar criticisms of British society. See Stella Nuralova, “W. M. Thackeray and his Cornhill Magazine in Russia: Nineteenth-Century Attitudes,” Victorian Periodical Reviews 35, no. 3 (2002): 295–304. 27 On Bleak House as a “panoptical world,” see D. A. Miller’s The Novel and the Police (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), 58–106. Blake problematizes the conventional readings of Dickens’s work as a critique of utilitarianism, arguing that his response to Bentham is more multifaceted and ultimately accepting (Pleasures of Benthamism, 2–5). 28 Russia had its own exposure to Benthamite utilitarianism that dated from the Bentham brothers’ sojourn in Russia on Prince Grigorii Potemkin’s estate Krichev in the late eighteenth century. See Alessandro Stanziani, “The Traveling Panopticon: Labor Institutions and Labor Practices in Russia and Britain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, no. 4 (2009): 715–741.

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Chernyshevskii and Dmitrii Pisarev who viewed art in utilitarian terms as an agent of social reform.29 Goncharov’s encounter with the visual culture of London exhibitions, museums, and shows of the early 1850s raises intriguing questions. What does it mean to be a Russian observer of the center of British imperial and technological power? How do the optics of modernity shape the opening section of Frigate Pallada in implicit and explicit ways? In the next section I will look closely at Goncharov’s description of London and at how the city is framed as the “all-seeing” and “all-consuming” eye at the center of the European imperial universe. The general picture of English life in Frigate Pallada is of a chillingly “consumed” society, one that has internalized the “scientific”-colonial gaze to the degree that the English have become the objects of their own evaluation.

The Kaleidoscopic City: Goncharov’s Mechanics of Vision Perhaps not surprisingly, the London section of Frigate Pallada reads differently from the other sections of the travel narrative: everywhere else Goncharov travels is a European colony or site of imperial interest, not a European capital. London, however, is arguably the very center of European modernity and it is quite literally viewed differently by the narrator. It is seen by means of the modern tools it has produced—a necessarily disorienting perspective. In comparison to the other parts of the text, it is striking that in London Goncharov does not describe individuals or landscapes in detail, nor does he relate much about his traveling companions or the Russian crew. Rather, most of the narration describes tourist sights and relays the narrator’s observations from the street; he never narrows his view from the level of the crowd to that of the individual. While Goncharov does not have the opportunity to meet people in London in the same way he does elsewhere on the voyage, his unremittingly broad view of the city forms an alienating perspective that allows him to treat London itself as a kind of large-scale “instructive” exhibit. Mechanics of vision come into play from the narrator’s very first glimpse of the city when he reports that he cannot see the Thames because of the industrial fog that covers it. This initial invisibility is in prominent 29 Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator, 22, 46–49. See also Galya Diment, “The Precocious Talent of Ivan Goncharov,” in Goncharov’s Oblomov: A Critical Companion, ed. Galya Diment (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 10–11.

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contrast to every other arrival described in the text, where the narrative opens with a sweeping panoramic description of the landscape as viewed from the ship. When the fog lifts, the view of the Thames proves hardly picturesque, appearing as it does “in all its ugliness, surrounded by unkempt brick buildings, choked by ships.”30 Despite this unpromising start, Goncharov asserts that he will “not forget the immense city, ablaze in the light of gas lamps, as it presents itself to the traveler when he arrives in the evening.  The locomotive pushes itself into this ocean of light and hastens past the roofs of houses, above the elegant canyons where the human antheap is moving amid fire and color, as if seen in a kaleidoscope.”31 This view of London is nothing short of spectacular with its blazing illumination and wide scope, and it possesses a number of perceptual dimensions. First there is the distinctly wide-angle, panoramic perspective that takes in the entire “immense city” and “ocean of light” in one glance, despite the city’s initial hiddenness from view. The panorama, a large-scale circular painting hung in a rotunda, remained enormously popular into the mid-nineteenth century. Panoramas generally depicted landscapes or historical events and were meant to be “so true to life that they could be confused with reality.”32 As Mary Louise Pratt has noted, the panoramic view is also a hallmark of imperial texts where it corresponds to a rhetoric of “penetration and discovery;” she describes the panoramic view as a “fantasy of dominance” in which “the eye ‘commands’ what falls within its gaze . . . ; the country ‘opens up’ before the European newcomer.”33 Strikingly, it is just such a commanding view that Goncharov directs toward London on first glance in what is a powerful assertion of visual dominance. The narrator’s view is also notable for its miniaturizing power: as he looks down on the city streets from above, his assertion that London’s inhabitants look like insects recalls the gaze of a scientist looking through a microscope. The image of the antheap here is likewise striking: it suggests a swarm life governed by observable natural laws in which individuals do not stand out from the crowd. It also might be said to indicate the “practical” or 30 Goncharov, Pallada, 30. 31 Ibid. Emphasis mine. 32 Bernard Comment, The Painted Panorama (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000), 7–8. 33 “Scratches on the Face of the Country; or What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushmen,” in “Race,” Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 143.

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utilitarian side of life as Goncharov described it in his early 1840s essay “Is it Good or Bad to Live in the World?” (“Khorosho ili durno zhit’ na svete?”). In this essay, he describes a binary between individual participation in “antlike bustling” in the “practical” sphere for the common good and the “ideal” sphere in which the individual is fully realized and in which heart, soul, and mind work together.34 Perhaps most notable of all in this passage, however, is Goncharov’s comparison of his first visual experience of London to the sensation produced by looking into a kaleidoscope, a handheld optical device that uses mirrors to create “an infinity of patterns,” or random, yet orderly combinations of colors and shapes. The visual phenomenon produced by the kaleidoscope—multiple reflections generated by two or more reflecting surfaces—was itself nothing new, but the first commercial kaleidoscopes, created in England in 1815, were a popular sensation. Indeed, as Helen Groth describes, English society fell into “the grips of Kalleidoscopism” and was “captivated by a new way of seeing the world, a way of seeing which was quickly translated into a novel and potent metaphor” in print culture: To describe an event or phenomenon as kaleidoscopic evoked a sense of perpetual transformation, in contrast to the spectacular stasis and visual mastery suggested by contemporary popular sensations such as the panorama. The kaleidoscope immersed the observer in a visual field that never allowed the eye to rest, producing a visual effect that tested the limits of verisimilitude and reflected the existential flux of modern life in early nineteenth-century London.35 The kaleidoscope’s inventor, Sir David Brewster, went so far as to suggest that his device could serve as a “mechanical means for the reformation of art according to an industrial paradigm,” a stunning reduction of art to scientific and mathematical principles.36

Despite its commercial success, the kaleidoscope was not without its detractors: Baudelaire saw it as contributing to the “disintegration of 34 Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator, 24. The motif of people appearing from afar as insects reappears on occasion in Frigate Pallada, such as in Goncharov’s description of a merchant ship “covered” in immigrants at the Madeira harbor (Goncharov, Pallada, 74) or people “crowded together like flies” in the Cape Verde Islands (ibid., 100). 35 Helen Groth, “Kaleidoscopic Vision and Literary Invention in an ‘Age of Things’: David Brewster, Don Juan, and ‘A Lady’s Kaleidoscope,’” ELH 74, no. 1 (2007): 217. 36 Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 113–114.

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a unitary subjectivity” that disturbingly echoed the process of modernity itself.37 Marx and Engels took issue with the kaleidoscope in the The German Ideology (1846) for what they saw as its deceptive nature. Instead of producing new images, the mirrors in the kaleidoscope repeat one image, such that the display “is composed entirely of reflections of itself.” Further, the mirrors produce the “appearance of decomposition and proliferation” without actually creating (or destroying) anything.38 In Frigate Pallada, the reference to the kaleidoscope on Goncharov’s entry to London reflects the use of an English optical tool to view the epicenter of industrial modernity itself. This is a tool that offers the ability to distort or manipulate perception – in this case through the appearance of an endless proliferation. While Goncharov’s kaleidoscopic view of London is bright with its “fire and color,” its perspective is powerfully decentering: it is possible to spin the tiny English antheap around into all number of potentially meaningless combinations that are yet constrained by a rigid symmetry.39 Remarkably, Goncharov packs several distinctive optical experiences into his first view of London. The city is alternately possessed by his all-encompassing panoramic gaze, examined in miniature “scientifically,” and, finally, shattered by the refraction of a kaleidoscopic lens. All of these perspectives distance the observer from what he sees and privilege the act of looking itself. The act of viewing from a remove that defines Goncharov’s first encounter with London permeates the rest of his experience there: everything in the city is for looking at or looking over, and looking is itself a primary activity for inhabitants and visitors alike. In this vein, Goncharov’s attention to London’s stores is worthy of note:40

37 Ibid., 116. 38 Ibid., 114, 116. Emphasis mine. 39 Bojanowska applies the metaphor of an “imperial kaleidoscope” to Frigate Pallada as a whole for its mix of prejudice and sympathy toward different peoples (World of Empires, 31) and to describe the process by which Goncharov orders the “raw experience” of travel into a “patterned narrative” (ibid., 278). As she suggests, finding too much consistency in a travelogue is equivalent to a “kaleidoscopic mirage” (ibid., 283). However, the kaleidoscope also plays an important role in Frigate Pallada as a specific metaphor that references the optical revolution and forms of colonial, utilitarian, and industrial vision. 40 As Altick notes, London was renowned for its shop displays. Observers particularly noted their “brilliant lighting” and the use of plate glass and mirrors (Shows of London, 226–227).

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if there is nothing more to look at, then go and simply see the stores; many of them are in their way museums of merchandise [muzei tovarov]. Abundance, luxury, taste, and display of the wares amazes you to surfeit.  The wealth here exceeds the imagination. Who and where are the customers? You ask yourself as you look into and are afraid of entering these palaces of marble, malachite, crystal, and bronze.41

In this passage, the store—typically conceived of as a place of exchange—is reconfigured as a one-sided attraction. In Goncharov’s telling, it is devoid of people, merchants and customers alike, and is characterized by cold, hard, reflective surfaces that seemingly prevent any sensory connection other than the visual. The store functions as a kind of taxidermic space, perhaps similar to the natural history displays Goncharov notes in the British Museum where things are displayed in full color but are “dead” in the sense of their remove from life. The acts of collection, observation, and display that define the museum quite literally frame the activity of shopping, too: one can look, but not touch in this “museum of merchandise.” Further, the commercial products for sale in the center of the British empire are as spectacular as the colonial artefacts available for observation and study in the museum, raising the question of how much distinction there really is between these two kinds of consumption. Both spaces serve as a venue in which to be visibly impressed by the strength and riches of the empire. The riches Goncharov observes in the stores prove to be not quite what they seem, however: In front of these ten-foot mirrors you can stand for hours gazing at bales of cloth, precious stones, porcelain, and silver. For the most part the price is marked; when you see the price and find it attainable by your purse, then there is no way to keep you from going and buying something. From every walk I returned with bulging pockets full of all kinds of things and when I came home and put everything on the table, I had to admit to myself that this thing was wholly unnecessary, that one I had already and so on. You buy a book that you will never read, a pair of pistols that you will never shoot, porcelain that is not needed on the sea, in fact, not useable, a cigar case, a walking stick with a dagger in it, and so on. I wish someone would protect me from these temptations that I meet at every step—and it is all so cheap! 41 Goncharov, Pallada, 34. Emphasis mine.

