Category: Russian Literature

Vladimir Nabokov’s Strong Opinions and (Less Strong) Arguments

One Big Misunderstanding

I recently finished Vladimir Nabokov’s Strong Opinions, a collection of the author’s interviews, essays, and letters-to-the-editor. Since the pieces were all short and written with some degree of accessibility in mind, it became my bedtime reading for a few days. The first thing of his that I read was “Lolita”, which stumbled through aged fourteen without understanding a word and thus thinking for most of it that Lo was having the time of her life.

Following that magnificent misunderstanding of Lolita, Nabokov’s interviews in isolation were what I read next. I was at an age and in an environment where I was wholly convinced of the sanctity of the Canon while at the same time not really able to say what exactly it was. I was open, in a sense, to an authoritarian or at the very least authoritative figure who seemingly knew what was what and wasn’t shy about letting me know. It’s probably for the same reason that Harold Bloom appealed at that point, even though I didn’t understand him either when I actually tried reading him. Nabokov in these sits on his great-writerly throne dispensing fireballs and lightning and very, very occasionally, a glimmer of praise.

Back then that all was very attractive – it gave me opinions so that I didn’t need to bother forming my own, and it told me what was worth reading so that I didn’t have to read either. But now, having read other writers’ (and critics’) essays, binged the back issues of the Paris Review’s “Art of Fiction”, and done a little growing up, the book that had I read it six or seven years ago might have seemed the masterwork of an assured genius, now appears in a much less pleasant light.

Structure

As I mentioned above, the book is made of interviews, letters-to-the-editor, and a few essays. The former make up most of the book, and stretch from immediately after the publication of Lolita until Ada’s own completion. The letters meanwhile include such banalities as Nabokov’s witticisms on the moon landings. While Lolita, being the most popular and enduring of his novels, takes up the main part of the interviews even long after it has been published, the essays that end the book are concerned with another book of Nabokov’s – his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. The collection, it is important to note here, is one organised by Nabokov during his own lifetime – each interview, for instance, is introduced by his comments explaining the circumstances of each meeting – and for that reason it’s fair also to say that these two works are what he considers to be his primary legacy, and indeed he says as much. I’ll tackle both the interviews and essays in turn.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Great Writer, sure. But here we’re after his personality.

The Interviews

These were on the whole pretty fun, and what I was here for. Though I had read a few before, I scarcely remembered them. It also doesn’t help that Nabokov repeats himself. He has a number of metaphors and images that he uses again and again for two reasons. The first of these is that as with the rest of us, the things that are at the forefront of his mind are often similar from year to year, even if his vocabulary is undoubtedly marvellous (I quite wanted to go through it again just noting down every new and exciting word of his), and so when they are stacked side by side these interviews become a little like paintings at an art gallery. What beauty and power they have individually becomes blurred and dulled by company of equals. The same is true of Nabokov’s metaphors.

The other problem, though, is that these aren’t interviews in the strictest sense. Nabokov admits in his preface that “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child” (was there ever a more blatant instance of praising with faint damning?) and so what he does instead of speak unprompted is get his questions in advance and prepare answers to them on flashcards. It means that the whole selection has a slightly odd feeling of unreality to it – this is obviously not who Nabokov actually is in speech, but nor is he entirely who he is in his fiction either. It has an uncomfortable artificiality to it.

The Interviews: Humour and Judgement

But they are fun, and by this term I mean that they appeal in a few different ways. One of those is that the interviews are actually pretty funny. I love the hilariously awful punning of things like “I differ from Joseph Conradically” or my personal favourite “Off the Nabocuff” – things that if I said them in person I would be met with a sigh and awkward smile but when written down Nabokov almost seems to get away with. Beyond the puns there is the casual tone, such as when he calls himself “the shuttlecock above the Atlantic”, or talks of the indifferent audience he has to face whenever he lectures. All this is simple and mindless, but things become a lot more complicated when the humour is derived from his judgements about others – and it is regarding his judgements of others that the centre of my distaste for the book lies.

I imagine at least a few people read this book to know what Nabokov thinks of other writers. It’s certainly why I read the interviews all those years ago, and it remains an almost unacknowledged reason for why I still read a lot of things by other writers, especially ones that I admire. I want the literary gossip – who’s in, and who’s out. Nabokov is very good at deciding who is passé and out of style. Conrad is obliterated whenever there is a chance – “I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir-shop style, bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist clichés” – and anybody who writes any fiction occupied by ideas is doomed to disdain. Hemingway is merely the author of “something about bells, balls, and bulls”, though Nabokov admits to liking “the wonderful fish story”. The authors of the Soviet period are also crushed by Nabokov’s own iron fist.

Praise is left for Joyce, Kafka, Borges, and Beckett, among others. But the greater part of the interviews are concerned with criticism of fellow writers, and here it goes hand in hand with witticism rather than analysis, much to its own discredit. Aside from comments about Conrad’s childishness and sentimentality there is very little explanation of why Nabokov didn’t actually like him. Meanwhile, when praise is given it is rarely a simple matter either: Nabokov’s desire to belittle Hemingway’s output is made clear through his language (and since he wrote everything for these conversations down beforehand, Nabokov’s language is absolutely worth a little close reading) – instead of naming The Old Man and the Sea or Fiesta, Nabokov refers to them by their topics, suggesting that their names were not good enough to remain in his memory. This is in contrast to somebody like Kafka, whose “Metamorphosis” (which Nabokov refers to as “The Transformation”, a little closer to the German “Verwandlung” original) is named, or Joyce’s Ulysses. Where praise comes, it is carefully and cunningly formulated so that Nabokov never seems to be praising outright anybody he wouldn’t consider to be his equal (thus Kafka and Joyce are worthy in his mind, whatever he may state in faux-humility elsewhere). We get little from reading these parts except for a list of literary friends and enemies.

