Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Chekhov (Where “It” All Began), Chukhovskaya, Chizhov

It’s been nearly three years since I last wrote an alphabet post but I’ve been thinking about Chekhov so much lately that it’s time to finally move on from Х to Ч, fill in another letter, and mention a few Ч-named writers I’ve particularly enjoyed reading.

I always seem to reminisce a fair bit about Anton Pavlovich Chekhov because his “The Bet” (“Пари”) was the first piece of Russian literature (other than Baba Yaga stories) that I ever read. In sixth grade. (I went down Memory Lane on “The Bet” back in 2010, for Chekhov’s hundred and fiftieth birthday, here.) I went on to take a Chekhov course in college and, rather predictably, most enjoyed longer stories, with “Ward Number Six” (in Ronald Hingley’s translation) my big favorite. “Дама с собачкой” (“The Lady With the Dog” (oops, almost “God”!)) was the first Chekhov I read in Russian, in that same era. I’ve gone on to (re)read lots of other short Chekhov stories, particularly when a collection from Restless Books – Chekhov: Stories for Our Time, with an introduction by Boris Fishman – brought me back to A.P. back in 2018 (previous post) and got me thinking I needed to do better justice to the modest Russian-language collections of long and short stories I’d purchased a few years earlier.

One of the works in one of those collections is Моя жизнь (My Life), which I started reading last year, in preparation for a visit to Duke University in March 2020. Of course the visit didn’t happen. And, predictably, I didn’t finish My Life, which Carol Apollonio’s Chekhov class was going to be discussing during my visit. I had a hard time concentrating on my reading in the early pandemic months but am plotting a reattempt at My Life and some other Chekhov reading. I’m especially motivated because Carol sent me a copy of her book, Simply Chekhov, which examines A.P.’s life and work. I love talking with Carol about Russian literature, so who better to guide me? I have two other longer works – “Степь” (“The Steppe”) and “Дуэль” (“The Duel”) – that we didn’t get around to in college, so there’s plenty of new material to go along with old favorites like “Gooseberries.”

Now, a confession: I don’t have many other real, true favorite Ч writers. But there are some interesting books to mention. I read and enjoyed a shortened version of N.G. Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? (Benjamin R. Tucker’s translation, revised and abridged by Ludmilla B. Turkevich, in a Vintage edition with an Edward Gorey cover design) back in grad school and have happy memories of that experience simply because I was reading at the ocean. I remember very little (meaning: pretty much nothing at all) about the novel, but oh my, my marginalia tell me the book thoroughly engaged me at the time. I sometimes feel guilty for not remembering even a basic plot, though I’m not sure I feel guilty enough for an imminent reread.

Lidia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna, however, has long been a genuine favorite: I’ve read it several times, always appreciating the simplicity of the form and language, which leave so much room for Chukovskaya to offer a close-up of the devastating effects of totalitarianism (previous post). It was a lovely surprise to look at my Chukovskaya book today and find that the afterword I actually read and enjoyed (marginalia tell all!) back in 2011 was written by Olga Zilberbourg, a writer I met in 2016 at a translator conference. I wrote about her Like Water story collection last year (previous post). My book with Sofia Petrovna also includes Спуск под воду (Going Under), which I haven’t yet read, though I’ll put the book in my trolley and consider it to soon.

Contemporary fiction wouldn’t have given me a favorite Ч-named writer if Evgeny Chizhov hadn’t decided to use a pseudonym. His Translation from a Literal Translation (previous post), which I thought was very, very good, is plenty to put him on the list even if it’s his only novel that I’ve finished.

Charskaya, reading at the dacha

 

 

My pandemic book buying binges b(r)ought me two other books (new acquisitions already in the trolley, unread, so not yet favorites) by Ч-named writers: a book containing Lidia Charskaya’s Записки институтки (something like: Notes of a [Female] College/Institute Student) and Княжна Джаваха (Princess Dzhavakha, a.k.a. Little Princess Nina, I believe, in Hana Mus̆ková’s translation?), which both look promising. And then there’s Anton Chizh’s Машина страха (maybe The Fear Machine?), a retro detective novel set in 1898 Petersburg. Of course I love detective novels. Who knows how this one will be, but, yes, I’m still rather stuck in the past – or in various alternate, often futuristic, realities – and having difficulty reading fiction about this century since characters are rarely masked up, vaccinated against COVID-19, or staying far, far away from each other. Fortunately, Russian fiction offers plenty of fantasy, mysticism, and other twists on what we conventionally consider reality.

