Category: Russian Literature

“Asya” by Ivan Turgenev

I’ve never liked Turgenev. What I mean is that I’ve never been particularly impressed by him. Among the major Russian writers of the 19th century he bears the fewest marks of the land of his birth. This is fair enough, for a man who corresponded with Theodor Storm and Gustave Flaubert, and spent much of his life in Europe rather than Russia. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve always found Turgenev boring. Unlike Dostoevsky, ideas don’t seem to interest him, and though he tries to write passionate characters he can’t actually write characters who ideas seem to interest them either. In On the Eve, we have a classic Turgenev tale of a revolutionary who forgets about his convictions when love appears. Fathers and Sons is not much better.

If I were feeling charitable, I’d say Turgenev’s stories are mostly about the failures of an ideological way of living. His characters are shown, time and again, to fail to achieve their goals because of their own hesitations and inaction. They think they believe something, but it always turns out that they don’t quite know themselves. It’s either love spoiling the young revolutionary, or his own weakness of will. Either way, hesitancy leading to quiet failure is the common thread in Turgenev’s work. No character really feels strongly enough to actually do anything, so opportunities are always being missed and everyone ends up sad. In “Asya”, the novella which I finished this week, the formula is little changed.

“Asya”: an Introduction to the Plot

“Asya” was completed in 1858 and shows Turgenev’s Europeanness rather plainly by being set in Europe. Our narrator and the two other principal characters are Russians, but the action takes place somewhere along the Rhine in the German lands. N. N. is our narrator, and “Asya” is ostensibly a recollection by an older and wiser N. N. of a time in his youth – “First Love”, another Turgenev novella, has a similar structure. Our hero is about twenty five at the time of his story, carefree and travelling “without any goal or plan”. He enjoys observing others, and he has recently attempted a tryst with a widow only to get rebuffed. But we shouldn’t worry for the sake of N. N.’s soul – he says himself that the wound she left “wasn’t very deep”.

In any case, he winds up in the town of Z., on one bank of the Rhine. On the other is another town, L., which can be reached by ferry. Neither of them is on the track usually beaten by Russians holidaying in Europe. Having nothing else to do, one day N. N. heads over there, and to his surprise comes across two other Russian tourists, a seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Asya, and her brother, who goes by Gagin. Gagin is a bad artist but a friendly fellow, and the two men strike up an acquaintance. Asya, however, is a wild thing – and Turgenev is constantly comparing her to a wild animal, or a child – and the narrator isn’t quite sure what to make of her. At one moment she’s enthusiastic and buoyant, at another she dresses demurely and shuns contact. One thing N. N. is certain of, however – she’s not Gagin’s real brother.

Well, he’s right. He overhears her making a confession of love to her “brother”, but it turns out she’s not actually his secret lover – as we might suppose – but actually his half-sister. She was born to one of the servants employed by Gagin’s father shortly after his wife died. Gagin for a long time never knew his sister’s identity, and her mother kept her out of the big house where the aristocrats lived. However, once her mother dies Gagin’s father took Asya into his own house, and on his deathbed he admits to Gagin that she’s actually his sister. So anyway, that’s how the two of them got to know each other.

Gagin and his sister go to Petersburg soon after, and he puts her into a boarding school – after all, he can’t keep her with him. Then, he decides he’s sick of work and wants to travel, so the two of them head to Europe for a wander, as you do.

Social Monster or Victim – Who or What is Asya?

The Russian name “Asya” is a shortened version of quite a lot of names. I know an Anastasia who uses that name, and an Arsenia. Turgenev’s Asya is, however, an Anna – which is quite unusual. It is a simple example of her rather confused, mixed identity. She is half aristocrat, half peasant – not just by parentage, but also by the amount of time she has spent in each milieu. If she stayed in Russia she would immediately be identified as not belonging, but in Europe there’s a little more leeway for her, a chance to determine her own identity. Turgenev plays up her unnaturalness by comparing her to a “little beast” and a “boy” on various occasions. N. N. notices in Asya something unnatural, though he’s unable to put his finger on what until Gagin tells him.

