SOURCE: "Time After Time: The Temporal Ideaology of Oblomov," in Slavic and East European Journal, Vol XXXVIII, No. 4, Winter, 1994, pp. 561-73.

In the following essay, Borowec discusses Goncharov's thematic and structural use of cyclic and linear-progressive time in his novel Oblomov.

Ilya Oblomov, Goncharov's most famous literary creation and the central figure of the novel Oblomov, represents a particular social class at a specific moment in Russian history. Oblomov epitomizes the obsolete, feckless aristocracy made possible by serfdom in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Critical appraisals contemporary to the novel, including Nikolaj Dobroljubov's famous essay, "What is Oblomovka?",¹ often focused on the historical issues Oblomov raises—the economic divisions inherent in serfdom itself and the concomitant social injustices as they are embodied in the novel's eponymous character. And, on one level of interpretation, the story of Ilya Oblomov does indeed comprise the story of the Russian aristocracy at...