"The rain will wet me, the sun will dry me."

Today’s passage is taken from a separate work, “Oblomov’s Dream,” which the author, Ivan Goncharov [gon-chr-rof], later incorporated as a chapter in his most famous novel, “Oblomov.” In “Oblomov’s Dream” Goncharov attempts to convey the feel of “a premodern society—isolated, fearful of strangers, self-satisfied, smug—with a cyclical sense of time, based on the return of the seasons.” The village inhabitants fully accept whatever happens. As one peasant says, “The rain will wet me, the sun will dry me.”

“Oblomov’s Dream”

“This peaceful spot where our hero suddenly found himself was not like that. The sky there seems to hug the earth, not in order to fling its thunderbolts at it, but to embrace it more tightly and lovingly; it hangs as low overhead as the trustworthy roof of the parental house, to preserve, it would seem, the chosen spot from all calamities. The sun there shines brightly and warmly for about six months of the year and withdraws gradually, as though reluctantly, as though turning back to take another look at the place it loves and to give it a warm, clear day in the autumn, amid the rain and slush. The mountain there seems to be only small-scale models of the terrifying mountains far away that frighten the imagination. They form a chain of gently sloping hillocks, down which it is pleasant to slide on one’s back in play, or to sit on watching the sunset dreamily. The river runs gaily, sporting and playing; sometimes it spreads into a wide pond, and sometimes it rushes along in a swift stream, or grows quiet, as though lost in meditation, and creeps slowly along the pebbles, breaking up into lively streams on all sides, whose rippling lulls you pleasantly to sleep.”

                                                Literary Apparel for the Enlightened