Asya is playing a role – she is trying to be the aristocrat she isn’t, and the effort is draining. Just like Maslova in Tolstoy’s Resurrection, because Asya is the product of two social groups she struggles to sit easily in either of them, causing great spiritual strain – like Maslova, she also struggles with having had an absent mother in her life. N. N. once comes across her reading a French novel and complains of her taste, not realising what her reading means to her: “She wanted to be no worse than other ladies, and so she gave herself to books”. Later, she desperately asks him “Tell me what I should read! Tell me what I should do!”

Youth, Love, and a Complete Inability to Do Anything

Unsurprisingly, after a few days together both Asya and N. N. fall hopelessly in love with each other. Asya, a girl who “doesn’t experience emotions by halves”, arranges a rendez-vous between them. They meet, but N. N. has already spoken with Gagin about it, and he comes prepared to play a role himself. She wants him to marry her, and he refuses. He doesn’t even say what he feels for her. Shortly afterwards, she and Gagin disappear, never to be seen again.

The narrator’s reluctance to marry her stems from his class prejudices, from the need for respectability. It also stems from his word of honour, given to Gagin, that he wouldn’t let his emotions get the better of him. But once Asya has gone he realises his love for her and feels that it is stronger than anything else. However, he had missed his opportunity, and he will never have another such chance again. He grows old, feeling sad and regretting what he lost.

Honour, class, are apparently left worthless when love has escaped our grasp. But Turgenev’s novella tells us all this with enough irony to keep us guessing. First of all, we might think of the structure – why is N. N. telling this story? He says at the end “that I didn’t feel sad about her for too long”, that probably she’d have been a bad wife. At the beginning of his story he talks of youth as like a “biscuit that we think is hearty bread”, and says that like flowers we should never bloom too long. But I think his words are ultimately a kind of self-deception. The man is alone, living on his memories, and perhaps worth feeling sorry for. As he says, “happiness has no tomorrow”, and he missed his “today”.

Location and Literature

“Asya” doesn’t strike me as a particularly complex story, but there are a few things going on behind the scenes that are interesting enough to mention. I quite like the idea of the two towns, separated by the river. The crossing from one end to another is a nice visual metaphor for what happens to N. N. as he enters Asya’s world. I also like the way Turgenev uses literary references in “Asya”. We have Gretchen (Goethe’s Faust), Tatyana (Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin), and the Lorelei myth, which has featured in lots of poems by various Germans including Goethe and Heine. The Tatyana one is quite interesting. Asya says “I would have liked to be Tatyana” – a woman who loved a man who didn’t love her back, and then rejected him once he did. The comparison with Pushkin’s heroine ties Asya to her homeland (something N. N. remarks on elsewhere, saying she’s the most Russian creature he’s ever seen), but it also makes her a little immature for wanting to be a tragic heroine. Although N. N. is mostly to blame for the failure of the relationship, Asya herself is not without fault for her decision to appoint mysterious rendez-vous and make overly harsh demands of N. N. – her final note said if he’d said he’d loved her she would have stayed. So much for second chances or taking things slowly!

This tragic nature makes us think the story will end with a melodramatic death scene. Indeed, there’s a frightening moment when N. N. goes searching around the town for her, and it seems certain she’s about to take her own life (as Lorelei did, by jumping into the river). It turns out that she didn’t, and just went home instead. While Turgenev can’t escape traditional descriptions of women or boring men he is at least wise enough to know that not every story involving a girl needs to end with suicide.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt Turgenev was a sensitive soul. He wrote some beautiful nature passages which I had to force myself to analyse in my first year at university, but in some sense that’s about it. His characters are limp and forgettable. I don’t actually remember Fathers and Sons, though I’ve read it twice. I only remember Bazarov because he’s significant in Russian literary history, not because he actually shines in his own story. “Asya” was very okay. While it’s true I was surprised by it in a few places, at the end of the day it’s just another story about two young people who fall in love and end up unhappier for their trouble. There are a few interesting ideas in here, but not really enough to make this story particularly exciting. In the end, “Asya” is as limp as its narrator. And that’s just doesn’t make for an awesome reading experience.

