The People Immortal by Vasily Grossman - first published 1942- translated from Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler - 2022 - to be published by The New York Review of Books September 22, 2022

 

The People Immortal by Vasily Grossman - first published 1942- translated from Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler - 2022 - to be published by The New York Review of Books September 22, 2022 - 252 pages

Vasily Grossman 

Born: December 12, 1905, Berdychiv, Ukraine

Stalingrad- first published in Russia in 1952- published translated into English by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler - 2019

Life and Fate - 1960- translated by Robert Chandler-2006-considered his masterwork 

His WW Two  reporting has been collected -The Road: Stories, Journalism, and Essays, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Olga Mukovnikova, commentary and notes by Robert Chandler with Yury Bit-Yunan, afterword by Fyodor Guber, New York, New York Review Books, 2010, ISB

Died: September 14, 1964, Moscow, Russia 

The People Immortal is set during the catastrophic for Russia first few months of the German invasion of the country.  It centers on a Russian army battalion whose mission is to, at any cost, slow the advancing Germans.  Through the eyes of Russians ranging from privates who want only to go home to Generals with deep love for the motherland Grossman brings the Russian experience vividly to life.  Germans are portrayed as brutal killers without a shred of humanity.  Nazis are Germans who have never heard of Goethe or Beethoven but worship Hitler.

For me the best part of this marvelous work were the many conversations. 

Julia Volohova has contributed an informative introduction and afterword.

Mel Ulm

“Spindleshanks” - A Set in Paris Short Story by Sasha Chorny -1931. Translated by Maria Bolshteyn - 2017 - included in Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky - edited by Bryan Karetnyk -2017

 

“Spindleshanks” - A Set in Paris Short Story by Sasha Chorny -1931. Translated by Maria Bolshteyn  - 2017 - included in Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky - edited by Bryan Karetnyk -2017

Paris in July 2022 

This is my eighth year participating in a wonderful event, Paris in July.  The event hosts are Reader Buzz and Thyme for Tea.  Posts on any and all things Paris are welcome.  You can share your memories of a trip to Paris, your favorite French recipes or restaurants, art in the  Louvre, your favorite set in Paris Movies (mine are Ninotchka and Midnight in Paris).  Of course the French literary masters as well as contemporary writers are great subjects.

My Prior Paris in July 2022 Posts

1. Yiddish Paris by Nicholas Underwood - 2022
2. After the Romanovs- Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque to Revolution and War by Helen Rappaport - 2022
3. Late Hour” -A Set in Paris Short Story by Ivan Bunin - 1938- translated by David Humphries -included in The Gentleman from San Francisco and other Stories-- 
4. The Paris Tattoo” - An Essay by Ann Patchett - from her essay collection These Precious Days- 2022

“Spindleshanks” is a Russian Emigre married man’s deeply felt litnany of complaints about living in Paris has negatively impacted Russian women, particularly his wife. He is talking to an old friend who has just arrived in Paris.

“You remember what my Natasha looked like back in Narva. A meadow blossom! Glowing with health. She really turned heads on the street: all those curves – natural, no padding! Round shoulders, apple cheeks and so forth … A regular cello!…. Take Rubens, for example, or our own Kustodiev, or some sensible ancient Greek sculptor – they’re all on the same page. If it’s Venus you’re depicting, then make her look like Venus…But now … Have you seen what my Natasha did to herself, following everyone else’s lead? Started out as a beautiful Houri and finished off looking like one of the Furies. ‘Why did you plane yourself away like this?’..

Ok we get the idea. Paris has for Russian men made their women want to be Spindleshanks, an arhachic term for a long  logged skin and bones woman, just opposite of what Russian men like.

SASHA CHORNY (1880–1932) was the pen name of Alexander Mikhailovich Glickberg. A satirical poet, short-story writer and children’s writer, he enjoyed immense popularity in pre-Revolutionary Russia. He served at the Front during the First World War and was opposed to the 1917 October Revolution. In 1918 he and his wife left Russia for Lithuania. In spring 1920 they moved to Berlin. Following a brief stay in Rome in 1923, he moved to Paris, and in 1929 he purchased a plot in La Favière, where he spent the last years of his life.

Mel Ulm

THE LAST AND THE FIRST by Nina Berberova - 1929- Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz 2021-published by Pushkin Press

 This is part of my participation in Paris in July 2021 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea 

This year I have been focusing on Russian Émigrés in Paris 

THE LAST AND THE FIRST by Nina Berberova - 1929- Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz 2021-published by Pushkin Press

Nina Berberova 

Born July 26, 1901 - St Petersburg, Russia 

She leaves Russian 1922 for Berlin. With her husband Vladislav Khodasevich, a well known poet 

1924 - They move to Paris. He dies 1939

She became a contributor to Russian Émigré publications including many short stories 

1950 - Moves to USA and becomes a citizen in 1959

She taught Russian at Yale then Princeton .she retired in 1971

Dies September 26, 1993 - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, USA

Dies - September 26, 1993 - Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 

“The first English translation of celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova’s debut novel: an intense story of family conflict and the struggle over the future of émigré life

On a crisp September morning, trouble comes to the Gorbatovs’ farm. Having fled revolution and civil war in Russia, the family has worked tirelessly to establish themselves as crop farmers in Provence, their hopes of returning home a distant dream. While young Ilya Stepanovich is committed to this new way of life, his step-brother Vasya looks only to the past. With the arrival of a letter from Paris, a plot to lure Vasya back to Russia begins in earnest, and Ilya must set out for the capital to try to preserve his family’s fragile stability.

