The Nose and Other Stories

THE NOSE AND OTHER STORIES

RU S S I A N L I BR A RY

© Columbia University Press

The Russian Library at Columbia University Press publishes an expansive selection of Russian literature in English translation, concentrating on works previously unavailable in English and those ripe for new translations. Works of premodern, modern, and contemporary literature are featured, including recent writing. The series seeks to demonstrate the breadth, surprising variety, and global importance of the Russian literary tradition and includes not only novels but also short stories, plays, poetry, memoirs, creative nonfiction, and works of mixed or fluid genre.

Editorial Board: Vsevolod Bagno Dmitry Bak Rosamund Bartlett Caryl Emerson Peter B. Kaufman Mark Lipovetsky Oliver Ready Stephanie Sandler

■□■ For a list of books in the series, see page 339

© Columbia University Press

R HE S E OT & ORI ST

T

E S O EH N

GO

N

L O G

I A L

O d by K e I o lat s ss n u a F T r nne sa Su

Columbia University Press / New York

Š Columbia University Press

Published with the support of Read Russia, Inc., and the Institute of Literary Translation, Russia Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Translation copyright © 2020 Susanne Fusso All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gogolʹ, Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich, 1809–1852, author. | Fusso, Susanne, translator.

Title: The nose and other stories / Nikolai Gogol ; translated by Susanne Fusso.

Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2020] | Series: The Russian Library | Translated from the Russian.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019053937 (print) | LCCN 2019053938 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231190688 (cloth ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780231190695 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780231549066 (ebook) Classification: LCC PG3333 .A6 2020 (print) | LCC PG3333 (ebook) | DDC 891.73/3—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053937 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053938

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich Book design: Lisa Hamm

© Columbia University Press

For Joe

•

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix Introduction by Susanne Fusso xiii Notes on the Translation xxi Table of Ranks xxv

The Lost Letter 1 Viy 17 The Portrait (1835 version) 65 Nevsky Avenue 113 Diary of a Madman 155 The Carriage 181

© Columbia University Press

v iii \

Contents

The Nose 197 Rome (A Fragment) 229 The Overcoat 279 Notes 317

© Columbia University Press

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M

y first encounter with Russian literature was reading a collection of Gogol’s short stories called Tales of Good and Evil, translated by David Magarshack, that I checked out of the library when I was twelve or thirteen years old.

I owe my life’s work to the enchanting spell it cast. I would like to acknowledge here the work of Magarshack, as well as other dedicated translators who opened up the world of Russian literature for me before I could read it in the original: Constance Garnett, Bernard Guilbert Guerney, and Andrew R. MacAndrew. I have been fortunate to have worked for over thirty years side by side with a brilliant translator of Gogol’s stories, Priscilla Meyer, professor emerita of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Wesleyan University. I offer my own contribution to “Gogol in English” with humble respect for these writers.

I am grateful to Stephanie Sandler, Ernest E. Monrad Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, and Christine Dunbar, editor of the Russian Library series at Columbia University Press, for suggesting this project to me. It has been a

© Columbia University Press

x \

Acknowledgments

wonderful experience to engage with these stories in such an intimate way, and Christine has been a patient, astute, and supportive editor. Thanks also to Christian Winting, assistant editor at CUP, for his help and responsiveness. Ben Kolstad, Leslie Kriesel, and Mary Curioli provided expert project management and editing.

I am also grateful to Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich for the beautiful cover design and to Lisa Hamm for the elegant book design.

It has been my great good fortune to have worked with some of the giants in the Slavic field early in my career, when I began my study of Gogol. Robert Louis Jackson, B. E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University, directed my doctoral dissertation on Gogol’s Dead Souls, and he continues to be a guiding light of interpretative brilliance for me.

Yury Vladimirovich Mann of the Institute of World Literature in Moscow, whose lifelong study of Gogol is an awesome scholarly monument, extended his friendship and support to me when I was a young scholar, and he will always be one of my major inspirations.

Irina and Yuz Aleshkovsky, Sergei and Valentina Bunaev, Olga Monina, and Alexandra Semenova are dear friends who have taught me a great deal about Russian language and culture. Irina in particular has fielded numerous questions and shared her love for Gogol’s humor. Roman Utkin, assistant professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Wesleyan University, has been most helpful and encouraging about this project. My Wesleyan colleagues Nadja Akšamija, associate professor of Art History, and Francesco Marco Aresu, assistant professor of Italian, kindly responded to my questions related to Rome and “Rome.”

I am grateful to two anonymous readers for Columbia University Press for their helpful suggestions. My thanks are also due to Oliver Ready for his advice on the notes.

My students at Wesleyan always help me to read Gogol with fresh eyes. They are too numerous to name, but among recent students

© Columbia University Press

I would like to thank Austin Barvin, Foster Conklin, Sonja English, Najeeba Hayat, Sarah Jacobs, Tim Jambor, Miguel Pérez-Glassner, Allegra Ranelli, Eric Roe, Matthew Rubenstein, Olivia Siegal, and Molly Zuckerman for their enthusiasm and insight.

My thanks are due to the administration of Wesleyan University for its generous support of scholarship. I am grateful in particular to Marc Eisner, dean of the Social Sciences; Joyce P. Jacobsen, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs (now president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges); and Michael S. Roth, president, for their generosity and responsiveness.

As always Katherine Wolfe and Lisa Pinette of the Interlibrary Loan Department of Olin Library rendered invaluable assistance.

Kellyanne Foley keeps me moving no matter what, and I thank her for her friendship and expert care.

My brother Jim Fusso and brother-in-law Richard Barry are constant sources of kindness, love, and responsive reading.

My debt to my husband, Joseph M. Siry, Kenan Professor of the Humanities and professor of Art History at Wesleyan University, is immense. He has read every word of this translation and laughed in all the right places. I am endlessly grateful for his love and support.

Acknowledgments

\ xi

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

INTRODUCTION SUSANNE FUSSO

A

lthough Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) brilliantly distinguished himself as a novelist, a playwright, and an essayist, it was his stories that stretched as a constant creative thread across the most productive years of his career, from 1831 to 1842. The stories display all the sparkling facets of his peculiar genius: the existential terror of a darkened church in which the power of Satan is brought to life to confront a solitary mortal; the zany humor of a nose that absents itself from the human face to have adventures of its own on the streets of St. Petersburg; and the philosophical probing into the questions of national identity that came into focus for one of the greatest writers in the Russian language only when he lost himself in the ancient labyrinth of Rome.

Born in the province of Poltava (in what is now central Ukraine) to a landowning family, Gogol moved to St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, in 1828 and began work at a low rank in the civil service. The move to St. Petersburg was associated in his mind with his aspiration to “make [his] name significant by means of some beautiful deed,” but whether that significance was

© Columbia University Press

x iv \

Introduction

to be achieved in public life, literature, or the teaching of history remained uncertain for him until the mid-1830s.1 In 1831–1832 he published his first major work of prose, the story collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, which was an immediate success. Its deployment of Ukrainian language, costumes, cuisine, and folklore was exotic and engaging for Russian readers.

Gogol continued in this vein with the story collection Mirgorod in 1835, but at virtually the same time he published a very different collection, Arabesques. In Arabesques Gogol brought together essays on the teaching of history and geography, on modern architecture and painting, on the (western European) Middle Ages, and on Ukrainian folk songs, along with three stories set not in the Ukrainian countryside but in St. Petersburg: “The Portrait,” “Nevsky Avenue,” and “Diary of a Madman.” These stories, and two that came later (“The Nose” and “The Overcoat”), continued the literary investigation into St. Petersburg as a city of illusion and fantasy that was begun by Alexander Pushkin in “The Queen of Spades” (1834) and later continued by Fyodor Dostoevsky in works such as Crime and Punishment (1866).

Dividing his time in the next decade between Russia and Europe, particularly Rome, where the food, climate, and community seemed to encourage his creative energies, Gogol produced more stories—“The Carriage,” “The Nose,” and “Rome (A Fragment)”— while working on his plays, including the magnificent comedy The Government Inspector, and his magnum opus, the novel Dead Souls.

Finally, as he brought Dead Souls to completion, he revisited and revised his earlier stories for publication in a four-volume collection of his works, published in 1842, the same year that Dead Souls appeared. This collection included one entirely new story, considered by many to be Gogol’s finest, “The Overcoat.” In his remaining ten years Gogol wrote no more stories. He published a collection of essays, Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1847),

© Columbia University Press

and devoted himself to writing a continuation to Dead Souls, which was never published and much of which he burned before dying, essentially of starvation due to excessive penitential fasting, in February 1852.

This edition includes one story from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (“The Lost Letter”), one from Mirgorod (“Viy”), the 1835 Arabesques version of “The Portrait,” and all of Gogol’s other stories in their later 1842 versions (with some censored passages restored, as has been the practice in modern Russian editions). This selection emphasizes the later period of Gogol’s story writing, so some richly rewarding stories such as “Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Auntie” (from Dikanka) and “Old-World Landowners” (from Mirgorod) have been omitted. Russian editions often preserve the ordering of the stories as Gogol placed them in his 1842 collection (“Nevsky Avenue,” “The Nose,” “The Portrait,” “The Overcoat,” “The Carriage,” “Diary of a Madman,” and “Rome”), but I have followed a roughly chronological order. Although Mirgorod was published shortly before Arabesques, both in 1835, Gogol regarded Mirgorod as a continuation of Dikanka (1831–1832), so I have placed “Viy” immediately after “The Lost Letter” and before the stories from Arabesques. Unlike most English-language editions, this one includes “Rome.”

The common denominator of the stories in Dikanka is the human encounter with the demonic, treated sometimes humorously and sometimes with deadly seriousness. One of the shortest stories in Dikanka, “The Lost Letter,” serves as what seems to be a preliminary sketch for “Viy” in its depiction of a journey by a brave Cossack into hell itself. As with several of the stories in the collection, its status as oral discourse is foregrounded, as the narrator tells a tale from the colorful past of his own grandfather, who traveled to the underworld to play cards with witches. Many of the characters and situations in Dikanka, inspired by the folk tradition of Introduction

\ xv

© Columbia University Press

xvi \

Introduction

the Ukrainian puppet theater, adhere to a stereotyped image of the happy, dancing, laughing people of what was then known as Little Russia that was tailor-made for the Russian metropolitan audience.2 This is exemplified by Pushkin’s patronizing praise of the Dikanka tales: “Everyone rejoiced at this vivid description of the singing and dancing tribe, these fresh pictures of Little Russian nature, this gaiety that is simple-hearted and at the same time sly.”3 For all his charm and bravery, the hero of “The Lost Letter” fits Pushkin’s stereotype of the cunning, witty, compulsively dancing Ukrainian.

Although “Viy” is also set in Ukraine, its hero, Khoma Brut, is not a stereotype. In fact, he is not much like any of Gogol’s other heroes. Self-reliant, resourceful, and blessed with a healthy sex drive, he represents a road not taken for Gogol, whose later works set in St. Petersburg or the Russian provinces offer no characters with this sort of vigor and common sense.4 When Khoma does dance, it is not in order to entertain an audience of condescending Russians but to taste the joys of life for one last time and to gather his strength for a monumental struggle with the powers of darkness.

Despite its supernatural plot, “Viy” offers a richly textured picture of the daily life of seminary students and Cossacks and of the Ukrainian landscape. Along with “Rome,” “Viy” is one of Gogol’s most underrated works.

Most English-language editions of Gogol’s stories include the 1842 version of “The Portrait” rather than the one originally published in Arabesques in 1835. The influential critic Vissarion Belinsky, who was generally supportive of Gogol’s work and helped to make his reputation as a major Russian writer, harshly criticized the 1835 version of “The Portrait” as an unsuccessful attempt at the fantastic.

As a result, Gogol extensively revised the story for the 1842 edition of his works. When he published Arabesques, Gogol was in transition from his earlier stories, in which witches and devils openly interact with mortals, to his later style, in which the supernatural and the

© Columbia University Press

demonic are encoded into a seemingly realistic milieu.5 In the 1835 version of the story, magical events occur with no possible rational explanation: The portrait appears in the main character’s lodgings despite the fact that no one brought it there, the man depicted in the portrait steps out of the frame and has a conversation with him, and the plot hinges on the intervention of the Antichrist into the world to break down the laws of nature. In the 1842 revision, Gogol added a plethora of naturalistic details and provided plausible realistic explanations for most of the seemingly supernatural events.

The buyer of the portrait carries it home himself, the man emerging from the portrait turns out to be appearing in a dream, and the secret of the portrait is an aesthetic rather than a metaphysical one.

Nevertheless, the story remains a fairy tale revolving around a mysterious portrait, and no amount of rationalistic hedging can disguise that fact. Whatever the merits of the two versions, however, the 1835 version of the story is not well enough known, and it is a good representation of Gogol’s Romantically-infused aesthetics at a pivotal moment in his career.6 All three of the stories in Arabesques, as well as the later Petersburg stories “The Nose” and “The Overcoat,” depict the individual moving in an urban landscape that is often unforgiving, for reasons of harsh weather, poverty, corruption, and social class. Both “The Portrait” and “Nevsky Avenue” involve artists, while in “Diary of a Madman” the hero, originally conceived by Gogol as a mad musician, is a downtrodden civil servant, like the hero of “The Overcoat.”

Gogol never labeled these five stories as a “Petersburg cycle,” but it is understandable that this is how they have come to be known.

Their interlocking themes and motifs—of city crowds, of insensitive office superiors, of beautiful but dangerous women, of the devil in everyday disguise, with a constant undercurrent of absurd humor even in the most serious situations—create a kind of super-story across the individual tales that belongs on the same level as Gogol’s Introduction

\ xvii

© Columbia University Press

xviii \

Introduction

major longer works The Government Inspector and Dead Souls. Yet the last of these stories written, “The Overcoat,” harks back to “The Lost Letter” and “Viy” in its centering on the primal situation of a person lost in the darkness and seeing a light that . . . But readers should find out what happens next for themselves.

“The Carriage” is anomalous among Gogol’s stories for its provincial Russian setting and its seeming absence of any demonic undercurrent. Analysis or interpretation would cause it to disintegrate; as Lev Tolstoy said in 1909, it is “the height of perfection in its own way,” a seemingly trivial story that is nevertheless deeply satisfying. It is the summit of Gogol’s mastery of what can only be described by the oxymoronic term “understated hilarity.” The non-Russian reader will probably have to read it twice. Do it, it’s short.

