Oblómoff is a Russian nobleman, of moderate means--the owner of six or seven hundred serfs--and the time of action is, let us say, in the fifties of the nineteenth century. All the early childhood of Oblómoff was such as to destroy in him any capacity of initiative. Imagine a spacious, well-kept nobleman’s estate in the middle of Russia, somewhere on the picturesque banks of the Vólga, at a time when there were no railways to disturb a peaceful patriarchal life, and no “questions” that could worry the minds of its inhabitants. A “reign of plenty,” both for the owners of the estate and the scores of their servants and retainers, characterises their life. Nurses, servants, serving boys and maids surround the child from its earliest days, their only thoughts being how to feed it, make it grow, render it strong, and never worry it with either much learning or, in fact, with any sort of work. “From my earliest childhood, have I myself ever put on my socks?” Oblómoff asks later on. In the morning, the coming mid-day meal is the main question for all the household; and when the dinner is over, at an early hour of the day, sleep--a reign of sleep, sleep rising to an epical degree which implies full loss of consciousness for all the inhabitants of the mansion and its dependencies--spreads its wings for several hours from the bedchamber of the landlord even as far as the remotest corner of the retainers’ dwellings. In these surroundings Oblómoff’s childhood and youth were passed. Later on, he enters the University; but his trustworthy servants follow him to the capital, and the lazy, sleepy atmosphere of his native ‘Oblómovka’ (the estate) holds him even there in its enchanted arms. A few lectures at the university, some elevating talk with a young friend in the evening, some vague aspiration towards the ideal, occasionally stir the young man’s heart; and a beautiful vision begins to rise before his eyes--these things are certainly a necessary accompaniment of the years spent at the university; but the soothing, soporific influence of Oblómovka, its quietness and laziness, its feeling of a fully guaranteed, undisturbed existence, deaden even these impressions of youth. Other students grow hot in their discussions, and join “circles.” Oblómoff looks quietly at all that and asks himself: “What is it for?” And then, the moment that the young student has returned home after his university years, the same atmosphere again envelops him. “Why should you think and worry yourself with this or that?” Leave that to “others.” Have you not there your old nurse, thinking whether there is anything else she might do for your comfort?