Of course, perhaps you can say that it’s wrong to expect analysis from an interview – I’d grant that. But mere witticisms are far less helpful than even the pithiest of analytical comments.

The Interviews: the Nabokov Show

For those people interested in Nabokov himself, these interviews admittedly do contain a wealth of information. On his compositional methods: “The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the novel is done. My schedule is flexible but I am rather particular about my instruments: lined Bristol cards and well-sharpened, not too hard, pencils capped with erasers.” He includes a detailed description of his daily routine too, but for those who seek the secrets of success there is likely only disappointment: Nabokov spends a lot of time walking, drinking tea, and playing Russian Scrabble.

We also learn what he read as a child, and what has fallen in and out of fashion with him as he has aged: “Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Alexander Blok” are his childhood’s occupation, while “Housman, Rupert Brooke, Norman Douglas, Bergson, Joyce, Proust, and Pushkin” gain ascendency once he is into his twenties, thirties, and forties. We are told that Lolita only survived being incinerated after an intervention by his wife, Vera, and a little bit about his life in Berlin and France before he reached America. Biographical details, simply put, but nonetheless interesting if that is to your taste.

The Interviews: A Cutting Edge

Nabokov wrote, by common admission, pretty good fiction, and when he wants to in these interviews he can well deploy that power of insight which contributes a great deal towards his reputation, just rarely. It is here too, that his strong opinions are most useful, for they allow him to say boldly what others might not. He is at his most interesting when discussing themes also addressed in his novels and stories. When discussing how we view reality he imagines it in a series of steps: “reality is a very subjective affair… a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist”. He also talks about memory, the ways that the past changes as we grow older and begin to focus on different aspects of it – “The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is”. Less interesting is his dismissal of Soviet fiction in its entirety as mere banality – though much of it was, his answer lacks a lot of nuance and could conceal from a reader the value of what was produced in the Soviet Union in terms of writing. One thing I did agree with though was his statement about Osip Mandel’shtam, the Russian poet, whose death in the camps Nabokov states makes his poetry look better now than it would do otherwise, good as it is. This is close to my own experience of him too, but I’m keeping my mind open since I’ve not read as much as I’d have liked to.

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), whose novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin details the tragically aimless life of its eponymous hero.

The Onegin Affair – Introduction and Background

The interviews at their best are a collection of witticisms and occasional insights into their author’s talent and creative process; at their worst they are rude an unfounded criticisms of others with nary an analysis in sight. The majority of the essays in the second half of the book deal with Nabokov’s translation of Eugene Onegin, and unfortunately they are much oftener similar to the bad interviews than to the good ones. Nabokov’s version of Pushkin’s novel in verse was first published in 1964, and included as an appendix a section on prosody differences between English and Russian – for both works (“Notes on Prosody” was published separately later) he met with fierce opposition, and responded equally fiercely. His own translation was written in accordance with his own views on the act of translation, expounded among the interviews and in the essays too. That view was one of extreme literalism. Nabokov wanted every word to be translated exactly according to its meaning, so that works translated from a foreign language ought to sound strange, precisely because they are not being adapted or smoothed over for their new audience. It makes them clunky but according to Nabokov also much more correct. It’s not a debate to get into here, but needless to say the style of his version of Pushkin’s work raised a few hackles among academia and the wider public.

The Onegin Affair – the Nature of the Defence

Nabokov, way back when, used to be good friends with the literary critic Edmund Wilson. During the course of the affair things between them got a little heated, and a sort of mangled retelling of all this is possible by looking through the essays and following up a few of the references within them. The key essay is the fourth one, “Reply to my Critics”, which is “a magazine article of explanation, retaliation, and protest” but mostly the latter two. Nabokov takes to task a huge number of minor denizens of the academy who have been critical of him, before rounding on Mr Wilson in particular. Wilson, in his own article, had begun by stating that he and Nabokov were old friends, but ones whose affection was “sometimes chilled by exasperation.” Nabokov, nonetheless, rounds on him. Where Wilson suggests he has “an addiction to rare and unfamiliar words” Nabokov arrogantly responds that “it does not occur to him that I may have rare and unfamiliar things to convey”. Elsewhere, he compares him to “some seventeenth-century pedant discoursing on high and low style”.

But beyond these criticisms of tone and personality, Nabokov also states that Wilson has no right to complain about his writing because Wilson is actually bad at Russian – which as a language learner is among the most offensive things you can be told. Nabokov acts in such a way that leaves no room for misinterpretation – he says himself that “my facts are objective and irrefutable” even as they are simply more and more opinions disguised as facts by a grandiose prose style. He is rude and, if not often wrong, then at least far less “right” than he seems to think he is. When Wilson tried to make things good again between them, saying that his article was “more damaging” than he had intended, Nabokov, instead of accepting the apology merely rubbed salt in the wounds by saying “his article, entirely consisting, as I have shown, of quibbles and blunders, can be damaging only to his own reputation”. In one of the letters-to-the-editor written later, Nabokov once more dismisses the possibility of making up with his old friend, writing “I am aware that my former friend is in poor health but in the struggle between the dictates of compassion and those of personal honour the latter wins.” The very next year Wilson was dead.

This may all sound ridiculous. In a sense, after all, I’m just criticising Nabokov’s personality. But when we read interviews and essays, at least outside of an academic context, part of their appeal comes from the way they somehow contain the essence of their authors. Nabokov’s personality does not appeal to me – I would even go so far as to say that he should little appeal to anybody. He is cruel, insistently so, and arrogant beyond all measure. He may well have assembled this collection hoping to impress his readers, but anyone with unclouded vision will instead see whatever idol they’ve constructed for him crumble with each passing page. We rarely read fiction for the personality of a work’s creator (excepting, for example, the Beats) because the text is rarely so autobiographical that we cannot move beyond the author’s experience, if the work is good enough, into something exciting and more universal. But here Nabokov’s personality is overwhelming, and overwhelmingly toxic. Other essays just take aim at differing people who have annoyed him over the years, such as Robert Lowell and Maurice Girodias, and are just as tiresome.