Most English-language editions of Gogol’s stories do not include “Rome,” even though the author himself included it in the third volume of his four-volume collected works along with the other stories translated here (except for “The Lost Letter” and “Viy,” which were included in the first volume with Dikanka and the second volume with Mirgorod, respectively). He even accorded it a prominent position, as the last story in the volume, serving as a bookend along with the first story, “Nevsky Avenue,” which similarly centers around a young man’s encounter on a city street with a stunning embodiment of female beauty. There are many reasons for the omission of this story in English-language editions, even ones labeled as “complete.” It is subtitled “A Fragment,” and it certainly has no conventional plot with a beginning, middle, and end. It is true that Gogol seems to have planned a novel about Italian life, but by the time he published “Rome” that project seems to have been abandoned, and the “fragment” label is possibly designed to tease the reader into speculation, like the label “poema” (epic poem) that he gave his novel Dead Souls, written entirely in prose. In style “Rome” is quite different from the fleet comedy of

© Columbia University Press

“The Nose” or “The Carriage.” Its incident-free narrative unfolds in enormously long sentences and finely detailed descriptions of Parisian and Roman architectural interiors and exteriors and the landscape of the Roman Campagna. Yet as scholars such as Rita Giuliani and Michael Kelly have argued, “Rome” belongs with Gogol’s other stories, both because of thematic affinities (the urban landscape, the lure of feminine beauty) and because of the importance of the city of Rome as a locus for Gogol’s own aesthetic development as he worked on a style that would be adequate to his lofty plans for a continuation to Dead Souls.7 Gogol was at the height of his powers in 1841, when he completed Dead Souls, revised his earlier stories, and wrote “The Overcoat” as well as “Rome”; everything he wrote in that period is worthy of the serious reader’s attention.

In this “fragment” Gogol seems to be reaching for a new mode of literary exploration (although it could be argued that conventional plot was never one of Gogol’s primary concerns, even in his most celebrated works). Many of Gogol’s friends in Rome were artists, and in this story he tries to capture in words the visual splendor of Rome’s art and nature, particularly the Campagna, so famous as a subject for painters like Claude Lorrain (Gellée). Gogol also tries to achieve an understanding of national identity and national difference on a large scale; his meditations on the fate and future of Italy and of the Italian people can also be read as allegories for the fate and future of Russia and its people. Even if Gogol’s reach arguably exceeds his grasp in this story, he achieves passages of gleaming beauty and penetrating analysis in the course of the attempt.

One of Gogol’s contemporaries, the critic V. V. Stasov, recalled that Gogol introduced an entirely new language into Russia, a language that was beloved for its “simplicity, power, precision, striking boldness, and closeness to nature. . . . All the young people started talking in Gogolian language.”8 Gogol’s language is indeed distinctive, whether because of his Ukrainian–Russian bilingualism or his Introduction

\ xix

© Columbia University Press

x x \

Introduction

eccentric personality or some combination of factors. He is accordingly known as one of the most untranslatable of Russian writers.

Nevertheless, generations of talented translators have made the effort to bring Gogol’s works to the Anglophone reader. My contribution to this long tradition is meant not in a spirit of competition but of admiration and appreciation, and I have brought to it the experience of decades of reading, studying, and teaching Gogol’s works. The frustration of translation is that no translation is perfect, and no translation will give its readers the original text in all its complexity, ambiguity, and richness. The beauty of translation is that no translation is perfect, and each translator has the opportunity to offer a new imagining of a work of verbal art in a different linguistic medium. I have tried to make the strangeness and wonder of Gogol’s vocabulary and style survive the transition into English, striving to keep Gogol’s inimitable humor and oddity alive. In “The Portrait,” the narrator speaks of great art as lifting the veil from heaven and showing to the human being “a part of his own inner world, filled with sounds and sacred mysteries.” This is what Gogol did in his entire career—and he made people laugh a lot too.

© Columbia University Press

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION

T

he original publication dates of the stories included in this volume are:

“The Lost Letter” [Propavshaia gramota], in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka [Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan’ki], 1831, book 1.

“Viy” [Vii], in Mirgorod, 1835; revised version in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842.

“The Portrait” [Portret], in Arabesques [Arabeski], 1835, part 1; revised version in The Contemporary [Sovremennik], book 3, 1842, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842.

“Nevsky Avenue” [Nevskii prospekt], in Arabesques [Arabeski], 1835, part 2; revised version in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842.

“Diary of a Madman,” originally “Scraps from the Diary of a Madman” [Zapiski sumasshedshego, originally Klochki iz zapisok sumasshedshego], in Arabesques [Arabeski], 1835, part 2, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842.

© Columbia University Press

x xii \

Notes on the Translation

“The Carriage” [Koliaska], in The Contemporary [Sovremennik], vol. 1, 1836, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842.

“The Nose” [Nos], in The Contemporary [Sovremennik], vol. 3, 1836, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842.

“Rome” [Rim], in The Muscovite [Moskvitianin], no. 3, 1842, and in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia Nikolaia Gogolia], 1842.

“The Overcoat” [Shinel’], in Works of Nikolai Gogol [Sochineniia N. V. Gogolia], 1842.

■□■ The endnotes to this edition are indebted to the following: N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 14 vols. (n.p.: AN SSSR, 1937–1952). Abbreviation: Academy PSS. N. V. Gogol’, Sobranie sochinenii, 7 vols., ed. S. I. Mashinskii and M. B. Khrapchenko (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976–1979). Abbreviation: SS Mashinskii.

N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati trekh tomakh, ed. Iu. V. Mann et al. (Moscow: Nasledie/Nauka, 2001–).

Abbreviation: PSS Mann.

N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v semnadtsati tomakh, ed.

I. A. Vinogradov and V. A. Voropaev (Moscow-Kyiv: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskoi Patriarkhii, 2009). Abbreviation: PSS 2009.

I. A. Vinogradov, Gogol’ v vospominaniiakh, dnevnikakh, perepiski sovremennikov, 3 vols. (Moscow: IMLI RAI, 2011–13). Abbreviation: Vinogradov.

The translations of “The Lost Letter” and “The Portrait” are based on the text in PSS Mann, vols. 1 and 3. Other stories are based on SS Mashinskii, collated with Academy PSS and PSS 2009.

© Columbia University Press

Note: I have approached PSS 2009 with caution, as it is presented as “a joint Russian-Ukrainian project [ . . . ] called upon to be of service to the Christian enlightenment of people as well as the unification of the Slavic peoples,” and has appeared “with the blessing of the Most Holy Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’ Kirill and the Most Blessed Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine Vladimir.” I have consulted this edition for its factual information and not for its interpretations.

■□■ Russian names consist of a first name, a patronymic, and a last name.

The patronymic is formed from the father’s first name plus the suffix -ovich/-evich for men or -ovna/-evna for women. Russian also uses a wide array of diminutives for the first name. In “The Overcoat,” the main character’s name is Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, which signifies that his father’s first name was Akaky. Bashmachkin, not Akakievich, is his last name. People are referred to either by their first names (or nicknames like Vanya for Ivan), first names plus patronymic, or last names. Only in rare cases is a person (usually a peasant or someone of the lower classes) referred to only by their patronymic, as is the case with the tailor Petrovich in “The Overcoat.” We learn that his first name is Grigory, but we never learn his last name.

“Little Russia” was the term used in the Russian Empire to refer to what is now Ukraine. The term “Ukrainian” referring to the ethnic group living in the area and its language did not come into wide use until the end of the nineteenth century. In this translation, I have preserved Gogol’s use of the term “Little Russia” and “Little Russian.” Ukrainian place names are given in Ukrainian, not Russian, transliteration.

There is no precise English word for the Russian “chukhonets/ chukonka,” a derogatory term for people of Finno-Ugric origin living in St. Petersburg. I have translated it as “Finn” or “Finnish.”

Notes on the Translation

\ xxiii

© Columbia University Press

x xiv \

Notes on the Translation

Gogol sprinkles his texts with foreign words (Ukrainian, German, Italian). Sometimes he provides translations in the text, sometimes not. When the translations provided are Gogol’s, they are given in parentheses. Translations provided by me are provided in the notes: simple glosses as footnotes; more elaborate information in the back matter.

The transliteration is a greatly simplified version of the Library of Congress system (although for citations of scholarly works I have used the Library of Congress system). When dates are mentioned that are from the Julian calendar used in Russia before the Revolution, they are noted as “OS” (“Old Style”).

An earlier version of my translation of “The Portrait” was published in 2006 by Pegasus Publishers in Amsterdam as a deluxe limited edition with artwork by Leon Steinmetz.

© Columbia University Press

TABLE OF RANKS

The Table of Ranks of all Military, Government, and Court Positions was ratified on January 24, 1722 (February 4 NS), under Tsar Peter I. Although it was changed at various times, it remained the fundamental framework for the hierarchical life of tsarist Russia. This version has been simplified for ease of reference. Navy and court ranks have been omitted. A helpful source on the significance of the Table of Ranks for Russian literature is Irina Reyfman, How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

CIVIL RANKS

ARMY RANKS

Chancellor Actual privy councillor Privy councillor Actual state councillor State councillor Collegiate councillor Court councillor Collegiate assessor Titular councillor Collegiate secretary Ship secretary Gubernial secretary Provincial secretary Collegiate registrar

Field marshal General Lieutenant general Major general Brigadier-general (1722–1796) Colonel Lieutenant colonel Major Captain Staff captain ——— Lieutenant Second lieutenant Ensign

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

THE NOSE AND OTHER STORIES

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

THE LOST LETTER A True Story, Told by the Lector of *** Church

S

o you want me to tell you another story about my granddad? Well, all right, why shouldn’t I tell you another funny little story? Oh, the old, bygone days! What joy, what a feeling of freedom and merrymaking descends on your heart when you hear about what happened on this earth long, long ago, so long ago that it has no year or month! And then if some kinsman of yours, a grandfather or great-grandfather, gets mixed up in it—well, then forget about it: May I choke while singing the akathist hymn to the great martyr Barbara if it doesn’t seem as if you’re doing it all yourself, as if you’ve crawled into your great-granddad’s soul or his soul is making mischief inside of you . . .1 It’s our maidens and young wives who keep after me the worst of all. As soon as I come in sight, it’s “Foma Grigorievich, Foma Grigorievich! Can’t you tell us some really scary story? Come on, come on!” and da-da-da-da-da, they just won’t stop.2 Of course I don’t mind telling them a story, but just look what happens to them when they get in bed. I know for sure that each one of them is just trembling under her blanket like she has a fever, and she’d love

© Columbia University Press

2 \

The Lost Letter

to hide her head in her sheepskin coat. Just let a rat scratch around a clay pot, or let her catch her foot on the poker, and God help us!— she’s scared out of her mind. But the next day it’s as if nothing happened; she starts bothering me again to tell her a scary story.

So what should I tell you? Nothing much is coming to mind right away . . . All right, I’ll tell you how the witches played “fools” with my late granddad.3 But I beg you in advance, ladies and gentlemen, not to interrupt and get me off track, or you’ll end up with the kind of pudding you’d be ashamed even to taste.

My late granddad, I must tell you, was one of the more distinguished Cossacks of his day. He knew his ABCs and he knew the abbreviations they use in the church books. On a holiday he’d rattle off the Epistle Book in such a dashing way that he’d put even some of today’s priest’s sons to shame. Well, you know yourself that in those days, if you gathered together all the literate men in the whole town of Baturyn, there’d be no need to hold out your hat to catch them—you could fit them all into the palm of one hand.4 So it’s not a bit surprising that everyone he met would bow to him almost to the waist.

One day the grand hetman of the Cossacks took it into his head to send a letter to the empress for some reason.5 The regimental scribe, damn it to hell if I can remember his nickname—it wasn’t Snotnose, it wasn’t Ropey, it wasn’t Bare-Butt Fledgling—all I know is, he had some really weird nickname—anyway, he summoned my granddad and told him that the hetman himself was assigning him as a courier with a letter to the empress. Granddad didn’t like to spend a long time getting ready. He sewed the letter into his cap, he led out his horse, he gave a smacking kiss to his wife and his two piglets, as he called them, one of whom was the father of your humble servant, and he kicked up such dust when he set out, it seemed as if fifteen lads had started playing ball in the middle of the street.

© Columbia University Press

The next day, before the cock crowed a fourth time, Granddad was already in Konotop.6 There was a fair going on at that time, and so many people had thronged in the streets that it dazzled the eyes.

But since it was so early, they were all still sleeping, stretched out on the ground. Near a cow lay a young carouser with a nose as red as a bullfinch’s breast; a little farther on, a secondhand dealer sat snoring with her stock of flints, laundry bluing, shot, and bagels; under a cart lay a Gypsy; a chumak* lay on a wagon full of fish; in the very middle of the road a bearded Rooskie lay outstretched with his belts and gauntlets . . . well, you know, all sorts of riffraff, like always at a fair.7 Granddad stopped to take a good look at it all. Meanwhile things started stirring in the fair tents. The Jewesses started clanking bottles, smoke came billowing out in rings here and there, and the smell of hot baked goodies wafted through the whole encampment. It occurred to Granddad that he had neither tinderbox nor tobacco on hand, so he started wandering about the fair. He had hardly gone twenty steps when a Zaporozhian Cossack appeared, coming toward him. A real carouser, you could tell by his face! Wide trousers as red as fire, a dark-blue jerkin, a bright multicolored sash, at his side a saber and a long-stemmed pipe with a brass chain that hung to his very feet—a Zaporozhian plain and simple! What a fine folk! One of them’ll take a stance, draw himself up, run his hand over his dashing mustache, click his iron-capped heels—and set himself in motion! And how he’ll set off: His legs will be dancing away like a spindle in a woman’s hands. Like a whirlwind he’ll run his hand over all the strings of the bandura, and right then, arms akimbo, he’ll rush into a squatting Cossack dance. He’ll burst out into song—your soul just goes on a spree! No, that time has passed.

You don’t see Zaporozhians any more!8

* cart driver

The Lost Letter

\ 3

© Columbia University Press

4 \

The Lost Letter

So, they met each other. If you get to talking, it doesn’t take long to become acquainted. They started gabbing and gabbing so that Granddad almost forgot about his journey. They started up a drinking bout like at a wedding right before Lent. Finally they got tired of breaking pots and throwing money at people, and after all, the fair wasn’t going to last forever! The new friends agreed that they shouldn’t part and should continue their journey together. It had long since become evening when they rode out into the fields. The sun had gone off to rest; in its place a few reddish strips were shining here and there; the grain fields made a multicolored pattern like the holiday skirts of dark-browed young wives. Our Zaporozhian was overcome by an irresistible urge to talk. Granddad and another carouser who had joined them started thinking that maybe some demon had gotten into him, and that’s where all this was coming from: such strange stories and embellishments that several times Granddad split his sides and almost strained his stomach with laughing. But the farther they went into the fields the duskier it got, and at the same time the dashing fellow’s talk got more and more incoherent. Finally our storyteller fell completely silent and would shudder at the slightest rustling.