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I would . . . advise you, before you buy, to compare the prices in two or three establishments, because nowhere else is there such arbitrariness in setting prices for things. It seems that the merchant sets his price by the look, the physiognomy of the buyer.42

The “ten-foot mirrors” that illuminate the shops immediately attract the reader’s attention. They amplify the proffered goods beyond their actual worth, and they restrict the customer to a glancing assessment, not a real valuation. The value of items, which would seem to be absolute judging by the visible price tags, is, in fact, arbitrary—a trick of the eye—as Goncharov realizes as soon as he steps into the next store. It turns out, however, that the customer’s value is measurable, for the shop mirrors function as the “eyes” of the store itself: the merchant uses them to arrest the customer’s attention and to assess what the customer is worth. While such practices are hardly new to the art of selling things, the emphasis on gazing or glancing surfaces in the shop, coupled with the presence of a marked, visible price, plays a critical role in shaping the customer’s experience. Value is marked as if it is absolute and affordable; together, these assertions are compelling; they make the Russian customer buy things. What Goncharov describes here is a process of compulsive consumption, of buying novelties because they catch his eye, only to discover that despite the advertised value, the goods are themselves of no value to him at all. The shop’s mirrors, then, are their own kind of kaleidoscope, offering the observing customer an infinite proliferation of what is, at base, meaningless. The confusion of boundaries between looking and buying that Goncharov experiences extends beyond the realm of the store in London, for he remarks that the act of looking at—or looking over—things is a national pastime for the English. They go to view exhibits and displays in great numbers, considering with “cold calculation that this or that is useful,” and therefore should be inspected: “I never saw that they enjoyed what they came to look at; they inspect the way they might inspect an object for sale. They see where it hangs, how big it is, how it was printed or how it was said—and then they pass on.”43 It seems that everything, from mechanical devices to, implicitly, other peoples and places, is subject to Londoners’ evaluation for its use and value—and for purchase. This national dedication to assessment is a joyless affair, defined as it is by “cold calculation” and stripped of any 42 Goncharov, Pallada, 34–35. Emphasis mine. 43 Goncharov, Pallada, 36.

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emotion; it is consumption at its most mercantile. The passage brings to mind Baudrillard’s discussion of the new push to “demonstrate happiness and equality” with observable proof in the nineteenth century. Happiness was to be “‘measurable in terms of objects and signs,’ something that would be evident to the eye in terms of visible criteria”—arguably, a formula perfectly designed to deprive happiness of its meaning.44 What Goncharov portrays as an all-consuming evaluative spectatorship finds expression in other, more troubling ways in English society. He asserts that there is no nature in England because it has been harnessed and organized to the extent that the animals “are all pure-bred: sheep, horses, bulls, dogs, just like men and women.”45  In another startling remark, he comments that English animals are becoming like people, that is, they are beginning to wonder why they are being fattened up—while the people are becoming like animals, trying to forget why they shovel coal all day.46 In this vision, English people are bred intentionally to be used like livestock—the result, it seems, of a mania for treating everything as a resource to exploit in the name of industry, science, and empire. In this sense, Goncharov’s English have turned England itself into a kind of utilitarian “internal colony” in which they view themselves with the same assessing gaze directed towards their imperial possessions. Goncharov does credit the English system with producing great specialists, but the larger sense of this and other passages seems to be: at what cost to the livelihood of the English people themselves? Perhaps in answer to this question, and in a manner reminiscent of the utilitarian calculus lampooned in Dickens’s Hard Times, Goncharov suggests that cost and value are themselves the determining components of the English worldview: all this practicality would be very good but unfortunately there is an unpleasant side to it. Not only public life, but the life of every individual here proceeds on very practical lines, like a machine. . . . Here . . . it appears that [virtue] only exists because it is useful for something, serves some end.  It seems as if honesty, justice, charity grow like hard coal, so that in statistical tables they can be measured along with steel production or bales of cotton cloth; and so 44 Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 11. See also Jean Baudrillard, La société de consummation (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 60. 45 Goncharov, Pallada, 39. 46 Ibid.

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and so much justice is apportioned to this province or that colony; or to some project is added a certain amount for producing quiet, or for taming savage customs, and so on. Such virtues are applied where they are needed and come back in rotation, but they have lost their warmth and their charm. From faces, movements, actions, one can read clearly the practical knowledge of good and evil, as an inescapable duty, but not as part of life, enjoyment, charm.47

While Goncharov does not question the basic premise of empire in the pages of Frigate Pallada, it is difficult not to read this passage and others as an indictment of English society for some of the very practices that contribute to the building of empire in the first place: the amassing of measurable knowledge and the application of utilitarian economic principles to human life in the conviction that these are improving as well as profitable. As the narrator asks, does it matter whether people strive to be good for the sake of it or try “to be virtuous by machine, according to tables, on demand. It seems that it doesn’t matter, but why is it so disgusting?”48 The posing of such questions by a Russian observer undermines a presumed English imperial certitude in the value of assessment itself. That the English are sure of their power of assessment is evident from Goncharov’s visit to one of the more remarkable London sights of the time, Wyld’s Great Globe (1851–1862). The most popular site besides the Crystal Palace in 1851, the Globe consisted of a large brick rotunda, with the constellations painted on the outside. On the inside, the visitor could view the earth’s topography as demarcated on a “spherical relief map,” as Goncharov describes:49 47 Ibid. Emphasis mine. The measurement of virtues recalls Dickens’s repeated mockery of the “tabular” measurement of human qualities practiced by utilitarian reformers and embodied in the character of the educator Thomas Gradgrind in Hard Times: “Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. . . . With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic.” Hard Times, ed. Fred Kaplan, 4th ed. (New York, W. W. Norton and Co., 2017), 25. Emphasis mine. 48 Goncharov, Pallada, 40. 49 The map was quite detailed: “All the world’s well-known volcanoes, in simultaneous eruption, had tufts of cotton wool issuing from their red-painted peaks; snow-covered mountains were represented by roughly modeled masses of a glittering white substance; deserts were painted in a tawny color, the oceans blue, the fertile areas green” (Altick, Shows of London, 465).

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There is a special temporary building in which sits an enormous globe. Parts of the world are shown in relief, not outside the globe but inside. Visitors climb stairs from where they can observe the whole earth. A professor who accompanies them reads a short geographical lecture about natural history and the political division of countries. Moreover, here is also a remarkable geographic museum, chiefly about England and its colonies. Whole countries are modeled in plaster, with mountains and oceans shown in relief, and also everything for the study of general geography: maps, books, beginning with the earliest times, Arabian, Roman, Greek maps, and maps from Marco Polo to the present time.”50

The visitor to this special exhibit gets to stand inside the globe, a unique vantage point in which the viewer is positioned at the center of the earth and from where he can take in all of creation in one all-encompassing, panoramic gaze. Not coincidentally, this occurs while he is standing in the middle of London at the heart of the British Empire. All the lectures, museums, maps, and dioramas available across London suggest the possibility of a systematic and complete knowledge of the earth, the kind of knowledge that might be said to culminate in the spectacle of the Great Globe. As Said has demonstrated, it is precisely this proposed system of Western “comprehensive knowledge” that functions as a means of dominating or possessing a non-Western other.51 In reference to the zoo, Goncharov explicitly describes it as offering the visitor the chance to feel like the Lord of Creation for a shilling. Taken together with Wyld’s Globe, it is clear that London offers multiple opportunities to enact global possession in miniature—for a small fee. In Goncharov’s representation of English society as one of commodification, utility, and global possession, it bears noting that even that which seems most antithetical to economic value has a price attached to it: “A beautiful woman has no reason to run away from England; beauty is a capital. . . . An ugly woman has no value at all, unless she has some particular talent that is needed even in England. Just teaching language or looking after children isn’t enough: then the only choice that remains is to emigrate to Russia.”52 This ironic description of a society that expels “ugly” women unless they have some special use rings an eugenicist note, as do the earlier 50 Goncharov, Pallada, 33. 51 See Edward Said’s Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 52 Goncharov, Pallada, 41.

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remarks about “pure-bred” people. It suggests England is a place in which everything—physical beauty, moral values, human life—is assessed for its worth and then used, or discarded, accordingly. This is also a world in which Russia falls beyond the gaze of the ever-measuring center; so far, in fact, that it is the distant receptacle for that which has been cast out as useless. I would note that despite Goncharov’s assertion that beauty is capital, his discussion of English society is tempered in relation to “attractive women.” The domestic realm proves to be the one place where the English relax their mercenary attitude: It seems that women in England are the only subjects to whom the practical application does not apply. They reign here like queens, and if they should be a subject of speculation, as for instance Mrs. Dombey was, then no more so than in other places. Before them incense always burns on the domestic altar, and the Englishman who has roamed the city all day, doing business, doffs his mackintosh and his umbrella and with it his practical sense. There the fire that drives the machines is extinguished, and another fire lighted, that of the hearth, the fireplace.53

While Goncharov concedes that women are a matter of financial speculation the world over, the difference in England lies in their status as an exception to the larger utilitarian calculus in which their “unattractive” peers are utterly devalued, regardless of any less visible qualities they might possess.54 The narrator’s reference to Dombey and Son, in which the cruel and mercenary Mr. Dombey effectively buys his second wife, the widow Edith Granger, in an arranged marriage, is notable here. Though mentioned in passing, this reference, appearing as it does at the end of Goncharov’s lengthy discussion of the “unpleasant side” of “English practicality,” is hardly coincidental.55 He has just described English life in pre53 Ibid., 41–42. Emphasis mine. 54 The note to the Russian text indicates that Goncharov was taking aim here at the popular Russian “boulevard literature” that typically described English “romance” as a form of stock market speculation or financial transaction. Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 559. 55 The Russian translation of Dombey and Son appeared in 1847 to great popularity. More conservative Russian readers liked Dickens for seeming to “level out contradictions” and to support the status quo. Belinskii criticized Dickens for being too kind to the bourgeoisie, but favorably noted his sharp portrayal of social ills (Palievsky and Urnov, “A Kindred Writer,” 210, 212). As Gifford notes, “it was Dombey and Son  .  .  .  that truly established Dickens for the Russian reader. Capitalism and the railway were just

A Russian Observer Catches the London Eye

cisely the critical terms that Dickens deployed in novels like Dombey and Son and Hard Times.

A Moving Picture Show: The Diorama View of English and Russian life That there might be no “there” there where London is concerned, consumed as it is by its own ever-observing eye, is brought to the fore in Goncharov’s treatment of one of London’s top sights of 1852, Albert Smith’s famous moving diorama and one-man “monopolylogue” show, “Ascent of Mont Blanc.”56 In Frigate Pallada, Goncharov notes in passing that in theaters he saw “fine ladies; well dressed, but all too well dressed for the poor little theater in which they showed the [A]scent of Montblanc [sic]; their décolleté, their white cloaks, the flowers in their hair, make them look a little like our gypsies when the latter appear at the balustrade to sing.”57 That Smith’s show barely merits a mention by name in Frigate Pallada is surprising, given that it opened a few months before Goncharov’s arrival to immediate and enormous success; it has been described as “the most popular entertainment of the whole decade” and “one of the biggest hits of the whole Victorian era.”58 The show was staged in the Egyptian Hall, a building famous for its elaborate façade rendered in the style of an ancient Egyptian temple. The Hall was the well-known site of numerous shows and exhibitions throughout the period, including human displays, such as that of the Aztec Lilliputians.59 For Smith’s extravaganza, the hall’s interior was “converted into a little plot of old Switzerland,” complete with a “full-scale representation of the exterior of a chalet,” canton flags, moving scenery, gas and colored lights, a small waterfall and pond with real fish, live Saint coming to Russia, and the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 would make the Dombey world a vision of the near future” (“Dickens in Russia,” 62). 56 Smith’s diorama and others were based on the Diorama, created by Louis Daguerre in Paris in 1822. Though the words have often been used interchangeably, the diorama differed from the panorama in that it consisted of moving or rotating painted screens coupled with strategic use of lighting, narration, and sound in a fashion that prefigured cinematic experience. See Kris Belden-Adams, Photography, Temporality, and Modernity: Time Warped (New York: Routledge, 2019), 11. 57 Goncharov, Pallada, 42. Emphasis mine. Goncharov was not alone in noting what he saw as English “overdressing” for the theater (Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 560). 58 Altick, Shows of London, 473, 475. 59 Ibid., 235–252.

