DAVID HOCKNEY

O by V.S. Pritchett

O is for Oblomov, one of the most sublime comic characters in the Russian novel of the nineteenth century and a splendid example of the character who outgrows and even contradicts the author’s intention. His creator, Goncharov, was the son of one of the new, shrewd, hardworking merchant class, angered by the idleness of the ruling landowners. He set out to write a social tract, but by some freak of the unconscious the story became a hymn to sleep and idleness, to a man who cannot even get up in the morning. ‘Other people’, his servant shouts at him, ‘get up and go to work.’ Oblomov’s answer is sublime. ‘How dare you compare me to Other People.’ He prefers to dream and indeed his wife and children adore him for his indolence and his gift for going downhill. The story intended to be a tract turns into a delightful comedy in which people and animals doze through the days. The curious fact is that Goncharov himself was a cantankerous man, unlike the sainted Oblomov, and was intensely jealous and litigious.