The first novel by the celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova, The Last and the First is an elegant and devastating portrayal of the internal struggles of a generation of émigrés. Appearing for the first time in English in a stunning translation by the prize-winning Marian Schwartz, it shows Berberova in full command of her gifts as a writer of masterful poise and psychological insight.”  From Pushkin press 

I am very glad I had the opportunity to read this work. It is historically important.  One of the conflicts among Émigrés was over whether they were better off in Russia.  There is perpetual debate over the Russian character.

"The White Mother" and "The White Dog", two short stories by Fyodor Sologub translated by John Cournos, 1908?)

Two Short Stories by Balzac's First Russian Translator. -  Late Czarist Period 

Fyodor (sometimes translated as "Theodor", born and died in St Petersburg, Russia) Sologub is a second level Russian writer that I encountered for the first time yesterday.  He was a profuse literary writer and was the first, according to my research, to translate Balzac into Russian.  That alone makes him an important figure.  He wrote a number of short stories and I enjoyed the two I read. (At the end of this pits I will include a link from which you can download  a collection of his short stories translated by John Crounus , from 1915.  Crounus (1881 to 1966) was born in Russia into a Yiddish family.  His family immigrated to the USA, living in Philadelphia, when he was ten. He had a diverse career as a writer and it is for his translations that he is still known.  

"The White Mother". Published somewhere between 1900 and 1913

"The White Mother" feels like a story Balzac might have written, or Turgenev on a sentimental day.  The story focuses on a thirty five year old bachelor.  When we first meet him he is at a party and the hostess is trying to suggest matrimonial prospects to him.  He listens to her but his heart is in verthe grave, given many years ago to his beloved and passed Layla.  Much of his time is spent thinking of her, she fills his dreams and he has no interest in displacing her with a wife.  One day he is out for a walk and he comes on a young boy crying and lost in the streets.  The man asks where his father lives and learns he is dead.  The boy tells him he has two mothers, one white and one black.  At first he thinks the black mother must be a nun and the boy an orphan.  He finds out the white mother is the boy's deceased mother, the black mother is his black haired black eyed step mother.  She wants to get rid of the boy, left as a burden on her as a stepmother after his father died.  After some pondering and conversations with friends, the boy somehow makes him think of a son he and Layla might have had, he adopts the boy, the final touch is when the stepmother says she will agree to it only on the condition the man pay her for the clothes the boy is wearing.  This is a story aimed at the heart and it works.  I enjoyed reading it a lot.

"The White Dog"

"The White Dog" is a very interesting story set in the Russian countryside.  It has an amazing close that I am surprised got past censors circa 1907.  One of the central characters is an unmarried woman, having reached spinsterhood at thirty or so.  I don't want to spoil the plot for potential readers but at the close of the story she strips naked and runs outside, she evidently transforms into a huge white dog.  Two men hear the unearthly howls of the dog and take it for a werewolf and shot her.  As they approach the dog they see it is a woman, covered in blood.  No doubt this story echoes Russian folklore and certainly it can be seen as the final venting of frustration by the woman and perhaps as societies disregard for such women as no longer of value.

You can read online or download a collection of stories here

Mel u

"At Christmas Time" by Anton Chekhov. 1900 (includes the full story)

Mel ü has asked me to take over The Reading Life until at least next year.  I will be featuring a few classic Christmas stories, among other things.  

"At Christmas Time" is set in Russia in 1900.  I am somewhat familiar with this milieu through wintering on the Black Sea with Moma at one of Felix's palaces while Felix and Uncle Ruffy were touring Japan with Nicholas.  To dispell any scandal mongers, yes my mother was once in service to the Maharani of Ragapour until she met my father Sheridan Boussweau, but that is a story for another day.

"At Christmas Time" is a very moving masterfully compressed short story that perfectly expresses the emotion of separation at Christmas and the depth of family bonds.  As the story opens an older woman is telling her husband how much she misses her daughter whom she has not heard from for many years, ever since she married and moved away.  She does not even know if she has grandchildren.  Her and husband are illiterate but they know of a man  who for a fee is known to write an elegant epistle. They go to the man and the old woman pours her heart out to him, telling him what she wants to say.  She is in a panic as her heart is overflowing with what she wants to tell her daughter.  Instead of actually listening the writer just sends a sort of form letter in which he says all is fine.  When he learns the daughters husband is a security guard he includes really pompous and pointless career advice for military men even though he is not in the army.

In the second part of the story we see the daughter overwhelmed with emotion upon the arrival of the letter.  She seems to fear her husband.  In one heartbreaking line we learn the daughter had given her husband several letters over the years to her parents for him to mail, she thought they no longer cared about her as they never answered them, but in truth he did not want to spend the money for postage to mail them.  

Chekhov compresses years of pain and longing in just a few pages.  

I present to you the full story

At Christmas Time

By Anton Chekhov

Translated by Mariam Fell 1915 -

"WHAT shall I write?" asked Yegor, dipping his pen in the ink.

