Sublime

exemplo de Turguêniev, Gontcharóv se revela, em Oblómov, um prosador esmerado e consciente. Sua prosa comporta, de um lado, uma crítica ao Romantismo, tido como inadequado para a realidade russa. E, de outro, tenta encontrar e construir um âmbito novo que permita certa dose de expansão lírica, ainda que controlada e mesclada com o humor.

Prominent friends introduced him at court; the emperor Alexander II asked him to be the spiritual guide of his younger sons, the Grand Dukes Sergei and Pavel;

he was simply an early lover of mankind,

I remember it was precisely he who marveled most of all when he got acquainted with the young man, who interested him greatly and with whom he used—not without inner pangs—to have occasional intellectual altercations.

eight years of penal servitude,

А я ему такой же дядюшка, как он мне дедушка.

такой ли человек, которого нужно задержать и схватить, как неблагонамеренного, или же он такой человек, который может сам схватить и задержать их всех, как неблагонамеренных.