Oblomov, Part Two, Chapter 9
"Love—it really is life's hardest school!"
We have some wonderful descriptions of love in this chapter. The Pearl translation is so good here, and I felt inclined to look up these passages in the original Russian and write them out. My Russian is terribly rusty and I write it very rarely, so it seems like a worthwhile exercise for this once fluent speaker of the language to copy out my favourite passages from literature and poetry. I’ll include them here in case any of you are Russian speaker and would like to see the orginal text with the translations.
So that’s Olga. Here’s Ilya:
With Ilya I feel that there’s a bit of co-dependency going on here, or is it obsession? I don’t know; maybe I’m wrong and it’s really just a beautiful description of how love feels. I know from experience that when I’m in obsession mode with playing guitar, how good my day has been is determined by how much of it was spent playing guitar.
It’s having a good effect on Ilya though. He’s sacked his bailiff and isn’t eating late, heavy suppers any more. He seems to be getting his life together in a positive way.
The relationship has also moved up a gear and they start to discuss it in more technical terms, to figure out from each other what love means to them. Ilya asks Olga whether she loves him or is in love with him. In his mind, they’re not the same thing.
She gives him a straight answer about what love means to her:
This doesn’t gel with his own ideas at all and he keeps expressing doubt as to whether the love equation is equally balanced. Remember what Olga said to him in the previous chapter about how he will have to find his own half of the love equation in order not to lose the first half? Well that comes up again here:
His need for constant and continuous reassurance is going to turn Olga away and he’s really going to have to be careful. But we know that he can’t help but express his feelings; it’s like a pathological need for him.
How?
Just … gonnae no!
Literary References
We have two literary references in this chapter, both of which I had to look up as I was unfamiliar with them. The first one is to Galatea and Pygmalion, a reference to Greek mythology. Galatea was a statue carved in alabaster ivory by Pygmalion which then came to life and Pygmalion feel in love with the living statue. The reference here is that Ilya is the Galatea to Olga’s Pygmalion; she’s moulding him into what she wants him to be and he’s allowing it to happen.
The second reference is to King Lear and the character Cordelia. Cordelia is Lear’s youngest daughter. Lear asks her to profess her love for him in return for one-third of his lands and her honesty and integrity prevent from doing so. As a result she is banished. Ilya is asking Olga to declare her undying love for him and she’s responding with, “love is a duty.”
Video Review
Questions
Is Ilya in love or is it an obsession?
Do you enjoy seeing the Russian text in my posts or is it just annoying?