Vasilissa had not seen her daughter for four years. Efimia had gone away to St. Petersburg with her husband after her wedding, had written two letters, and then had vanished as if the earth had engulfed her, not a word nor a sound had come from her since. So now, whether the aged mother was milking the cow at daybreak, or lighting the stove, or dozing at night, the tenor of her thoughts was always the same: "How is Efimia? Is she alive and well?" She wanted to send her a letter, but the old father could not write, and there was no one whom they could ask to write it for them.

But now Christmas had come, and Vasilissa could endure the silence no longer. She went to the tavern to see Yegor, the innkeeper's wife's brother, who had done nothing but sit idly at home in the tavern since he had come back from military service, but of whom people said that he wrote the most beautiful letters, if only one paid him enough. Vasilissa talked with the cook at the tavern, and with the innkeeper's wife, and finally with Yegor himself, and at last they agreed on a price of fifteen copecks.

So now, on the second day of the Christmas festival, Yegor was sitting at a table in the inn kitchen with a pen in his hand. Vasilissa was standing in front of him, plunged in thought, with a look of care and sorrow on her face. Her husband, Peter, a tall, gaunt old man with a bald, brown head, had accompanied her. He was staring steadily in front of him like a blind man; a pan of pork that was frying on the stove was sizzling and puffing, and seeming to say: "Hush, hush, hush!" The kitchen was hot and close.

"What shall I write?" Yegor asked again.

"What's that?" asked Vasilissa, looking at him angrily and suspiciously. "Don't hurry me! You are writing this letter for money, not for love! Now then, begin. To our esteemed son-in-law, Andrei Khrisanfltch, and our only and beloved daughter Efimia, we send greetings and love, and the everlasting blessing of their parents."

"All right, fire away!"

"We wish them a happy Christmas. We are alive and well, and we wish the same for you in the name of God, our Father in heaven--our Father in heaven--"

Vasilissa stopped to think, and exchanged glances with the old man.

"We wish the same for you in the name of God, our Father in Heaven--" she repeated and burst into tears.

That was all she could say. Yet she had thought, as she had lain awake thinking night after night, that ten letters could not contain all she wanted to say. Much water had flowed into the sea since their daughter had gone away with her husband, and the old people had been as lonely as orphans, sighing sadly in the night hours, as if they had buried their child. How many things had happened in the village in all these years! How many people had married, how many had died! How long the winters had been, and how long the nights!

"My, but it's hot!" exclaimed Yegor, unbuttoning his waistcoat. "The temperature must be seventy! Well, what next?" he asked.

The old people answered nothing.

"What is your son-in-law's profession?"

"He used to be a soldier, brother; you know that," replied the old man in a feeble voice. "He went into military service at the same time you did. He used to be a soldier, but now he is in a hospital where a doctor treats sick people with water. He is the door-keeper there."

"You can see it written here," said the old woman, taking a letter out of her handkerchief. "We got this from Efimia a long, long time ago. She may not be alive now."

Yegor reflected a moment, and then began to write swiftly.

"Fate has ordained you for the military profession," he wrote, "therefore we recommend you to look into the articles on disciplinary punishment and penal laws of the war department, and to find there the laws of civilisation for members of that department."

When this was written he read it aloud whilst Vasilissa thought of how she would like to write that there had been a famine last year, and that their flour had not even lasted until Christmas, so that they had been obliged to sell their cow; that the old man was often ill, and must soon surrender his soul to God; that they needed money--but how could she put all this into words? What should she say first and what last?

"Turn your attention to the fifth volume of military definitions," Yegor wrote. "The word soldier is a general appellation, a distinguishing term. Both the commander-in-chief of an army and the last infantryman in the ranks are alike called soldiers--"

The old man's lips moved and he said in a low voice:

"I should like to see my little grandchildren!"

"What grandchildren?" asked the old woman crossly. "Perhaps there are no grandchildren."

"No grandchildren? But perhaps there are! Who knows?"

"And from this you may deduce," Yegor hurried on, "which is an internal, and which is a foreign enemy. Our greatest internal enemy is Bacehus--"

The pen scraped and scratched, and drew long, curly lines like fish-hooks across the paper. Yegor wrote at full speed and underlined each sentence two or three times. He was sitting on a stool with his legs stretched far apart under the table, a fat, lusty creature with a fiery nape and the face of a bulldog. He was the very essence of coarse, arrogant, stiff-necked vulgarity, proud to have been born and bred in a pot-house, and Vasilissa well knew how vulgar he was, but could not find words to express it, and could only glare angrily and suspiciously at him. Her head ached from the sound of his voice and his unintelligible words, and from the oppressive heat of the room, and her mind was confused. She could neither think nor speak, and could only stand and wait for Yegor's pen to stop scratching. But the old man was looking at the writer with unbounded confidence in his eyes. He trusted his old woman who had brought him here, he trusted Yegor, and, when he had spoken of the hydropathic establishment just now, his face had shown that he trusted that, and the healing power of its waters.

When the letter was written, Yegor got up and read it aloud from beginning to end. The old man understood not a word, but he nodded his head confidingly, and said:

"Very good. It runs smoothly. Thank you kindly, it is very good."

They laid three five-copeck pieces on the table and went out. The old man walked away staring straight ahead of him like a blind man, and a look of utmost confidence lay in his eyes, but Vasilissa, as she left the tavern, struck at a dog in her path and exclaimed angrily:

"Ugh--the plague!"

