How Oblomov drew on Eugene Onegin
A documented line of influence: Ivan Goncharov demonstrably engaged Alexander Pushkin’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Eugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin · 1833
RomanticismThe influenced
Oblomov
Ivan Goncharov · 1859
The Age of the NovelRelevance
7/10
On Oblomov’s page
- Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is the apotheosis of a type Pushkin invented thirty years earlier in Eugene Onegin — the clever, well-bred Russian who is constitutionally incapable of action. Critics line them up in a single descent: Onegin, then Pechorin, then Oblomov, each more inert than the last.
- Goncharov inherits the diagnosis but removes the Byronic glamour. Onegin's listlessness still has a duel and a doomed romance in it; Oblomov's has a sofa, a dressing gown, and a dream of a manor that no longer exists.
On Eugene Onegin’s page
- The whole sad pedigree of the Russian superfluous man starts with Onegin: the gifted, educated nobleman who cannot be bothered to do anything with himself, and Pushkin's bored aristocrat is the seed Goncharov grows to monstrous, unforgettable proportions.
- Where Onegin at least gets up and travels and duels, Goncharov asks the crueler question — what if the type just never got out of bed? Oblomov is Onegin with the energy switched off, the prototype taken to its logical, dressing-gowned conclusion.