Up Next: Ksenia Buksha’s Advent and Eugene Vodolazkin’s History of Island.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual. Carol Apollonio is a friend and colleague. As is Olga Zilberbourg, though we’ve only met once in person; she has reviewed a couple of my translations.

 

Photo by M.G. Nikitin, public domain, obtained through Wikipedia.

Totally: Novellas by Chukovskaya and Iskander

I first read Lydia Chukovskaya’s Софья Петровна (Sofia Petrovna) in the early ‘90s, when I lived in Moscow: it was one of six pieces in a collection called Трудные повести (Difficult Novellas) that also included Andrei Platonov’s Котлован (The Foundation Pit). My reading skills weren’t ready for Platonov then but I could read and appreciate Sofia Petrovna quickly, easily, without a dictionary. The novella was even more satisfying because I could tell Chukovskaya’s direct, unembellished language was the perfect medium for a story about a Leningrad widow whose son Kolya, an engineer, is arrested in the 1930s.

I appreciated Sofia Petrovna even more this time around, watching Chukovskaya unwind the story of Sofia Petrovna, a loyal Soviet citizen who becomes more and more unhinged trying to handle difficulties at work and the cruelly impossible task of finding her son. Chukovskaya experienced similar humiliations—she wrote the novella during November 1939-February 1940, after the arrest of her husband, which makes it even more remarkable—and demonstrates the effects of totalitarianism with painfully striking precision.

I’m thinking of totalitarianism in the second definition in my Webster’s New [sic: it’s dated 1981] Collegiate Dictionary—“the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority”—more than the first definition’s “centralized control by an autocratic authority” that creates the political concept. Chukovskaya’s novella is less about the system itself than its effects on the thinking and actions of regular people, represented by a circle of family and friends anchored by Sofia Petrovna. The book draws the reader into her psyche as Soviet life wears her down.

We hear Sofia Petrovna’s doubts about Kolya’s activity and friendships, experience her pain when her communal apartment neighbors say nasty things, and feel her deflation when she has brief audiences with government officials after waiting for hours, even days. As the novella continues and we witness her evolution from a happy, optimistic publishing house administrator to a recluse who barely eats, it’s not difficult to understand her confusion, her delusions, or her fears of everybody.

After Chukovskaya’s book I picked up a collection by Fazil’ Iskander and chose Сумрачной юности свет (The Light of Murky Youth) for one reason: at 75 pages, it was the longest piece in the book. I didn’t know the story was about an Abkhaz man, Zaur, whose father was shot during the Stalinist terror. Most of the story takes place when Zaur is an adult—there are mentions of Khrushchev—and the most vivid aspect of the story for me, perhaps because of my lingering thoughts on Sofia Petrovna, was the uneasy balance of private and public in Zaur’s life. That made the story feel like a later generation’s update on totalitarianism.

Iskander gives Zaur a childhood with public Stalin portraits and an adulthood that values privacy and individuality, whether he’s writing to the Central Committee about the need for more private farming or trying to find a place to be alone with his girlfriend. Though Iskander deftly blends believable characters with lots of telling episodes about required volunteer work, sneaking into forbidden places, police behavior, family pressures, and politics, the story felt a little lumpy to me. But that’s a minor complaint, what with the strong pull of the conflict between control and privacy (always a favorite), and Iskander’s ability to, like Chukovskaya, create vivid scenes, portraits, and stories out of simple words and complex human situations.

Level for Non-Native Readers of Russian: Though I think the language in Sofia Petrovna is easier than the language in The Light of Murky Youth, I’d recommend both to readers looking for relatively easy novellas.

Up Next: Perhaps Mikhail Lipskerov’s Белая горячка. Delirium Tremens, which I began reading today at the beach. If I don’t like the book as reading material it may still have an honored place in my life and beach bag: it’s a paperback of the perfect size and thickness for killing the stinging beach flies that love to hover around my ankles.

Fazil Iskander on Amazon
Sofia Petrovna on Amazon

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