Still, it’s a nice story to have in my mental repertoire. There are some worthwhile comparisons to be made between Asya and Lelenka in Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya’s “Boarding School Girl” – both are almost the same age, and both of them are faced with the challenges of forming their own identity against the identity that society wants to force upon them. But Turgenev is not particularly interested in the Woman Question, and anyway I can’t write about him on that topic in my exam because he’s not a woman to begin with.

If you’re out here looking for some Turgenev to read that’s not Fathers and Sons, I’d recommend Rudin over “Asya”. It’s not too long but it’s much more interesting. But if you have nothing else to read except “Asya”, then be my guest. After all, if you’re dying of thirst then even the lukewarm bottle of water you left out on the table overnight will do for a drink.

“The Wanderer” by N. P. Ogarev (translation)

This year at Cambridge I founded a small Russian poetry translation group. Unlike my German poetry translation group, which never made it beyond a Facebook group chat, I can call the Russian one a success. We have yet to meet in person, but already we have seen each other over Zoom a few times. This poem, by Nikolai Ogarev, was the first poem I translated specifically for the group.

I came across it while flicking through an anthology of Russian religious poetry that I have. Much as with Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, which I wrote about last week, I enjoy religious poetry because it makes people’s beliefs accessible and stamps them with an individual’s personality. We often come away from religious poetry believing in belief, even if we don’t get any further.

As for why I translated Ogarev’s poem instead of any of the hundred others included, the answer is rather more simple – it is nice and short! “The Wanderer” is the only poem of his included, so there was lots of white space around it, which gave me a place to begin the translation.

Anyway, here’s the poem:

The Wanderer

 Misty lies our dreary vale,
 Clouds conceal the sky.
 Sadly blows each mournful gale,
 Sadly looks each eye.
  
 Though you wander, have no fear,
 Though this life is hard -
 Peace and prayer are always near,
 Safe within your heart!

I enjoyed translating this poem, just as I enjoyed reading the original. One of the advantages of translating a poem (and poet) which is not too well known is that it is far easier than something from a “Great” poet. Both because the poet has inevitably been translated many times already (and certainly better than you could), but also because it’s nice to feel a certain degree of equality to your quarry. It is certainly presumption on my part, but there you go. I don’t feel, from the original, that Ogarev is a fantastic artist, but I felt he was one I was good enough to be able to translate. A similar train of thought is how I explain my success with Theodor Storm’s poetry in German.

I don’t feel the poem itself needs much explanation. It’s the kind of optimistic call for self-reliance that is always necessary for a revolutionary (and most of the rest of us). But I like it. It’s a nice little credo, the sort of thing that perhaps really can be mumbled before bed.

A photo of the page in my anthology of Russian prayers where I translate Ogarev's "The Wanderer".
My surprisingly neat attempts at translating “The Wanderer”. Generally it is much worse – I feel particularly sorry for my copy of Fet’s poems.

Nikolai Ogarev is best known now for his association with Alexander Herzen, a major Russian radical who lived for much of his adult life in exile in London. Together they printed the newspaper “The Bell”, which was smuggled into Russia and provided a far more liberal outlook than could be found in most Russian papers because of tsarist censorship. Today there is a website with the same name, run from America (in English and Russian), which gives an interesting look on Russian affairs. The spirit of criticism lives on, even though there is little else that links the two.

Thanks for reading. For more Russian poetry, look at my translation of Baratynsky.