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Bernard dogs, flowering plants, and Alpine songs.60 As impresario, Smith delivered an engaging show that consisted of a combination of “anecdote, impersonation, song, and mild satire,” especially of the news of the day. The first half of the show enacted the train journey to Chamonix and the second half portrayed the ascent of Mont Blanc itself through a vertically moving panorama. Smith’s “Ascent of Mont Blanc” was enough of a sensation that Goncharov assumes his readers know what he is referring to; indeed, it had been mentioned in the Russian press.61 Goncharov’s failure to describe the diorama as he has such phenomena as the Great Globe or the London stores is surprising. Why would he omit this impressive spectacle or go out of his way to present English audiences as easily impressed? The first moving diorama in Russia was demonstrated in St. Petersburg only in 1851, so Smith’s show, the apex of the art form, was a relatively novel sight for the Russian visitor. One reason for Goncharov’s dismissive treatment may be an attempt to assuage national feeling: this famous English show turns out to be not all it is cracked up to be. Instead, Goncharov’s off-hand remark consigns Smith’s multi-media extravaganza to the realm of empty spectacle. Like his experience in the stores, certain phenomena of London life—such as dioramas or the London ladies—turn out to be cheap, false, even tawdry on closer inspection. In this vein, it is important to note that London’s panorama and diorama shows were given fresh energy by the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853 when numerous models and panoramas featuring Russian and Crimean landscapes were produced for display. Wyld’s Great Globe was retooled in 1854 to feature a forty-nine-scene “Grand Moving Diorama of a Tour from Blackwall to Balaclava,” accompanied by an exhibit that included forty-three Russian scenes, models of Sebastopol, Kronstadt, Sveaborg, and the Baltic, and a gallery illustrating “the people of the East from Bulgaria to Afghanistan.”62 Goncharov was likely aware of these “Russian” displays in London during and after the war, even if he did not witness them himself. Conceivably, then, an awareness of Russia’s role as the object of denigrating English observation plays a role in his dismissive treatment of “Ascent of Mont Blanc.” After all, it is not difficult to imagine Albert Smith staging an over-the-top version of a journey to Russia, replete with the façade of 60 Ibid., 473, 475; Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 560. 61 Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 560. 62 Altick, Shows of London, 481, 490.

A Russian Observer Catches the London Eye

a peasant hut or Orthodox church, and perhaps even the presence of real “Russian peasants” or Siberian peoples on the stage.63 A further point to consider in relation to Smith’s show is that by the late 1850s when Goncharov was preparing the text of Frigate Pallada for publication, London was witnessing the end of the era of “large-scale exhibitions of mechanical ingenuity, . . . leavened by pictorial and musical entertainment,” such as the moving diorama.64 Public interest had shifted away from forms of “educational” entertainment in favor of photography, the new illustrated press, and music halls. Moreover, improvements in slide and magic lantern technology and the mass production of the stereoscope meant these devices could be used for entertainment at home.65 Despite initial excitement about the panorama’s potential as a new art form in the early part of the nineteenth century, by the late 1850s its popularity was also on the wane. This was hardly the moment at which Goncharov would have wanted to wax enthusiastic about a show like Smith’s. Goncharov’s dismissal of “Ascent of Mont Blanc,” however, is also in keeping with his response to another key visual form of the era, photography. As I discuss elsewhere, the narrator takes pains throughout Frigate Pallada to make a case for photography’s inability to adequately represent reality.66 We might see Goncharov’s attitude toward Smith’s panorama, then, as at least partly that of a writer in response to what he sees as a second-rate visual art form that pretends at a kind of immersive realism it is very far from attaining. Along these lines one might note the reference to a diorama in Oblomov, where it serves as a metaphor for Oblomov’s life on the Vyborg Side with Agafia Matveevna: “[Ilia Ilich] lived, as it were, within a golden framework of life, in which, as in a diorama, the only things that changed

63 Smith did add a panorama of Constantinople to his entertainment complex in 1854 (ibid., 476). 64 Ibid., 496. By the 1860s, entertainment and instruction began to part ways, as the government took on more responsibility for educating the public through museums (ibid., 509). 65 Ibid., 509. 66 In “Better Late Than Never,” Gonharov draws a distinction between literary realism, in which the representation of reality is refracted through the author’s imagination, and what he pejoratively calls neo- or ultra-realism—mimetic writing that strives for a literal reproduction of reality with no authorial shaping, much like a daguerreotype or photograph in Goncharov’s interpretation. I. A. Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Moscow: Pravda, 1972), vol. 6, 484–485.

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were the usual phases of day and night and the seasons.”67 Despite the movement of its surface, the diorama is presented here as something static and as a false form of representation that fails to accurately portray real life. Arguably, Goncharov’s dismissal of “Ascent of Mont Blanc” echoes that of the Romantics to the panorama slightly earlier in the century. As Gillen D’Arcy Wood illustrates, figures like Coleridge and Wordsworth rejected the panorama and other forms of visual mimesis for what they saw as their status as disappointing “copies” of reality, unilluminated by any artistic insight or larger idea. They also criticized phenomena like the panorama for their role as mass spectacles and for their perceived “dehumanization of nature” and commodification of art. As Wood notes, they experienced a “failure of meaning as well as taste at the panorama.”68 Intriguingly, despite Goncharov’s dismissal of Smith’s show, the form of the diorama, like the kaleidoscope, plays a critical role in the England section where it informs the structure of Goncharov’s quasi-ethnographic comparison of a “day in the life” of an English urban gentleman and a Russian barin. These passages deploy a structure of physically changing scenes that are explicitly and implicitly accompanied by a rhetoric of comparison and close evaluation of an object or “species in its natural habitat.” Goncharov is hardly alone in adapting the diorama and other optical forms to narrative use in mid-nineteenth-century literature. Dickens incorporated the form into his work and other English writers, including George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Thackeray, referred to the diorama’s visual effects or made use of its effects in their narratives.69 67 Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov, trans. David Magarshack (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 174. 68 Gillen D’Arcy Wood, The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760–1860 (London: Palgrave, 2001), 4, 104, 115. Notably, early Realist French writers like Balzac and Stendhal expressed similar concerns in their work, particularly in response to the visualization and commodification of history in the form of the panorama (Maurice Samuels, The Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century France [Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004]). Samuels notes that the “transformation of history into  .  .  .  something to be viewed for a price represented a cultural shift with profound—and, according to Realist novels, dangerous— implications for the organization of knowledge and the structuring of the self in the modern world” (6). 69 Buckland notes that Dickens used the diorama as a literary device in his 1846 text Pictures from Italy: “Dickens’s ‘rapid succession of delights’ offers a variation on the theme that references the London shows with his use of the diorama. His description is replete with shifts of scenery that fade in and out of view, overlaying images and scenes

A Russian Observer Catches the London Eye

In a clever reversal, Goncharov creates a literary moving diorama to complete the picture of what is missing from or problematic about English life, while providing a telling contrast in the shape of a day in the idealized life of a Russian barin. The “diorama” show starts with a concise glimpse of a “typical” Englishman living a thoroughly mechanized life: The modern Englishman does not have to wake up by himself. . . . He wakes up by an alarm clock. After washing himself by means of a little gadget, he puts on his clothes, which have been washed by steam; he sits down at the table . . . and prepares for himself, again with the help of steam, a beefsteak or a chop in three seconds. . . . He looks up in a table which day and weekday is today, asks himself what he should do, takes up a little machine that does the computing for him. . . .70

The Englishman is dependent on gadgets to the degree that he seems to be turning into a machine himself. One might even say that he is exactly the kind of person “formed entirely in [his] hours of leisure by Polytechnic Institutions” that Dickens laments in the epigraph to this chapter. In contrast, the Russian “diorama” scenes quickly expand beyond their frame to extend over several pages. The scenes featuring a typical barin include the presence of a multitude of close-up personal details, such as named servants or descriptions of a variety of food dishes (each member of the household gets something different to eat). The “observed Russian” exists outside the realm of mechanization; money is figured in the squire’s head, not on paper, and his accounts do not balance at the end of the year due to his acts of spontaneous charity to individuals—unlike the Englishman’s dutiful, planned donations to institutions. In contrast to the solitary Englishman, the barin has visitors and lives embedded within an extended family. He takes part in local governance and organizes alms-giving for the whole community, an act of generosity unimaginable for the Englishman. The key point is that there is more to see with the Russian squire than with his English counterpart, who appears devoid of emotion and community. Possibly this is because the barin does not live for or through the inspecting gaze to begin with. When one looks at the Englishman, one looks and nothing more: there is nothing to know about him beneath the surface. If one but begins to look at the barin, in contrast, one cannot help but be drawn in to knowing more about him and in a montage-like transformation of the initial view just like the diorama” (“‘The Poetry of Science,’” 682, emphasis mine). See also Altick, Shows of London, 174. 70 Goncharov, Pallada, 48–49.

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his organic life. It is difficult to imagine that the richness in detail of the barin’s life is not meant to send up the paucity of England’s utilitarian, mechanized society—and to do so using the very optics of superficial observation and comparison with which English life is identified in Frigate Pallada. *** Russia’s defeat at the hands of the British and the French in 1856 was very recent history for Goncharov and his readers in 1858, many of whom no doubt appreciated an evisceration of the British for just those technological skills that helped them win the Crimean War, but Goncharov’s critical tone also voices concern with what the narrator portrays as the utilitarian impulses accompanying the development of Britain’s industrial, colonial market economy. Given these post-war sentiments and political restrictions, it would hardly have been possible for Goncharov to write about English society in an unabashedly positive way; however, his redirection of an evaluative, “scientific” gaze back onto the English center and assessment of the English as objects of their own exploitative instincts represents more than an absence of praise – it is a key critique of the optics of evaluation and possession that defined the age. In closing, I would note one last London display, the Eureka poetry machine, shown in the Egyptian Hall in 1845. This machine generated lines of Latin hexameter verse, visible through a slot, while an internal cylinder played “God Save the Queen.” A kaleidoscope mounted on its front simultaneously “displayed a geometrical figure corresponding to that of the hexameters being created—‘every identical verse with its corresponding figure, and every figure with its corresponding verse.’” Once the verse was displayed for several seconds, the letters were automatically withdrawn, this time to the tune of “Fly Not Yet.” If the machine was not stopped, it would compose hexameter verse at the rate of 10,080 lines a week—as Altick notes, “a sufficiently nightmarish foretaste of what a robot-equipped future might hold.”71 While Goncharov would not have seen the Eureka, he could well imagine it, based on the displays he did see in London. It is hard to imagine that he would not be troubled by the thought of this verbal kaleidoscope, reducing poetry to machine-generated word patterns, the ultimate in the utilitarian organization of life. 71 Altick, Shows of London, 356.