Montreux in Switzerland, where Nabokov spent his later years.

Rays of Light

For that reason, the best parts of the book are where Nabokov is doing something similar to telling a story and his own person takes a back seat. One of the letters-to-the-editor recounts the death of his father shortly after the family had arrived in Berlin. At the end of the book Nabokov details some expeditions in search of rare butterflies. In both instances we can enjoy the texts as independent of the personality created them. Another time where the book takes a turn for the better, and for me the most frustrating moment, is in the article on the Russian poet Vladimir Hodasevich (Khodasevich). It is a rare incidence of praise, and the only essay here that he translated from the original Russian work he did before coming to America. It includes the line “even genius does not save one in Russia; in exile, one is saved by genius alone”, which sounds rather good if nothing else. But it is annoying because essays like this, where Nabokov turns your eyes towards writers you hadn’t considered or even heard of, are almost non-existent here. In one of the interviews he famously declares Andrei Bely’s Petersburg as one of the four great masterpieces of the 20th century, which almost singlehandedly brought about that book’s revival and appreciation in the West. But again, that’s two new authors after a whole book’s worth of vitriol.

Conclusion

It is not easy to do, by any stretch of the imagination, but once one tears oneself away from the fancy prose style and the enchantments of his undoubtedly beautiful and charming language, the book offers far less than perhaps might be expected, based on Nabokov’s colossal reputation. The revelations are few and far between, and not even the sparkling of nice words can disguise the insipid cruelty of which he gives every indication of being proud. We may read criticism to watch our literary temples be torn down as much as we want to see them be built up, but Nabokov rarely undermines the foundations of what he attacks – instead he simply slings mud and insults at them until the walls are stained brown, but ultimately left easy enough to wipe clean. Rarely do we learn why things are bad, only that Mr Nabokov thinks they are. We do get the odd bit of insight into Nabokov’s life and times, but that’s not enough to redeem the book. It is a failure underneath the prose.

If you are after analysis, take a look at his lectures or book on Gogol’. If you are after style and an entertaining story that is not dripping with nastiness, he wrote plenty of fiction to keep you busy. But this… this is just a disappointment. Better to stay away.

For Nabokov in a much more enjoyable guise, I have a piece on Pnin, over here.

Picture of Vladimir Nabokov by Walter Mori (Mondadori Publishers) is in the public domain.

Portrait of Alexander Pushkin is by Orest Kiprensky and in the public domain

Photo of Montreux is by Nserrano and used under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

A Righteous Man by Nikolai Leskov

Since I finished reading Walter Benjamin’s “The Storyteller”, which I discuss here, I have been meaning to read some Leskov, and translate it as well if it weren’t too hard. I’m not sure whether the piece I chose was necessarily the best introduction, but I found it very funny, and hope I conveyed that a little in the translation. A few comments of my own follow the main text.

A Righteous Man – Nikolai Leskov

A Vision at Midnight

I have heard it said often and indeed several times read it too: that he has “vanished” – “the righteous man” has vanished, and he has vanished not only completely without a trace, but also without any hope of ever finding him again in Russia. This is grave news, and at the same time one didn’t quite want to believe it. Perhaps, though, the matter depends more on those people who are seeking him: they are looking even though they don’t know how to find such a “righteous man”. All this makes me remember the old vaudeville “A Peaceful Night in Sherbakovii Lane”. There, if I remember right, there was a couplet, going thus:

“And even on Sherbakovii Lane

You could find a goodly soul.”

What that means is that the author of this piece knew how to find “a good man” even in such a small and dirty lane as that one. And so, how could it be the case that there cannot be found in all of Russia but one “righteous man”? And what sort of justness are we expecting from this “righteous man” anyway? That he “in the face of social injustice finds within himself courage and determination to say publicly to the people: “You are making a mistake and are going on the path of error – but look: here is the path to righteousness”?”

I am citing this from an article I found in one public news organ whose name I feel no need to mention. I can vouch but one thing: that these printed words I have just repeated seemed to a great many to be deeply true. But I remained biased against them. I believed that a righteous man still survived, somewhere out there, and that I would soon meet him – and indeed I did. I saw him in a battle with the whole of society, which he strove to defeat on his own and without fear. This is how it happened.

It was the summer that has just passed by. I had left Petersburg with one rather devout friend, who had enticed me to have a look at a big religious celebration out in the country. The way there wasn’t particularly long or tiresome: one cool evening we sat down in a carriage in Petersburg, and the next morning we were already at the place. And within half an hour of crossing the threshold my religious friend had already quarrelled with some church sexton or other! (He had apparently said something disrespectful to him).

When evening came it found both of us in our room and my fellow traveller sitting and busily writing a letter of complaint back to the capital about this poor man, so I went down to breathe some fresh air and also have a look at what exactly it was that people got up to out here. I was accompanying an easy-going artist I had met who said he’d come here to “read his scenes” to the public.

At such an hour back home in Petersburg all respectable people are busy, as is well known, out in restaurant gardens eating, and here it turned out that people were doing just the same. It thus happened, then, that we landed without any misunderstandings right in the public garden, where my acquaintance, the artist, was supposed to be showing off his talents.

He wasn’t a newcomer like me – he knew a lot of people here, and they knew him too.

The garden, into which we had arrived, was rather large for a provincial town, though it was rather similar to a mere boulevard from my perspective. In any case, to the left there were entrances to the place where this evening there happened to be a paid concert going on, as a result everything was closed off. The paying public went through a single middle way, shaped like a concave semicircle. Around the gates were placed plank booths for selling tickets, and a number of policemen and idlers were standing there too, the latter having no chance of getting through to the garden due to lacking the necessary funds.