Misery / Toska by Anton Chekhov (Translation)

Chekhov’s story, Misery (Toska in Russian), is one of my favourites. It has a certain mystical resonance, in spite of its earthy subject matter. I first tried to translate it two years ago, but never got further than the first paragraph. This time I have managed to get to the end. It has previously been translated under the title “Heartache” (by Payne) and “Misery” (by Garnett). After the conclusion I will write a few final comments.

Misery

To whom shall I tell my sorrow?

The day is ending. Large wet snow lazily flutters around the recently-lit streetlamps and lies in a thin layer upon roofs, the backs of horses, on hats and shoulders. The coachman Iona Potapov is completely white… white as a ghost. He has curled himself up as tightly as any living being can and sits where he is without moving a muscle. Even if an entire snowdrift fell upon him… even then he would not think to shake the snow from himself… His little horse is also white and motionless. With the way that she doesn’t move, with the blockiness of her body and her legs straight as sticks, she looks more like a toy horse than any real one. It seems she is lost in thought. If you had been torn from your plough and the usual dull pictures of life and thrust here, into this confusion of monstrous fires, the endless crack of the whip and people constantly running past… if this happened to you, it would be strange not to be left with something to think about.

Iona and his horse have been in their spot for a long time now. They left home before lunch, and so far nobody has had need of them. And now an evening gloom is descending on the whole city. The pale light of the streetlamps becomes brighter and more intense, and the hustle and bustle of the street grows louder.

“Driver, take us to Vyborgskaya” Iona hears. “Driver!”

Iona shudders and sees through eyelashes sticky with snow an officer in a hooded overcoat.

“To Vyborgskaya,” repeats the officer. “Wake up man! Take me to Vyborgskaya!”

To show his agreement Iona gives a tug on the reins. Powdery snow falls from his shoulders and from the horse’s back… The officer sits in the sledge. His driver smacks his lips, extends his neck like a swan, sits up straight and gives his horse a whip, more from habit than any real need. His little horse also extends her neck, bends her stick-legs, and uncertainly moves off from their spot…

“What are you doing, idiot!” As soon as they got going Iona hears shouting from some dark mass, moving forward and back nearby. “Where the devil are you going? Stay in your lane!”

“Can’t you drive? Stick to the right!” The officer complains.

The dark mass attacking him was a coachman with a private carriage. A pedestrian crossing the road has bumped into Iona’s horse and now glares at him and shakes the snow from his sleeve. Iona shifts about uneasily, as if he is sitting on needles, sticks his elbows out to the side and lets his eyes wander, as though not in his right mind. It’s as if he doesn’t understand where he is or what he’s doing.

“What a bunch of scoundrels they all are!” says the witty officer. “Either they try to bump into you or they just throw themselves under your horse. They have it all worked out.”

Iona looks at his passenger and his lips quiver. He seems to want to say something, but he only croaks.

“What?” Asks the officer.

Ion bends his mouth into a smile, tenses his throat and croaks:

“My son, sir, he… my son passed away this week.”

“Hm!… and what did he die of?”

Iona twists his whole torso round to his passenger and says: “Who knows? Probably from fever… Three days he lay in the hospital and then he died… It was God’s will.”

“Out of the way, damn you!” Sounds ring out in the darkness. “You dog, what’s wrong with you? Use your eyes!”

“Come on, come on…” Says the passenger. “Otherwise we won’t make it till tomorrow. Give her another go with the whip!”

The coachman once more extends his neck, straightens himself out and with a certain solid gracefulness waves his whip. Later he looks at his passenger a few times, but the other has already closed his eyes and no longer seems in the mood to listen. Once he has let him out at Vyborgskaya, Iona stops outside an inn, curls into himself again and waits without stirring… Wet snow once more paints him and his horse white. An hour passes, then another…

Along the pavement, loudly clacking their galoshes and teasing each other, come three young men. Two of them are tall and thin; the third is short and stooped.