“Hey, hey, brother, you’ve really started dozing off. You seem to be wanting to go home and lie down on the stove!”

“I have no reason to hide anything from you,” he said, suddenly turning around and fixing them with his eyes. “I’ll have you know I sold my soul to the Evil One long ago.”

“So what else is new? Who hasn’t had dealings with the powers of evil once in a while? That’s just why you need to go on an outand-out drunk.”

“Oh, lads! I’d love to, but this very night is the hour of reckoning for this young daredevil! Oh, brothers!” he said, slapping them on the arms, “don’t betray me! Just stay awake for one night! I’ll never forget your friendship!”9

© Columbia University Press

Why not help out a fellow with such a misfortune? Granddad declared right away that he’d rather let his forelock be cut off and his own head along with it than allow the devil to sniff out a Christian soul with his dog’s snout.10 Our Cossacks would perhaps have ridden on, if night had not enveloped the sky as if with a sheet of black sackcloth, and if it had not become as dark in the field as under a sheepskin coat. All that could be seen was a single little light in the distance, and the horses, sensing that a stable was near, pricked up their ears and peered into the darkness. It seemed as if the little light came flying to meet them, and the Cossacks saw before them a tavern that was toppling to one side like a woman coming home from a jolly christening.

In those days the taverns weren’t like the ones we have now. Not only was there no room for a good man to spread out and start in on a “dove dance” or a gopak, there wasn’t even anywhere to lie down when the booze would go to his head and send him walking in the shape of the letter P.11 The courtyard was all filled with the wagons of chumaks. Under the sheds, in the mangers, in the entryway, they were snoring like tomcats—some curled up into a ball, others all stretched out. Only the tavern keeper stood in front of a lamp cutting notches on a stick to count how many quarts and half-quarts the chumaks had drained.

Granddad asked for a third of a pail of vodka for the three of them and set off for the barn. All three lay down next to one another. He had hardly had time to turn around before he saw that his countrymen were sleeping the sleep of the dead. Granddad woke up the third Cossack who had joined them and reminded him about the promise they had given their comrade. The man raised himself up a bit, rubbed his eyes for a moment, and fell asleep again. There was nothing else to do, Granddad was going to have to keep watch all by himself. In order to somehow ward off sleep, he went around inspecting all the wagons, he checked on the The Lost Letter

\ 5

© Columbia University Press

6 \

The Lost Letter

horses, he lit up his pipe, then he came back and sat down near his friends. Everything was quiet, so quiet that it seemed not even a fly was flying by. Then he had a vision of something gray showing its horns to him from under a nearby wagon . . . At this point his eyes started to close so tightly that he kept having to rub them with his fist and wash them out with the remaining vodka. But as soon as his eyes would clear up a bit, it would all be for naught. Finally, a little later, the monster again showed himself from under the wagon . . .

Granddad bulged out his eyes as much as he could, but the damned sleepiness kept covering everything in a fog. His hands went numb, his head rolled down, and a deep sleep overtook him so that he slumped down like a dead man.

Granddad slept for a long time, and only when the sun had already been burning the top of his shaved head for quite a while did he jump to his feet. He stretched a couple of times and scratched his back, and then noticed that there were not as many wagons in the yard as the night before. Apparently the chumaks had set off before dawn. He turned to his companions—the Cossack was sleeping, but the Zaporozhian Cossack was gone. Granddad asked around, but no one seemed to know anything. All that was left lying there was the Zaporozhian’s outer jerkin. Granddad was overcome by fear and doubt. He went to check on the horses—neither his horse nor the Zaporozhian’s horse was there! What could this mean?

Let’s suppose the Evil Power took the Zaporozhian, but who took the horses? After he thought it all over, Granddad concluded that apparently the devil had come on foot, and since hell is quite a ways off, he’d swiped Granddad’s horse. Granddad was deeply pained that he had failed to keep his Cossack word.

“Well,” he thought, “I have no choice, I’ll have to go on foot.

Maybe I’ll meet a horse dealer coming from the fair and I’ll buy a horse from him.”

© Columbia University Press

He reached for his cap—but his cap was gone. My late Granddad threw up his hands when he remembered that the night before, he and the Zaporozhian had swapped caps for a while. The Evil One must have gone off with the cap. So there’s a hetman’s courier for you! So that’s how he delivered the letter to the empress! At this point Granddad started treating the devil to such epithets that I think the Evil One had to sneeze more than once down in hell.12 But you can’t do much with cussing. No matter how much he scratched the nape of his neck, Granddad just couldn’t think of anything. What was he to do?

He hurried to get advice. He gathered all the good people who were there in the tavern, chumaks and just plain travelers, and he told them the misfortune that had happened. The chumaks thought for a long time, leaning their chins on their whips. They just twisted their heads and said that they had never heard of such a strange thing in the world of the baptized as that the devil should have swiped a letter from the hetman. Some of the others added that when the devil or a Rooskie steals something—you can just kiss it good-bye. Only the tavern keeper was sitting silently in the corner.

So Granddad went up to him. If a person is keeping silent, that means he’s stored up a lot of brains. But the tavern keeper wasn’t real generous with his words, and if Granddad hadn’t reached into his pocket for five twenty-kopeck coins, he would have just kept standing there in front of him for nothing.

“I’ll teach you how to find the letter,” the tavern keeper said, leading Granddad off to the side. Granddad felt relieved. “I can see by your eyes that you are a Cossack, not a woman. So listen! Near the tavern there will be a turn to the right into the woods. As soon as it starts to get dark, you should be ready to go. Gypsies live in the woods, and they come out of their lairs to forge iron on the nights when only witches travel on their pokers. What they are actually making, you don’t need to know. There will be a lot of hammering in The Lost Letter

\ 7

© Columbia University Press

8 \

The Lost Letter

the woods, but don’t go in the direction in which you hear the hammering. You will see a little path running past a charred tree, and you should start walking, walking, walking along that path . . . You’ll be scratched by blackthorns, a hazel tree will block the path—you just keep walking, and don’t stop until you come to a little stream.

That’s where you’ll see the one you need, but don’t forget to take in your pockets the stuff that pockets are made to carry . . . You know that both devils and humans love that good stuff.” Having said this, the tavern keeper went off to his little hole and wouldn’t say another word.

My late granddad was not one of the cowardly sort. If he met a wolf, he’d take it right by the tail; if he went through a bunch of Cossacks wielding his fists, they’d all tumble to the ground like pears.

Nevertheless, his flesh started to creep when he went into the woods on such a dark night. There wasn’t even a little star in the sky. It was as dark and deserted as in a wine cellar. All you could hear was the cold wind playing in the tops of the trees, high, high up overhead, and the trees swayed freely like tipsy Cossack heads, whispering drunkenly with their leaves. All of a sudden came such a wave of cold that Granddad thought of putting on his sheepskin coat, and suddenly it was as if a hundred hammers started hammering in the woods so loudly that his head rang. The woods were lighted up for a moment as if by summer lightning. Granddad immediately caught sight of a little path making its way among sparse bushes. And there were the charred tree and the blackthorn bushes! Everything was just the same as he’d been told; the tavern keeper hadn’t deceived him. But it wasn’t a lot of fun making his way through the prickly bushes. He’d never in all his life seen the damned thorns and branches scratch so painfully. At almost every step he wanted to scream.

Gradually he made his way out into a clear spot, and he noticed that the trees were becoming sparser, and the farther he walked the broader they became, such as he had never seen this side of Poland.

© Columbia University Press

Lo and behold, there was the stream flashing among the trees, as black as blued steel. Granddad stood for a long time on the bank, looking in all directions. On the opposite bank a fire was burning. It would seem that it was about to go out, and then it would glimmer in the stream, which was trembling like a Polish nobleman in a Cossack’s paws. And there was a little bridge! Well, it was so narrow that only the devil’s cabriolet would be able to cross it. But Granddad stepped onto it boldly, and he was on the other side before another man could have gotten out his snuff horn. Only now could he see that there were people sitting around the fire, and their snout-faces were so pretty that at any other time he would have given God knows what just to slip away from having to make their acquaintance. But now there was no help for it, he had to get tied up in it.

So Granddad bowed to them, almost to the waist: “May God help you, good people!” Not one of them even nodded to him. They sat silently, strewing something into the fire. Seeing a vacant place, Granddad sat right down without any preliminaries. The pretty snout-faces said nothing; Granddad said nothing. They sat silently for a long time. Granddad was starting to get bored. He started rummaging in his pocket, got out his pipe, looked around—not one of them was looking at him. “My dear benefactors, please do me a good turn, be so kind: it’s sort of like, one might say, in a certain sense . . .”

(Granddad had lived in society, he knew how to spin out his talk, and if the occasion arose he wouldn’t have been at a loss even before a king.) “So that, so to speak, so as to help myself but not offend you—I have a pipe, but I don’t have a devil of a thing to light it with.”

And they said not a word in answer to this speech; only one of the snouts shoved a burning firebrand right at Granddad’s forehead, so that if he hadn’t moved a little to the side he might have said farewell forever to one of his eyes. Seeing finally that time was passing to no purpose, he made up his mind to tell his business, whether the evil tribe was going to listen or not.

The Lost Letter

\ 9

© Columbia University Press

10 \

The Lost Letter

They pointed their horns and ears and stretched out their paws.

Granddad guessed what was up: He gathered all the money he had and threw it into their midst as if to a pack of dogs. As soon as he threw the money, everything got jumbled up before his eyes, the earth began to tremble, and somehow, he himself couldn’t have explained how, he found himself nearly in hell itself. “My God!” Granddad groaned when he had a good look: “What a bunch of monsters!” One mug was uglier than the next, as they say. There was a pile of witches as big as the pile of snow that sometimes falls at Christmastime: all dressed up, all made up, like young noblewomen at a fair. And all of them were dancing some kind of devil’s trepak as if they were drunk.13 God forbid the kind of dust they kicked up!

Any baptized person would be seized by trembling if he saw how high that demon tribe was leaping. Despite all his terror, Granddad couldn’t help laughing when he saw how the devils with dogs’ snouts wriggled around the witches on their little German legs, twisting their tails, like lads around beautiful maidens. The musicians banged on their cheeks as if they were drums, and blew with their noses as if they were French horns.

The moment they saw Granddad, they all turned toward him in a horde. Pig snouts, dog snouts, goat snouts, bustard snouts, horse snouts, they all stretched out and tried to kiss him.

Granddad spat, it was so disgusting! Finally they grabbed him and sat him down at a table that was about as long as the distance from Konotop to Baturyn. “Well, this isn’t so bad,” Granddad thought when he saw on the table pork, sausages, onions chopped up with cabbage, and lots of other goodies—“it seems these devilish bastards don’t observe the fasts.”14 My late Granddad himself, you should probably know, didn’t miss many opportunities to have a bite or two. He had a good appetite. So without bothering to ask, he took hold of a bowl full of slices of fatback and a hunk of ham, he took a fork that wasn’t much smaller than the forks

© Columbia University Press

peasants use to pitch hay, he grabbed the weightiest piece he could find, pillowed it on a crust of bread, and—lo and behold, he put it into someone else’s mouth. It was right up next to his ear, and somebody’s mug was chewing and clicking their teeth loud enough for the whole table to hear. Granddad didn’t turn a hair. He grabbed another piece, and he seemed to already be hooking it with his lips when again it went into somebody else’s gullet. A third time—he missed again. Granddad blew his top. He forgot his fear and forgot whose clutches he was in. He jumped up and yelled at the witches: “You Herod’s tribe! Are you trying to make fun of me? If you don’t give me back my Cossack’s cap right this minute, may I be a Catholic if I don’t twist all your pigs’ snouts so they’re facing backward!”15 No sooner had he uttered these words than all the monsters bared their teeth and laughed so loudly that Granddad’s heart nearly stopped beating. “All right!” squealed one of the witches, who Granddad decided was the most senior of all because her face was almost “prettier” than all the rest—“We’ll give you back your cap, but not before you play three games of ‘fools’ with us!” So what was he supposed to do? That a Cossack should play “fools” with a bunch of women! Granddad tried and tried to refuse, but finally sat down. They brought the cards, which were as greasy as the ones our priest’s daughters use to tell fortunes about prospective bridegrooms. “Listen!” the witch barked. “If you win even once, the cap is yours, but if you end up the ‘fool’ all three times, then please don’t take offense, but not only won’t you ever see your cap again, you might not see the world again!”

“Come on and deal, you old hag! Whatever will be, will be.”

So the cards were dealt out. Granddad took his hand—what trash. If only there’d been one trump card just for laughs. His highest card was a ten, he didn’t even have any pairs, and the witch kept piling up five at a time. He ended up the fool! As soon The Lost Letter

\ 11

© Columbia University Press

12 \

The Lost Letter

as Granddad ended up the fool, all the snouts started whinnying, barking, and oinking: “Fool! Fool! Fool!”

“I hope you all bust a gut, you tribe of devils!” Granddad yelled, stopping up his ears with his fingers. “Well,” he thought, “the witch was doing the shuffling. Now I get to deal.” He dealt.

He turned up the trump card. He looked at his cards: He had a great hand, this time he did have some trumps. And at first things went really well, but then the witch put down five cards, including some kings! Granddad had only trump cards in his hand.

Without taking long to think about it, he grabbed those kings by the whiskers with his trumps.

“Hee-hee-hee, that’s not a very Cossack-like thing to do! What are you covering them with, brother?”

“What do you mean? With trump cards!”

“Maybe you think those are trump cards, but we don’t!”

Lo and behold, indeed they weren’t from the trump suit. What devilish doings! He ended up the fool yet again, and the pack of devils started yelling again: “Fool, fool!”—so that the table shook and the cards jumped around.

Granddad got mad as blazes; he dealt the last round. Again things were going well. The witch put five down again. Granddad covered them and then got a whole hand full of trump cards. “Trump!” he cried, thumping the card on the table so hard that it bent. The witch silently covered it with an eight of another suit.

“What are you trying to trump with, you old devil!” The witch lifted the card: under it was an ordinary six.

“It’s some kind of demonish cheating!” Granddad said, and pounded the table with his fist as hard as he could. At least it was good that the witch had a bad hand; Granddad, as if on purpose, had pairs. He started picking cards from the deck with all his might.

It was all such trash that Granddad lost heart. There wasn’t a single

© Columbia University Press

good card in the deck. So without even looking he played a simple six. The witch took it.

“Hey, wait a minute! What’s this? Hey, hey, something’s not right!”