All that night the old woman lay awake full of restless thoughts, and at dawn she rose, said her prayers, and walked eleven miles to the station to post the letter.

II

Doctor Moselweiser's hydropathic establishment was open on New Year's Day as usual; the only difference was that Andrei Khrisaufitch, the doorkeeper, was wearing unusually shiny boots and a uniform trimmed with new gold braid, and that he wished every one who came in a happy New Year.

It was morning. Andrei was standing at the door reading a paper. At ten o'clock precisely an old general came in who was one of the regular visitors of the establishment. Behind him came the postman. Andrei took the general's cloak, and said:

"A happy New Year to your Excellency!"

"Thank you, friend, the same to you!"

And as he mounted the stairs the general nodded toward a closed door and asked, as he did every day, always forgetting the answer:

"And what is there in there?"

"A room for massage, your Excellency."

When the general's footsteps had died away, Andrei looked over the letters and found one addressed to him. He opened it, read a few lines, and then, still looking at his newspaper, sauntered toward the little room down-stairs at the end of a passage where he and his family lived. His wife Efimia was sitting on the bed feeding a baby, her oldest boy was standing at her knee with his curly head in her lap, and a third child was lying asleep on the bed.

Andrei entered their little room, and handed the letter to his wife, saying:

"This must be from the village."

Then he went out again, without raising his eyes from his newspaper, and stopped in the passage not far from the door. He heard Efimia read the first lines in a trembling voice. She could go no farther, but these were enough. Tears streamed from her eyes and she threw her arms round her eldest child and began talking to him and covering him with kisses. It was hard to tell whether she was laughing or crying.

"This is from granny and granddaddy," she cried-- "from the village--oh, Queen of Heaven!-- Oh! holy saints! The roofs are piled with snow there now--and the trees are white, oh, so white! The little children are out coasting on their dear little sleddies--and granddaddy darling, with his dear bald head is sitting by the big, old, warm stove, and the little brown doggie--oh, my precious chickabiddies--"

Andrei remembered as he listened to her that his wife had given him letters at three or four different times, and had asked him to send them to the village, but important business had always interfered, and the letters had remained lying about unposted.

"And the little white hares are skipping about in the fields now--" sobbed Efimia, embracing her boy with streaming eyes. "Granddaddy dear is so kind and good, and granny is so kind and so full of pity. People's hearts are soft and warm in the village-- There is a little church there, and the men sing in the choir. Oh, take us away from here, Queen of Heaven! Intercede for us, merciful mother!"

Andrei returned to his room to smoke until the next patient should come in, and Efimia suddenly grew still and wiped her eyes; only her lips quivered. She was afraid of him, oh, so afraid! She quaked and shuddered at every look and every footstep of his, and never dared to open her mouth in his presence.

Andrei lit a cigarette, but at that moment a bell rang up-stairs. He put out his cigarette, and assuming a very solemn expression, hurried to the front door.

The old general, rosy and fresh from his bath, was descending the stairs.

"And what is there in there?" he asked, pointing to a closed door.

Andrei drew himself up at attention, and answered in a loud voice:

"The hot douche, your Excellency."

I hope you enjoyed this story.  Tommorow I hope to post on a really fun Christmas story by Saki.

"The Bishop" by Anton Chekhov The Most Irish of Chekhov's Stories

"The Bishop" by Anton Chekhov (1902, 16 pages)

March 11 to July 1

Stories about Priests

April 1 to April 6

Posts by Participants

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

My Prior Posts for ISSW Year Two

My Prior Posts on Anton Chekhov

Please consider joining us for this event.

"The Bishop" is a final affirmation of Chekhov's faith in life-lonely and sad, immeasurably sad, but beautiful beyond the power of the greatest artist to tell.  Frank O'Connor

Anton Chekhov-1860 to 1904

From now until the end finally comes for Irish Short Story Week Year Two on July 1 (no more extensions) we will be having as our guests some of the greatest of the world's  short stories authors.  In order to be invited you do have to have an "Irish Connection" of some kind.   Guests will stay on until the final event virtual party on July 2 at Dunsanny Castle.  Thanks to the power of magic realism they will arrive in Dublin by the modes of transportation in their times and all those who need them will be provided translators and each guest will have a generous per expense account.   

There are only really three claims for best of in the literary world that are undisputed.   Shakespeare is the best playwright, War and Peace is the best novel and Anton Chekhov (1860 to 1904-Russia) is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.  Frank O'Connor's took as his masters in the short story Chekhov and another Russian, Ivan Turgenev (we are working on getting him and Gustav Flaubert to come together).  He taught a generation of Irish Short Story Writers to love Chekhov.  James Joyce famously said O'Connor was doing for Ireland what Chekhov did for Russia.

Chekhov will arrive in London via Steamship from St Petersburg.  He will spend a few days in London then proceed also by steamship to Dublin where he will be met at the docks by George Moore and William Carelton.   The first order of business is a stop for some Jameson.  

In The Best of Frank O'Connor edited and with commentary by Julius Barnes we are told that O'Connor said that "The Bishop", one of Chekhov's last stories, is virtually indistinguishable from an Irish short story.  

The bishop in the story is of course Russian Orthodox.   