In front of this entrance to the main garden there was a small front garden, but I couldn’t tell what it was growing or why it was here and fenced round in the first place. Its relation to the larger garden was like that of a waiting room in a bathhouse to the baths themselves.

The artist went through according to his “special right”, while I bought a ticket, and we entered through the gates to the accompaniment of the Skobelevskii March[1], after which there were cheers of “hoorah” and new demands for the exact same thing again.  

The public were out in great numbers, and all of them were pressed together on a small lawn, in the corner of which there was a wooden restaurant, made to look like a pagan temple. On one side of it a summer theatre had been erected from wood panels, and this was where the performance was now taking place and where a little while later my Petersburg orator ought to be doing his readings. Meanwhile, on the other side there was the “shell” where the military band was located and busy playing the march.

The society here clearly belonged to several different ranks: there were petty councillors, officers from the army, merchants and the “grey people” of the petty bourgeoisie. In the more obvious places were packed the traders, while in a far corner a regimental clerk and a certain sort of woman were hanging around.

Decrepit little tables covered by dirty cloths had been haphazardly thrown about, all inconveniently near to one another and all of them occupied. The people cheerfully gave me a public demonstration of what exactly it was they did here. In great demand it seemed was tea, beer, and vodka, although they called the latter “Simple person’s wine”, as if it would sound more respectable that way. Only in one place did I notice someone who was managing himself in a way suggestive of greater wealth: before him stood a bottle of champagne and cognac, and a teapot with boiling water for making punch. There were rather a lot of empty glasses around him, but he was at that moment sitting alone.

This guest had a remarkable appearance which soon thrust itself upon one’s sight. For one, he was gigantic, with a thicket of thick hair which already had flashes of grey in it among the black. His dress was extraordinarily elaborate, colourful, and tasteless. He was wearing a bright and deep blue linen shirt with a high upturned and starched collar. On his neck a white foulard with brown spots was carelessly hung, and over his shoulders was slung a jacket in the Manchester style. Then, on his chest was an extraordinarily massive golden chain with a diamond and a great number of dangling pendants. Even in terms of his footwear he was extremely original: he had on his feet such low boots that one might sooner have taken them for slippers, and between them and his pantaloons flashed bright stripped red cotton socks, just as if he had scratched his legs until they bled.

He was sitting at the biggest table, which was placed in the very best location – just beneath a large old lime tree for shade – and it seemed that he was in a state of nervous agitation.

The artist, who had accompanied me thus far, as soon as he saw this most original specimen squeezed my hand quietly and murmured to me:

“Well, well, well. Now this is something unexpected!”

“Who is he?”

“This, my dear friend, is a subject[2] of the finest sort.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that he is extremely curious. This is Martin Ivanich – a nobleman, merchant, and extremely prosperous fellow and an absolute nutcase to boot. In common parlance among our people he is often known as “Martin the righteous”, because he loves to tell everyone the truth. His fame, just like that of Ersha Ershovich[3], has spread along every river and port of our dear Russia. And he is not without an education either – he knows a lot of Pushkin and Griboedov[4] by heart, and if you get him to have a drink he’ll start to draw upon “Woe from Wit” or something from Gogol. Indeed, it looks as though he’s already started with his spree – he’s already sitting without his hat.”

“Well, it has gotten hot.”

“No – he always brings another bottle with him hidden under his hat, just in case they refuse to give him any more at the buffet.”

The artist stopped a lackey, just at that minute going past, and asked: “Has Martin Ivanovich got a bottle underneath his hat?”

“Sir… I don’t know what you mean…”

“Well, that means he’s ready,” the artist turned back to me, “and soon we two will witness a righteous performance of the most unexpected and noblest sort. We ought to go and have a chat with him.”

The artist went towards Martin Ivanovich and I trudged after him, stopping close by so as to observe their meeting.

The artist stopped in front of Martin and, after taking off his own hat, with a smile said: “I bow to your honour.”

Martin Ivanovich in response to this extended a hand to him and immediately brought him down onto the empty chair next to him, then answered:

“”I beg you to join me” – this said Sobakevich[5]”

“But I don’t want to,” Uttered my friend, but at that moment a glass of punch was already sitting before him, and Martin once more repeated the quote.

“I beg you to join me” – said Sobakevich.”

“No, truly I cannot. I have to go and read now.”

Martin poured out the punch onto the ground and muttered some unpleasantry or other befitting a Nozdrev[6].

I didn’t much like this – I understood why everybody ran away from this antique. As an original he certainly was an original, but it seemed to me that within him was contained not only the character of Sobakevich, but also Konstantin Konstandzhoglo[7], who boiled fish with their skins still on. Only, this Konstandzhoglo now had drunk a little more and in an even less pleasant mood he began to slag off the whole of society. He talked of how they “all are wretches and scoundrels”; and when the public once again demanded the Skobelevskii March he suddenly stood up without a cause and shushed the lot of them.

“Why’d he do that?” I asked my friend as he fled the vicinity.

“Because he is now going to cast a little righteousness in their direction. But anyway, we should head into the theatre.”

I left with my friend and made myself comfortable in his dressing room. We sang, read, and once more went out into the garden.

The spectacle was finished. The public had markedly thinned out and, as they were leaving, once more demanded the same Skobelevskii March. Without difficulty we found ourselves a table, but luckily or unluckily we had ended up right next to our Martin Ivanovich again. He, while we had been away, had managed to increase his sensibility still further, and his sense of justice, it appeared, now demanded a vocal stand from him. He now no longer sat, but stood and declaimed not poetry, but a prose excerpt which really made you admit that he was very well-read for someone of his milieu. He was rolling off from memory phrases from the praised word of Zakharov[8] to Catherine, which was located in “Considerations on the Matter of New and Old Style”.