You see, Granddad had made the sign of the cross over the cards under the table, and lo and behold, in his hand appeared an ace, king, and jack of trumps, and instead of a six he had played a queen.

“So you called me the fool! You called me the fool! King of trumps! Well, can you take it? Huh? You cat’s spawn! You want an ace? An ace! A jack!”

Thunder rumbled all through hell; the witch starting writhing, and seemingly out of nowhere—his cap came flying right into his face. “No, that’s not enough!” Granddad shouted, putting on his cap with a new sense of courage. “If my dashing steed does not appear before me this very minute, then may I be struck down by lightning on this very evil spot if I don’t make the sign of the holy cross over all of you!” He started to raise his arm, when a bunch of horse bones came clattering right in front of him. “There’s your steed!” The poor man burst into tears like a small child when he looked at them. He felt so sorry for his old comrade! “Well, give me some kind of horse so I can get out of your nest!” The devil cracked a whip—and a fiery steed came flying up under him, and Granddad went soaring up like a bird.

He got really scared on the journey, though, when the horse, refusing to obey his shouts or the reins, went galloping over hollows and swamps. You’d start trembling just to hear him tell about what places he’d been in. He’d happen to look down below his feet, and he’d get even more scared: an abyss! a sheer drop! And the satanic animal didn’t mind a bit, it would just go right across. Granddad tried to hold it back, but it was no use. It flew headlong over stumps, over hillocks into a hollow, and it hit the ground at the bottom so

The Lost Letter

\ 13

© Columbia University Press

14 \

The Lost Letter

hard that it knocked the breath out of Granddad. At any rate, he couldn’t remember a thing that had happened to him during that time, and when he finally came to and looked around, it was already getting light. He caught glimpses of familiar places, and he was lying on the roof of his own hut.

Granddad climbed down and crossed himself. What devilish doings! What an abyss, what strange things they did to a man! He looked at his hands—they were all bloody; he looked into a barrel full of water—and saw that his face was also covered in blood. He washed up so that he wouldn’t scare the children, and went quietly into the hut. He looked and saw the kids backing up toward him and pointing in fear, saying, “Look! Look! Mother’s jumping like a crazy woman!” Indeed the woman was sitting asleep in front of her loom, holding her spindle in her hands and sleepily jumping on the bench. Granddad quietly took her hand and tried to wake her up: “Hello, my wife! Are you all right?” She looked bug-eyed at him for a bit, and finally she recognized Granddad and told him that she had been dreaming that the stove was riding around the hut, chasing the pots and washtubs out with a spade, and the devil knows what else.

“Well,” Granddad said, “you dreamed it, and I saw it for real. I can see we’re going to have to have our hut consecrated, but right now I have no time to lose.” After he rested a bit, Granddad got a horse, and now he didn’t stop either by day or by night until he made it to his destination and gave the letter to the empress herself. Granddad saw so many wonders there that it took him a long time to tell the tale afterward. How they led him into grand halls with such high ceilings that if you put ten huts one on top of another, even then they wouldn’t reach the top. He looked into one room—nothing; into another—nothing; into a third—still nothing; in a fourth there was nothing either; but in the fifth room, lo and behold, she herself was sitting there wearing a golden crown and a brand-new gray caftan

© Columbia University Press

and red boots, and eating golden dumplings. How she ordered him to fill his cap with blue five-ruble notes, how . . . I can’t remember it all. Granddad forgot even to think about all his troubles with the devils, and if anyone happened to mention it, Granddad would be silent, as if it had nothing to do with him, and you had to work really hard to get him to tell the whole story the way it happened. And apparently as a punishment for the fact that he hadn’t thought to get the hut consecrated right away, every year at exactly that same time, such a strange thing would happen to his wife: She would start dancing, and she couldn’t do anything about it. No matter what she tried to do, her legs would have a mind of their own, and they’d just grab her and go into a squatting Cossack dance.

The Lost Letter

\ 15

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

VIY

E

arly in the morning, as soon as they rang the resounding seminary bell that hung by the gates of the Brotherhood Monastery in Kyiv, schoolboys and bursaks would come hurrying in crowds from all parts of the city.1 Grammarians (first-year students), Rhetoricians (second-year), Philosophers (third-year), and Theologians (seniors), with their notebooks under their arms, would make their way to class.2 The Grammarians were still quite small; as they walked they shoved each other and quarreled in thin little soprano voices; almost all of them wore torn or stained clothes, and their pockets were constantly full of all sorts of trash, like knucklebones, little whistles made out of feathers, half-eaten pies, and sometimes even tiny little sparrows, one of which, when it suddenly started cheeping during a particularly quiet moment in class, would earn its patron a pretty painful slap on both hands with a ruler, or sometimes a whipping with a cherrywood switch. The Rhetoricians walked along in a more respectable way: Their clothes were often completely intact, but on the other hand their faces were almost always adorned by a rhetorical trope:

Š Columbia University Press

18 \

Viy

either one of their eyes would be so swollen it was climbing up the forehead, or there’d be a big blister instead of a lip, or some other marking; they talked and swore among themselves in tenor voices.

The Philosophers’ voices were a whole octave lower; there was nothing in their pockets except strong shag tobacco. They didn’t store anything up, but just devoured whatever came their way right on the spot; sometimes you could smell their pipes and vodka so far off that a tradesman walking by would stop and sniff the air like a hunting hound for a good long while.

The marketplace would usually just be starting to get going at that hour, and the market women selling bagels, rolls, watermelon seeds, and poppyseed cakes would tug at the garments of those walking by, as long as they were made of fine cloth or some kind of cotton material.

“Young gentlemen! Young gentlemen! Look here! Look here!” they would call from all directions. “I have bagels, poppyseed cakes, fancy cakes, fine loaves! I swear they’re fine! Made with honey!

I baked them myself!”

Another would lift up a long, twisted roll and cry, “Here’s an icicle! Young gentlemen, buy an icicle!”

“Don’t buy anything from that one. Look how nasty she is—her nose is ugly, and her hands are dirty . . .”

But they were afraid to tug at the Philosophers and the Theologians, because the Philosophers and the Theologians always liked to take things just to sample, and they’d grab a whole handful at a time.

After arriving at the seminary, the whole crowd would disperse to their classes, which were in low-ceilinged but spacious rooms with small windows, wide doors, and grubby benches. The classroom would suddenly be filled with the humming of many different voices: The senior students serving as auditors would be listening to their pupils read out their lessons; the ringing soprano

© Columbia University Press

of a Grammarian would hit a resonance with the glass in the small windows, and the glass would reply with almost the exact same sound; in the corner a Rhetorician would be droning, and his mouth and thick lips looked as if they should have belonged to a Philosopher at the very least. He droned in a bass voice, and all you could hear from a distance was “Boo . . . boo . . . boo . . .”

While they were listening to the lessons, the auditors would look with one eye under the bench, where they could see a roll, or a fruit dumpling, or some pumpkin seeds peeking out of the pocket of the bursak under their charge.

When this whole scholarly crowd had managed to arrive early or when they knew that the professors would be later than usual, by unanimous consent they would make a plan for a fight, and everyone had to take part in the fight, even the monitors who were supposed to ensure the orderliness and morality of the whole student estate. Two Theologians would usually decide how the battle was to proceed: whether each class year was supposed to stand up for itself or whether they were to divide into two halves: the bursa and the seminary. In any case, the Grammarians would start first, and as soon as the Rhetoricians got mixed up in it, the Grammarians would run away and stand on higher ground to watch the battle. Then the Philosophers with their long black mustaches would enter in, and finally the thick-necked Theologians, in horrible wide trousers. Usually it would end with Theology beating everyone, while Philosophy, scratching its sides, would be crowded into the classroom and disperse to the benches to take a rest. The professor, who had participated in similar fights himself, would come into the class and in a single second recognize from the flushed faces of his students that it had been quite a fight. At the same time that he was beating the fingers of Rhetoric with a switch, in another classroom another professor would be working over Philosophy’s hands with wooden paddles. The Theologians were Viy

\ 19

© Columbia University Press

20 \

Viy

treated in a quite different manner: As the professor of Theology put it, they got poured out to them a measure of marrowfat peas, which consisted of blows from short leather whips.

On holidays the seminarists and bursaks would travel around to people’s homes with puppet theaters. Sometimes they would perform a play based on a Bible story, and in those cases there would always be some Theologian who was almost as tall as the Kyiv bell tower, who would distinguish himself by playing Herodias or the wife of Potiphar, the captain of the guard in Pharaoh’s palace.3 As a reward they would receive a piece of canvas, or a sack of millet, or half a boiled goose, all that sort of thing.

This whole scholarly tribe, both the seminarists and the bursaks, who felt a kind of hereditary hostility toward each other, were extremely poor in means of support and at the same time were unusually gluttonous, so that it would be quite impossible to calculate how many dumplings each of them could put away at dinner; thus the voluntary contributions of well-to-do property owners could hardly suffice. So a senate consisting of Philosophers and Theologians would send out some Grammarians and Rhetoricians under the leadership of a Philosopher—and sometimes he would participate himself—with sacks on their backs, to empty out other people’s vegetable gardens. And pumpkin porridge would appear in the bursa. The senators would gobble so many watermelons and melons that the next day the auditors would hear not one but two lessons from them: one came from their mouths, and the other rumbled in the senators’ stomachs. The bursaks and the seminarists wore long cassock-like garments, which reached to this very day, a technical term meaning “below the heels.”

The most festive event for the seminary was the school vacation—the time starting in June when the bursaks would usually disperse to their homes. Then the whole highway would be strewn

© Columbia University Press

with Grammarians, Philosophers, and Theologians. Whoever did not have a haven of his own would go to visit the home of one of his comrades. The Philosophers and Theologians would set off on condition, that is, they undertook to teach or prep the children of well-to-do people, and in return they would receive a new pair of boots and sometimes also a frock coat for the coming year. This whole gang set off together in a camping party. They would boil porridge for themselves and sleep out in the fields. Each one of them dragged a sack in which there was one shirt and a pair of foot wraps.

The Theologians were particularly thrifty and careful: In order not to wear out their boots, they would take them off, hang them on poles, and carry them on their shoulders, especially when there was a lot of mud. Then they would tuck up their wide trousers to their knees and fearlessly splash through the puddles.

As soon as they caught sight of a farmstead off in the distance, they would immediately turn off the highway and, when they neared a farmhouse that was built a little bit better than the others, they would stand in a row in front of the windows and start to sing a canticle at the top of their voices. The owner of the farmhouse, some old peasant Cossack, would listen to them for a long time, arms akimbo, then he’d start sobbing bitterly, turn to his wife and say, “Wife! These students are singing something that must be very intelligent. Bring them some fatback and whatever else we have!”

And a whole bowlful of filled dumplings would be poured into the sack. A decent-sized piece of fatback, a few round loaves, and sometimes even a tied-up chicken would find a place in the sack together. Fortified by this supply, the Grammarians, Rhetoricians, Philosophers, and Theologians would continue on their way. The farther they went, however, the smaller their crowd became. Almost all of them had dispersed to their homes, and the only ones who remained were those whose parents’ nests were farther away.

Viy

\ 21

© Columbia University Press

22 \

Viy

Once during such a journey, three bursaks turned off the highway in order to stock up on provisions at the first farmstead they could find, because their sack had long since been emptied out. They were the Theologian Khalyava, the Philosopher Khoma Brut, and the Rhetorician Tiberius Gorobets.4 The Theologian was a strapping, broad-shouldered man with an extremely strange disposition: He would never fail to steal anything that was lying around near him. Moreover, he was of an extremely gloomy character. When he got drunk, he would hide in the tall weeds, and the seminary authorities would have a difficult time finding him.

The Philosopher Khoma Brut was of a cheerful disposition.

He loved to lie around and smoke his long-stemmed pipe. When he was drinking, he would always hire musicians and dance a trepak.5 He would often get a taste of the marrowfat peas, but always showed philosophical indifference, saying, whatever will be, will be.

The Rhetorician Tiberius Gorobets was not yet old enough to grow a mustache, drink vodka, or smoke a pipe. All he had was a forelock, and therefore his character had not yet been developed; but judging by the big bumps he often had on his forehead when he appeared in class, it might be supposed that he would become a good warrior. The Theologian Khalyava and the Philosopher Khoma often pulled him by his forelock as a sign of their patronage, and they made use of him as their deputy.6 It was already evening when they turned off the highway. The sun had just set, and the warmth of the day still remained in the air. The Theologian and the Philosopher walked in silence, smoking their pipes; the Rhetorician Tiberius Gorobets was knocking the heads off the roadside thistles with a stick. The road wound through scattered groups of oak and hazelnut trees that covered the meadow.

Declivities and small green hills, as round as church domes, sometimes crisscrossed the plain. Visible in two places, a field full of

© Columbia University Press

ripening grain was a sign that a village must be somewhere nearby.

But it had been more than an hour since they had passed the swaths of grain, and still they had not seen any dwellings. The twilight had completely darkened the sky, and only in the west could one see a pale remnant of crimson radiance.

“What the devil!” the Philosopher Khoma Brut said, “it really seemed like there was a farmstead nearby.”

The Theologian looked silently around, then again took his pipe in his mouth, and they all continued their journey.

“Honest to God!” the Philosopher said, stopping again. “You can’t see so much as the devil’s fist, it’s so dark.”

“Maybe a farmstead will appear a little farther along,” the Theologian said, his pipe still in his teeth.

But meanwhile night had fallen, and a rather dark night. Small storm clouds intensified the darkness, and judging by all appearances, neither stars nor moon could be expected. The bursaks noticed that they had gone astray and had long ago wandered off the road.

The Philosopher groped with his feet in all directions and finally said abruptly, “Where’s the road?”

The Theologian was silent for a moment, and after thinking it over, he said, “Yes, it’s a dark night.”

The Rhetorician went off to the side and tried to find the road by crawling on all fours, but his hands just kept going into foxes’ holes. All around was nothing but the steppe, which seemed never to have been traversed by anyone. The travelers made yet another effort to move forward, but they encountered the same wilderness everywhere. The Philosopher tried calling out to someone, but his voice died away on all sides and encountered no response. Only a little while later did they hear a faint moaning that resembled the howling of wolves.

“Look, what are we going to do?” the Philosopher said.

Viy

\ 23

© Columbia University Press

24 \

Viy

“What do you think? We’ll spend the night in the field!” the Theologian said and reached into his pocket to get his tinderbox and light up his pipe again. But the Philosopher could not consent to this. He had the habit of putting away a twenty-pound hunk of bread and about four pounds of fatback before bed, and at this point he was feeling a kind of unbearable solitude in his stomach. Besides, despite his cheerful disposition, the Philosopher was somewhat afraid of wolves.