“Driver, take us to Politseiskii Bridge!” Shouts the hunchback with a rasping voice. “Twenty copecks for the three of us.”

Iona pulls on his reins and smacks his lips. Twenty copecks isn’t fair, but what does he care? What’s the difference between a rouble and ten? For him it’s all the same, so long as he has a passenger… The young people, swearing and shoving at each other, approach the sledge and all three of them immediately climb into the space for seating. Now they start to argue about who will sit and who will have to stand? After a long argument, much capriciousness and reproaches, they decide that the hunchback, as the smallest, is the one who ought to stand.

“Well, let’s get going!” Rasps the hunchback, settling himself just behind Iona and breathing on the back of his neck. “Chop chop! That’s quite a hat, mate! I don’t think you could find a more wretched piece of work anywhere in all Petersburg…”

“Hehe… hehe…” Laughs Iona. “Yes, it is a strange one…”

“Well, whatever it is, come on and get us moving. Are we going to go this slow the whole journey? Come on, or I’ll give you something to help speed you up.”

“My head is killing me…” Says one of the taller men. “When I was at the Dukmasovs’ house yesterday Vasya and I managed four bottles of cognac between us.”

“I just don’t understand why you always lie about this stuff.” Says the other taller man. “You lie like a dog.”

“God be my witness, it’s true…”

“It’s just as true as saying a flea can cough.”

“Hehe!” Says Iona with a smirk. “What good-natured gentlemen you are!”

“Tfu, what do you know?…” says the hunchback indignantly. “Are you going or not, you old thing? Is this really how you drive? Give her a whip! What the hell. Come on!”

Behind his back Iona feels the hunchback turn and the rumbling of his voice. He hears the swearing, sees the people, and little-by-little he starts to feel the loneliness retreat from his heart. The hunchback keeps complaining in the most elaborate manner until at last a fit off coughing comes over him. The two taller men start to talk about some or other Nadezhda Petrovna. Iona looks round to them. He waits for a short pause, then he turns round again and murmurs: “This week my, my son… he passed away!”

“We all die.” Says the hunchback, drying his lips after the last of the coughing has finished. “Well, come on, get to it! God, I’m afraid I really can’t go on like this! When on earth are we going to get there?”

“Why don’t you give him a whack to get him going? Just a small one!”

“Old man, do you hear us? You don’t want me to give you a whack in the neck, do you? No point just waiting around with you, better to leave and do the rest on foot. Do you hear us, you snake? Or do you not give a damn about what we have to say?”

And Iona hears the sound of the blow more than he feels it.

“Hehe…” he laughs. “What cheerful gentlemen… may God grant you health!”

“Eh, driver, are you married?” Asks a tall one.

“Me, sir? Hehe, cheery gentlemen! Nowadays the only wife I have is the earth beneath our feet. Hoho… The grave, I mean!… My son is dead, and yet I live… What a strange thing to happen… Death must have mixed us up. Instead of coming for me, he went for my boy…”

And Iona turns to tell them the story of his son, but just at that moment the hunchback sighs with relief and announces that they – thank God! – have arrived. Iona gets his twenty kopecks, and for a long time he looks after the walkers, and watches as they disappear into a dark entranceway. Once more he is alone, once more he has only silence for company… The great miserythat he had managed to keep down returns and makes his chest fit to burst with its strength. Iona’s eyes run over the crowds scurrying down both sides of the street anxiously, like the eyes of a martyr. Is there not one person among the many thousands who would hear him out? But the crowds run on, caring neither for him nor his misery… His misery is enormous, it flows without limits. If Iona’s chest split open and all his misery spilled out there would be nowhere on earth that wouldn’t be overwhelmed by it. And yet nobody can see it. Somehow it has managed to fit inside such a worthless little shell that even in broad daylight you wouldn’t be able to make it out…

Iona sees a doorman with a paper bag and decides to talk with him.

“What time would you say it is, my good man?” He asks.

