Modern Humanities Research Association

Review
Author(s): Richard Freeborn
Review by: Richard Freeborn
Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Jul., 1993), pp. 814-815
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3735007
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8I4 Reviews

contingent, the sheer size of which will astonish uninformed outsiders. They are
waiting here in ranks to introduce themselves. With better planning they might have
carried more force. The book that accommodates them will prove a useful reference
aid, even if it does not burn the Russian word into the hearts of the people.
UNIVERSITYOF BIRMINGHAM A. D. P. BRIGGS

Novel. By RICHARD
of Goncharov's
Oblomov:A CriticalExamination PEACE.(Birming-
ham Slavonic Monographs, 20) Birmingham: University of Birmingham.
1991. viii+87pp. ?8.
First of all, what an admirable publishing venture the Birmingham Slavonic
Monographs are proving to be! Begun in the late 197os, they have opened vistas onto
a diverse range of literary subjects, mostly individual works which would not
otherwise have received the close scholarly treatment they deserve. As a publishing
initiative it has filled a very important need. Richard Peace's contribution on
Goncharov's Oblomov is a first-class addition to the list, as welcome for its admirable
competence in the close reading of a text as for its readiness to be contrary and sheer
ornery.
About Oblomovthere is a textual problem which is not really addressed in this
monograph. As L. S. Geiro has shown in his authoritative edition of the novel
(Leningrad: Nauka, 1987), Oblomovhas existed in two versions, those of 1859 and
1862, a fact which has bemused translators and commentators. On the evidence
offered by Geiro it now seems imperative that the I862 version should be treated as
authorized and the nearest thing to a definitive text.
It is not entirely clear from Peace's 'critical examination' what text he has used.
To state this is not to carp, it is simply to emphasize that in a study devoted to
examining 'narrational procedures' in the novel which 'show a preoccupation with
states rather than actions' (p. 7), it is helpful to know which state is which
whether Oblomov's state at the opening of the novel involved thoughts that
'promenaded freely all over his face, fluttered about in his eyes, reposed on his
half-parted lips, and then vanished completely' (Magarshack, presumably based on
the 1859 version) or involved him simply having 'dark-grey eyes that strayed idly
from the walls to the ceiling with a vague dreaminess which showed that nothing
troubled or occupied him' (Duddington, based on 1862). In short, one might be
reading quite different novels.
As might be expected, Peace opens his examination with the question of Oblo-
movism and Russian society, referring to Dobroliubov's famous critique (though
not expounding it) but laying emphasis on 'the pull between East and West' (p. 13)
within Oblomov himself. Intriguingly, and rather bizarrely, a hint of some greater
power, Peace suggests, lies inherent in Oblomov in his very name, 'Ilya son ofIlya',
perhaps Ilya Muromets. The likelihood of his awakening from his dream and
performingsome great national act of heroism hardly needs to be taken seriously. He
is an oblomok,'a remnant of an ancient and disintegrating social fabric' (p. 25) and
this interpretation emphasizes the tyranny consequent on his idleness, the way he
torments not only Zakhar but Olga as well. Oblomov's relationship with the 'Other'
is explored both sensitively and resourcefully, particularly in regard to the snail's-
pace courtship of Olga. One is bound to share the sense that the lilac branch,
generally assumed to be a token of their love, is more clearly an expression of
annoyance. Interesting chapters are devoted to Olga and Agafya, and there is a
chapter on the imagery in the novel which stresses the important symbolic role of
Oblomov's khalat and the river imagery that becomes so prominent in the novel's
later stages.

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 MLR, 88.3, I993 815

A somewhat bitty Conclusion touches on the perfectiveaspect of Oblomov by

contrast with the imperfective aspect of Shtol'ts, but what seems to emerge most
obviously from this 'critical examination' is a discernible reluctance on Richard
Peace's part to allow that Oblomov is lovable.
LONDON RICHARD FREEBORN

TheWriteras Naysayer:MiroslavKrlezaandtheAestheticof InterwarCentralEurope. By

RALPH BOGERT. (UCLA Slavic Studies, 20) Columbus, OH: Slavica. I99I.
266pp. $22.95.
Ralph Bogert's impressive study of the Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza is divided
into four chapters termed 'Background', 'History', 'Theory', and 'Expression'. The
result is a coherently argued work in which the theory and practice of Krleza's art
during the I920s and I930s are analysed. In the first chapter Bogert discusses the
author's place within the Austro-Hungarian cultural sphere, and his links with
philosophical and literary traditions both in the Balkans and in Europe generally. In
the second chapter he traces Krleza's contribution to debates concerning the
function of literature which were heard amongst left-wing intellectuals and writers
of the I920S and I930S in Yugoslavia. The chapter titled 'Theory' contains an
analysis of Krleza's thinking about art and aesthetics in general terms. In his final
chapter Bogert examines certain aspects of Krleza's Glembaj cycle of plays and
prose works which focus on the final years of a Croatian bourgeois family in full
decadent splendour.
Krleza is described in his Balkan and Central European context, and links are
drawn between him and a diverse range of nineteenth-century and twentieth-
century thinkers and writers, in particular Marx, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and
Sartre. However, ample quotations from his literary and essayistic output, with
analyses of his style and intentions, constantly return the reader to Krleza's
individual talent. Bogert's assertion in the title of his book that Krleza was a
'naysayer' is proven in the body of the work. Krleza constantly denied the validity of
the arguments proposed by contemporary schools and trends which sought to make
use of him or his art for their own aims. This negative role as the denier of orthodoxy
and established norms was forced on him in the heady decades between the two
world wars in his confrontations with both the royalist establishment and the
dogmatists on the left. He was attacked for his Marxist views by the right, and for his
unequivocal denunciation of Socialist Realism from its inception by the Commu-
nists and their fellow-travellers. Bogert's achievement in the third chapter is to steer
his reader down the course which Krleza took, explaining his rejection of idealist
and crudely materialist approaches to literature, his political engagement, and his
assertion that art was autonomous. Krleza was a Marxist who regarded art as a
system which does not depend on general principles to validate its claims. He
developed ethical and epistemological ideas relevant to his own inclinations in
literature, based on terms 'which are concerned with reconciling rather than
preserving the antithesis between mind and matter, idea and feeling, thought and
sensation, the soothsaid and the sung' (p. 16). Bogert considers his views on the
social function of literature, art as an expansive process in which material is
integrated into creative expression, and the artist as the source of that creativity.
However, Krleza's system in practice lacks any distinctively human element. Issues
which in the hands of some of his literary contemporaries took deeper ontological
turns are drawn by Krleza into a global drama between consciousness and history,
often fought in the provincial atmosphere of small Croatian towns. He is to be
remembered as a thinker and essayist, as a cultural figure with a particularly

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