“No, Khalyava, that’s not possible,” he said. “How can we just lie down and stretch out like dogs, without eating anything to keep up our strength? Let’s keep trying. Maybe we’ll stumble on some kind of dwelling place and at least drink a glass of vodka before bed.”

At the word “vodka,” the Theologian spat to the side and said, “You know, you’re right, there’s no reason to stay out here in the fields.”

The bursaks started walking on ahead, and to their immense joy, they could hear barking in the distance. They listened attentively to hear what direction it was coming from, and then they set out more confidently. After walking a little while, they saw a light.

“A farmstead! Honest to God, a farmstead!” the Philosopher said.

His supposition did not deceive him: Very soon they in fact saw a small farmstead consisting of just two huts in a single courtyard. A light was burning in the windows. A dozen plum trees stuck up from behind a lath fence. When they looked through the gaps in the wooden gates, the bursaks saw a courtyard filled with chumaks’ wagons.7 Now there were a few stars peeping out in the sky.

“Come on, brothers, don’t lag behind! No matter what, we have to get a place for the night!”

Together the three learned men knocked at the gates and shouted, “Open up!”

© Columbia University Press

The door of one of the huts creaked, and a moment later the bursaks saw before them an old woman in a sheepskin coat.

“Who’s there?” she cried, coughing faintly.

“Let us in, Granny, to spend the night. We’ve lost our way. It’s as nasty out in the field as in a hungry belly.”

“And what kind of folk are you?”

“We’re harmless folk, the Theologian Khalyava, the Philosopher Brut, and the Rhetorician Gorobets.”

“I can’t,” the old woman grumbled. “My farmyard is full of people, and all the corners of my hut are occupied. Where would I put you? And you’re all such strapping and healthy lads! My hut would collapse if I tried to fit you in. I know these Philosophers and Theologians. If you start taking in drunkards like that, pretty soon you won’t even have a farmyard. Get out! Get out! There’s no room for you here.”

“Have mercy, Granny! How can it be that Christian souls should perish for no good reason? Put us wherever you like. And if we do something or somehow or something else, then may your arms wither away or God knows what else happen to you. How about that!”

It seemed that the old woman was relenting a bit.

“All right,” she said after thinking it over, “I’ll let you in, but I’m going to put you in different places. Otherwise I won’t feel easy at heart if you’re lying together.”

“Whatever you like; we won’t argue,” the bursaks answered.

The gates creaked open, and they went into the farmyard.

“Say, Granny,” the Philosopher said as he followed the old woman, “if we could just, as they say . . . Honest to God, my stomach feels as if somebody were riding on wheels in it. I haven’t had even a wood chip to eat since early morning.”

“Look what he wants!” the old woman said. “I don’t have anything, nothing of the sort, and I haven’t lit the stove today.”

Viy

\ 25

© Columbia University Press

26 \

Viy

“But we’d pay for all of it,” the Philosopher continued, “we’d pay you properly tomorrow, in hard cash.”

“Yeah,” he continued quietly, “like hell we’ll pay you!”

“Go on, go on, and be happy with what you’re given. The devil himself brought me such sensitive young gentlemen!”

The Philosopher Khoma got completely depressed when he heard these words. But suddenly his nose caught the scent of dried fish. He looked at the Theologian’s wide trousers as he walked alongside and saw a huge fish tail sticking out of his pocket: The Theologian had already managed to filch a whole carp off one of the wagons. And since he had done this not out of any self-interest but solely out of habit, and had completely forgotten about his carp and was now looking around to see what else he could swipe, determined not to miss out on even a broken wheel—Khoma the Philosopher stuck his hand into the Theologian’s pocket as if it were his own, and pulled out the carp.

The old woman found different places to lodge the bursaks.

She put the Rhetorician in the hut, she locked up the Theologian in an empty pantry, and for the Philosopher she allocated a sheep pen that was also empty.

As soon as he remained alone the Philosopher ate up the carp in a single minute, then inspected the wattled walls of the pen, pushed away with his foot the snout of a curious pig who had stuck her nose in from the neighboring pen, and turned onto his other side in order to fall into the sleep of the dead. Suddenly the low door opened, and the old woman came into the pen, all bent over.

“What do you need, Granny?” the Philosopher said.

But the old woman came walking right toward him with her arms outstretched.

“So that’s it!” the Philosopher thought. “No way, my dear, you’re too old.” He moved away a little, but the old woman again came right up to him without ceremony.

© Columbia University Press

“Listen, Granny!” the Philosopher said, “it’s fast time now, and I’m the kind of man who won’t violate the holy fasts for a thousand gold pieces.”8 But the old woman spread her arms and tried to catch hold of him, without saying a word.

The Philosopher got frightened, especially when he noticed that her eyes were flashing with a kind of unusual glitter.

“Granny! What’s wrong with you? Go away, go away, and may God be with you!” he shouted.

But the old woman said not a word and kept trying to grab him.

He jumped onto his feet, intending to run away, but the old woman stood in the door, fixed her flashing eyes on him, and again started coming up to him.

The Philosopher wanted to push her away, but to his amazement he noticed that he couldn’t raise his arms, and his legs would not move, and he saw with horror that even his voice made no sound from his mouth. The words stirred soundlessly on his lips. He heard nothing but his heart beating; he saw the old woman come up to him, fold his arms, bend his head down, and jump onto his back with the swiftness of a cat. She struck his side with a broom, and prancing like a saddle horse, he carried her away on his shoulders.

This all happened so fast that the Philosopher could hardly come to his senses and grab his own knees, trying to hold his legs back, but to his great amazement, they lifted against his will and galloped faster than a Circassian trotter. Only when they had already left the farmstead and a flat valley opened up before them, and woods as black as coal stretched out to the side, did he say to himself: “Aha! She’s a witch.”

The inverted sickle of the moon was shining in the sky. A timid midnight radiance, like a transparent veil, lay lightly on the earth and gave off smoke. Woods, meadows, sky, valleys—everything seemed to be sleeping with open eyes. If only a wind would flutter Viy

\ 27

© Columbia University Press

28 \

Viy

up somewhere. There was something moist and warm in the nocturnal freshness. Like comets, the shadows of trees and bushes cast dark wedge-shaped shadows on the sloping plain. That was the kind of night it was when the Philosopher Khoma Brut galloped with a weird rider on his back. He felt a kind of agonizing, unpleasant, and at the same time sweet feeling rising up to his heart. He lowered his head and saw that the grass that had been right under his feet seemed to be growing deeply downward and that above it was water as clear as a mountain spring, and the grass seemed to be the bottom of a sort of sea that was bright and transparent to its very depths. At least he could see clearly how he was reflected in it together with the old woman sitting on his back. He saw some sort of sun shining there instead of the moon; he heard bluebells ringing as they bent their little heads. He saw a water nymph swim out from behind some sedge, and caught a glimpse of her back and her leg, which was plump and springy, made all of gleaming and trembling.

She turned toward him—and now her face, with bright, sparkling, piercing eyes that sang their way into his soul, was getting close to him, was on the surface, and then moved away, trembling with sparkling laughter—and now she had turned over onto her back, and her cloudlike breasts, with a matte surface like unglazed porcelain, shone translucent in the sun along the edges of their white, tenderly elastic roundedness. Water bestrewed them in little beadlike bubbles. She was all trembling and laughing in the water . . .

Was he seeing this or not? Was this in waking life or in a dream?

And what’s that over there? The wind or music: It rings, it rings, and it twines, and it approaches, and it pierces the soul with a kind of unbearable trill . . .

“What is this?” the Philosopher Khoma Brut thought, looking beneath him as he flew at full speed. Sweat was pouring from him.

He felt a demonically sweet sensation, he felt a kind of piercing, agonizingly frightening pleasure. It often seemed to him as if his

© Columbia University Press

heart was no longer in him, and in fright he tried to grasp it with his hand. Exhausted, bewildered, he started recalling all the prayers he knew. He went over in his mind all the incantations against evil spirits—and suddenly he felt a kind of refreshment; he felt that his pace was getting lazier, and the witch was holding onto his back more feebly. The thick grass touched him, and he no longer saw anything unusual about it. The bright sickle shone in the sky.

“All right, good!” the Philosopher Khoma thought to himself, and started uttering the incantations almost out loud. Finally he leaped out from under the old woman with the speed of lightning and jumped up onto her back in his turn. The old woman started running with a quick, rhythmic pace, so fast that her rider could hardly catch his breath. He could just barely glimpse the earth beneath him. Everything was clear in the moonlight, although the moon was not full. The valleys were smooth, but he was glimpsing everything vaguely and in fragments because of the speed they were going. He grabbed a log that was lying on the road and started whacking the old woman with it with all his might. She uttered wild howls. At first her howls were angry and threatening, then they became feebler, more pleasant, purer, and finally they were just barely ringing softly, like fine little silver bells, and they sank deeply into his soul. Involuntarily the thought flashed in his head: Is this really the old woman? “Oh, I can’t do it any more,” she said in exhaustion and fell to the ground.

He stood on his feet and looked into her eyes: The dawn blazed up, and the golden domes of the churches of Kyiv gleamed in the distance. In front of him lay a beautiful woman with a disheveled plait of luxuriant hair, with eyelashes that were as long as arrows.

Insensibly, she flung her bare white arms out to the sides and moaned, raising her tear-filled eyes upward.

Khoma began trembling like a leaf. Pity and a kind of strange excitement and cowardice, which he himself did not understand, overcame him; he started running as fast as he could. On the way, Viy

\ 29

© Columbia University Press

30 \

Viy

his heart pounded in agitation, and he could not explain to himself what this strange new feeling was that had overcome him. He no longer wanted to go to any farmsteads, and he hurried back to Kyiv, meditating on this inexplicable incident the whole way.

There were almost no bursaks in the city. They had all dispersed to various farmsteads, either on condition or without any sort of conditions, because at Little Russian farmsteads one can eat small dumplings, cheese, sour cream, and stuffed dumplings the size of a broad-brimmed hat, without paying a cent. The large dilapidated building in which the bursa was housed was completely empty, and no matter how the Philosopher rummaged in all the corners and even felt all the holes and depressions in the roof, he could find neither a piece of fatback nor an old roll that might have been hidden away by the bursaks, as was their habit.

But the Philosopher soon found a way to solve his problem. He walked three times through the marketplace, whistling. At the very end he winked at a young widow wearing a yellow cap and selling ribbons, shot, and wheels—and that very day he was given his fill of stuffed wheat dumplings, chicken . . . in short, it’s impossible to list everything he had at the table that was set for him in a small earthen house in the middle of a cherry orchard. That same evening the Philosopher was seen in a tavern. He was lying on a bench, smoking his pipe, as was his custom, and everyone saw him throw the Jewish tavern-keeper half a gold piece. A tankard stood in front of him. He watched the people coming in and going out with indifferent and contented eyes and was no longer thinking at all about the unusual incident that had happened to him.

■□■ Meanwhile rumors spread everywhere that the daughter of one of the richest Cossack lieutenants, whose farmstead was located about

© Columbia University Press

thirty miles from Kyiv, had returned one day from a walk all beaten up.9 She had hardly had the strength to make it to her father’s house, she was on her deathbed, and before her hour of death she had expressed the desire to have the prayers for the dying read for her for the three days after her death by one of the Kyiv seminarists: Khoma Brut. The Philosopher learned this from the rector himself, who had officially summoned him into his room and declared that he must quickly set off, without any delay, and that the eminent Cossack lieutenant had sent servants and a wagon expressly for him.

The Philosopher shuddered with a kind of instinctive feeling that he himself would not have been able to explain. A dark premonition told him that something evil was awaiting him. Without himself knowing why, he declared straight out that he would not go.

“Listen, Mister Khoma!” the rector said (on certain occasions he could speak very politely to his subordinates), “no one gives a good goddamn whether or not you want to go. All I’ll say to you is that if you’re going to kick up your heels and try to be smart, I’ll order them to whip your back and other bodily parts with a young birch so that you won’t need to go to the bathhouse.”10 The Philosopher went out of the room, scratching lightly behind his ear, not saying a word, and planning at the first opportunity to place his hopes in his own legs. Deep in thought, he descended the steep staircase that led into the courtyard planted with poplars, and he stopped for a moment, hearing distinctly the voice of the rector, who was giving orders to his steward and to someone else, probably one of the people the lieutenant had sent to get him.

“Thank his lordship for the millet and eggs,” the rector was saying, “and tell him that as soon as those books he wrote about are ready, I’ll send them immediately. I’ve already given them to the scribe to copy. And don’t forget, my dear man, to add that I know they have some good fish, especially sturgeon, on their farm, and ask him to send some when he has a chance. The fish they have in Viy

\ 31

© Columbia University Press

32 \

Viy

the markets here is of poor quality and expensive. Yavtukh, give each of the lads a glass of vodka. And tie up the Philosopher, or he’ll surely make a run for it.”

“Look what a son of the devil he is!” the Philosopher thought to himself. “He’s sniffed me out, the long-legged rascal!”

He went down and saw a covered wagon that at first he took for a grain-drying barn on wheels. Indeed, it was as deep as an oven for baking bricks. It was the usual Krakow carriage in which fifty Jews will set off with their goods to all the towns in which they can sniff out a fair. About six hearty and strong Cossacks, already of middle age, were waiting for him. Their caftans made of fine cloth with tassels showed that they belonged to a quite notable and rich proprietor. Their small scars indicated that they had at one time played a not inglorious role in war.

“What is to be done? Whatever will be, will be,” the Philosopher thought to himself, and turning to the Cossacks, he said loudly, “Hello, comrade brothers!”

“Greetings, Mister Philosopher!” some of the Cossacks answered.

“So I’m to sit with you? This is quite a splendid carriage!” he continued as he climbed in. “All you have to do is hire some musicians, and you could have a dance in it.”

“Yes, it’s a well-proportioned carriage!” one of the Cossacks said as he took a seat on the box alongside the coachman, who had wound a rag around his head to replace the cap he had left behind in a tavern. The other five men together with the Philosopher climbed into the depths of the carriage and took their seats on sacks filled with various goods they had bought in the town.

“It would be interesting to know,” the Philosopher said, “if, for example, you were to fill this carriage with some kind of goods— let’s say salt or iron wedges—how many horses would you need then to pull it?”

© Columbia University Press

“Yes,” the Cossack on the box said after a moment’s silence, “you’d need a pretty good number of horses.”

After this satisfactory answer the Cossack considered himself fully justified in remaining silent for the rest of the journey.

