Oblomov, Part Two, Chapter 10
"There must be some mistake!" — Oblomov writes a letter.
Ilya goes to bed elated but then wakes up in a low mood.
He drinks his tea listlessly, but somehow refrains from a complete reversion back to type and doesn’t end up lying on the divan. So what happened between going to bed and getting up?
Depression
It made me think of depression, when that voice in your head takes over and makes you feel worthless. There’s a quote in the book that he heard a ‘gloomy, hectoring voice’ in his mind:
“Yes, you cannot live as you choose, obviously,” he heard a gloomy, hectoring voice saying…
It reminded me of HI REN, a music video that covers this topic in a vivid way. I highly recommend it! (NSFW)
In his low mood, Ilya now feels that he should sacrifice his own potential happiness for the sake of Olga’s. His dark mood is colouring everything around him as he looks back at all his mistakes.
So, he writes Olga a letter, rather a long and self-effacing one. In it, he lets her know that he loves her and is setting her free of any obligation towards him for the sake of her own happiness. He uses the word abyss:
it was only yesterday that I was able to look down deeper into the abyss—I’m standing on the brink and I have made up my mind to stop.
It made me think of Nietzsche’s quotation about the abyss, but that didn’t come till later as Nietzsche’s time was 1844–1900 and I don’t imagine he made the quotation when he was 15! Magarshark also translates пропасть / propast’ as abyss in his translation.
Serenity
The love affair has upset Ilya’s serenity and although he’s feeling passionately about Olga and wants to spend every waking minute with her, he’s yearning for the days when his heart was at peace. Rather than living, part of him would rather be at home on the sofa.
The turbulence of passion vs the soporific and familiar. But I did say part of him wants that; there is another part that wants to soar, to fly up out of the abyss and live!
He wants to love and be loved in return. He’s not listening to the little voice:
“No one is coming, how come?” He heard a little voice whispering in his ear: “What are you worried about? This is exactly what you wanted—nothing to happen so that the relationship would be broken off.” But he refused to listen to the little voice.
It’s that age-old vulnerability issue, when one can feel that opening up to another human is way too risky and that it’s safer to lock one’s heart away and lie in the bottom of the abyss—on or on the sofa. Poor Ilya. Is there any hope for him?
The response
Olga gets understandably upset by the letter. She says:
What do you want from me, you’re full of doubts about whether my love for you is all a mistake and I can’t reassure you; maybe you’re right, maybe it’s a mistake—I don’t know.
Olga’s willing to open up and take the risk. Will she be able to talk Ilya around? Does she even want to after reading his letter? How could one enter into a relationship when only one of the two is willing to commit?
It’s a very moving scene in the book and I enjoyed it a lot. Love and commitment are universal themes and will continue to be written about as long as humans are still around. Goncharov writes the awkwardness so well, making Ilya’s uncertainty relatable, as well as Olga’s frustration.
Video Review
Here’s my rambling about the chapter, recorded right after finishing it.