"The Bishop" in the story is very sick.   He is used to being called "Your Grace" and his manner really does not admit of exceptions to this.   One of the themes of Chekhov is thk breaking down of false personalities through trauma.   People become what they are.   The bishops elderly mother comes to see him as her little boy under the skin of the bishop.  It is somehow crushing to see the mother call her dying son "Your Eminence".  As they both come to a realization as to what will soon happen the mother begins to call him by the words of childhood endearment that he longs to hear but cannot even admit this need to himself.  

You can  read "The Bishop"-translated by Costance Garnett-here

Here in the Philippines we believe that Manny Pacquiano is pound for pound the world's great greatest boxer ever.   I often think that word for word, Anton Chekhov is the world's greatest writer.  

I am pretty sure Ivan Turgenev will arrive in a day or so and will share with us his wonderful work "Father Alexyei's Story.   Frank O'Connor in The Lonely Voice said two of Turgenev's short stories were the best of all time.   Ford Madox Ford said his short fiction were among the greatest of all cultural treasures.  Gustav Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant are hopefully coming with them, with Turgenev, of course, paying the costs of the trip.    Flaubert wrote some wonderful short stories but not enough to be an active participant in our event.   He will be here for the party on July 2.

Who would you like to see be invited as a guest for Irish Short Story Week?

The next mini-event will be four days of "Nobel Prize Winners Only Please", with George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett and a guest from India, Rabindranth Tagore with a very strong connection to Irish Literary Culture.  

Mel u

Father and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

Fathers and Son by Ivan Turgenev (1862, 204 pages, translated by Richard Hare)

Prior to today I have posted on two short stories by Ivan Turgenev (1818 to 1883, Russia) and his novella, Diary of a Superfluous Man.   (There is some additional background information on Turgenev in my prior posts on him.)\

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 22.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or and e mail and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge.  

Fathers and Sons is a very important European novel, listed on most best 100 novels of all time lists.  It is included by Clifton Fadiman in his The Life Time Reading Plan.   Turgenev was a close friend of Gustave  Flaubert.

Fathers and Sons was the first Russian work to be widely read out side of the country.   As the novel opens two young men fresh from the university go for a visit to the modest country estate of the father of  Arkady.   His father feels a bit uncomfortable as he has recently had a child with one of the servant women and has kept this from his son.    The son's friend is an advocate of nihilism, a new philosophy that repudiates all ideas that cannot be scientifically proved.    The friend, Bazarov, strongly condemns everything about life in Russia from the Czar to the peasants.

I do not see a need or wish to give a plot summery (there is one here if you are doing your homework).

The power in this book is in several things.   One of them, as the title suggests, is its its brilliant portrayal of the relationship between the two young men and their fathers.   Another is in its portrayal of the coming changes in Russia, the Russian Revolution was still over fifty years in the future.   We can see the radical Bazarov is not really ready to turn everything over to the peasants.  There are also beautiful descriptions of the natural wonders of rural Russia.   Bazarov gets in a duel over a petty point of honor, he is still enough of a traditionalist to hold to old codes of honor.    One of the most moving parts of the book is when Bazarov goes to visit his own parents, very traditional people who love their son with all their heart but have no comprehension of what is behind his strange and radical to them views.

I really enjoyed reading Fathers and Sons.   It is not hard to read or follow at all.

I plan to begin to read the stories in his Sportsman's Sketches soon.   Please share your experience with  Turgenev with us.

Mel u

"The Crocodile" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"The Crocodile"  by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1865, 34 pages, translated by Constance Garnett)


"The Crocodile"  by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821 to 1881-Russia) is flat out strange!    If I had read this work not  knowing who wrote it and been asked to guess the author I would have first guessed Franz Kafka, then Nikolai Gogol, then I would have been wide open who might be but I think I would not have guessed the author's name for a long time.

The story is told in the first person about what happens after the narrator's friend, Ivan Matveich, is swallowed alive by a crocodile that was being shown in a sort of traveling zoo run by a German and his wife.    Ivan begins to tease the crocodile and he ends up inside the stomach of the crocodile which he finds quite comfortable.   Ivan's wife insists that the crocodile be cut open to release her husband but the German refuses permission for this unless he is paid a huge price for him as he feels the crocodile will attract a lot more customers now that he has a a life person inside him.   It turns out Ivan is quite comfortable in side the beast and has no urgent wish to leave.   He feels he will attract a lot of attention as the man inside the crocodile and he can give his views on politics and economics to the world.

There are a lot of social references in the story as well as satirically intended conversations about economic theory.   It is really a funny work and know I have not conveyed this.   My post read research indicated that "The Crocodile" was sort of a satire on the writings of Russian socialists.

You can easily find it online.   It is not "heavy reading" or anything like that.   It really is a "fun" read by an author we normally do not describe in that way!



Mel u

"God Sees the Truth But Waits" by Leo Tolstoy

"God Sees the Truth But Waits" by Leo Tolstoy (1889, 10 pages, translated by Constance Garnett)

Since my blog began in July 2009 I have read and posted on four minor works by Leo Tolstoy (1828 to 1910-Russia).    Tolstoy is the world's greatest novelist.   This is the value judgement of the literary world.    In addition to his huge novels he also wrote a number of parable like short stories such as "Ivan the Fool" and "Papa Panov's Special Christmas"    You are depriving your self of a real pleasure and passing up on some strong does of sublime wisdom if you never read the short stories of Tolstoy.