The Philosopher very much wanted to find out in more detail: who was this lieutenant; what was his disposition; what did people know about his daughter, who had returned home in such an unusual fashion and was now at death’s door, and whose story was now somehow tied to his own; how did they live and what went on in their home? He addressed his questions to the men, but apparently the Cossacks were also philosophers, because they answered him by remaining silent and smoking their pipes as they lay on the sacks. Only one of them addressed the driver on the box with the terse order: “Watch out, Overko, you’re such an old scatterbrain. As soon as you get to the tavern on the Chukhrailovsky Road, don’t forget to stop and wake me and the other lads up, if any of us has happened to fall asleep.” After saying this, he fell asleep rather loudly.

These instructions were quite superfluous, however, because hardly had the gigantic carriage come near the tavern on the Chukhrailovsky Road than they all shouted in one voice: “Stop!” Moreover, Overko’s horses were so well trained that they stopped in front of every tavern all by themselves.

Despite the hot July day, they all got out of the carriage and went into the low-ceilinged dingy room where the Jewish innkeeper rushed to receive his old acquaintances with signs of joy.

The Jew brought some pork sausages hidden under his shirt, and after laying them on the table, he immediately turned his back on this fruit forbidden by the Talmud. They all took seats around the table. Earthenware tankards appeared in front of each guest.

The Philosopher Khoma was obligated to take part in the general carousal. And since Little Russians, when they go on a binge, never fail to start kissing or crying, soon the whole hut was filled with the Viy

\ 33

© Columbia University Press

34 \

Viy

sounds of kissing: “Oh, Spirid, let’s kiss!”—“Come here, Dorosh, I’ll give you a hug!”

One Cossack who was a little older than the others, with a gray mustache, propped his cheek on his hand and started sobbing with deep feeling about the fact that he had neither father nor mother and had ended up all by his lonesome in the world. Another was a great thinker and kept consoling him, saying, “Don’t cry, by God, don’t cry! What’s all this . . . God knows what all this is.”

The one named Dorosh got very curious and kept addressing questions to the Philosopher Khoma: “I’d like to know what they teach you in that bursa. Do they teach you the same thing the lector reads out in church, or something else?”

“Don’t ask!” the great thinker drawled out. “Just let everything be the way it was. God knows how things should be; God knows everything.”

“No, I want to know,” Dorosh said, “what’s written in those books. Maybe it’s something entirely different from what the lector reads.”

“Oh, my God, my God!” the well-respected preceptor said.

“Why say such things? It’s as God’s will has decreed. Whatever God has given, no one can change.”

“I want to know everything that’s been written. I’ll go to the bursa, honest to God, I’ll go! You think I can’t learn it all? I’ll learn it all, all of it!”

“Oh, my God, my God!” the consoler said and lowered his head to the table, because he no longer had the strength to hold it up on his shoulders.

The other Cossacks were talking about landowners and about why the moon shines in the sky.

The Philosopher Khoma, seeing the state all their heads were in, resolved to make use of it and slip away. At first he turned to the gray-haired Cossack who was grieving about his father and mother:

© Columbia University Press

“Why are you weeping, old fellow,” he said, “I’m an orphan myself!

Lads, let me go free! What am I to you?”

“Let’s let him go free!” some of them responded. “He’s an orphan, after all. Let him go wherever he wants.”

“Oh, my God, my God!” the consoler said, raising his head.

“Let him go! Let him go on his way!”

And the Cossacks were ready to lead him out into the open field, but the one who had displayed his curiosity stopped them, saying: “Don’t touch him. I want to talk to him about the bursa. I’m going to the bursa myself.”

But this escape could hardly have succeeded anyway, because when the Philosopher tried to get up from the table, his legs seemed to have turned to wood, and he was seeing such a multitude of doors in the room that he could hardly have figured out which was the real one.

Only in the evening did this whole company remember that they needed to continue their journey. They clambered into the carriage and set off, urging on the horses and singing a song whose words and meaning no one would have been able to make out. After traveling the greater part of the night, constantly losing their way although they knew it by heart, they finally went down a steep hill into a valley, and the Philosopher noticed a paling or wattle fence stretching out on either side, with short trees and roofs peeking out from behind them. This was the large hamlet that belonged to the lieutenant. It was long past midnight; the sky was dark, and tiny little stars twinkled here and there. No light could be seen in a single hut. They rode into the farmyard, accompanied by the barking of dogs. On either side one could see barns and little houses with straw roofs. One of them, located right in the middle opposite the gates, was larger than the others and seemed to be the residence of the lieutenant. The carriage stopped in front of a small simulacrum Viy

\ 35

© Columbia University Press

36 \

Viy

of a barn, and our travelers went to find sleeping places. The Philosopher, however, wished to look around the master’s mansions from the outside for a while; but no matter how he strained his eyes, nothing would appear in a clear form: instead of a house he’d see a bear; a chimney would become the rector. The Philosopher gave up and went to find a place to sleep.

When the Philosopher woke up, the whole house was in motion: The pannochka had died in the night.11 The servants were rushing back and forth. Some of the old women were crying. A crowd of curious people were looking through the fence at the master’s farmyard, as if they could catch sight of something.

The Philosopher began to inspect at his leisure the places he hadn’t been able to discern the night before. The master’s house was a small, low building of the kind that used to be built in the old days in Little Russia. It had a straw roof. A small gable with a sharp, tall peak and a little window that looked like an upraised eye was decorated with painted light-blue and yellow flowers and red crescents.

It was supported by oak pillars that were round from halfway up and hexagonal below that, with fancifully carved tops. Under this gable was a small porch with little benches on each side. On the sides of the house were canopies supported on the same sort of pillars, some of which were in the form of a spiral. In front of the house was a tall green pear tree with a pyramidal crown and trembling leaves.

Several storehouses stood in front of the house in two rows, forming a kind of broad street leading to the house. Behind the storehouses, up against the gates, stood two triangular wine cellars, one opposite the other, also roofed in straw. Each cellar’s triangular wall had a low door and was decorated with various painted images. On one was painted a Cossack sitting on a barrel, holding a tankard over his head, with the caption: “I’ll drink it all.” On the other was a bottle and flasks, and to enhance the beauty, on the sides were painted an upside-down horse, a pipe, tambourines, and the caption: “Wine

© Columbia University Press

is the Cossack’s joy.” From a huge dormer window in the attic of one of the barns a drum and some brass trumpets peeped out. Two cannons stood by the gates. Everything showed that the master of the house liked to have a good time and that his yard often heard the resounding shouts of a drinking bout.

Beyond the gates were two windmills. Behind the house stretched the gardens, and through the tops of the trees all you could see were the dark chimney tops of the huts that were hidden in the thick green foliage. The whole hamlet was situated on the broad and even ledge of a hill. From the north, the steep hill shielded it all, and its base ended right at the farmyard. When you looked at the hill from below, it seemed even steeper, and on its high top the irregular stalks of scraggly weeds stuck out here and there and showed black against the bright sky. The hill’s bare, clayey appearance inspired a feeling of despondency.12 It was all pitted by rain gullies and ruts. On its steep slope two huts stuck up in two places. Over one of them spread the branches of a broad apple tree, supported at its roots by small stakes with dirt mounded up on them. Apples blown down by the wind came rolling down all the way to the master’s yard. A road came winding down from the very top of the hill, and as it descended it went past the farmyard into the hamlet. When the Philosopher measured its terrible steepness and recalled their journey of the night before, he decided that either the master had the most intelligent horses ever, or the Cossacks had the strongest heads ever, if in their drunken state they had managed not to go flying head over heels along with their enormous carriage and baggage. The Philosopher was standing on the highest point in the yard, and when he turned around and looked in the other direction, he saw something completely different. The hamlet rolled down the slope to a plain. Boundless meadows opened up into distant space; their bright greenness got darker the farther away they were, and whole strings of hamlets showed dark blue in the distance, although Viy

\ 37

© Columbia University Press

38 \

Viy

they were more than fifteen miles away. To the right of these meadows stretched a line of hills, and off in the distance the strip of the Dnieper River shimmered darkly.

“Oh, what a beautiful place!” the Philosopher said. “I’d love to live here, fish in the Dnieper and in the ponds, go hunting with snares or a gun for little bustards and snipe! Come to think, I bet there are quite a few great bustards in these meadows too. You could dry a ton of fruit and sell it in the city, or even better, make vodka out of it, because fruit vodka is incomparably better than grain vodka. And it wouldn’t hurt to start thinking about how to slip away from here.”

He spied out a little path beyond the wattle fence, completely covered with overgrown weeds. He stepped onto it absentmindedly, thinking that he’d first take a little stroll, and then on the quiet, between the huts, he’d light out running into the fields, when suddenly he felt a firm hand on his shoulder.

Behind him stood that same old Cossack who yesterday had so bitterly mourned the deaths of his father and mother and grieved his own loneliness.

“Mister Philosopher, you’re wrong to think you’re going to take to your heels from the farmstead!” he said. “This isn’t the kind of establishment from which you can escape. The roads are no good for traveling on foot. You’d better go see the master. He’s long been waiting for you in the parlor.”

“Let’s go! What do you mean . . . I’d be happy to,” the Philosopher said and went along with the Cossack.

The lieutenant, an aged man, with a gray mustache and an expression of gloomy sadness, was sitting at a table in the parlor, leaning his head on both hands. He was about fifty years old, but the deep despondency on his face and a kind of pale, gaunt color showed that his soul had been killed and destroyed suddenly, in a single moment, and all his former gaiety and raucous life had disappeared forever.

© Columbia University Press

When Khoma came in with the old Cossack, he removed one hand and slightly nodded in response to their low bows.

Khoma and the Cossack stood respectfully by the door.

“Who are you, and where are you from, and what is your rank, my good man?” the lieutenant said, neither kindly nor sternly.

“I am a bursak, the Philosopher Khoma Brut.”

“And who was your father?”

“I don’t know, noble sir.”

“And your mother?”

“I don’t know who my mother was either. According to sound reasoning, I must have had a mother, of course; but who she was, and where she was from, and when she lived—honest to God, my lord, I do not know.”

The lieutenant was silent for a moment and seemed to have fallen into thought.

“But how did you meet my daughter?”

“I never met her, noble sir, honest to God, never. I’ve never had any dealings with pannochkas as long as I’ve lived. God keep them away from me, let me say that instead of a dirty word.”

“But why then did she ask by name for you to read, and not someone else?”

The Philosopher shrugged: “God knows how to explain it. It’s a well-known fact that noble people sometimes want things that the most literate person can’t figure out. Even the proverb says, ‘The devil has to jump when the lord gives him an order!’ ” “Are you perhaps lying to me, Mister Philosopher?”

“May thunder strike me down on this very spot if I’m lying,” “If you had only lived just a tiny minute more,” the lieutenant said sadly, “then I would probably have found out everything.

‘Don’t let anyone read over me, Daddy, but send immediately to the Kyiv seminary and have them bring the bursak Khoma Brut.

Let him pray for three nights for my sinful soul. He knows . . .’ But Viy

\ 39

© Columbia University Press

40 \

Viy

what he knows, I did not hear. That’s all the darling girl was able to say, then she died. You, good man, are probably well known for your holy life and your charitable works, and perhaps she heard about you.”

“Who, me?” the bursak said, stepping back in amazement. “My holy life?” he said, looking right into the lieutenant’s eyes. “God be with you, sir! What are you talking about! Although it might be indecent to mention it, I went to see the baker-woman right before Maundy Thursday.”13 “Hmmm . . . well, she must have had some reason for naming you. You must begin your task this very day.”

“In answer to that I would say to your lordship that of course any person who is learned in the Holy Scripture might be able to do this in some degree . . . but propriety demands a deacon or at least a lector for this task. They are sensible people and know how to do all this, while I . . . And I don’t have the right kind of voice, and I myself am the devil knows what. I don’t look like anything at all.”

“You can say whatever you like, but I am going to carry out everything that my darling girl left me to do as her dying will, without sparing myself. And if you read the prayers over her in a proper fashion for the next three nights, I will reward you; if not—I wouldn’t advise the devil himself to get me angry.”

The lieutenant uttered these last words so firmly that the Philosopher fully understood their meaning.

“Come with me!” the lieutenant said.

They went out into the entryway. The lieutenant opened the door into another parlor that was opposite the first. The Philosopher stopped for a moment in the entryway to blow his nose and then stepped across the threshold with a kind of inexplicable terror.

The floor was carpeted in red nankeen cloth. In the corner under the icons, the body of the dead young woman lay on a high table, on a dark-blue velvet blanket trimmed with golden fringe and tassels.

© Columbia University Press

Tall wax tapers with guelder-roses wound around them stood at the foot and head of the table, shedding their dull light, which was lost in the light of the sun. The face of the dead woman was screened from him by the inconsolable father, who sat before her with his back turned toward the door. The Philosopher was struck by the words he heard: “My dearest, darling daughter, I don’t regret the fact that you have left the earth in the flower of your years, without living out your appointed time, to my great sadness and grief. My little sweetheart, I do not regret the fact that I do not know who my mortal enemy is, the man who caused your death.

And if I knew who it was who could even think of offending you or even saying something unpleasant about you, I swear to God, he would no longer see his children, if he’s as old as I am; nor his father and mother, if he is still in the prime of life, and his body would be cast out to be eaten by birds and the beasts of the steppe.

But my darling wild marigold, my little quail, my little star, my sorrow is that I must live out the rest of my life without any joy, wiping away with the hem of my shirt the constant tears flowing from my old eyes, while my enemy will be making merry and secretly laughing at the feeble old man . . .”

He stopped because of a burst of grief that resolved into a whole flood of tears.

The Philosopher was moved by such inconsolable sadness.

He coughed and made a little sound to clear his throat.

The lieutenant turned around and pointed him to a place at the head of the dead woman, in front of a small lectern with books on it.

“I’ll somehow manage to work through the three nights,” the Philosopher thought, “and his lordship will fill both my pockets with clean banknotes for it.”

He came closer, cleared his throat again, and started to read, not paying any attention to anything else and resolving not to look at the face of the dead woman. A deep silence reigned. He noticed that Viy

\ 41

© Columbia University Press

42 \

Viy

the lieutenant went out. Khoma slowly turned his head to look at the dead woman and . . .

A shiver went through his veins: Before him lay a beauty the likes of which had never been seen on earth. It seemed that never before had facial features been formed in such a sharply defined and at the same time harmonious beauty. She lay as if still alive. Her beautiful brow, tender as snow or silver, seemed to be thinking; her fine, even eyebrows, like night in the middle of a sunny day, rose proudly over her closed eyes, and her eyelashes lay like arrows on her cheeks, which glowed with the fire of secret desires; her lips were rubies ready to break out into a grin . . . But he saw something terrifyingly piercing in those very features. He felt his soul begin to ache painfully, as if suddenly in the middle of a whirlwind of carousing and a madly dancing crowd someone had struck up a song about an oppressed people.14 The rubies of her lips seemed to be stuck to his very heart by blood. Suddenly something terrifyingly familiar appeared in her face.