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter, and Colonial Discourse in Frigate Pallada Lyudmila Parts

Ivan Goncharov’s Frigate Pallada (Fregat “Pallada”) is an account of a journey featuring a first-person narrator, a linear, itinerary-like progression, and a combination of descriptive and narrative elements. While distinct by virtue of its relatively exotic destinations and complex narrative persona, this travelogue is typical of the genre in its overarching theme: it is about coming into contact with foreign cultures. Through engagements with foreign Others, travel writing constructs, rather than reflects, identities; in the Russian literary context, its primary concern is with questions of national identity. Thus, Goncharov’s text includes observations of various attributes, lifestyles and customs of the nations he tours, often followed by sweeping characterizations of these countries and their peoples. In the process of characterizing these Others, he constructs a certain conception of Russianness that is quite different from that developed by Russian travelers to the West. As secretary to Admiral Putiatin, commander of the Russian expedition to the Far East, Goncharov often speaks as a representative of the state; his position thus differs from that of a traveler who journeys for the sake of personal pleasure or education. As a member of an official expedition on board a military vessel and a witness to complex diplomatic negotiations, Goncharov’s use of broad

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strokes is justified.1 The text is massive in size and scope; moreover, his narrator wears many hats and offers various, sometimes contradictory, points of view. In order to limit my analysis to a consistent line of inquiry, I focus not on his generalizations, but on what I call micro-encounters: short episodes, in which the traveler interacts with locals in person. My contention is that alongside the story of the macro-encounter, with its calculated and across-the-board characterizations of foreigners, a different story emerges when the traveler engages directly with individual locals—when gazes are exchanged, and mutual reactions recorded. Microencounters forgo the decorum intrinsic to official meetings with significant political personae, thereby permitting the narrator to create closer, more personal zones of contact with these foreign Others. During the micro-encounter, the narrator “opens up” for a moment, in a way that may run counter to his customary attitude as a government official, and comfortably detached observer. By reducing my scope of analysis, I pinpoint those moments, in which the shifts between various aspects of the narrative persona are revealed.2 I further narrow my focus to those micro-encounters involving laughter. The travelogue is a genre uniquely suited to exploring the role of humor and laughter in the textual construction of identities, since it literally brings one face to face with the different, and the strange. The incongruity theory of laughter posits, that people react with laughter to the difference between what is expected, and what they observe.3 In travel literature, this difference is often identical to the discrepancy between what one considers the norm, and an aberration. A traveler to exotic lands expects, likely even hopes, to be surprised, and may react to these discrepancies with wonder, 1

2 3

Ivan Goncharov served as the secretary to Admiral Evfimii Putiatin, the commander of the Russian expedition to the Far East in 1852. The expedition’s main goal was to open diplomatic and trade relations with Japan. The voyage lasted more than two years and included stops in England (Portsmouth), Madeira, the Cape Verde Islands, Cape Town at the Cape of Good Hope, Java, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Shanghai, the Ryukyu Islands, the Philippines, and Korea. The voyage ended in Siberia, from where Goncharov traveled on land. On the concept of micro-encounters see Lyudmila Parts, “Karamzin’s Traveler Meets the Locals: Micro-Encounters in Letters of a Russian Traveler,” Russian Review 78, no. 4 (2019). See for instance Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour (London: Sage Publications, 2005); Alexander Kozintsev, The Mirror of Laughter (New Brunswick: Transactions, 2010); Arthur Asa Berger and Aaron Wildavsky, “Who Laughs at What?,” Society 31, no. 6 (1994): 82–86.

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

confusion, amusement, or outright laughter. The latter reaction reveals a great deal about the travelogue’s narrator, in relation to whether or not the author intended it as a characterization technique. Goncharov’s narrator is a multifaceted persona, whose views may, at times, seem contradictory and inconsistent, with one exception: namely, his remarkable consistency in employing laughter as a marker of a social and racial hierarchy. Goncharov’s lengthy travel account is humorous in many ways that Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler (Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika), for instance, is not. Karamzin’s travelogue is often rich in irony; but its sentimental aesthetics struggle to accommodate laughter’s role as a destabilizing factor. By contrast, Goncharov relies on the comic to various ends. Vsevolod Sechkarev submits, that Goncharov’s humor, his “dazzling display of wit,” is the true source of his travelogue’s success with its readers.4 In the same vein, Milton Ehre regards Goncharov as “a writer always on the watch for the comic possibilities of the curious and eccentric.”5 Elena Krasnoshchekova, meanwhile, develops Ehre’s discussion of the narrator’s dual identity (as both bureaucrat and youthful argonaut) to suggest that Goncharov’s humor is, in fact, a marker of one of “the two faces of the narrator.”6 These observations concern the comical descriptions in the narrative. However, there is a difference between humorous depictions of situations inviting the reader to laugh, and those episodes, in which the narrator himself is laughing, or contemplating what motivates the Other to laugh. The former pertain to the study of comic techniques, and the latter— to the sociology and psychology of laughter. Thus, I propose a closer look at the instances of laughter on the level of plot, that is, when the narrator is moved to laughter by an occurrence, or in reaction to the exotic lands and their inhabitants. When the narrator-protagonist laughs, he characterizes not only the object of laughter, but also its subject. Goncharov exploits the first-person narrator’s dual nature, as both player and teller, to double the comic potential of the scene. Most importantly, he manipulates the various Vsevolod Sechkarev, Ivan Goncharov. His Life and His Works (Wurzburg: Jal-Verlag, 1974), 101–105. Sechkarev also points out that in Goncharov’s personal letters the account of his travels is significantly less “rosy” and humorous than in the travelogue (ibid., 81–83). 5 Milton Ehre, Oblomov and His Creator: The Life and Art of Ivan Goncharov (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 143. 6 Elena Krasnoshchekova, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov: mir tvorchestva (Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1997), 142. 4

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interpretations of laughter in order to control the power dynamic in the encounters. For many contemporary scholars, laughter belongs to the present-day debates concerning identity politics, because it discriminates against the Other and foregrounds differences.7 Many theories of laughter explore its social function, identifying humor as a tool in the operations of social protest or reconciliation.8 For Henri Bergson, a key function of laughter is disciplinary, as “a kind of social ‘ragging.’”9 Mikhail Bakhtin examines subversive laughter and its potential for destabilizing social structures.10 In Goncharov’s travelogue, laughter aligns with all of these theories; but most importantly, it serves to establish the narrator’s role as an observer, who reacts to social, cultural, and racial Others from the position of a (would-be) colonizer. The Russian delegation’s mandate was to establish diplomatic and trade relations with Japan. Regardless of this event’s justification, it was primarily a colonial enterprise: the treaty that was eventually signed, “violated the sovereignty of Japan and extracted at gunpoint trading rights that favored the imperial intruder.”11 Therefore, the extent to which Goncharov’s chronicle of this ostensibly peaceful mission relies on the language of colonial discourse is remarkable, but hardly surprising. As studies of colonialism have abundantly demonstrated, this discourse is concerned with marking differences, and justifying dominance. David Spurr summarizes the master tropes of colonial discourse, from surveillance, to idealization and debasement, as encompassing “a range of tropes, conceptual categories, and logical operations available for purposes of representation.”12 Although this See, for instance, Jure Gantar, The Pleasure of Fools: Essays in the Ethics of Laughter (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005). 8 Some of the recent studies are: Simon Critchley, On Humor (London: Routledge, 2002); Billig, Laughter and Ridicule; Dennis Ioffe and Serguei Oushakine, “The Amusing Disturbance of Soviet Laughter,” Russian Literature 74, nos. 1–2 (2013). 9 Henri Bergson, Laughter. An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 135. 10 Peter Barta, ed., Carnivalizng Difference: Bakhtin and the Other (London: Routledge, 2001). 11 Edyta Bojanowska, A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 6. 12 David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). Spurr’s eleven master tropes of colonial discourse are surveillance, appropriation, aestheticization, classification, debasement, negation, affirmation, idealization, insubstantialization, naturalization, and eroticization. 7

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

traditional repertoire certainly accommodates Goncharov’s emphasis on classification and debasement, his depictions of foreigners also contributes a significant element: his use of ridicule. Scholars have recently begun to focus on humor and laughter as tools of anticolonial movements and postcolonial identity-formation.13 Meanwhile, the role of laughter and ridicule in texts written from a colonizer’s perspective has not been addressed. The value of their approach and interest in the literature of liberation and protest is undeniable. It must not obscure the fact, however, that just as laughter can be employed to subvert and liberate, it can, and has been, used to belittle and subjugate. In this particular role, it provides the basis on which Goncharov’s narrator establishes his rank, in relation to the different peoples he encounters. While most theories of laughter deal with the question of what makes one laugh, significantly fewer scholars consider the objects of laughter or ridicule. In order to address both scenarios, I distinguish between two types of micro-encounters in Frigate Pallada. The first type, depicting the narrator as the laughing subject, conforms remarkably well to the contemporary understanding of laughter’s social and psychological functions. By contrast, those in which he identifies as the object of someone else’s scrutiny and laughter, prove more complex and interesting. Here, the traveler puts his identity to the test: he may accept, through tacit, ironic agreement, his assigned comic objectification; or project his insecurity and anxieties outward. Goncharov does the latter; rather than betray any sense of insecurity, he develops two distinct interpretations of laughter: one signals the narrator’s inherent superiority, and the other—his interlocutors’ developmental inadequacy. Thus, whether the subject or object of laughter, he “holds the reins.” Alongside the incongruity theory of laughter, the superiority theory figures among the most influential. It advances Thomas Hobbes’s notion that laughter arises from the misfortunes or infirmities of others, which allow us to consider ourselves “better” than those afflicted. Charles R. Gruner explains Hobbes’s seventeenth-century theory in simple terms: “[W]hen we find humor in something, we laugh at the misfortune, stupidity, clumsiness, moral or cultural defect, suddenly revealed in someone else, to whom we instantly and momentarily feel 13 Susanne Reichl and Mark Stein (eds.), Cheeky Fictions: Laughter and the Postcolonial (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005); Graeme Harper, Comedy, Fantasy, and Colonialism (London: Continuum, 2002).

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‘superior’ since we are not, at that moment, unfortunate, stupid, clumsy, morally or culturally defective, and so on.”14 Time and again, the superiority theory has been subjected to revaluation for its unfashionably dark view of laughter; as in life, there are clearly various types of laughter in a given text. However, Goncharov’s text exhibits remarkable consistency, in employing laughter that is “aggressive, hostile, and deprecating.”15 As Michel Billig points out, the “superiority theory, which seems so out of tune with ideological positivism, may offer clues about the maintenance of power, order and ideological self-deception, as well as discouraging the unquestioning acceptance of laughter’s goodness.”16 By and large, Goncharov’s narrator laughs in reaction to what he perceives as strange and incongruous, based on the assumption that he represents what is acceptable and proper. He thereby assumes the position of superiority and makes laughter a tool of colonial discourse. Goncharov’s stance as colonial observer in Frigate Pallada is complicated by the awareness that, in traveling throughout East Asia and the Pacific, the Russian expedition drops anchor in colonies of major European powers, that is, in someone else’s Orient.17 Therefore, maintaining this superior stance requires more effort from the Russian traveler than it does from other Europeans, such as the English or Dutch. This fact prompts Goncharov to bolster his claim by other means, including the narrative element of “superior” laughter. In the absence of verifiable claims to this stance, other than his European origins and skin color, Goncharov frequently resorts to laughter, as the only available means of setting himself up as a Russian colonial observer. In other words, he often employs laughter to establish and maintain the power imbalance intrinsic to the colonial paradigm.18 Laughter’s role thus becomes disproportionately large: rather than merely signal one’s own sense of superiority over the objects of laughter, it functions to establish this superiority and ensure its indisputability. It becomes the colonizer’s prerogative, as both the sign and very foundation of his privileged position. 14 Charles R. Gruner, The Game of Honor: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh (London: Routledge, 2017), 13. 15 Ibid., 147. 16 Billig, Laughter and Ridicule, 40. 17 Susanna Soojung Lim, “Whose Orient Is It? Frigate Pallada and Ivan Goncharov’s Voyage to the Far East,” SEEJ 53, no. 1 (2009). 18 Reichl and Stein, Cheeky Fictions, 9.