“Ten… what are you doing still here? Get a move on!”

Iona drives a few feet away, bends over, and surrenders to his misery…It already seems like nobody wants to speak with him. But in less than five minutes he straightens up, shakes his head, as if he had felt a stinging pain, and pulls on the reins… He can’t take it any longer.

“Let’s go back.” He thinks. “Let’s go back to the yard!”

And his horse, understanding his thought perfectly, begins to trot the way. Half an hour later, and Iona is already sitting by the big and dirty stove. On the stove, on the floor, on the benches, people are snoring. The air was heavy and stuffy…  Iona looks on the sleepers, scratches himself and thinks that it was a mistake to go back so early.

“And I didn’t get enough done to afford any oats…” he thinks. “That’s true misery for you… A man who knows his work… who has eaten well and fed his horse… such a man will be at ease forevermore…”

In one of the corners a young coachman pushes himself up, yawns sleepily, then reaches for a bucket of water.

“After a drink?” Iona asks.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it!”

“Well, here’s to your health, then. Now, as for me, my son has died… have you heard? Just this week in the hospital… what a story!”

Iona watches to see what effect his words have. But the younger coachman has already covered his head and gone back to sleep. The old man sighs and scratches himself… Just like the young man wanted to drink, he himself wants to talk. Soon it will be a whole seek since his son died, and in all that time he hasn’t spoken with anybody about it… He needs to speak about it seriously, with purpose… He needs to say everything: about how his son got ill, and how he suffered, what he said before he died, and how he died… He needs to describe how the funeral went and his trip to the hospital to pick up the dead man’s clothes. His daughter Anisa is still alive, back in his home village… He needs to say something about her too… The only way to speak about all this would take time. His listener should sigh, and gasp, and wail… It would be best of all to talk with the women. They may be stupid, but they always listen attentively and cry at the right moments.

“Let’s go and check on the horse.” Thinks Iona. “You’ll always have a chance to get some sleep later… Probably you’ll sleep enough to get your fill…”

He gets dressed and goes into the stables where his horse is. He thinks about oats and hay and the weather… Alone, he doesn’t dare think of his son… He could speak with someone about him, but to think about him or even just imagine his face was unbearably painful for him without company…

“Having a nibble?” Iona asks his horse, seeing her shining eyes. “Well, keep at it… If we didn’t earn enough for oats, I suppose there’s always hay for the two of us… Yes… I’m already too old for driving… It’s my son who should be driving, not me… He was a real coachman – you could tell… if only he had lived…”

Iona stands in silence for a while before continuing: “That’s the way it is, old girl. Kuzma Ionich is no more… He should have lived a long life, but he was taken before his time… How can I explain it? Let’s say you have a foal, and you’re its mother… and let’s say this foal is supposed to have a long life… wouldn’t you be sorry?

The horse continues to nibble. She listens and breathes onto the hands of her owner…

And Iona gives himself over to his misery and tells her the whole story.

Closing Remarks

Who has not felt the particular loneliness of trying to speak only to find that nobody is willing to listen? Not all of us have lost a child, and I certainly haven’t, but still that feeling that the world has turned its back against us is one that I feel from time to time. And in those moments of misery, the path back to joy can be so strange that we’d never have considered it otherwise. Talking to a horse may be just the thing we need.

It’s worth noting that the Russian title, Toska, is one of those words which are regularly touted as untranslatable. Nabokov, indeed, rhapsodises about it. And it’s true that the word is in a way untranslatable, because not all of its meanings correspond to one specific English word. There’s often a hint of wistful boredom about it, of being stuck at home and not quite knowing what to do. But that’s certainly not the case here, where the sense of melancholy is overwhelmed by the pain of loss. I felt my title was adequate. So, it seems, did Constance Garnett.

I enjoyed translating this. If it has any major problems, do let me know in the comments. Although I’d be more interested to here if the story resonates with you, so why not comment about that too?