Cherisa’s Comments (group member since Sep 26, 2021)

Cherisa’s comments from the The Obscure Reading Group group.

Darrin wrote: "I will join you all. Our library has..."

Great, Darrin! Glad to see you.

Please join me this month on reading Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. Published in 1859, the book is a story about a loveable, indolent man who became an archetype in Russian literature. It's been more than 30 years since I read it, and I want to revisit it. Ken and Plateresca have indicated they might join me for a discussion. If you're free this month for a classic Russian novel, I hope you'll join in.

One last thing about why I want to reread it regards Oblomov's close friend, Stoltz. I have carried this literary character in my mental landscape for decades as an apotheosis of a good friend, a solid, salt-of-the-earth, steady man who keeps the world on track. I want to see if he holds up to my memories and beliefs after all these years. I hope so, but we'll see.

Please note the 1915 Hogarth translation is available on Project Gutenberg (their ebook #54700 - hyperlinks off this site not allowed so I can't post it for you).

I’m gonna finish up Thais of Athens then pick up Oblomov next, later this week!

Ha ha ha ha ha, Ken!

Plateresca wrote: "Hypothetically, I am interested in joining you with 'Oblomov'! Whether I can really do it or not will depend on what else goes on in my life. But for now, late July or early August sound good! So p..."
Great! I'll post when I start reading, probably late July.

Ken wrote: "I have an unread copy of Oblomov from 10 years ago (sorry it cannot match your book for being indignant with its owner), but have a few book commitments to meet before I can get to it. Maybe mid- t..."
Hi Ken, I can wait. I'm finding I love chatting with a fellow reader! Who knew? :)

I've really been itching to reread Oblomov by Goncharov, which I loved a lot about 30 years ago. Anyone interested in joining me?

Ken wrote: "Interesting quote I marked from Ch. XXXIV:

"Liza did not utter a word during the controversy between Lavretsky and Panshin, but she followed it closely and was entirely on Lavretsky's side. Politi..."

I missed this thread before Ken, and just got to it. I really appreciate your insights and thoughts on Liza's Christianity and how they apply similarly in today's environment. I mostly just wrote her off as naïve and simplistic, but you've given me much more appreciation of her beliefs. I think we also have to remember that she was only 19. Though her core personality and character could be firmly in place, her understanding and choices would be more immature than might be best for her or those around her.

BarbaraW wrote: "Also not to belabor things and yrs I have read a lot of tough literature over the years- Marya and Marfa. What was he thinking??"
Sorry, Barbara, but I don't think this would be any different from an English-based story having a Tom and a Tim, or a Mary and a May, for instance.

Carol wrote: "What if Turgenev wanted Liza and Varvara to intentionally be traditional and progressive? Too much good and too much evil . There was no balance . Maybe Home of the Gentry was a social experiment t..."

What's interesting is that Varvara is the only "primary character" woman to get what she wants. Glafira worked like a dog running the family's estates, raising boys (brother and nephew), feeding old fathers, and didn't even get thank yous. Liza was sweet and passive and obedient for the most part and settled for the narrow cloistered existence of a nun because neither man she had feelings for lived up to her hopes. Varvara took what she could get and got a good long run of pleasure without really hurting anyone except maybe Fedor's feelings. I don't think it makes her "evil", just selfish, and not any more than Ivan and Fedor mooching off Glafira's labor their whole lives.

Ken wrote: "That's quite a tribute to Glafira, Cherisa. It's the final narrative of her last days at the estate that I remember best. With all this fodder to sing her praises, can we not credit Turgenev for readers showing sympathy toward her?..."

Yes Ken, you're right, though my first read was that Turgenev was "anti-Glafira", he did in fact sprinkle in good things to say about her throughout, it just seems harder to find.

The women overall make for an interesting set to consider, probably better portraits among them than the men who, perhaps except for Lemm, seem all of a type (entitled/ privileged/ ineffective if not superfluous).

The character I'd like to focus on is Glafira Petrovna, that maiden aunt so deeply maligned. The way she's treated reflects on Russian society and its disabuse of women in a way differently than young or beautiful women were. Turgenev makes us dislike her immediately, introducing her with this description: "This Glafira was a strange creature, ugly, crooked, with severe wide-open eyes, compressed lips..."