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

Throughout his narrative, Goncharov’s condescension toward other races permits him to indulge in a sense of superiority as a European explorer and a representative of a nation that he considers more advanced. Edyta Bojanowska notes the presence throughout the text of “the palpable sense of superiority that, as a “civilized” white­skinned European, he felt over the differently hued people Europeans ruled or aspired to rule.”19 She also emphasizes, however, that this condescending attitude, while persistent, is not based on a coherent set of views, pertaining either to race and ethnicity, or a developed colonial discourse. What we have instead is “a record of impressions rooted in specific circumstances,” as Bojanowska rightly observes, “that tells us about psychological mechanisms of confronting human differences and about triggers of prejudice.”20 My aim is not to point out the various inconsistencies in Goncharov’s geopolitical ideas, but rather to distinguish and focus on one of his various reactions to difference. I contend, that tracing the occurrences and functions of laughter throughout this lengthy “record of impressions” reveals at least one consistent pattern, in the way Goncharov manages his dual role as an observer, and a participant, in his encounters with difference. In examining the episodes involving laughter in Frigate Pallada I distinguish between those in which he is the subject and object of laughter respectively. These two groups of episodes correspond and conform to the workings of two distinct and different conceptions of laughter. In the former, Goncharov’s laughter signals and bolsters the Russians’ superiority, while interacting with the Japanese, for instance, as colonial subjects. In the latter group, however, the opposite interpretation comes to the fore; here, the Others’ laughter is construed as barbaric, and the laughing subject as developmentally deficient. This interpretive divergence may well constitute the essence of colonial laughter.

“I Could Not Help Laughing”: The Subject The Russian delegation’s lengthiest and most important foreign interaction was with the Japanese. Goncharov’s comical descriptions of the Japanese, reinforced by the narrator’s explicit account of his companions’ initial reactions, clearly marks the laughter as born of superiority: 19 Bojanowska, A World of Empires, 214. 20 Ibid., 215.

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We . . . could not suppress a smile, seeing these soft, smooth, white, effeminate faces, their sly and clever physiognomies, their hairdos and their squatting. They got to know us and responded to our friendly approach. We brought them sweet cakes, liquor, wine. They looked at everything with curiosity, examined the cabins, and stood open-mouthed when someone touched the keys of the piano.21 At first, being unaccustomed, it was difficult to look without laughing at these figures in skirts, with pigtails and bare little knees.22

Here, the narrator records not only the strange, even incongruous (to him) dress and behavior in retrospect; his very act of laughter at the time establishes his entitlement to feel and express condescension toward the nation as a whole. Since the Russians were facing, and entering into, complicated negotiations with official representatives of a foreign power, the delegation’s actual interactions with the Japanese unfolded in situations with uncertain power dynamics. On the whole, Frigate Pallada downplays the complexities of the negotiation process, of Russia’s need to secure trade relations with Japan, and even the delegation’s willingness to respect the host’s requests and maintain decorum.23 Goncharov’s act of laughter alone allows him to claim the Russians’ superiority over the Japanese outright, without having to justify or even make any overt statements on the matter. Indeed, a kind of skewed logic is at work here: the fact that we laugh easily and naturally must mean that our privileged and superior position is self-evident. Thus, the laughing subject has the upper hand. The reader, especially in the twenty-first century, might imagine the Japanese reacting to the Russians just as incredulously; however, Goncharov’s account invariably relegates the Japanese to the position of objects of the colonial gaze and laughter. In addition to looking down at foreigners from the heights of a more developed culture, Goncharov assumes the pose of an adult, smiling down at children; the latter requires no justification in geopolitical terms. The 21 Ivan Goncharov, The Frigate Pallada, trans. Klaus Goelze (New York: St.  Martin’s Press, 1987), 269 (318). For the original Russian, see Ivan Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1997), vol. 2; pages are given in parentheses. A number of passages from the original are omitted from Goelze’s translation; the translations of these passages are mine as indicated where necessary. 22 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 298 (349). 23 Primechaniia, in Ivan Goncharov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh (St.  Petersburg: Nauka, 2000), vol.  3, 404–415; Bojanowska, A World of Empires, 119–124.

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

above depictions are designed to render the Japanese as children, by mention of their childlike wonder at the unfamiliar surroundings and the proffered sweet treats, and the use of the diminutive forms in “little pigtails and bare little knees (kosichki, kolenki).” In other instances, he refers to the Japanese’s wariness of the Russians as “childish suspicion,” and their curiosity as “childish and naïve.”24 In Goncharov’s opinion, the entire nation “has atrophied in the impotence and murk of pathetic childhood,” and “they behave like children.”25 Krasnoshchekova notes that in Frigate Pallada, Goncharov’s tendency to envision the world in age categories leads him to extend the notion and metaphor of age to different peoples and races.26 Indeed, classifying most non-Europeans as children and the ‘advanced’ nations as adults, further bolsters the narrator’s claim to superiority. Bojanowska observes that Goncharov infantilizes the Japanese by means of the rhetoric typical to colonial discourse, in which the European conquest is theorized as aiming to educate and elevate the childlike, underdeveloped nations to the level of those “fully grown.”27 Goncharov formulates these ideas in lengthy passages, in contemplating Japan’s unwillingness to accept foreign influence (“they don’t trust foreigners and behave like children”). Moreover, in depicting the Japanese as children and recording the Russians’ condescending laughter during their mutual interactions, he also demonstrates this theory “in action.” In his study of the psychology of colonialism, Ashis Nandy observes that it elaborates on the notions of growth and development through a parallel between primitivism and childhood. This process involves a split in characterizing ‘nations in their childhood’ as either childlike or childish: while the former could, potentially, be reformed through Westernization and modernization, the latter would have to be repressed by means of tough administration.28 Goncharov establishes a hierarchy in which the Japanese are classified as childish; therefore, as Europeans and representatives of a fully grown civilization, the Russians are fully justified in their intrusion into Japan.

24 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 269 (318), 280 (329). 25 Ibid., translation mine (354, 355). 26 Krasnoshchekova, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov, 175–176. 27 Bojanowska, A World of Empires, 126–128. 28 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 16.

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Goncharov infantilizes the Japanese more than any other peoples in Frigate Pallada for a reason. In view of Russia’s own somewhat recent alignment with, and persistent marginality to, European civilization, neutralizing the very perception of any similarities between the two nations’ experience with the West requires an extra effort. Goncharov chooses not to offer his own country’s experience to suggest the benefits of accepting European ways of life; drawing such close parallels between the Russian and Japanese experience would undermine Goncharov’s superiority claim and betray the Russians’ age-old anxiety over truly belonging to European civilization. Instead, he presents the advantages of accepting foreign influence as obvious: “And of course, they realized, especially in modern times, that if they were to allow foreigners in, they could learn a lot from them: to live a little better, be more knowledgeable in everything, stronger, richer.”29 Similarly, rather than suggest, that the Russian delegation comes to the negotiating table with knowledge and ideas, he stresses that it comes with might: So now, the foreigners have knocked at their treasured gates from both sides . . . Let them in—and the guests will again bring their faith, their ideas, customs, rules, goods, and vices. Don’t let them in . . . but they have four ships as it is, and perhaps as many as ten will arrive, all [equipped] with long cannons. Meanwhile, they themselves have short ones, unmounted or on straw supports. They also have matchlock muskets, swords, even two on every man’s belt, and excellent ones at that . . . But what can you do with these toys?30

Russian military might—four ships with cannons—is Goncharov’s only argument as to why the Japanese should submit: At a loss, they try this and that. They see that their strategy of isolation and alienation, their only hope of salvation, taught them nothing and only stunted their growth. Like some school-age ruse, it fell apart the second the teacher arrived. They are on their own, helpless; they have no option but to burst into tears and say: “It’s our fault, we’re children!”—and, like children, to surrender to the guidance of their elders.31

29 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, translation mine (352). 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., translation mine (353).

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

In the paragraph preceding these considerations of Japanese childishness, Goncharov gleefully describes how the Russians laughingly ignore the Nagasaki governor’s interdictions: Having found out that our ship sets sail tomorrow, they run to the governor, in a hurry to get clearance. We roar with laughter (my khokhochem). They declared that they would fire from the batteries on seeing [our] ships offshore, thereby implying they had cannons that could actually fire. “Fire away,” we reply with a smile. They implore us not cruise too far along the roadstead—we don’t reply and go ahead anyway.32

The reader might characterize the Russians’ behavior as childish, but Goncharov does not: having established their behavior and laughter as adult, and the Japanese as childish, he created a hierarchy in which the Russians’ behavior cannot be considered in the same terms as the Japanese’s. He thus refuses to acknowledge any parallels between Russia’s and Japan’s experiences with the West. Goncharov would address these considerations in his novels; however, they have no place in Frigate Pallada, in which his aim is to lay claim to the colonial stance, and not undermine it. Nevertheless, they crop up occasionally, as in the author’s unusually conciliatory statement, below, in describing the Japanese as not particularly savage, and the Russians as having only recently adopted European ways: You must not think that the Japanese in their understanding, their words, or their manners are in any way savage (if you perhaps excuse their blowing their noses into little pieces of paper or their taking candy—but remember how two thirds of the Russian people blow their noses, and how recently our ladies stopped using their reticules, which were kept full of candy at dinners and evening at other people’s houses) or surprising to a European. There is none of that, only perhaps their costume and their ungainly hairdo strike the eye. In everything else these people, if not compared to Europeans, are rather cultured, socially secure, and extremely entertaining by their different upbringing.33

The most striking part of this admission is the stipulation, “if not compared to Europeans.” Herein lies the crux of the matter for Goncharov: everything is compared to the European way, the only acceptable model. 32 Ibid., translation mine (352). 33 Ibid., 278 (327–328), emphasis mine.

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One either belongs to, or is subjugated by, European civilization. Throughout Frigate Pallada, Goncharov consistently maintains that Russians are firmly positioned as Europeans and that, as such, they have every right to participate in the European colonial project.34

“It Makes Him Laugh”: The Object Alongside the episodes in which laughter helps Goncharov’s narrator assume the position of superiority, there are numerous others in which he is not the subject of laughter—when he is quite disturbed by someone else’s glee, and still others in which he is actually its object. Being the target of someone else’s laughter can be a source of shame, or at least embarrassment. Both are powerful and unpleasant emotions that often elicit anger, or at least denial, as a form of self-preservation.35 This is why Bergson sees laughter as a kind of “social ragging,” while Freud sees it as a form of socially accepted aggression.36 Theorists of humor often rely on jokes as examples; however, characters in jokes are oblivious to the listener’s laughter. By contrast, laughter in social situations involves people—as its subject or objects—and strong emotions may arise on the part of both, including the sudden glory of superiority or anger, born of embarrassment. In dealing with someone else’s laughter, Goncharov adopts an alternative understanding of laughter whereby he is able to deny its power to affect him. The most significant instances of this practice are revealed in Goncharov’s treatment of his orderly, Faddeev, and the Japanese translator, Kichibe, both of whom are characterized primarily by their predisposition to laugh at others, including the author. Here, Goncharov must either accept the shift in hierarchies or neutralize the effects of the laughter of those he considers inferior. Faddeev’s laughter, Goncharov scrupulously records, is always in reaction to some misfortune of others, ranging from his fellow sailors to the officers: “I have already written to you, how Faddeev 34 The fact that Russia lost the Crimean war to France and Britain and had to curb its colonial aspirations regarding the Ottoman Empire added to anxieties about Russia’s role in this project. Goncharov barely mentions the Crimean War even though it started before the expedition reached Japan and greatly imperiled the voyage. 35 On shame as the opposite of laughter see Kozintsev, The Mirror of Laughter; Lev Karasev, Filosofiia smekha (Moscow: RGGU, 1996); Billig, Laughter and Ridicule. 36 Mikita Brottman, Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor (Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press, 2004).

