Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the theme of idleness in Russian and Italian literature of the last two centuries; where idleness means to surrender to a tragic sense of being, but at the same time stands for a utopian acceptance, such as an exorcism of the anguish of death. The thesis consists of two main parts, linked both through a relation of temporal and cultural consequentiality. The first one is based on a Russian perspective: starting from a study of the phenomenology of idleness in the Russian literature of the XIX century and approaching to a deep analysis of the novel Oblomov (1859) by Ivan Goncharov. The second part is about the influence of this interpretation of idleness on the Italian prose of the XX century, and is centred particularly on the novel "Gli anni perduti" (The lost years, 1941) by Vitaliano Brancati, where the Sicilian writer seems to achieve the same utopian culture of idleness of Goncharov; to find a shelter from the shadow of death.

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