“”Suvorov[9], so spoke Catherine, show us! He rose like a tumultuous whirlpool and he blasted the Turks from their guarded borders; like a hawk he fell upon his prey. Whoever he saw he sent to flight; whoever he met he conquered; and to whomever he brought his thunder he annihilated. There were none who escaped. Europa herself was left trembling… and…””  

But just at that moment the public once more demanded the Skobelevskii March, and once the orchestra had started fulfilling this request it was no longer possible to discern whatever Martin Ivanovich was declaiming. Only when the march had finished did his words reach us again:

““-Thus, must we honour our forebears and never think too highly of our own poor selves!””

What is this man trying to get at?” I asked my friend.

“Verily, verily, my good fellow, he is trying to achieve his justice.”

“What does he want it for now?”

“For him it is essential: the man is righteous, and you can see it on his face. Look look…” The storyteller finished, and I saw that Martin Ivanovich had suddenly stood up from his place and with rapid if tipsy steps had gone after an older man in military uniform who at that moment just happened to be walking past.

Martin Ivanovich caught up with this stranger (who happened to be the bandmaster of the orchestra), grabbed him from behind by the collar and shouted: “”No, no, you shan’t get away from me” – so said Nozdrev”.

The bandmaster smiled with a look of embarrassment but asked that he be released.

“No, I shall not let you go,” Answered Martin Ivanovich. “You are tormenting me!” And he forced him down towards the table and shouted again: “Drink to the insult to our affronted forebears and the darkness now covering our future descendants!”

“Who did I insult?”

“Who? Me, Suvorov, and all the righteous people of our land!”

“I didn’t think I… I wasn’t suggesting to…”

“Then for what in God’s name were you playing that itch of a march for the entire evening long?”

“The public requested it.”

“You are tormenting me with this injustice.”

“The public requested it.”

“Despise the public, then, if they are unjust!”

“What is this injustice you are going on about?”

“Why aren’t you playing Suvorov’s March, eh?”

“The public did not request it.”

“I suggest you clear up the matter with them. Play the Skobelevskii March once, then Suvorov’s March twice, because he waged war more than him. Yes! Now I shall let you go – head back right at this moment and play Suvorov’s March!”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no such thing as Suvorov’s March.”

“How could there be no march for Suvorov? “Suvorov, spoke Catherine, show us how it’s done! He blew things up, swooped down upon them, destroyed them, conquered them, gave a shake to Europa!…” and you’re saying he doesn’t have a march?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The public hasn’t requested one.”

“Aha! Well, I will show them what’s what!”

And Martin Ivanovich suddenly let go of the bandmaster, stood up on top of the table and cried out: “You public! You are unfair, and what’s more, you are a pig!”[10]

Everything suddenly grew noisy and people started moving about, while near the table where Martin Ivanovich the Righteous was continuing his speech a policeman had appeared and was now demanding that the orator lower himself back to the ground. Martin did not comply. He defended himself by kicking about with his legs and loudly continued to reproach everyone for their injustice towards Suvorov. He finished with a challenge for a duel, throwing down one of his shoes instead of a glove. A couple of townsfolk who had come to the rescue grabbed at his legs, but they couldn’t put an end to the mayhem: into the air there flew yet another boot, the entire table flipped over, and the sounds of smashing cutlery could be heard alongside the splashing of water and cognac… in a word, it was a right mess… at the buffet table for some reason the lights all momentarily went out and a everyone began a stampede towards the exit, while on their platform the musicians decided have a go playing their finale: “Only Gloried is our God in Zion.”[11]

My friend and I joined the handful of curious ones who had not rushed to leave and were now awaiting the denouement. We were all tightly packed in that place were the police were trying to restrain Martin Ivanovich, who was still managing to keep them off him and all the time was heroically defending the matter, crying: “Catherine spoke: Suvorov, show us… Explosions, swooping, annihilation, shaking!”

And then he was silent, either because he was tired or because something had finally managed to interrupt him.

In the darkness that now followed it was hard to see who had a hold of whom, but then the voice of the righteous man resounded anew: “Stop strangling me: I am on the side of righteousness!”

“There isn’t any justice here” Said the policeman.

“I am not speaking to you, but to the whole of society!”

“Maybe if you just go over here…”

“And I will go – but only get your hands off – come on! I’m going… hands off! No need to embrace me.”

“Gentlemen, please move out of the way.”

“I am not scared… Why is there no march for Suvorov?”

“Go complain to the justice of the peace.”

“And I will complain! Suvorov conquered more!”

“The justice will decide the matter.”

“The justice is an idiot! Where is that devil of a man to learn about it?”

“Well just wait and see!… it’s all in the protocol.”

“Well I’m not scared of your justice. I’m going!” Martin shouted. He threw off the arms of the policemen and went with big steps towards the exit. He was still not wearing any shoes – he was walking with only those multicoloured socks…

The police didn’t keep off and tried to encircle him.

From among the rows of the public who were still there someone cried out: “Martin Ivanovich, go and find your shoes… you need to put something on your feet.”

He stopped for a moment, but then he waved his hands and carried on, shouting: “It’s nothing… if I am a righteous man then I should be walking like this. Justice always walks without boots.”

At the gates they forced Martin into a carriage with a policeman and then they drove off.

The public then went off to wherever each of them needed to be.

“Well, all things considered, his reasoning was just,” Said one stranger to another as they overtook us.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just like he said – Suvorov conquered more than Skobolev after all – why shouldn’t they have played his march?”

“There isn’t an arrangement.”

“So that’s your injustice right there.”

“Eh, shut up. It’s not for us to bother with it. Maybe the justice of the peace will have to worry about it, but not you. Who cares about being just or not?”

My friend took me by the arm and whispered: “If you want to know – this is the real truth.”

While I was getting undressed in my room I heard two people going along the corridor, quietly discussing something. They decided to part ways by the entrance to the room next door and finished with the following: “Well, however you want to look at it, in his drunken state there was some justice alright.”