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

delighted in every mishap or blow suffered by anyone, including himself.”37 And further: “Not for the first time did I remark on this trait of my orderly. Let someone get caught, get hell, and it makes him laugh. Try and figure out the elements of which the Russian is composed! And it is not evil. He is not malicious at all. This trait demands a fine analysis and special interpretation.”38 Faddeev is granted a certain complexity: though street-smart, he is not mean—but he is indifferent toward all things exotic. He is also incapable of empathy. Together, Faddeev’s lack of wonder and compassion thoroughly distinguish his laughter from Goncharov’s—even if, as I will demonstrate, maintaining this distinction requires a degree of obliviousness on the narrator’s part. Many social theories of humor assert that people usually react to others’ embarrassment with compassion. They may initially take part in the ridicule but would soon find the situation uncomfortable, even for themselves. The result is “empathetic embarrassment” and an attempt to help the victim recover. Some call this notion the “nice-guy theory.”39 Clearly, Goncharov’s Faddeev is not a “nice guy”; however, there is a second reason behind his inability to shift from laughter to empathy and his continued delight in the other’s misfortune. As a person, Faddeev is not fully developed—indeed, he is a child. The author’s lengthy analysis of Faddeev’s laughter as “[a] trait [which] demands a fine analysis and special interpretation,” yields a list of characteristics, but no conclusions.40 His most striking characterization and sole explanation is phrased in terms of age: Faddeev is “[an] infant with huge fists.”41 Thus, an alternative understanding of laughter appears in Frigate Pallada: namely, as a child’s reaction to things beyond his grasp. Lev Karasev describes this form of laughter as barbaric: “The child or undeveloped person deliberately disconnects from whatever conflicts with his unsophisticated conception of ‘what is proper.’ . . . Therefore he responds to a perceived absurdity or deficiency with triumphant, barbaric laughter, which seizes young and undeveloped souls repeatedly, as if for the first time.”42 Goncharov thus aligns Faddeev with other “children” 37 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 26 (31). 38 Ibid., 67 (78). 39 Michael Billig, “Humor and Embarrassment. The limits of ‘Nice-Guy’ Theory of Social Life,” Theory, Culture, and Society 18, no. 5 (2001). 40 On Faddeev see for instance Krasnoshchekova, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov, 205–208. 41 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 73 (84). 42 Karasev, Filosofiia smekha, 75.

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depicted in his narrative—the peoples of Africa and Asia. In effect, he conceives of two different types of laughter: that of the civilized adult, and the infantile savage. Theorizing the Other as infantile, irrational, and unformed is a common feature of Orientalism. However, it conflicts with another conception of childhood, more familiar and natural to Goncharov and his readers than Orientalist clichés: namely, the sentimentalist and romantic myth of childhood. From Rousseau to early Tolstoy, it celebrates “a spiritual and moral purity and immediacy” of the child’s perception, linking it to the golden age of mankind as the state of “joyous innocence.”43 Goncharov de-romanticizes this persuasive myth of childhood as the epitome of natural goodness and links childlike laughter not to joyous innocence, but to savage crassness. This reinterpretation is easy to perform when the age metaphor is applied to nations rather than individuals. Goncharov debunks the golden age idyll as the “childhood of nations” in several instances, most significantly in the chapter on Ryukyu Island. Its depiction begins by celebrating the idyll, however humorously: there are “no books, gun powder, or other such debauchery,” and concludes by scorning the dreamlike, senseless existence, where “the realm of intellect and spirit lies torpid, still in childish slumber, as in the primeval, heathen kingdoms of shepherds.”44 Goncharov’s ideas on the ages of nations—with some still in their infancy and others fully developed—lead him to break with Rousseau and his followers and ascribe to childhood such negative attributes as a lack of consciousness, and arrested development. Some of the ambiguity of Goncharov’s views of childlike existence and infantilism is evident already in “Oblomov’s Dream” published separately in 1849, years before Frigate Pallada.45 Laughter makes this distinction especially clear: the laughter of Frigate Pallada’s “children” is interpreted as preverbal and prerational, hence devoid of meaning, curiosity, or even mirth. The Japanese, the Africans, as well as Faddeev and other sailors, are objects of the narrator’s condescension, which is justified by the same criteria: in terms of race, class, and age.46 That he lumps together representatives 43 Aleksandr Babuk, “The Myth of Childhood as an Embodiment of the Golden Age in Dostoevsky’s Oeuvre,” Russian Studies in Literature 51, no. 2 (2015); Andrew Wachtel, The Battle for Childhood: Creation of a Russian Myth (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 44. 44 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 343 (496); 437–438 (501). 45 “Oblomov’s Dream,” in turn, echoes Gogol’s use of the childhood metaphor in “The Old-World Landowners.” 46 As Bojanowska notes, “[from] his elite vantage point as a Europeanized, educated Russian, he observes the customs and habits of mind of lower-class, uneducated

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

of the Russian lower classes with Asian and African peoples of all stations should come as no surprise: class and race play similar roles in structures founded on power imbalances. One way in which Goncharov maintains this imbalance is to deny others the appropriate use of laughter. His description of the sailors, celebrating the end of work on Sunday, stresses the mechanical and mirthless nature of their dancing: “the dancers were silent, their faces expressed dead seriousness, even moroseness  .  .  .  they danced, it seems, just because they were supposed to enjoy themselves.”47 By contrast, the sailors’ revelry during the festivities in honor of the god Neptune is excessive and unnaturally merry. The implication that simple people have not learned the appropriate measure of laughter and merriment becomes a sign of the divide between common people and the Europeanized elite. Goncharov’s reference to the nose-blowing simple folk above, whom he includes in the same category as the underdeveloped Japanese, works toward the same purpose. Soviet critics have glossed over the instances of obvious condescension toward the Russian people in Frigate Pallada; however the commentators on the most recent Complete Works point out that Goncharov describes the world of “the common people” as an outsider and observer: “to Goncharov the master and government official, this world seems as curious and peculiar as the distant countries and continents he planned to see;” “this world is depicted with undisputed sympathy, but superficially and sketchily, with a clear bias toward the realms of the comic, funny, strange, and unusual.”48 In their effort to join Europe, the Russian elite leave the Russian people far behind. While the gap between the people and the educated elite was a subject of grave concern for most intellectuals of the day, including Goncharov, he gives no indication in Frigate Pallada that this state of affairs is worrisome. Goncharov seems equally oblivious to the contradictions in his hierarchy of laughing subjects. His own reaction to the Japanese as “these figures in skirts, with little pigtails and bare little knees” is almost identical to Faddeev’s, in laughing at the kilts and bare knees of the Scottish guards in Portsmouth: “How he jeered, seeing the Scottish soldiers standing guard in their bright, resplendent ensembles, that is, their kilts of Scottish tartan, but without trousers and therefore with bare little knees! ‘The Queen got mad: she didn’t give them any pants,’ he said, roaring with laughter and pointing Russians as if they were imperial minorities” (A World of Emipres, 216). 47 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 19 (24). 48 Primechaniia, 437, 441.

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at the naked legs of a soldier.”49 There is a remarkable similarity between Faddeev, who “looked on every differing tradition [or] institution as a failing, with animosity and even contempt” and the narrator, who consistently describes Japanese and other foreign customs not merely as different, but with the derision usually reserved for distortions and funny irregularities.50 Yet, this similarity is never acknowledged. Goncharov never wonders how Faddeev, the “infant with huge fists,” differs from the Russian officers with their ships and huge cannons. This jarring lack of self-awareness is a byproduct of the singlemindedness, with which the narrator maintains his distance from, and superiority over, those of the lower classes and different races. Unlike Russian travelers to the West, who aspired to gain acceptance as equals by the advanced European civilizations, Goncharov, in traveling to the less developed nations of the East, clearly does not. Faddeev’s Japanese “double” is the translator, Kichibe, most of whose appearances are accompanied by his inexplicable laughter. He speaks “with smiles and grimaces,” “squirming in his chair, with a convulsive laugh.”51 In relating official messages, and for no apparent reason, he guffaws: “Kichibe, bowed and spread his arms, laughed convulsively,” “Kichibe squirmed in his chair, choking with laughter, and with his quacking voice pronounced each word separately,” “Kichibe, as was his custom, squatted, groaned, and broke out in hysterical laughter, when he uttered the governor of Nagasaki’s plea not to come too close to the batteries with our launches.”52 This laughter, described at times as hysterical, is never explained. It certainly does nothing to endear Kichibe to the Russians: Goncharov characterizes him as “both small-minded and stubborn.”53 Kichibe’s inexplicable, recurrent laughter remains as irrational as Faddeev’s, thus characterizing both men either as cruel children or savages. Goncharov does seem to be aware of the power of laughter, especially when beyond his control. He attributes its cruelty to the forces of nature: the frigate, for instance, is at the mercy of the sky and the sea, “as if they laughed in the way concentrated evil sometimes laughs at its helpless victim.”54 He therefore dismisses the “inferior” others’ laughter outright as an 49 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 47 (58). 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 291 (342) 52 Ibid., 307 (365), 383 (445), 531 (606). See also other instances: ibid., 353, 378. 53 Ibid., translation mine (390). 54 Ibid., 101 (114).

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

elemental force that does not belong to the world of “grown-up” civilization and culture. As such, the laughter of cruel children, be they Faddeev, the Japanese, or Africans, cannot affect the narrator. It is remarkable how firmly Goncharov draws the line between the two types of laughter, his own and that of the “savage,” so that the legitimacy of his own cruel laughter is beyond question. In an episode on the Ryukyu Islands, Goncharov and company notice that their effect on the locals, especially children, is one of horror. They stumble upon a garden, where an old woman, “black as a firebrand,” takes fright, like the children, and runs. The Russians “roared with laughter; she quickened her pace.”55 She turns and, “like an orangutan,” watches the men and, “[s]eeing us standing there, roaring with laughter and pointing at her, she started to run further into the forest.”56 Here Goncharov is either testing, or oblivious to, his own attitudes. The aggression in the scene is almost palpable, and unimaginable in the so-called civilized world: these cultured men would not chase and taunt a frightened old woman, of any social class, anywhere in Europe. Their roaring, inherently aggressive laughter signals the same dehumanization as that construed in colonial discourse. Even though Russia, in this case, is only aspiring to colonize the islands, one senses that the narrator, having envisioned himself as a representative of a colonial power, has no choice but to adopt the attitudes and hierarchies of colonial discourse, with its demeaning view of other races. Thus, the micro-encounters of this type illustrate the urgency of Goncharov’s need to maintain the superior stance of the colonial observer: it trumps all else, including basic decency.57 While terrorizing the locals is acceptable to sustaining Goncharov’s claim to racial superiority, being the object of their laughter is not. That is, the Other’s laughter displaces Goncharov from the position of a privileged observer, to that of a curiosity or incongruity. At times he manages to circumvent this shift in status by conceding that in these exotic lands, he is indeed a curiosity for the natives, in which case he remains unperturbed. While touring factories in Shanghai and Manila, for instance, he notes that 55 Ibid., 441 (505). 56 Ibid., 442 (505–506). This and similar passages in the travelogue prompted the publisher of the 1987 English translation by Klaus Goetze to make a statement dissociating the press form the “the distasteful racial and ethnic terms found in this work” (Note to the Reader). See Lim, “Whose Orient Is It?,” 27. 57 Bojanowska comments that “questioning the humanity of Asians and Africans is a wellestablished trope in The Frigate Pallada,” and Goncharov “fails to see un-Europeanized Asians as fully human,” (A World of Empires, 159).