How can one really not be drawn to read a short story titled "God Sees The Truth But Waits"?    Admittedly this is not the title a writer with a weak ego gives to one of his works but this reads like something out of the wisdom books of the one the world's great religions.


The plot is simple.   It shows Tolstoy had a deep empathy for the huge masses of poor in late Czarist Russia and a fervent desire for social justice.   The central character in the story is a simple working man (maybe Tolstoy does romanticise the peasants and Maxim Gorky is your corrective force here) with a wife and children.    He is framed for a robbery and murder.   A bloody knife is planted on him and his hands are smeared in blood when he is found by the police.   He even has a small bit of money from the wallet of the victim in his pocket.   To compress a bit,  the story skips 25 years ahead  to a Siberian prison camp where the man is now aged way beyond his years.    A new set of prisoners arrives and one of them is from home town.   He asks the man of news of his family.   It turns out they have prospered and he is not even remembered by his children.   To tell the story a bit, it turns out the man is the one who really was the murderer and who framed him years ago.   He tells this story in a boasting way to other prisoners when they give their histories.   He has no idea that his victim is there.    


The action of the story moves forward rapidly from this point and I will leave it untold.  


You can read the story online here if you like.


Mel u

"Bobok" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Bobok" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1873, 20 pages, translated by Constance Garnett)

1821 to 1881

As a blog note, from now until the first week of 2012 I will be posting only on short stories.   I am about  half way through The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and they will be next novels I post on.

Yesterday I was checking my Amazon.com recommendations and they listed a forthcoming paperback edition of  The Eternal Husband and other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Prevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.    I like their translations but I was not really interesting in buying it, being happy to read older translations for free but I did check to see what stories were included in the collection.   The shortest one was "Bobok".   Long ago in the distant mists I read most of the major works of Dostoevsky and I am happy now to have begun slowly reading some of his shorter fiction.   (My first post on his short fiction was on "A Christmas Tree and a Wedding".)

"Bobok" was written between the publication of Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).   It sounds almost like a bit of an autobiographical story.   The chief character is a frustrated writer.   He wants to write literary fiction but his work always gets rejected by editors.   He gets by through odds and ends of journalism, advertisements and translation of French works.  When he submits works of literary fiction, they are rejected and he is told his work lacks the quality of real life.   He is told he must seek out inspiration where ever he can.   The story is told in the first person as if it were from the writer's diary.  

One day he goes to the funeral of a friend and stays behind in the graveyard to think about his life and his writing.   Suddenly he hears voices all around him even though no one is there.   It is the recently buried conversing with each other and with him.   It seems they have enough consciousness left to speak for two or three months after they are dead.  The dead speak very openly about their lives.   It is as if there is many life times of stories being told as inspiration for the writer.   Some of the dead are bitter, some long for passion, others freely confess affairs and corruption they always denied while living.   The writer begins to despair that the dead seem to have no inspiring stories for the living.  He tells himself maybe he will have better luck in another cemetery.  

"Bobok", the title is supposed to come from a Russian slang word for nonsense, is not hard to read, not very long and is very much worth reading.    

Please share your experience with us on shorter Russian fiction.  

Mel u

"Papa Panov's Special Christmas" by Leo Tolstoy

"Papa Panov's Special Christmas" by Leo Tolstoy  (1890?, 16 pages)

In observation of Christmas, I want to post on  , Leo Tolstoy's retelling of a French Christmas fable, "Papa Panov's Special Christmas".   The origins of this story are a little vague to me.  I have not so far been able to find when it was first published (I am assuming about is in his latter years from the style and subject matter so I guess 1890.  If you know, please leave a comment or e mail me.)   It seems like it was either originally written by a French evangelical Christian, Ruben Saillens (1855 to 1942) or he recording a folk tale.   Tolstoy translated the story from French to Russian and reshaped it considerably.    It reads much more like "Ivan the Fool" than War and Peace.   


"Papa Panov's Special Christmas"  is the perfect "meaning of Christmas story".   It is not especially original (it is a retelling of a folk story one way or another) and the point it makes has been made many places but I think no one has made it more movingly and the fact that the world's greatest novelist wrote it simply adds to its power, like it or not.  I will supply a link where you can read it in just a few minutes if you like so I will just give the outlines of "Papa Panov's Special Christmas" .

Papa Panov is a widower.   He has grown children who live far away and he rarely sees them.   He is doing OK with his shoe business, making and repairing them for local people.   He is not miserable or suffering but somehow the spirit went out of his life when he lost his wife.   It is Christmas day.   He steps outside his house into the village street.   He hears happy children laughing and smells Christmas meals being prepared and he feels sad and lonely and wished for the old days when he had a happy family.   Papa Panov goes back inside and sits in his easy chair.   He does not read very much today he takes out the family bible.   He reads the story of Joseph and Mary when they could find no room at the Inn.   He says he wishes he could have been there to give them shelter.    He wonders what gift he could have given the new born Jesus to compete with the gifts of the three wise men.   Then he recalls he still has the best pair of shoes he ever made, baby shoes his daughter had worn.   He says he would give Jesus the shoes.  

Even in translation these lines are very moving.