“Yes, well, maybe you’re right, but the devil was in it too.”

And they wished each other good night.

[1] Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev (1843-1882), recently deceased at the time the story takes place, had been a successful general during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878.

[2] The Russian has “suzhekt” a pun on “sub’ekt” meaning a subject, and “syuzhet”, meaning a plot.

[3] Ersha Ershovich was a character in a popular satire of the 17th Century

[4] Pushkin is the most famous Russian writer, equivalent in stature to Shakespeare in English. Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov (1795-1829) was a diplomat, poet, and dramatist. His comedy “Woe from Wit” is extremely popular in Russia and has had a huge influence on literature ever since its publication.

[5] A character in Gogol’s Dead Souls.

[6] Nozdrev is a character in Dead Souls as well. He is two-faced and superficial.

[7] See note 5

[8] I. S. Zakharov was a famously good stylist according to the work mentioned

[9] A V Suvorov was general under Catherine, and among the most well-known generals of the Imperial period altogether. Far more important that Skobelevskii.

[10] “You are swine” is another translation, but I thought using pig was more funny. In the Russian he is speaking to the public as if it were an individual, including using the second-person singular form of “you”.

[11] A religious hymn by M. M. Kheraskov

Comments and (brief) Analysis

As I mentioned above, this is the first Leskov piece I’ve read, so there’s only so much I can say about it. He’s not a particularly well-known writer outside of his homeland, and then only for “Lady Macbeth of Mtensk”. He writes simply, and that gives me an advantage translating the piece, because I have less recourse to the dictionary or my Russian friends. Still, I hadn’t anticipated Martin Ivanovich’s quotes when I started reading, and they were a bit trickier to translate – I did need help for those, because the Russian is much older than what I’m used to, being as it was from the 18th century.

Nikolai Leskov around the time this story was written. Doesn’t he look like a man with plenty of yarns to spin?

More useful, probably, is to explain a few of the ways the story connects to Benjamin’s ideas of storytelling.

For one, the story is recounted as if it were a story from real life – and indeed, Leskov is recounting a largely real event, according to the notes in his collected works. The narrator explains how they heard about the story then tells the story itself, which is simply an event. He also tries to frame it, in the beginning, within moral questions. That is, the story has a moral – another key element for Benjamin. It is trying to tell us something, most obviously that there are still righteous people out there, though they may seem strange to us.

The story is also written simply. The language is of a low register, and indeed in recounting the speech of people the narrator even veers into coarse day-to-day language of the time. He doesn’t try to explain actions, or provide justifications – he lets the characters speak for themselves, and then the reader find their moral. Because of the lack of a psychological level – another distinguishing characteristic of stories as opposed to novels – there is a layer of ambiguity. Are we to treat Martin Ivanovich as a truly righteous person, or is there more irony involved? These questions depend on how the story is told – with each retelling, a narrator could focus on one or the other.

Though it is true that this is a story in a book, and thus it lacks some of the other traits that oral stories would, it nonetheless serves as a kind of base, which through real-life retellings, could be shaped and moulded into a truer story. Perhaps you, reader, could pass it off as one of your own experiences, the next time you find yourself enjoying an evening with your friends, and see what they think. 🙂

Translation: “I Just Couldn’t Help Myself” by Leo Tolstoy

This is my first attempt at translating a complete prose piece longer than a page. It is a story by the later Tolstoy, “Nechayanno”, detailing and comparing two moments in the lives of two separate families living in a single building. For classes in my first year at uni I had to do some translation, but it was never complete texts. Anyway, since my work was always rushed out either for deadlines or the exam itself, I never had a chance to truly take care over the translation and editing. Which isn’t to say that this is perfect, but at least that I’ve put some time and effort into it. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find an English translation anywhere online, but the original can be read here: https://rvb.ru/tolstoy/01text/vol_14/01text/0317.htm

Have a read of my translation and let me know what you think in the comments. My comments on the challenges of the process of bringing the story into English, and on the text itself, are underneath.

I just couldn’t help myself, Chance, Bad luck, An Accident, Misfortune[1]

He returned after five in the morning and went through, as was his custom, into his dressing room. But instead of getting undressed he sat – collapsed – into his armchair, with his arms falling upon his knees. He sat there like that, completely motionlessly, maybe for five minutes, maybe ten, or maybe for a whole hour – he didn’t know.

The seven of hearts – just like that he was crushed! – and he saw in the mirror his terrible, unshaking face, which somehow still shined with self-satisfaction.

“Oh, devil take them all!” He said loudly.

There was a rustling behind the door. Then his wife, a beautiful and energetic brunette with sparkling eyes, entered in her nightcap and dressing gown with a broach on it and felt green slippers.

 “What’s happened?” She said plainly. But when she saw his face, she cried out again. “What’s happened? Misha! What’s happened?”

“What’s happened is, well, that I’ve fallen again.”

“You were gambling?”

“Yes.”

“Well, and so what?”

“So what?” He looked at her with a mixture of pleasure and malice[2] and carried on: “I have fallen, I’m dead! It’s all over.” And he gave a sob, trying to hold back his tears.

“Just how many times have I asked? Have I begged?”

She pitied him, but she pitied herself still more. Both because she knew there would be privations to put up with, and because she herself hadn’t slept all night, tormented by terrible thoughts as she waited for him. “It’s already five in the morning.” She thought, glancing at the clock upon the sideboard. – Well, you torturer, how much?”

He waved both of his hands around his head.

“All of it! No, not all of it, but more than that: everything I own, everything to my name. Go on and hit me for it. Do whatever you want to me. I’m dead now,” And he hid his face with his hands. “And I don’t know anything else!”

“Misha, Misha, listen to me for a moment. Pity me too – I’m a person just like you, and I didn’t sleep all night long. I waited for you, worked myself up with anxiety, and this is my reward. At least tell me what it was. How much?”