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in one place “[t]wo girls who worked here were laughing up their sleeves, while looking at us,” while in the other, “the majority could barely contain their laughter.”58 Yet, he makes no comment; indeed, he is no more offended by their laughter than he is troubled upon discovering that the locals know nothing of Russia because, as Bojanowska observes, “they are equally ignorant of the French and the English—a key test of international relevance.”59 Clearly, in visiting factories or prisons, Goncharov has the upper hand from the start: he is free either to leave, or stay and observe and even engage, thus creating micro-encounters in which he establishes the hierarchies that suit him. In one Cape Town prison, he calmly observes the black inmates laughing amongst themselves and perhaps at the Russians because, he remarks, the crowd of prisoners “looked at us with more interest than we had in them.”60 In another prison, while meeting with the Kaffir chieftain, Ceyolo, and his wife, the narrator notes, that “they followed each of our movements with curiosity and continued lying there, sometimes laughing (usmekhalis’);” as before, however, he is unperturbed by the couple’s scrutiny and mirth. He elicits a much stronger reaction and louder laughter, when he presents them with a photograph of Ceyolo, who “looked at it and laughed loudly, then handed it to his wife. ‘Ceyolo, Ceyolo!’ she said, and pointed to her husband with a laugh, then looked at the portrait again and kept on laughing.”61 Throughout the scene, laughter serves as the only common language, in which the parties can express their mutual goodwill. Nevertheless, the detail depicting the black woman’s childlike glee on seeing a photograph, perhaps for the first time, maintains the established hierarchy: the encounter remains one between “infantile” black locals and “benevolent” adult Europeans. In fact, the laughter has already been marked as an attribute of race: previously, at a hotel in Cape Town, Goncharov observes a black male servant who reacts to every order with laughter, remarking that: “This laugh is typical of Negroes.”62 The blacks’ laughter, unlike their speech, which Goncharov would not have understood, is a nonverbal reaction that could be construed as predating, thus unrelated to, speech and rational thought.

58 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 368 (428), 487 (553). 59 Bojanowska, A World of Empires, 241. 60 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 167 (205). 61 Ibid., 196–197 (238). 62 Ibid., 141 (177).

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

When Goncharov fails to rationalize the Other’s laughter and deflect its negative effects on his self-ascribed superiority, he reacts by viciously denigrating its subject. In Cape Town, the narrator is infuriated by the local black women’s raucous laughter, which he characterizes as “insolent” (naglyi khokhot).63 He’s done nothing to warrant such insolence, having merely asked one of the women “to what tribe she belonged”: “‘Fingo,’ she said, ‘Mozambique,’ and finally shouted ‘Hottentot!’ All three then roared with laughter.” He insists this behavior has nothing to do with him and is typical to black women: “If you just pass by, nothing happens, but if you ask some black beauty her name or something about the road, she will talk nonsense, and then her friends will break out in laughter, if any are near.”64 Goncharov presents the encounter not as a meeting of individuals, but as one between races, because the notion that “black women laugh insolently at everyone” is more acceptable than “three local women who find something ridiculous in the demeanor of this European man.” He goes on to liken common African women to their Russian counterparts: “She was a real broad. Dressed just like our peasant broads . . . ,” thereby suggesting a relationship also between race and class.65 The insult to the European man is manyfold here: he is laughed at by black persons, by women, and, as his “Russian peasant broads” comment reminds us, by those of lower social status. The encounter is a double punch because it combines the power of women’s laughter and colonial object’s laughter, thereby doubling its destabilizing potential. Laughter can undermine hierarchies, including those of the gender, race, and class; it might empower the subaltern.66 Black women’s laughter is doubly subversive. Bojanowska observes that in comparing the African and Russian peasant women Goncharov “briefly suspends the black/white dichotomy” and combines the strength of class and race prejudices.67 I would argue the narrator’s mind flashes to the image of Russian peasant women to lessen the sting of finding himself the object of African women’s derision. He brings in the familiar Other—the Russian peasant—to diffuse the power of the 63 Ibid., 118 (130). 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 For an illuminating analysis bringing together feminist and postcolonial interpretation of laughter see Virginia Richter, “Laughter and Aggression. Desire and Derision in a Postcolonial Context,” in Reichl and Stein, Cheeky Fictions, 61–72. 67 Bojanowska, A World of Empires, 255.

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exotic Other’s laughter. To dress the African women in Russian peasant grab is to tame them, at least discursively, by placing them in the familiar and non-threatening hierarchy. Moreover, Goncharov again marks laughter as a developmental problem: a member of the Russian lower classes and the “racially inferior” peoples have one thing in common: their inexplicable, insolent laughter. Faddeev, Kichibe, the unnamed black servant and inmates are grouped together in this regard, as are the laughing African women in Cape Town, above. In so doing, Goncharov denies the Other’s laughter the power to signal the superiority he has claimed for himself.

Laughing Together: Subject and Object Goncharov’s own sense of humor and keen wit, lauded by critics, often shine through in those episodes, where laughter arises among the members of the Russian delegation, and testifies to their good, mutual relations. The warm, humorous descriptions of his fellow officers’ traits, such as Kreidner’s appetite, or Zelenyi’s artistic talents, involve no ridicule, nor do they establish a hierarchy of subjects and objects of laugher.68 This laughter among equals seems radically different from the “superior” laughter he employs to set colonial hierarchies. Yet Goncharov employs it to frame situations that, if portrayed differently, could be seen as embarrassing to Russians. Thus, in the lengthy account of the delegation’s visit to the governor of Nagasaki, Goncharov prevents this possibility by infusing the story with a heavy dose of self-irony and “claiming” the laughter for the Russians. After much deliberation over where to seat the governor’s Russian guests in a house with no chairs, the decision is made to bring chairs from the ships. In comic frustration, Goncharov exclaims: “Over in Europe you wonder whether ‘to be or not to be’ and we worried for days, whether to sit or not to sit.”69 The potentially funny depiction of sailors carrying chairs from the ships to the governor’s house is omitted. Instead, the delegation’s procession is interrupted by a digression several pages in length, in which the narrator contemplates Japan’s childish stubbornness, discussed above, in refusing foreign influence. The officers, who refuse to take off their shoes, bring cloth overshoes that keep falling off. The set-up is ripe with potential for ridicule, but the only people shown to laugh are the Russians 68 On Goncharov’s relationship with other officers on Pallada see Primechaniia, 415–436. 69 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 290 (341).

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

themselves. The governor’s staff is silent and emotionless: “at the back of the room several rows of human figures sat on their haunches, dressed in fine clothes, exhuming comical pomposity.” These Japanese display an utter lack of interest in the foreign guests: “not one of these figures looked at us, no one followed our /movements with eager curiosity.”70 In failing to acknowledge the Russians as a curiosity, the Japanese remain the objects of the Russians’ curiosity and ridicule. The subsequent scene, depicting the Russian’s futile struggle with their shoe covers, culminates with the officers themselves exchanging a laugh: “‘shocking,’ whispered the baron and let out a half-silent laugh that only he and I heard, in the nature of a cough.”71 Shared among friends, partly self-deprecating and partly directed at the Japanese and their “outrageous” customs, Goncharov’s laughter preempts the laughter of the foreign observer. On arriving in Cape Town, Goncharov performs his customary classification by color on the hotel staff and owner: “At the entrance, the servant who met us on the bottom step was completely black; the next was Malay, not entirely black, but not white, either, wearing a red headscarf; in the lobby was a waitress, English, a little whiter; then, on the staircase, was a girl of twenty, a beauty, completely white; and finally the old proprietress, the ne plus ultra of whiteness—that is, white-haired.”72 In the same hotel, his fellow officer later discerns a Jew by his facial features: “We took a closer look at him . . . his profile . . . his profile was definitely Jewish—without question.”73 Just days later, the tables are turned, and the narrator finds himself an object of scrutiny and essentializing. More important, however, is that in this micro-encounter, he is also the subject of laughter, so that both of his interpretations of laughter come into play at the same time. At dinner one evening, an elderly white man with “red cheeks and kind, smiling face” joins those already seated. Dr. Ferstfeld is the local doctor, an amateur ethnographer, and a phrenologist who, having only heard and read about Russians, has come to observe the Russian “type.”74 Goncharov and his fellow officers have a good-natured laugh at the doctor, who finds typically Russian features in the faces of Baron Kreidner, Dr. Weirich, and the translator Possyet who, judging from their names, are clearly of non-Russian descent. “‘Just 70 71 72 73 74

Ibid., 299–300 (357). Ibid., 301 (358). Ibid., 122 (135). Ibid., translation mine (150). Ibid., 149 (186).

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look at this type!’” the doctor marvels, oblivious to this fact, then carries on, speculating that the ethnically Russian Zelenyi looks Mongolian, and the Ukrainian Goshkevich—Chinese.75 The officers “can barely contain their laughter” as the doctor examines those around the table, guessing ethnicities by facial features.76 The narrator seems, or claims to be unaware, first, of routinely performing the same exercise himself, most recently in distinguishing the peoples of Africa by hue, and Jewish ethnicity by profile at the hotel; and second, of his “dual role” in this episode as subject and object of scrutiny and laughter. Having been in both positions, variously, in his travelogue, Goncharov must have been able to distinguish between them. By ridiculing the ideas, now, of discernable identities and national types, he could be perceived as undermining his own routine objectification of people of other races. Yet, this does not seem to be the case. In fact, Goncharov consciously glosses over this episode’s ironic potential and, rather than acknowledge any personal discomfort, he claims control over the situation by depicting the laughter as shared by all: “We roared with laughter, and he too, along with us.”77 In effect, Goncharov reconciles, albeit to his own benefit, his position as both object and subject of observation, whereby their respective anxieties and advantages cancel each other out—the more so because both laugher and “laughee” are white European men. Goncharov interprets Dr. Ferstfeld’s reaction to the Russians as one of surprise: “He probably expected to see giants, perhaps people somewhat with the looks of wild beasts,” only to find that Russians actually have a culture.78 This twist in the encounter with the African physiognomist of European descent brings to mind another conversation between a Russian traveler and a European physiognomist, namely, Karamzin and Johann Kaspar Lavater, author of Essays on Physiognomy (1775-78).79 Just as Karamzin in his travelogue repeatedly assures the wise men of Europe that Russian culture is developed sufficiently to have a respectable literature, Goncharov informs his interlocutor, an African Lavater, that Russian 75 Ibid., 150 (187) 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 On Lavater’s ideas on physiognomy and their significance for European literature, see Graeme Tyler, Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces and Fortunes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).

“Who are you laughing at?” Identity, Laughter

culture is fully developed: “We have many learned men, and a literature too.”80 This intertextual reference serves to further distinguish Russian travelers to the West from those to the East or Africa. Goncharov’s travelogue connects with Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveler on a number of points, namely, in its epistolary form, in engaging with scholarly sources and literary predecessors and, most importantly, in constructing a certain conception of Russianness.81 Karamzin’s traveler is a Russian and a European, pointedly at ease with being the object of the Europeans’ scrutiny. His goal in impressing the wise men of Europe with his poise, education, and sophistication, is to assert that the culture he represents is an equal participant in European development. Goncharov’s Russianness, meanwhile, is of a different nature: he manages to “remain in Russia” while aboard the ship, by employing images of Russian life in lengthy similes and refusing to apply any other parameter to his evaluations of the foreigners. Moreover, in traveling to lands so radically different from his own, he feels no need to impress the locals, whom he considers vastly inferior. While Karamzin claims kinship with all educated and sensitive Europeans, Goncharov, in effect, claims alliance with the European colonizer, whose conquest acquires moral justification by dehumanizing the foreign, inferior Other. The shift from Goncharov’s macro-encounter of the Russian expedition’s participation in global politics and trade, to his micro-encounters with largely unremarkable individuals of Africa and Asia, helps highlight both the constructedness, and the inconsistencies, of the narrative point of view in Frigate Pallada. The narrator is multi-faced: a bureaucrat and Argonaut, a writer (a Homer of the voyage) and oblomovist, a man of the 1840s and a sybarite.82 Yet, the micro-encounters involving laughter reveal other, less appealing aspects—of a would-be-colonizer riddled with the anxiety of belonging, a representative of a waning empire and a white, middle-aged man out of his element. The one constant in the narrator’s fluid 80 Goncharov, Frigate Pallada, 187 (150). 81 On Goncharov’s dialogue with Karamzin see Viktor Shklovsky, “I. A. Goncharov, avtor ‘Fregata Pallada,’” in his Izbrannoe v dvukh tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1983), vol.  1, 78–83; Krasnoshchekova, Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov, 153–167. 82 M. V. Otradin, “Mezhdu ‘sozertsaniem’ i ‘deistviem’: povestvovanie v knige I. A. Goncharova ‘Fregat Pallada,’” in Zhivaia perspektiva prozy. Nauchnye stat’i o tvorchestve I. A. Goncharova, ed. Angelika Milnar et al. (Szombathely: Berzsenyi Dániel Tanárképző Főiskola Nyomdája, 2013).

