Chinese reception of Oblomov’s image

Abstract

Chinese scholars have been studying Goncharov for over a century. The first acquaintance with his works happened through Japanese translations published in the late 19th c. Following the May Fourth movement that promoted new culture, the first Chinese translations from the Russian original came out and scholarly interest in Goncharov was reinvigorated. The initial reception of Oblomov in China was heavily influenced by N. Dobrolyubov, who saw Goncharov’s hero as a special type of the Russian national character. While some treated Oblomov with disdain and branded him a dawdler, others argued that his character is complex and controversial. A cohort of Chinese scholars considered Oblomov in the context of world literature as yet another ‘superfluous man,’ but as early as the 1950s, many Chinese experts of Russian studies began to adopt a more forgiving attitude to this character. Since the early 21st c., literary scholars have started to analyze Oblomov in the context of Chinese philosophy. The article seeks to describe the assumptions for this type of reception.