From the beginning to the end of her life, she was ill-treated. She wasn't pretty and of course she wasn't a boy, so her parents didn't care for her much. She was 12 years older than Ivan, Fedor's father. Her education is nil, but he gets sent to Princess Kubensky and educated according to some actual plan. In spite of this, she became the de facto manager of her father, Piotr's, properties. When Ivan dumps his wife and Piotr takes in Melanya and the baby Fedor, he assigns 2 maids and a page for their use without consulting Glafira. I could see how she'd get her hackles up and hold it against Melanya. After the young wife dies, Glafira is left in charge of Fedor, along with running the properties, and all, as ever, thanklessly.

Ivan strolls back eventually and decides that being a gentleman farmer is his calling. He announces his intention to radically change how Glafira been running the place all this years. No "thank yous" or "what do you thinks" to his sister. All Turgenev tells us is that Glafira "could only grind her teeth." Regardless, dilettante that Ivan is, her management comes back into force and so the family's livelihood is assured. The servants go back to calling her "old witch" behind her back, but things keep humming along.

At the end of his life, Piotr is completely dependent on Glafira and yet still did not appreciate her - everything passed to Ivan upon his death. What did Ivan do when he came into his inheritance? He left, with Glafira left to manage it all.

Okay, next generation. Ivan dies and Fedor comes into the inheritance. How does he thank his aunt? Without so much as a discussion, he puts Varvara's father in charge (some manipulation by Varvara brought this about).

Glafira gives up at this point and removes herself to the property she inherited from some other relative (not her father). She was the rock that kept the family running for two generations. It was her strength and discipline and fortitude that kept things going. She didn't give a lot of love or warmth, but then she never got any either.

We learn late in the story from the servant Anton that she had a suitor when she was young. Upon learning he was interested in her wealth, she got angry and kicked him out. I think this shows character. Unlike Lisa who ran away to a nunnery when her love stories didnt work out, Glafira kept her nose to the grindstone and kept to her duty. It's also Anton who gets angry that she was ever called a witch. (He's another good secondary character, like Lemm.)

It's Marfa Timofyevna who gave testimony to Fedor that most fairly sums up Glafira and her true value. The old lady gives Fedor a rouble to have a prayer or mass said for his aunt. "I had no love for her in her lifetime, but all the same there's no denying she was a girl of character. She was a clever creature; and a good friend to you."

This appears to be the most appreciation Glafira ever got in her long life of hard work, constancy, and devotion to duty and family, and she didn't even get to hear it. A man running the estates and managing so much for so many years would have gotten much more respect and appreciation, But as it was, Glafira was written off as an unlovable, unlikeable "creature". Did the author dislike her as much as the other characters? Was it a reflection of him or the society she was in?

Her story is the saddest of all.

Ken wrote: "Carol wrote: "Maybe she wasn’t his daughter..."

Also, wasn't there a reference to the child looking like Lavretsky in some respect? ..."
When Marya Dmitrievna attempts a reconciliation, (before she reveals that Varvara is hiding behind the screen), she goes on and on about the likeness between the child and Lavretsky. The problem is her credibility - is she making a fuss to try and gaslight him, either intentionally or because she simply wants to believe it? She has made up her mind she likes Varvara best and takes her side for paternity. There's no knowing, but my feeling all along was the child's paternity was always questionable and maybe even Varvara isn't certain.

Plateresca wrote: "Speaking of secondary characters... I've found Lemm's story the saddest part of the book. What happened to that beautiful piece of music he wrote, do you think he destroyed it (or just never wrote ..."

Plateresca, I loved Lemm, and, yes, his story was heartbreaking, much sadder to me than Lisa's even. I was hoping that he would become a permanent member of Lavretsky's household, appreciated for his quiet artistry and integrity, but alas.

Was it pretty rare for women to be depicted as so sensual? Flaubert’s Bovary was published only three years earlier, and she was a bolt of lightening to society’s sensibilities, wasn’t she? Flaubert had to legally defend his morals against her, that he wasn’t setting her up as a heroine. Varvara lives and keeps enjoying herself. Good for her, I say. Down with the patriarchy, lol. Poor Lisa, wasn’t she like 17 and decided her life was over because of two “old” men?