“The witch!” he screamed in a voice not his own, moved his eyes away, turned all pale, and started to read his prayers.

It was the same witch that he had killed.

When the sun started to go down, they carried the dead woman to the church. The Philosopher supported the black funereal coffin with one shoulder and felt something on that shoulder that was as cold as ice. The lieutenant himself walked in front, carrying the right side of the dead woman’s cramped house with his arm. The wooden church, all blackened, covered with green moss, with three cone-shaped domes, stood dejectedly almost on the edge of the village. One could see that no services had been held in it for a long time. There were candles lit in front of almost every icon.

They put the coffin in the middle, right opposite the altar. The old lieutenant kissed the dead woman once more, prostrated himself, and left along with the pallbearers. He gave an order to feed the

© Columbia University Press

Philosopher well and then bring him to the church after supper.

When they came into the kitchen, all the pallbearers started to warm their hands at the stove, which is what Little Russians usually do after they’ve seen a corpse.

The hunger that the Philosopher had started to feel at that time caused him to forget the dead woman completely for a few minutes.

Soon all the servants gradually gathered in the kitchen. The kitchen in the lieutenant’s home was something like a club where everyone who lived in the farmstead thronged, including the dogs who came, with their tails wagging, up to the very door to get bones and slops.

No matter where a person had been sent and no matter what their errand, they would always stop in at the kitchen first in order to rest a moment on the bench and smoke a pipe. All the bachelors who lived in the house, sporting their Cossack caftans, would lie here almost all day on a bench, under a bench, on the stove—in short, wherever they could find a comfortable place for lying around. Plus they were always forgetting something in the kitchen—either a cap, or a whip to ward off strange dogs, or something like that. But the largest gathering would be at suppertime, when the horse-wrangler, who had managed to drive his horses into the paddock, and the drover, who had brought the cows in to be milked, and all those people one didn’t see during the day, would come. Over supper even the most reticent tongues would be overcome by chatter. They would talk about everything: about who had had new trousers made, and what can be found in the middle of the earth, and who had seen a wolf. There were a lot of specialists in the bon mot, who are always in abundance among the Little Russians.

The Philosopher sat down with the others in a big circle in the fresh air in front of the threshold to the kitchen. Soon a peasant woman in a red coif popped out of the door, holding a hot crock full of dumplings in both hands, and put it down in the middle of the circle of people waiting for their supper. Each one took a wooden Viy

\ 43

© Columbia University Press

44 \

Viy

spoon out of his pocket, except for those who didn’t have one, who got out sharp-pointed sticks they could skewer the dumplings with.

As soon as their mouths started to move a little more slowly and the wolfish hunger of the whole gathering had been somewhat sated, many of them started to converse. Naturally the conversation turned to the dead woman.

“Is it true,” said one young shepherd, who had put so many buttons and brass plates on the leather shoulder belt he carried his pipe on that it looked like a petty tradeswoman’s shop, “is it true that the pannochka, not to speak ill of the dead, but is it true she had dealings with the Evil One?” “Who? The pannochka?” said Dorosh, with whom our Philosopher was already acquainted. “She was a downright witch! I swear she was a witch!”

“That’s enough, Dorosh!” said the man who had been so eager to console people when they were on the road. “It’s none of our business, let it go. There’s no need to talk about that.”

But Dorosh was in no mood to stay silent. He had just gone down to the wine cellar with the steward on some important errand, and after bending over two or three barrels he had come out quite happy and talking nonstop.

“What do you want? You want me to keep silent?” he said. “Why, she took a ride on my back! Honest to God, she did!”

“Say, old fellow,” said the young shepherd with the buttons, “are there some kind of markings you can tell a witch by?”

“No,” Dorosh answered. “You can’t tell, even if you read all the Psalters, you won’t be able to tell.”

“Yes, you can, Dorosh. Don’t say that,” said the consoler. “God has given everyone a particular custom. People who know their stuff say that a witch has a tiny little tail.”

“If a woman is old, then she’s a witch,” the gray-haired Cossack said coolly.

© Columbia University Press

“Oh, you’re fine ones!” caught up the woman, who was pouring fresh dumplings into the crock that had been emptied out, “you’re regular fat old castrated hogs.”

A smile of pleasure appeared on the lips of the old Cossack, whose name was Yavtukh (nickname Hair-Mat), because he saw that his words had really hit home with the old woman, and the cattle drover gave such a loud laugh it was as if two bulls standing face to face had started bellowing at the same time.15 The conversation they had started aroused an insurmountable desire and curiosity in the Philosopher to find out in more detail about the lieutenant’s dead daughter. So he tried to bring the conversation back to the previous topic by addressing his neighbor with the following words: “I would like to ask why this whole estate of people sitting over supper considers the pannochka to be a witch? Did she really do any evil to anyone or torment anyone?”

“All kinds of things happened,” answered one of the people sitting there, whose face was so smooth it had an uncanny resemblance to a spade.

“Who doesn’t remember Mikita the master of hounds, or the one . . .”

“What about Mikita the master of hounds?” asked the Philosopher.

“Wait! I’ll tell him about Mikita the master of hounds,” said Dorosh.

“I’ll tell about Mikita,” the horse-wrangler answered, “he was my best friend.”16 “I’ll tell about Mikita,” said Spirid.

“Let him, let Spirid tell it!” the crowd shouted.

Spirid began: “You didn’t know Mikita, Mister Philosopher Khoma. Oh, what a rare person he was! He knew each dog as if it were his own father. Our present master of hounds Mikola, who’s Viy

\ 45

© Columbia University Press

46 \

Viy

sitting right over there, can’t hold a candle to him. Although he knows his business, in comparison to Mikita he’s trash, garbage.”

“You’re telling it well, really well!” Dorosh said, nodding with approval.

Spirid continued: “He’d see a hare before you could wipe the snuff from your nose. He’d whistle: ‘Come on, Bandit, come on, Speedy!’ and he’d be riding his horse at full speed himself—and you couldn’t tell who would overtake who first: would he outrun the dog or the dog outrun him. He’d swill down a quart of moonshine as if it was nothing. He was a great master of hounds! But just recently he started constantly looking at the pannochka. Whether he’d fallen in love with her or she’d bewitched him, he was just ruined, he became just like a woman; he became the devil knows what; ugh! it’s indecent even to say.”

“He’s telling it well,” said Dorosh.

“As soon as the pannochka would look at him he’d drop the reins, he’d call Bandit Hound-Dog, he’d stumble, and who knows what else he’d do. Once the pannochka came to the stable where he was grooming his horse. ‘Come on, Mikitka,’ she said, ‘let me put my little leg on you.’ And like a fool he was happy about it.

He said, ‘Don’t just put your little leg on me, but mount on top of me yourself.’ The pannochka raised her little leg, and as soon as he saw her bare, plump, white leg, they say he was dazed by a spell. The fool bent his back, and taking hold of her bare legs with both hands, he started galloping like a horse all over the field, and he couldn’t say all the places they went; but he came back hardly alive, and from that time he just dried up like a wood chip, and one day when they came to the stable, they found instead of him just a pile of ashes and an empty bucket: He had burned right up, all by himself. And he was the sort of master of hounds that you can’t find in the whole world.”

© Columbia University Press

When Spirid had finished his story, everyone started talking about the fine qualities of the former master of hounds.

“And did you hear about Sheptun’s wife?” Dorosh said, turning to Khoma.17 “No.” “O-ho-ho! So they don’t teach you everything there in the bursa. Well, listen! We have a Cossack in the village called Sheptun. A good Cossack! Sometimes he likes to steal and he’ll lie for no good reason, but he’s a good Cossack. His hut isn’t far from here. At just about the same time that we’ve been having supper today, Sheptun and his wife went to bed after supper, and since it was nice weather, Sheptun’s wife lay down in the yard, and Sheptun lay down in the hut on the bench; or no: It was Sheptun’s wife who lay down in the hut on the bench, and Sheptun lay down in the yard . . .”

“Sheptun’s wife lay down on the floor, not on the bench,” the woman interjected, standing on the threshold and leaning her cheek on her hand.

Dorosh looked at her, then looked down, then again at her, and after a brief silence, he said: “When I pull off your underskirt in front of everyone, it’s not going to be very nice.”

This warning had its effect. The old woman fell silent and did not interrupt again.

Dorosh continued: “So in the cradle that hung in the middle of the hut was lying a year-old child—I don’t know whether of the male or female sex. Sheptun’s wife was lying there, and then she heard a dog scratching at the door and howling so that you wanted to run out of the hut. She got scared, because women are such stupid folk that if you stick your tongue out at one of them from the doorway, she’ll start shaking with fear. Anyway, she thought, why don’t I just hit the damned dog in the snout, and maybe he’ll stop

Viy

\ 47

© Columbia University Press

48 \

Viy

howling—and taking the poker, she went out to open the door.

But as soon as she opened it just a little, the dog rushed between her legs and went right to the child’s cradle. Sheptun’s wife saw that it wasn’t a dog any more but the pannochka. And if only it had been the pannochka in the form she knew her in—that wouldn’t have been so bad. But here’s the thing and here’s the situation: She was all dark-blue, and her eyes were burning like coals. She grabbed the child, bit into its neck, and started to drink its blood. Sheptun’s wife just screamed: ‘Oh, my God!’ and ran out of the hut. But she saw that the doors were locked in the entryway. She went to the attic; she sat there trembling, the stupid woman, and then she saw the pannochka coming up to her in the attic; the pannochka flung herself on the stupid woman and started biting her. The next morning Sheptun dragged his wife out of there, all bitten up and turned darkblue. The next day the stupid woman died. So those are the kinds of arrangements and seductions that happen! Although she may be of noble spawn, a witch is still a witch.”

After telling this story Dorosh looked around with self-satisfaction and stuck his finger into his pipe, preparing it for stuffing in more tobacco. There seemed to be inexhaustible stores of material about the witch. Each one in his turn rushed to tell some kind of story.

One of them had seen the witch in the form of a haystack come right up to the door of his hut; she had stolen a cap or a pipe from another; she had cut off the plaits of many of the young girls in the village; she had drunk several buckets of blood from others.

Finally the whole company pulled themselves together and saw that they had gotten carried away in chattering, because night had fallen. They all started dispersing to their sleeping places, either in the kitchen or in the barns or out in the yard.

“All right, Mister Khoma! Now it’s time for us to go to the deceased woman,” the gray-haired Cossack said, turning to the Philosopher, and all four of them, including Spirid and Dorosh, set

© Columbia University Press

off for the church, using their whips to lash the dogs, of which there was a great multitude on the street, and who were viciously gnawing at their walking sticks.

The Philosopher, despite the fact that he had fortified himself with a good-sized tankard of vodka, secretly felt cowardice setting in as they came near the illuminated church. The tales and strange stories he had heard caused his imagination to work even harder.

The gloom under the lath fence and the trees started to thin out; the place became more exposed and bare. Finally they walked through the ramshackle church paling into a small yard, beyond which there was not a single little tree, and only an empty field and meadows engulfed by nocturnal gloom opened before them. The three Cossacks and Khoma climbed a steep staircase to the porch and entered the church. Here the Cossacks left the Philosopher, wishing him a successful execution of his duties, and locked the door behind him, as the master had ordered.

The Philosopher remained alone. At first he yawned, then he stretched, then he blew into his hands, and finally he looked around. In the middle of the church stood the coffin. Candles glimmered in front of the darkened icons. Their light illuminated only the iconostasis and a bit of the center of the church. The distant corners of the narthex were wrapped in gloom. The tall, ancient iconostasis displayed its extreme decrepitude; its gilded openwork carving shone only in sparks now. In some places the gilding had fallen off, in others it had turned quite black; the visages of the saints, completely darkened, had a gloomy look. The Philosopher looked around once again.

“Well,” he said, “what is there here to be afraid of? A man can’t come in here, and for corpses and ghosts I have such prayers that as soon as I read them, the spirits can’t touch me. All right!” he repeated, waving his hand. “Let’s start reading!”

As he approached the choir, he saw several bundles of candles.

Viy

\ 49

© Columbia University Press

50 \

Viy

“That’s good,” the Philosopher thought. “I should light up the whole church so that one can see as well as by day. Oh, it’s just too bad that in God’s temple you can’t smoke your pipe!”

And he started sticking the wax candles to all the cornices, lecterns, and icons, not stinting on them, until the whole church was filled with light. But the gloom seemed to become even thicker up above, and the gloomy icons looked more morosely out of their ancient carved frames, whose gilding still sparkled here and there. He went up to the coffin and looked fearfully into the face of the dead woman. He couldn’t help but squint his eyes with a slight shudder.

Such terrifying, sparkling beauty!

He turned and wanted to walk away; but thanks to a strange curiosity, a strange contradictory feeling that does not leave a man especially during times of terror, he couldn’t resist looking at her one more time as he walked away, and then, feeling the same trepidation, he looked at her once more. Indeed, the sharply defined beauty of the deceased woman seemed terrifying. Perhaps she wouldn’t have inspired such panicked horror if she had been a bit uglier. But there was nothing dim, turbid, or dead in her features.

The face was alive, and it seemed to the Philosopher as if she was looking at him with her closed eyes. It even seemed to him as if a tear started trickling from under the lashes of her right eye, and when it came to rest on her cheek, he could see clearly that it was a drop of blood.

He hurriedly walked over to the choir, opened a book, and in order to give himself courage, he began to read in the loudest possible voice. His voice struck the wooden church walls, which had long been silent and deaf. All alone, with no echo, his thick bass voice poured forth in the completely dead silence, seeming somewhat wild and strange even to the reader himself.

© Columbia University Press

“What is there to be afraid of?” he thought to himself meanwhile.

“She’s not going to rise from her coffin, because she will fear the word of God. Let her lie there! What kind of Cossack am I if I get scared? All right, so I drank a little too much—that’s why it seems scary. I’ll just take some snuff. Oh, good old snuff! Wonderful snuff!

Great snuff!”

But as he turned each page, he kept looking sideways at the coffin, and it seemed that an involuntary feeling was whispering to him: “She’s going to rise now! She’s getting up now, she’s about to look out of the coffin!”

But there was dead silence. The coffin stood immobile. The candles were pouring out a whole flood of light. Fearful is a church illuminated at night, with a dead body and not a single other human soul!

Raising his voice, he started to sing in different voices, wishing to muffle the remains of his fear. But every moment he kept turning his eyes to the coffin, as if involuntarily asking the question: “What if she gets up, if she rises?”