"Suddenly he heard a voice in the room. He sat up startled but could not see who was there. "Papa Panov" said the voice "You wished that I should visit you and that you could give me a gift. Look out for me in the street tomorrow and I will come."  

Papa Panov rubbed his eyes, the fire had burned low and bells were ringing to say that Christmas had come. "It was him" said Papa Panov "or perhaps it was a dream, no matter, I will watch for him, but I don't know how I will recognise him."

He did not go to bed that night but made up the fire and sat waiting for the dawn so he would not miss anyone. At last he saw a figure in the distance, he was very excited, perhaps this was Jesus coming to see him. Then he stepped back disappointed, it was the road sweeper, he had better things to do than watch the road sweeper. He looked again and saw the road sweeper rubbing his hands together and stamping his feet. Papa Panov felt sorry, the road sweeper did look cold and imagine having to work on Christmas Day. Papa Panov went to his door and called him. "Come and have a cup of coffee and warm yourself by the fire", the road sweeper gratefully accepted. As he drank s his coffee Papa Panov told the road sweeper how he was waiting for Jesus to visit, the road sweeper wished him the best of luck, thanked him for the coffee and went on his way."

He goes back to waiting for Jesus to appear.   He begins to think maybe it was just a wishful dream of a lonely old man.   Then he sees two women travelling alone with a babies, looking very poor and distraught.

"He watched carefully as he saw two people approach. Then he saw they were two young ladies, each with a small baby, both babies were crying. Papa Panov remembered when his children had been babies and asked the ladies if he could help them, the mothers explained how they had to travel to see their family, but one baby was hungry and the other had lost her shoes and they still had such a long way to go. Papa Panov invited them in to rest. As he warmed some milk on his stove for the babies he told the mothers about his dream, if it was a dream. Then he had a thought, he tried to ignore it but it kept coming back, so he lifted the special pair of shoes from the box and tried them on the baby, they fitted perfectly. "I hope your dream does come true" said one of the mothers as they left "You deserve it for being so kind"


I will let you read the rest of the story.   The ending is not hard to predict but if you open yourself up I think you might be very moved by this simple story of deep wisdom and compassion.

This story is sentimental and some may say it is almost schmaltzy and that it more a fable than a short story to which I can only say yes there is truth in this.   But it seems a deeply felt very wise story to me.   If you have never any Tolstoy, read this and now you have!

You can read the story HERE.
Mel u

"The Birth of a Man" and "The Icebreaker" by Maxim Gorky

"The Birth of a Man"  (1916, 20 pages)
"The Icebreaker" (1914, 32 pages)

Some Rambling Notes on Why Gorky

is not a very  popular writer.  

"The Birth of a Man" and "The Icebreaker" are both included in the collection of Gorky's short stories, Through Russia, first published in 1923.   (All of the stories in the collection  are translated by C. J. Hogarth).   I recently "discovered" that the short stories of Gorky (1868 to 1936-Russia) are amazing looks at life in late Czarist Russia among the poorest of the poor.   I have known off Gorky for many years but just read my first work by him a few days ago.   There are as far as I could find very few blog posts on Gorky.   A little research quickly revealed the reason he is now so little read and is held in almost contempt by many.    (There is some background information on Gorky in my prior two posts on him).


'Gorky is seen as the "pet" of Joseph Stalin.   There are lots of pictures of  Gorky and Stalin together and even a famous in its day painting of Gorky reading to an apparently thrilled Stalin.   There are pictures of Gorky posing with the head of the secret police, with generals, and with Lenin.  He was on stamps and coins and statues all over Russia.   Everyone in Russia at one time had to say they loved his work even if they never read it at all.    To be the pet writer of Stalin had to have been near the literary kiss of death among the readers of the western world.   Meaning this pretty literally,  being the favorite writer of Stalin is on a level with being endorsed as a great writer by Hitler.   I do not yet know if Gorky knew of the horrible consequences of Stalin's policies and turned a blind eye to them in exchange for mansions and great fame or if he sincerely believed Stalin was a great man.  A writer can have barbaric or totally naive political views and still be a great writer.   I think Gorky was not taught in English and American schools because of his political views so no one ended up reading him.

I kind of think as one reads more of Gorky, his work was "pure" up until the Bolsheviks took power and then he became increasingly a political writer.   In Gorky's defense, if Stalin decided to make a "pet" of him it would have been very dangerous to refuse his kindness so maybe Gorky was trapped.

OK enough on my no doubt half baked theories!

The five short stories I have so far read by Gorky (I now have found 17 translated stories online) are incredible depictions of life among the sub-peasants in late Czarist Russian (1895 to 1915 or so).    The poor in his stories make the poor in Hugo or Dickens look comfortable!   The realism of his stories did get him locked up by the Czarist secret police and noticed by Lenin.

If every there was a writer who wrote about those who had no one to speak for them, it was Gorky.   He does not write like Tolstoy or Turgenev of the rooted in place peasant but of the very rootless millions that were turned out by their masters with no where to go and no real way to live.   Millions of the people like those in Gorky's stories died as a result of state policy and the total indifference of the Czarist policies.  

I will just speak very briefly of the two stories by Gorky I most recently read as I will be reading and posting on more of his work in 2012.

