Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich

Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich (1812-1891), Russian novelist, born in Simbirsk. After a period of employment in the civil service, he worked in the government finance ministry. In 1865 Goncharov served as secretary to the head of a governmental commercial mission to Japan.

As a writer, Goncharov worked slowly and consequently produced little. His reputation rests on Oblomov (1859; trans. 1929), on which he spent ten years. Oblomov is the story of an indolent Russian provincial landowner who loses the woman he loves through his indecisiveness and general apathy. The term oblomovism entered into the Russian language as a designation of habitual laziness. The Precipice (1869; trans. 1915), a novel which depicts a Russian household presided over by a kindhearted but tyrannical grandmother, contains an unsympathetic treatment of nihilism, then a widely held doctrine in Russia. In these novels Goncharov contrasts the opposing characters of the dreamer and the person of action, a symbolic depiction of the tension between the newly-evolving industrialized Russian society and the aristrocatic traditions of the old Russia. Among his other works are A Common Story (1847) and The Frigate “Pallas” (1858), which is a detailed account of his journey to Japan.