Frigate "Pallada"

[3] According to Goncharov's commentaries to the first published fragment of the book ("Ryukyu Islands", Otechestvennye Zapiski, April 1855), he "started to keep a diary during the trip and to send his notes back home to friends occasionally... so as to avoid later questions as: 'where have you been, and what have you seen.'"

Some were given nicknames (Major general Alexander Khalezov featured here as Oldman, Дед), others, like the author and scientist (later academician) Konstantin Posyet or the ethnographer and scholar Archimandrite Avvakum (Dmitry S. Chestnoy, 1801–1866) were represented by their names' first letters.

[5] Mixing famous people (like Khalezov for whom that was his fourth round-the-world naval trip) with common sailors and caring for human traits, qualities, modes of speech rather than ranks or titles, Goncharov created a vast and curiously democratic gallery of vivid, memorable characters, which gave the book its distinctly 'novelistic' feel, according to the critic and biographer K. N.

"[7] According to Tyunkin, in Frigate "Pallada" Goncharov came to realize this initial idea and created a "brilliantly typical type of narrator, with this peculiar sense of humour and meaningful irony.

The chapter called "The Voyage Through the Tropical Atlantics" is written in the form of an epistle to his friend, the Romantic poet Vladimir Benediktov and should be taken in the context of the author's earlier polemics with his opponents, concerning the aesthetics of Romanticism.

While totally overlooked by contemporary critics (including those belonging to the Socialist camp), in retrospect one of Frigate Pallada's recurring themes was the critique of Western colonialism, in Africa, but mostly in China.

"[8] Another liberal critic, Alexander Druzhinin, saw Goncharov as a 'practical artist' and, drawing parallels with the Flemish painting, defined the author's object as "revealing poetic meanings in what would look like simple, everyday life.

"[5] Nikolai Nekrasov reviewed each chapter published by Sovremennik in 1855, praising the "liveliness and beauty of language" as well as the "moderation of tone" which enabled the author to depict every object "in its true light, full of mild overtones as well and multiple colours.