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identity is his manipulation of laughter to assert his superiority over the foreign Other and designate that Other as infantile and inferior. Unlike humor and irony, this laughter is of a special kind; it is reserved for his interactions with foreigners, in order to establish and maintain the power imbalance typical to the colonial situation.

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231

Index A

Africa, xxi, 206, 214-15 Akhmatov, N. S., 28 Aksakov, Sergei, xvi, 25, 73 Alexander II, xv-xvi, xxiii, 24, 27, 37, 43-44 Altick, Richard, 168, 173-74, 180n40, 192 Annenkov, P. V., 30-33, 161 Aristotle, 68 Armstrong, Nancy, 119, 126 Asia, xxi, 170, 198, 206, 215 Austen, Jane, 117 Austria, 45 Ayan, xxi, 164

B

Balzac, 129, 190 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 50-51, 55, 124n27, 196 Baudelaire, 179 Belinskii, Vissarion, xvii, 4, 72-75, 90-91, 93, 127, 161-62, 176, 186n55 Benediktov, V. G., 6 Berdiaev, Nikolai, 136 Bergson, Henri, 196, 204 Berner, A. F., 45 Bojanowska, Edyta, 168n4, 169n5, 170n9, 180n39, 199, 201, 206n46, 209n57, 210-211 Bonin, xxi, 156 Botkin, V. P., 74, 160 Bowers, Katherine, 120, 123 Brodskaia, V. B., 80 Brooks, Peter, 127 Brunson, Molly, 127

C

Cape Colony, xxi Cape Horn, xxi Cape of Good Hope, 156 Cape Town, 194n1, 210-13 Cape Verde Islands, xxi, 179n34, 194n1 Chaadaev Petr, 24 Chernyshevskii, Nikolai, xvi-xvii, 27, 35, 132, 134, 138, 160, 177

China, xxi, 165 Chizhevskii, Dmitrii, 73 Coleridge, 190 Common Story, A (Obyknovennaia istoriia), xiv, xviii, xxiv, 4-5, 7-8, 10, 23, 29, 72, 74-7, 79, 81-82, 87, 90-92, 116, 127 Contemporary, The (Sovremennik), 4, 24, 160 Crary, Jonathan, 171 Crimean War (1853– 1856), xxi, 169, 188, 192, 204n34

D

Daguerre, Louis, 171 Derrida, 96n3, 97, 102-3, 107, 109 Dianina, Katia, 173 Dickens, Charles, 129, 167, 169-70, 176, 183, 184n47, 186n55, 187, 190-91 Dobroliubov, Nikolai, 72, 134 Dostoevsky, Fedor, xiv, xvi, xix, 7, 66-67, 73, 129, 132-33, 135 Druzhinin, A. V., 18, 25, 29-30, 33

E

Edelman, Lee, 139-40 Ehre, Milton, xvn1, xvi, 80, 92-93, 117, 124n26, 125, 126n37, 129n48, 132, 169n8, 170n11, 195 Eliot, George, 190 Engel’gardt, B. M., 3, 6, 16, 156n3, 165-66 Engels, Friedrich, 180 England, xxi, 164, 170n11, 171, 179, 183, 185-86, 190, 192, 194n1 Evstratov, N. G., 6

F

Fanger, Donald, 129 Flaubert, xx Foucault, Michel, 143, 145, 150 French Revolution, 116 Frigate Pallada (Fregat “Pallada”), passim

G

Geiro, Liudmila, 50, 54n18 Gogol, xiv, 7, 122, 129-30, 206n45

Index

Golovnin, A. V., 36 Goncharov, Alexander Ivanovich, xvi Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich, passim Goncharova, Avdotia Matveevna, xvi Grech, N. I., 159, 162-63 Grigorovich, 7, 30 Gruner, Charles R., 197

H

Halberstam, Jack, xxv, 139, 141 Halperin, David, 139 Hardy, Thomas, 190 Hegel, xxiii-xxiv, 72-94 Herzen, Alexander, xvii, 22, 73, 156 Hobbes, Thomas, 197 Hong Kong, xxi, 194n1

Maikov, A. N., 159 Maikov, Vladimir, 137 Maikova, Ekaterina, 137-38 Maikov, N. A., 6, 156 Manila, xxi, 209 Mann, U. V., 80-81 Marx, Karl, 180 Maturin, Charles, 116, 119, 122 Medem, N. V., 36 Merezhkovskii, Dmitri, 130 Miller, D. A., 176 Moscow Commercial School, xvii, xxiii Moscow University, xv, xvii, xxiii, 52, 73, 80 Muratov, A. B., 6 Muravyov, N. N., 164-65 Muscovite, The (Moskvitianin), 24

I

N

Iaroslavtsov, A. K., 28, 30

J

Japan, xiii, xix, xxi, xxvii, 15, 156, 194n1, 196, 200-201, 204n34 Java, xxi, 194n1

K

Kant, Immanuel, 86, 102 Karamzin, Nikolai, xvi, 117, 159, 166, 195, 214-15 Katkov, Mikhail, 136 Kliger, Ilya, 73n5, 91, 115n1, 118 Kniazhevich, A. M., 5 Koni, Anatolii, 64 Konstantin Nikolaevich, Grand Prince, 27 Korea, xxi, 194n1 Korf, M. A., 26 Kraevskii, A. A., 22, 29-30, 33, 40, 164n22 Krasnoshchekova, Elena, 120n17, 131, 168n4, 195, 201 Kravchinskii, Sergei, 135

L

Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 214 Lazhechnikov, I. I., 28, 30, 32 Lermontov, Mikhail, xiii, xvii, 73 Leskov, N. S., 16, 35n35, 133n3 Lewis, Matthew G., 116 L’khovskii, I. I., 157-58, 163 London, xxvi-xxvii, 16, 23, 167-92 Lotman, Iu. M., 166 Lukács, Georg, 86

M

Madeira, xxi, 179n34, 194n1

Nadezhdin, Nikolai, xxiii, 52-53, 56, 57n40, 73, 80 Nagasaki, 203, 208, 212 Nandy, Ashis, 201 Nekrasov, Nikolai, 24, 33 Nesselrode, K. V., 164 Nicholas I, xv, 24, 26-27, 31, 165 Nikitenko, A. V., 7, 15n40, 24, 27-28, 39 Nikitenko, S. A., 20 Norov, A. S., 7, 15, 27 North America, xxi Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye zapiski), 30, 36, 115 Northern Bee, The (Severnaia pchela), 36

O

Oblomov, passim Ornatskaia, T. I., 6 Orwin, Donna Tussing, 73 Ostrovskii, A. N., 26, 32, 38 Otradin, Mikhail, 50, 67, 71n91

P

Peiker, N. I., 28 People’s Chronicle, The, 41-42 Piksanov, N. K., 7 Pisarev, Dmitrii, xvii, 35-36, 43, 85, 132, 134, 136, 177 Pisemskii, A. F., 32-34, 44n59, 133n3 Plato, xxiii, 50-61, 63, 65-66, 68-71, 103 Pogodin, M. P., 24 Polonskii, 39 Portsmouth, 194n1, 207 Pratt, Mary Louise, 178 Precipice, The (Obryv), passim

233

234

Index

Propp, Vladimir, 60 Punter, David, 117n6, 126 Pushkin, A. S., 30, 32, 161n16 Putiatin, Evfimii, Admiral, xiii, 4, 15, 165, 193, 194n1

R

Radcliffe, Ann, 116 Russian Word, The, 20-21, 35-37, 43 Ryukyu (Okinawa) Islands, xxi, 156-57, 194n1, 206, 209

S

Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail, 7, 73, 115 Sand, George, xx Schelling, Fredrich, 73-74 Schopenhauer, xxiv, 96-99, 107-8 Sea of Okhotsk, xxi Seniavin, L. G., 164 Shanghai, 156, 194n1, 209 Shcherbatov, G. A., 29-30 Shelgunov, N. V., 116, 126-27, 129 Shestov, Lev, 66-67 Shidlovskii, Iu. E., 28 Siberia, xxi, 16, 137, 164, 194n1 Simbirsk, xvi, 5 Singapore, xxi, 156, 194n1 Skabichevskii, A. M., 116, 118-19 Smith, Adam, 105 Smith, Albert, 175, 187-90 Socrates, 54, 60, 69-70 Sollogub, V. A., 17 Solonitsyn, Vladimir, 6 Somov, V. P., 11-12 Spurr, David, 196 St. Petersburg, xviii-xix, xxi, xxvi, 5, 22, 24, 28, 40. 49, 79, 82, 110, 124, 157, 173, 188 Stankevich, 73 Stendhal, 190n68 Stoker, Bram, 117 Strakhov, Nikolai, 136

Stroev, V. M., 162

T

Talbot, William Fox, 171 Taylor, Charles, 78 Time, The (Vremia), 36 Tiupa, Valerii, 61 Tiutchev, Fedor, 28, 71n91 Thackeray, William, 176n26, 190 Tolstoy, A. K., 38 Tolstoy, F. M., 39 Tolstoy, Leo, xiii-xiv, xvi, 3, 7, 23, 30, 38, 73, 129, 132, 206 Tregubov, Nikolai, xvi-xvii Tunimanov, V. A., 16 Turgenev, Ivan, xiv, xix-xx, 3, 7, 13-15, 23, 32, 38-39, 73, 118, 130, 133n3, 135-38

U

Uncommon Story, An (Neobyknovennaia istoriia), 14, 19, 23, 27, 43-44 University of Berlin, 76

V

Valuev, P. A., 7, 18, 37-40, 42, 44 Veltman, A. F., 160 Veselovskii, Aleksandr, 118 Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe), 52 Viazemskii, Petr, 5, 7, 27, 161n16 Voice, The (Golos), 40, 41-42 Vronchenko, F. P., 164

W

Wellington, 175 Whitehead, Alfred, 52 Wood, Gillen D’Arcy, 190 Wordsworth, 190

Z

Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Andrei, 6 Zagriazhskii, A. M., 5 Zhukovskii, Iu. G., 41

About the Editors

Ingrid Kleespies is Associate Professor of Russian Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Florida. She is the author of A Nation Astray: Nomadism and National Identity in Russian Literature (2012) and of articles on eighteenth and nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture, with a special focus on Russian Romanticism, travel literature, and symbolic spaces. Lyudmila Parts is Professor of Russian at McGill University (Montreal). She is the author of In Search of the True Russia. The Provinces in Contemporary Nationalist Discourse (2018); The Chekhovian Intertext: Dialogue with a Classic (2008); and the editor of The Russian 20th Century Short Story: A Critical Companion (2009). She has published articles on Karamzin, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, contemporary authors, symbolic geography, and Russian travelogue.