Toward a Poetics of Transition: Oblomov, Uneven and Combined

• In Event: Left Perspectives on Method IV: Uneven and Combined Development: Keywords for Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Culture

Abstract

At first glance, Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov (1859) presents us with a paradigmatic case of a nation-building novel, setting the personal story of its characters against the background of the nation’s broad temporal and spatial coalescence. The novel’s central opposition between the incurable backwardness and immobility of the eponymous protagonist and the tireless activity of his forward-striding friend and mentor Stolz marks the point of historical inflection in the aftermath of the Crimean defeat and on the eve of the abolition of serfdom. Will the archaic and the stagnant be brought up to date? The novel’s answer is both yes and no: yes, in objective-historical terms; no, when it comes to the individual person at stake. This paper explores the tension between these two answers by drawing on the depository of concepts and imaginaries associated with the problematic of uneven development within the capitalist world system.

Author

• Ilya Kliger, New York U