Oblomov

Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812–1891) — a famous writer and literary critic, who during his lifetime acquired a solid reputation as one of the most vivid and significant representatives of Russian realistic literature, and the social types he created in his novels became a means of self-knowledge and self-education for Russian society. The novel "Oblomov," written between 1847 and 1858, was published in 1859. It is divided into four parts, which symbolize the overlapping stages of the hero's life, precisely changing like the seasons, and it tells about the everyday life of the idealist-dreamer Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, who is incapable of serious activity and is a representative of the Russian landowning nobility. In the novel, Goncharov shows the fate of a lost generation of educated, wealthy nobles who have not found their place in the new, rapidly changing society. He emphasizes the tragedy of the situation when, unable to change with the circumstances, such people continue to cling to long-gone memories of the past.