GONCHAROV, Ivan Aleksandrovich.

Oblomov, roman v chetyrekh chastiakh [Oblomov, a novel in four parts].

St Petersburg, Glazunov, 1859. 4 parts in 2 vols., 8vo, pp. [3] – 260; 236; 157; 210; volume 1 without the half-title and with title-page neatly re-hinged; some browning and a few light stains, but generally in very good condition in Russian contemporary quarter roan over marbled paper boards, cloth cornerpieces, a bit rubbed and worn; in morocco-backed folders and slip-case. Very rare first edition of one of the great novels of 19th century Russia. The character of Oblomov has taken on mythic proportions, becoming for Russians the embodiment of inertia, and giving rise to the term Oblomovshchina (‘Oblomovism’). ‘The shifting tones of [Oblomov] are perhaps the result of its slow maturation - it was begun in 1847 and only completed in 1858. Part One, written in the forties, is most closely tied to the manner of the natural school. Static and plotless, it depicts with delicious humour a typical day in the life of its colossally indolent hero and his equally indolent servant Zakhar. Both master and man have become totally alienated from the “normal” world of activity and ambition. Goncharov, in turning despair into burlesque, shows himself a follower of Gogol and predecessor of modern writers like Beckett. The famous chapter nine, “Oblomov’s Dream”, is in turn a picture of typical days on Oblomov’s ancestral estate, Oblomovka. It is a piece of great imaginative appeal and poetic beauty. It moves in several directions at once, offering a humorous portrait of Russian provincial stagnation, a biography of Oblomov’s childhood, the genesis of his crippling passivity, and evolving ultimately into a fairy-tale-like image of a pastoral idyll. This mythic projection of a homely, idiosyncratically Russian land of Cockaigne stands at the centre of the novel, exerting a seductive fascination despite the ironic uses to which Goncharov puts it. Oblomov is doomed by his dream of paradise. Unwilling to relinquish it, he is unable to act in the real world’ (Victor Terras).From the library of Count Nikolai Mikhailovich Muraviev with his signature to front endleaf of vol. 1, and small stamp and signature dated 6/13/1888 to front endleaf of vol. 2.Kilgour 359; not in Smirnov-Sokol’skii. OCLC records copies at Yale and New York Public Library only.

• GBP 15,000.00 > otras divisas
• nº de pedido: F1238

• librero: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)