“So much that I can’t… that nobody can pay it. All sixteen thousand. Everything is over. I have to flee, but how…?”

He looked at her, and though he expected nothing of her at all, she drew him to herself. “How good she is.” He thought, and he took her by the hand. But as soon as he did she pushed him away.

“Misha, well, tell me the truth, how could you do this?”

“I wanted to win it all back…” He took out a cigar and greedily started to smoke. “Yes, of course… I am a bastard, I don’t deserve you. Get rid of me. Forgive me a final time, and I will go away – I’ll disappear. Katya, I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t. It was like I was dreaming, and then I just couldn’t help myself.” He started to squint. “But what can I do now? I’m already dead. But please forgive me, you at least.” And once more he tried to embrace her, but she angrily drew away from him.

“God, these pitiful men. They try to look all brave while things are going well, but the moment things take a turn for the worse it’s depression and uselessness all the way.”

She sat down on the other side of his washing table.

“Tell me how it happened.”

And he told her. He told her how he was taking his money to the bank and bumped into Nekrasov. Nekrasov suggested they go back to his and have a game. And they played, and he lost, and now he had decided to put an end to everything and himself too. He said that he had decided to put an end to everything, but she saw that in fact he had decided nothing, and was deeply depressed and ready to do anything.

She listened to him and, when he had finished, said: “All this is stupid, disgusting: how could you fail to stop yourself? This is cretinism, pure and simple.”

“Swear at me, do whatever you want to me.”

“Well, I don’t want to swear. I want to save you, just I have always saved you, no matter how disgusting and pitiful you’ve seemed to me.”

“Go on, go on. You’ve barely gotten started with the insults.”

“Look here, listen. Do you have any idea how base you are? How mercilessly you torment me? I am ill… Today I was taking even more of the stuff… and now this “surprise”. How powerless I feel.  And you say, what do we do? It’s very simple what we do. Right at this very moment – it’s six o’clock – go to Frim and tell him about it.”

“Will Frim really give a damn? I can’t tell him.”

“Oh, how stupid you are sometimes. Do you really think that I’m suggesting you tell the director of the bank that you lost the money they gave you – on trust! – in a game of cards? Tell him that you went to Nikolaevskii Station… No… it’s better go to the police right away. Wait a minute… not now, but in the morning at ten o’clock. You were going along Nechaevskii Lane when two people attacked you. One had a beard, the other was almost a boy. One was with a Browning and they took your money. After the police you need to go immediately Frim and say exactly the same thing.”

“Yes, but after all…” And he lit up a cigarette now. “What if they learned the truth from Nekrasov himself?”

“I will go to Nekrasov. I will tell him what’s happening. I’ll get it done.”

Misha began to calm down, and when it was 8 o’clock he fell asleep like a dead man. And then at ten she woke him.

…

This all happened early in the morning on the upper floor. And on the lower one, in the home of the Ostrovskys, at eight in the evening the following took place.

They had only just finished dinner. The young mother, princess Ostrovskaya, called over a servant, who had already served them all of the orange-jelly pie[3], and asked for a clean plate and, having placed on it a portion of the jelly, she turned to her children. There were two of them: the elder was a boy of seven, Voka, and the younger was a girl of four and a half, Tanya[4]. Both of them were very beautiful children. Voka was a serious, healthy and quiet boy with a charming smile which proudly presented his uneven, jumbled teeth; Tanya was a dark-eyed, talkative, quick and energetic little joker who always entertained with her constant cheeriness and affection towards everyone.

“Now, my dears, who will bring the pie to nanny?”

“I will,” Pronounced Voka.

“Me, me, me, me, me, me!” Started to cry out Tanya, racing down from her seat.

“No – who spoke first? Voka. Here, take it,” Said the father, who was always spoiling Tanya and for that reason was always glad for a reason to rectify the balance. “And you, Tanya,” He said to his favourite, “Let your brother have his turn.”

“I’m always glad to let Voka go. Go on, Voka, take it. I don’t mind giving him the chance.” Usually the children said their thanks after dinner. The parents drank their coffee and awaited the return of Voka. But for some reason he hadn’t come back.

“Tanya, run off into the children’s room and see why Voka hasn’t returned.”

Tanya jumped off her seat, brushing against her spoon and knocking it onto the floor. She picked it up and laid it on the edge of the table, where it soon fell again. She was dying of laughter as she picked it up once more, getting her leggings all messed up, then she flew into the corridor and then to the children’s room, at the far end of which there was the door to their nanny’s bedroom. She would have rushed through the children’s room, but suddenly she heard the sounds of sobbing behind her. She looked round. Voka was standing near his bed and, looking at the rocking horse, he carried the plate in his hands as he cried bitterly. On the plate there was not a crumb left.

“Voka, what’s up? Voka, what’s happened to the pie?”

“I… I… I… ate it as I walked. I just couldn’t help myself. I’m not going… anywhere… I’m not going. Tanya, I… really, it was an accident… I ate it all… at the beginning just a little, then all of it.”

“Well, what are we to do?”

“I just couldn’t help myself…”

Tanya fell into deep thought, while Voka burst into tears and wept. Suddenly everything became clear to her.

“Voka, here’s what we’ll do. You stop crying and go instead to nanny and tell her that you, without meaning to… well and say sorry too… and tomorrow we’ll give her both of our slices. She’s kind and will understand.”

Voka’s sobbing stopped, and he wiped away his tears with both his palm and the back of his hand.

“But how do I say it?” He said with a trembling voice.

“Well, let’s go in together.”

And they went, and when they returned they were happy and cheery. And happy and cheery, too, were their nanny and parents, when the nanny, laughing and touched, told them the whole story.