"The Birth of a Man" is set in the Russian country side.   It is narrated in the first person by a tramp, a man without a master.   He encounters a group of  "famine pilgrims" out on the road looking for food and facing death by starvation.   One of the women is pregnant and is about to give birth.   The narrator wants to help her but first he has to be sure she has no man in her life that might cause him trouble.   She has been abandoned.   The scenes of the man bringing the baby into the world are like nothing I have read elsewhere.     He knows pretty much nothing about the procedure and it is the woman's first baby.    It is all very moving without being mawkish like one might find in most of the writers of the era.    You will not find a scene like this in the lady writers of the era.

"The Icebreakers" is set on a frozen river.   There are a number of people in the story, all working poor stuck on or around an icebreaker ship whose job it is to keep the river open for traffic.    (If my memory of history is right-and no I was not there in person-workers on icebreakers and naval ships were among the first to support the Bolsheviks with the revolution began.)   Workers have their conflicts with their boss, a 15 year old son of the owner of a business.   The workers steal nails to trade for drink and when the son threatens to tell his father they just tell him go ahead we will just say we  have been stealing for a long time only you never saw it.   The fun in this story is in the normally behind the scenes conversations of the workers with each other.   We also feel a real sense of danger as they try to walk across the thawing ice.

I am very glad I gave Gorky a try.   I will be reading a lot more of his work,  for sure 13 or so more short stories and his major novel about women in the revolution, Mother.   I will post on the ones I think are most worth reading, maybe all of them.


Question- If Gorky knew Stalin was a mass murderer (20+ million as a minimum) and wrote in defense of his policies for the sake of personal comfort, would that turn you off so much that you would not read his work?    I admit whenever I read the work of German writers from the WWII era,  I look to see if they supported the Nazis.   I would probably not read the work of a Filipino writer who was a great supporter of Ferdinand Marcos (an angel compared to Stalin!)

Both of these stories can be downloaded as Kindles or in other formats (and read online) at eBooks@Adelaide, an excellent easy to use source for free e books.

Mel u

"Twenty-Six and One" by Maxim Gorky

"Twenty-Six and One" by Maxim Gorky (1899, 21 pages)

Maxim Gorky (1868 to 1936-Russia) was the "pet" writer of Joseph Stalin.   For many years to criticize the work of Gorky in public in Russia would get you a trip to Siberia or worse.  Not really surprisingly,  many say Gorky was murdered at the order of the director of the secret police.   The great Russian writers had written about the peasants in a romantic way.   There were millions of people in late Czarist Russia so poor that they wished they were serfs on the estate of a Turgenev or Tolstoy.  (There is some background information on Gorky in my prior post on two of his short stories.)   Some say Gorky invented as an important literary figure the character of "The tramp".   (A  tramp was basically a displaced serf or peasant forced out of his ancestral position of slavery and security and forced to roam Russia looking for food and work.)     If this is right, then Gorky paved the way for Waiting for Godot, among many other works.  

Tolstoy and Gorky

Gorky was a hugely productive writer with a giant ego.   In addition to 30 short stories he wrote all sorts of things including a 1000 page memoir, operas, and lots of political writings in opposition to Czarist policies and later in support of the early Soviet state.    


"Twenty-Six and One" (sometimes it is translated as "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" ) is one of the most famous of Gorky's stories.   The story is set in a large bakery factory.   The twenty six men made biscuits.   They are kept locked in their work place as virtual prisoners.  Their lives are  never ending toil and unrelieved tedium.   They have been together so long they have run out of anything to say to each other than to pursue endless petty quarrels.   Of course there are no women in their grim lives.   They have one joy they all share.   A beautiful sixteen year old girl Tanya visits them every morning and they give her six free biscuits.   They idolize her for her purity and goodness and beauty.  (It seems from this and his other stories, Gorky may have wanted to set the poor of Russia free but women were judged by their looks mostly.)   One day a handsome soldier, a blond, stops by the bakery.   He tells the bakers he knows that men like them cannot attract any women but as he is so handsome and bold and manly he can get any woman he wants.   Some of the bakers foolishly tell him "No you cannot get our pure Tanya".   A bet is quickly made.  The soldier has thirty days to "capture" Tanya.  I will leave the rest of the plot untold.   Gorky knows a great deal about what extreme poverty can do to people.   If ever there was writer who spoke for those without a voice, Gorky is it.   


Gorky lets us see exactly how the bakers lives.  We feel their misery.   These are not the idolized poor in a Victorian serial written for ladies to read over tea.   


I think a lot of potential readers of Gorky are kind of turned off by his status as a Soviet icon. Gorky for sure let himself be used by the state in return for wealth as well as great fame.    At one time in the USA or UK liking Gorky would  have been almost like proclaiming your self a communist.   His work was required reading for generations of Russia school children.   


I really have enjoyed reading the three Gorky short stories I have read so far.   I endorse them to all and see them as near must reading for those into Russian literature and those who want to learn more about life among the "real people" in late Czarist Russia.  


You can download this and other works by Gorky at Manybooks.


I have two more of his short stories to read soon.  I have so far found five of his thirty short stories online.   Some of his short stories are still as English works under copyright due to the date of translation.  (I have no translator credit for "Twenty-Six and One").



Please share your experience with Gorky and if you have no experience yet, give the stories I have posted on a chance.  


One of the very great things about short stories is they let us "try out" a new to us writer without a huge amount of time invested.  


Mel u