Ken wrote: "On a more serious note, I think mention of Rousseau speaks to the European influence Turgenev felt upon leaving Russia..."

Ken, I think the French influence on Turgenev's story is very interesting. From Rousseau's influence on Fedor Ivanitch's education (gawd how stupid and inane THAT was), to Voltaire and the Candidean expression "il faut cultiver notre jardin" (Lavretsky's "mission" on his return to Russian as his response to Panshin when they argued about he he came back). Turgenev, like the other Golden Age Russian writers appeals to Europe in most things. While they (the Russian writers) might insist that Russian nature is truer and purer, Turgenev, as expressed in the story, sure drank the Kool-Aid with Rousseau's belief that women don't need any education beyond knowing how to care for children and/or men.

As I look back over the book, I see Dostoevsky has set up a trail of wrongs that people do, displaying a variety of sins. Doesn't matter age, class, gender, education level, vocation, or creed. Vanity, envy, malice, ignorance, pride.... these vices have a way of making us do terrible things to others and ourselves. Whether the temptations come from an external supernatural entity or one we created from what we embody ourselves hardly matters. Thinking too hard about that can give us brain fever. And yet in the end, it comes down to Alyosha reminding us to be kind to one another.

I am so glad to have revisited this book with the group. The deep exploration of good and evil, humanity's flaws, obsessiveness and silliness, faith and doubt - few books drill into so many important topics in such an engaging way. It holds up to scrutiny on this my second read (30 years between), and I again rate it 5 stars.

Kathleen wrote: "Ilyusha is a child senselessly suffering ..."

Except remember, it's Ivan brother who has caused Ilyusha's suffering with his disrespect to his father and Snegirov's inability to defend his honor against the humiliation. Ilyusha is innocent, but not suffering in the same way Ivan was arguing against. But you're right, Ilyusha's illness and what comes later (I have finished the book and can't remember where the arc of his story ends) is used by the author to illustrate the importance of kindness and love, which FMD is all about.

There are a couple of asides in Ivan's conversation with the devil that are incredibly contemporary:

- What's the good of believing against your will? Proofs are no help to believing, especially material proofs.

- There are two sorts of truths for me- one, their truth, yonder, which I know nothing about so far, and the other my own.

Even 150 years ago, apparently people believed whatever they chose, regardless of evidence. I guess the internet has only made it more apparent.

It's Ivan again with his nightmare of the devil (Book 11 Chapter 9) that focuses the themes on the nature of good and evil, doubt and faith. If we believe in these things, are we just suffering from brain fever or mental illness? Is the devil a figment of our imagination? Here the devil is insidious how he worms his way into Ivan's head, using all sorts of rhetorical tricks to get him to believe him and his arguments and in him himself, so much as to throw a real item at him, which the devil had hoped for from the start.

Again echoing Dostoevsky's theory that the devil is created in our image, Ivan outright tells the visitor that "you are the incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me... of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them." Later, the devil himself says "It's reactionary to believe in God in our days, but I am the devil, so I may be believed in." He goes on to argue that without him, life would be only one long hosannah and so life wouldn't be possible. Again the echo of the earlier discussion that only through suffering can we know what pleasure or exaltation. He gets Ivan so riled up that he finally shouts "Is there a God or not?" The devil responds, "My dear fellow, upon my word, I don't know."

Back and forth, God or the Devil, can we believe in either, neither, or both? These are central to Ivan who needs to believe in something with his intellect. The devil taunts him, "Knowing that you are inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief..." then telling him next he planted a seed of faith. The devil comforting a suicide and taking his final confession, the priest who forgives the girl who confesses having sex to comfort a man then sets a rendezvous with her himself. There are a lot of jokes but it's all deadly serious to Ivan and therefore Dostoevsky. In the end, Ivan covers his ears (as if that could keep you from hearing a voice in your head), then throws the glass (at an apparition that isn't there?), and his angelic brother calls, thus banishing the visitor. In the end, the arguments disappear, and our own inherent or innate nature is left with which to carry on our lives.

The intellect only goes so far for our author. Our goodness is what matters.