A little bit about the translation

I chose Tolstoy as the first person to translate because, contrary to the size of his reputation, he’s actually a very easy writer to understand for a Russian learner. His sentences are perfectly formed, if long (I had to cut down a number of them here, and rearrange still others), and his vocabulary is rarely exceedingly complex.  Anna Karenina was for me, even though it was in Russian, a literal page turner. His style is fantastic because its virtuosity is in never getting in the way of the story yet at the same time managing to heighten every moment of it. Other great writers are great because of their content; many are great for their style; but to me Tolstoy is one of the best examples of a writer who synthesises style and content in the 19th century, before content moved predominantly into the characters themselves, and style had to morph to cope.

Other than Tolstoy, I might have done some Chekhov or Turgenev, both of whom are also good at writing well. Dostoevsky, who is my favourite Russian prose writer, is nonetheless pretty awful at writing, and I am not comfortable trying to translate him just yet. Writers of the 20th Century I find more challenging to read and translate not only because they tend to be more introspective, but also because their works tend to be more cluttered with realia, and my vocab isn’t quite up to it. Furthermore, there is the danger of copyright, which stops me from translating someone like Ivan Bunin until I’ve read all of the rules properly.

In the footnotes I commented on a few things that were tricky. Really the hardest thing is making something that sounds good in English. I made the translation last week, and then came back once I’d had a break so that I could edit it with fresh eyes. Sentences need to be cut, words need to be shifted around. And all the time I feel conscious of every little change I make as though it’s a sin before the great old man and his craft. I did my best though, and for a first attempt, I hope it sounds alright.

An image of Tolstoy.
The old master himself. Yet most of the fiction he is famous for was written when he was much younger.

A Few Words of Analysis

The story comes from the late Tolstoy. What that means is that it comes from a man now deeply concerned about the moral issues of his time, and about education. Both of these come from a religious conversation that took place as he was finishing Anna Karenina and left him a deeply devout radical Christian. Art, suddenly, had to have a clear message, and the two-part structure of the story is one way in which he, relatively painlessly for once, hints at this message he wants to convey. But what is the message? It’s best to take a look at each part in turn.

The first part details the return home of Misha after a night spent gambling. Gambling always seems to play a big role in Russian fiction of the 19th Century, and it famously inspired and in some cases forced the creation of some of Dostoevsky’s best fiction. Tolstoy himself squandered his entire inheritance on gambling while he was in the military, so he too knew a thing or two about it. Misha is a man in crisis. He has no direction in life without his money, and can think only of fleeing his guilt. This isn’t even the first time, but now the mistakes have piled up too high. He refers to himself as a dead man, and there is an undercurrent of suicidal thought throughout his thoughts and words.

At first his wife seems like a good character to his bad one. She arrives, she disapproves, but she forgives him, in a way, and tries to help. But her help is only more deceit and danger – it is lying to the bank, and making up a story about thieves. Though she loves him, what she proposes is not a good resolution to the problem. It is trying to make a right with two wrongs.

There are a number of indications that both husband and wife are to be disapproved of here, some of them ridiculous and Tolstoyan, while others are a little more sensible. Gambling, of course, is a sin, and for that Misha has done badly. He lives without faith, so he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he’s in trouble. He smokes too – one of Tolstoy’s greatest demands of himself when he became seriously Christian was that he quit the habit. His wife is ill and taking medicine without success. Anna Karenina, once she had fallen in the eyes of society (and Tolstoy), also developed an illness that required medication. What Tolstoy wants to show by this, however, is that medicine will never be enough to help someone who is morally fallen, as both of the characters here are. They need faith.

The second part, detailing a minor incident in the life of an aristocratic family, is shorter, and in a way simpler. It mirrors the first in that like the first part it focuses on a man in a state of despair being found by a woman who proposes a solution. Like Misha, Voka makes a mistake when he eats the pie intended for his nanny, and like Misha he suffers for his guilt. Yet there is a key difference between the two incidents, and it is not one of scale, but rather of response. Voka is found by Tanya in a state of despair, and she suggests to him a way of dealing with the problem. They will tell the truth, and try to make amends by giving away their pie tomorrow. Unlike Misha and his wife, who try to save themselves by telling lies, and hoping to avoid the consequences, here Voka accepts his punishment and atones for it.

Unlike with the first part, where we can only guess at the result of the lie, here we know what happens to the children. The adults laugh about their story and are touched – they forgive them. In short, Tolstoy seems to suggest that telling the truth is the best course of action, and the mark of a happy and morally healthy family. (It’s noticeable, also, that in the first part there is no indication that the couple have children.)

There is more to it than that, and more angles to come at it from, but that’s what I’m taking away from it. As always, the thing that I do think is absolutely amazing with Tolstoy is the way that I feel I could carry the story on in my head. These characters, sketched out in a few scant paragraphs, already seem real, living beings to me, independent of the text that contains them. Nobody else does it as well as him. It’s a funny little story, overall, with much more to say than its small size would seem to indicate. We don’t always have control over our actions, but we always have control over how we deal with their consequences. It makes us reflect on that, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.

Let me know what you think of the translation, or of the story, below.

[1] The Russian word “Nechayanno”/Нечаянно can usually be translated simply as “unintentionally”. It is related to the word “чуять”, which means “to scent”, in that both of them are related to sensing. Nechayanno means without being fully conscious, then. I initially wanted something like “by accident” or “a mistake” to be the title, but as will become clear, the word is used in different ways in the story, and no single English word would have been adequate. Hence the phrase.

[2] The Russian word “Zloradstvo” doesn’t have a single word equivalent, funnily enough. It combines both Evil “Zlo” and gladness “Rad”

[3] Food is always hard to translate, since there is often both a cultural barrier and a historical one to overcome.

[4] Tanechka, actually, on account of her diminutive size. I decided to keep the name more familiar in an English context. I have not been able to find out where in the world the name Voka comes from. Rather confusingly, if not also amusingly, most attempts to write вока in Google just lead to information about woks.