The Superfluous Man in Russian Literature

The “superfluous man” (lishnii cbelovek) is a term that, since the mid-19th century, has been applied to a particular type of character in Russian literature. Ivan Turgenev’s work of 1850, Dnevnik lishnego cheloveka (The Diary of a Superfluous Man), popularized the term “superfluous man”, which came to be used to identify literary characters of an earlier period of the 19th century as well as those in the middle years of the century and beyond, into the zoth century. Often, the end of the tradition of 30“superfluous men” was earmarked as the mid-19th century, with characters such as the eponymous Oblomov in Ivan Goncharov’s novel, many of Turgenev characters, including Chulkaturin, in The Diary of a Superfluous Man, and Bazarov, in Ottsy i deti (Fathers and Sons).