But the coffin did not stir. If only there had been some sound, some living creature, even a cricket making an answering sound in the corner! All that could be heard was the slight crackling of a distant candle or the faint plopping sound of a drop of wax falling to the floor.

“What if she gets up? . . .”

She lifted her head . . .

He looked at her wildly and rubbed his eyes. Indeed she was no longer lying down, but was sitting up in her coffin. He turned his eyes away and then turned toward the coffin in horror. She got up . . . she was walking around the church with her eyes closed, constantly stretching out her arms as if trying to catch someone.

Viy

\ 51

© Columbia University Press

52 \

Viy

She was walking straight toward him. In terror he drew a circle around himself. He made an effort and began to read the prayers and recite the incantations that he had been taught by a certain monk who had seen witches and evil spirits his whole life long.

She came to stand almost right on the line itself, but it was clear that she did not have the power to step across it. She had turned all dark blue, like a person who has been dead for several days. Khoma did not have the courage to look at her. She was terrifying. She gnashed her teeth and opened her dead eyes.

But since she couldn’t see anything, with fury expressed on her quivering face, she turned in another direction, stretching out her arms and grabbing at every pillar and corner, trying to catch Khoma. Finally she stopped, shook a threatening finger at him, and lay down in her coffin.

The Philosopher was still unable to come to his senses and kept looking in terror at the witch’s cramped dwelling place. Finally the coffin suddenly tore away from its place and started flying all around the church with a whistling sound, crossing the air in all directions.

The Philosopher saw it go almost above his head, but at the same time he saw that the coffin could not cross the circle he had drawn, so he intensified his recital of the incantations. The coffin crashed down in the middle of the church and remained motionless. The corpse again got up out of it, all green and dark-blue. But at that moment the distant cry of a rooster was heard. The corpse lowered itself into the coffin and slammed the lid shut.

The Philosopher’s heart was pounding and sweat was pouring from him, but emboldened by the rooster’s cry, he quickly finished reading the pages he was supposed to have read earlier. At the first light of dawn the lector and the gray-haired Yavtukh, now in the capacity of a churchwarden, came to relieve him.

After finding his distant sleeping place, the Philosopher could not fall asleep for a long time, but his fatigue overcame him, and

© Columbia University Press

he slept until the midday meal. When he woke up, the whole nocturnal event seemed to have taken place in a dream. They gave him a quart of vodka to restore his strength. Over the meal he soon relaxed. He added a few remarks to what was being said and ate almost a whole somewhat old suckling pig, but because of a feeling he himself couldn’t explain, he could not bring himself to speak about the event in the church, and to the questions of the curious he answered: “Yes, there were all kinds of marvels.” The Philosopher was one of those people who conceive an extraordinary philanthropy once they’ve been well fed. Lying there with his pipe between his teeth, he looked at everyone with extraordinarily sweet eyes and kept spitting to the side.

After the midday meal the Philosopher was in very good spirits.

He managed to walk all around the hamlet and meet almost everyone. He was even driven out of two huts; one pretty young peasant wife gave him a good smack on the back with a spade when he had gotten it into his head to take a feel to see what kind of material her blouse and skirt were made of. But the closer it came to evening time, the more pensive the Philosopher got. An hour before supper almost all the servants gathered to play ball or kragli—a kind of skittles that uses long sticks instead of balls, in which the winner has the right to ride on the back of another player. This game became very interesting for the spectators: Often the drover, who was as broad as a pancake, would straddle the swineherd, a short, puny man who consisted entirely of wrinkles. Another time the drover offered his back, and as he jumped up onto him, Dorosh would always say, “What a big healthy bull!” The more respectable folks were sitting by the threshold to the kitchen. They had an extremely serious look as they smoked their pipes, even when the young people would be laughing heartily at some witticism by the drover or Spirid. In vain did Khoma try to join in this game. Some kind of dark thought was sitting in his head like a nail. No matter Viy

\ 53

© Columbia University Press

54 \

Viy

how he tried to cheer himself up over supper, terror blazed up in him along with the darkness that was spreading over the sky.

“All right, it’s time for us to go, Mister Bursak!” the familiar grayhaired Cossack said to him, getting up along with Dorosh. “Let’s go to work.”

They took Khoma to the church in the very same way. Again they left him alone and locked the door behind him. As soon as he remained alone, cowardice again started to take root in his breast.

Again he saw the dark icons, the shining frames, and the familiar black coffin standing in threatening silence and immobility in the middle of the church.

“Well,” he said, “all these strange things won’t be anything new to me. It’s only scary the first time. Yes! It’s only a little scary the first time, and then it’s not scary any more; it’s not at all scary any more.”

He quickly took up his stance in the choir, drew a circle around himself, recited a few incantations, and began to read loudly, resolving not to raise his eyes from the book and not to pay attention to anything. He had been reading for about an hour when he started to get a little tired and felt the need to cough. He took his snuff horn out of his pocket and before he brought the snuff to his nose, he cast his eyes timidly at the coffin. His heart stood still.

The corpse was already standing in front of him right on the line and was fixing him with its dead eyes that had turned green. The bursak shuddered, and he could feel coldness running all through his veins. He lowered his eyes to the book and began to read his prayers and incantations more loudly, and he could hear the corpse again gnashing its teeth and waving its arms, trying to grab hold of him. But out of the corner of his eye he could see that the corpse was trying to catch him in a place where he wasn’t standing, and apparently could not see him. She started growling faintly and speaking terrible words with her dead lips; they sobbed hoarsely, like the gurgling of boiling pitch. What they meant he could not have said, but

© Columbia University Press

there was something terrifying in them. The Philosopher realized with terror that she was making incantations.18 The words caused a wind to blow through the church, and there was a sound as if from a multitude of flying wings. He heard the wings beating at the glass of the church windows and their iron frames, he heard their talons squeal as they scratched at the iron, and he heard an overwhelming force battering the doors and trying to break in. His heart was pounding all this time. He squeezed his eyes closed and kept reading incantations and prayers. Finally something suddenly whistled in the distance: It was the distant cry of a rooster. The exhausted Philosopher stopped, and his spirit rested.19 The men who came to relieve the Philosopher found him barely alive. He was leaning with his back to the wall and looked with motionless, bulging eyes at the Cossacks who were shoving him.

They almost had to drag him out and had to support him the whole way back. When they got to the master’s farmyard, he pulled himself together and ordered them to give him a quart of vodka. After drinking it, he ran his hand over his hair and said: “A lot of trash happens in the world! And such terrors happen that—well . . .” The Philosopher waved his hand while saying this.

The people who had gathered around him in a circle lowered their heads when they heard these words. Even a little urchin boy, whom all the servants felt justified in deputizing for themselves when it was time to clean out the stable or carry water, even that poor little boy gaped at him.

At that moment a wench of not quite middle age, wearing a tight-fitting skirt that showed off her rounded and firm figure, was walking past. She was the assistant to the old cook, a terrible flirt, who was always finding something to pin to her coif: either a piece of ribbon, or a carnation, or even a scrap of paper, if she couldn’t find anything else.

Viy

\ 55

© Columbia University Press

56 \

Viy

“Hello there, Khoma!” she said when she saw the Philosopher.

“Oh my goodness! What’s wrong with you?” she screamed, throwing up her hands.

“What are you talking about, you stupid woman?”

“Oh, my God! You’ve turned all gray!”

“Hey! She’s speaking the truth!” said Spirid, looking closely at him. “You’ve turned as gray as our old Yavtukh.”

Hearing this, the Philosopher took off running to the kitchen, where he noticed a triangular piece of mirror stuck to the wall, stained by fly droppings, in front of which were stuck forget-me-nots, periwinkles, and even a garland of marigolds, indicating that the mirror was used for the dressing ritual of the stylish flirt. With horror he saw the truth of their words: In fact half of his hair had turned white.

Khoma Brut hung his head and fell into meditation.

“I’ll go to the master,” he finally said, “I’ll tell him everything and explain that I cannot read any more. Let him send me back to Kyiv this very hour.”

Lost in these thoughts, he made his way to the porch of the master’s house.

The lieutenant was sitting almost motionless in his parlor. The same despairing sadness that Khoma had earlier encountered on his face was still preserved there to this moment. The only difference was that his cheeks had grown much more sunken. One could see that he had taken very little food, or perhaps had not touched any.

His unusual pallor lent him a kind of stony immobility.

“Hello, poor man,” he said when he saw Khoma, who had stopped at the door with his cap in his hands. “How is your work going? Is everything going successfully?”

“It depends how you define ‘successfully.’ There are such devilish doings that you just want to take your cap and run off as fast as your legs will carry you.”

“What do you mean?”

© Columbia University Press

“I mean that your daughter, my lord . . . Of course according to sound reasoning, she is of noble family; no one can dispute that, but please don’t be offended, may God rest her soul . . .”

“What about my daughter?”

“She’s allowed Satan to service her.20 She’s struck such terror into me that Holy Scripture has no role to play.”

“Keep reading, keep reading! She had some reason for summoning you. My dear sweetie took care for her soul and wanted to drive out all evil intentions by prayer.”

“As you wish, my lord. But honest to God, I can’t stand it any more!”

“Keep reading, keep reading!” the lieutenant continued in the same exhortative tone. “You only have one night left. You’ll do a Christian deed, and I’ll reward you.”

“No matter what rewards . . . Suit yourself, my lord, but I will not read!” Khoma said decisively.

“Listen, Philosopher!” the lieutenant said, and his voice had become firm and threatening, “I don’t like all these tales you’re telling. You can do that over in your bursa. But not with me: I’ll give you a flogging like you’ve never had from the rector. Do you know what good leather Cossack whips are like?”

“How could I help knowing!” the Philosopher said, lowering his voice. “Everyone knows what leather Cossack whips are. When you use a lot of them, it’s quite an unbearable thing.”

“Yes. But you don’t yet know how my lads can pour it on!” the lieutenant said threateningly, getting to his feet, and his face took on a commanding and savage expression that revealed his unbridled character, which had been lulled to sleep for a time by his grief.

“First they’ll give you a good flogging, then they’ll sprinkle you with vodka, then they’ll do it again. Run along, do your job! If you don’t do it—you’ll never get up again; and if you do it—you’ll get a thousand gold pieces!”

Viy

\ 57

© Columbia University Press

58 \

Viy

“Oh-ho-ho! Now that’s a bold fellow!” the Philosopher thought as he went out. “He’s not to be trifled with. Just wait, my friend.

I’ll take to my heels so fast you won’t be able to hunt me down with your dogs.”

And Khoma firmly decided to run away. He was just waiting for the hour after the midday meal, when all the servants had the habit of crawling into the hay near the barns, opening their mouths, and emitting so much snoring and whistling that the master’s farmstead began to resemble a factory. That time finally came. Even Yavtukh was lying stretched out in the sun with his eyes closed tight. The Philosopher, trembling in fear, set off quietly into the master’s garden, which seemed to him to be the easiest and least noticeable route for escape into the fields. This garden was terribly neglected and thus was extremely auspicious for all kinds of secret enterprises.

Except for a single little path that had been trodden down for household needs, the whole garden was covered by thickly spreading cherry trees, elderberry bushes, and burdock, which had stuck up its tall stalks, with their prickly pink burrs, above all the rest. A hop plant covered the top of this whole motley collection of trees and bushes like a net, and formed a roof over them that stretched onto the wattle fence and fell down from it in curly snakes together with wild bluebells. Beyond the fence that served as a boundary for the garden extended a whole forest of tall weeds, into which it seemed no one had ever had the curiosity to peek. It seemed that a scythe would shatter into pieces if it tried to touch the thick woody stalks with its blade.

When the Philosopher prepared to step over the wattle fence, his teeth were chattering and his heart was beating so hard that he frightened himself. The hem of his long garment seemed to stick to the ground as if someone had nailed it down. When he was stepping over the fence, it seemed to him that some kind of voice was jabbering in his ear with a deafening whistle: “Where are you

© Columbia University Press

going, where are you going?” The Philosopher scampered into the weeds and set off running, constantly stumbling on the old roots and trampling on moles. He could see that after he got out of the weeds he would have to run across the field, beyond which one could see thick blackthorn shrubs, where he thought that he would be safe, and that once he passed through the blackthorn he would find the road leading straight to Kyiv. He quickly ran across the field and found himself in the thick blackthorn shrubs. He crawled through the blackthorn, leaving pieces of his frock coat on each sharp thorn instead of a toll. He found himself in a small gully.

A pussy willow with its spreading branches reached almost to the ground in places. A small spring, as pure as silver, sparkled. The first thing the Philosopher did was lie down and drink his fill from it, because he was unbearably thirsty.

“Good water!” he said, wiping his mouth. “I can rest for a little while here.”

“No, we’d better keep moving. What if they pursue you!”

These words resounded right above his ears. He looked around: Yavtukh was standing before him.

“That damned Yavtukh!” the Philosopher thought angrily. “I’d like to take you by the legs . . . And I’d beat your disgusting face and everything else you have with an oak log.”

“You shouldn’t have gone such a roundabout way,” Yavtukh continued. “It’s much better to go the way I went, right past the stables.

Too bad about your frock coat. It’s good cloth. How much did you pay per yard? Anyway, you’ve had a nice stroll, time to go home.”

The Philosopher followed Yavtukh, scratching his head. “Now the damned witch is really going to give it to me hot,” he thought.

“But anyway, what am I, in fact? What am I afraid of? Am I not a Cossack? After all, I’ve read for two nights, God will help me with the third. That damned witch must have committed a pile of sins, since the powers of evil are so solidly behind her.”

Viy

\ 59

© Columbia University Press

60 \

Viy

These were his meditations as he entered the master’s farmyard.

After cheering himself up with such observations, he asked Dorosh, who by virtue of the steward’s patronage sometimes had access to the master’s wine cellars, to grab a bottle of raw vodka. The two friends drank almost half a pail while sitting near the barn, so that the Philosopher suddenly got up onto his feet, shouting: “Musicians! I must have musicians!” Without waiting for the musicians, he started dancing a trepak in a clear space in the middle of the yard. He danced until it was time for the midafternoon snack, and the servants, who had surrounded him in a circle, as is usual in such cases, finally spat and walked away, saying, “That’s how long a man can keep dancing!” Finally the Philosopher lay down to sleep right on the spot, and it took a decent-sized tub of cold water to wake him up for supper. At supper he talked about what a Cossack is and how he shouldn’t fear anything on earth.

“It’s time,” Yavtukh said, “let’s go.”

“Curse your tongue, you damned boar!” the Philosopher thought.

Getting up, he said, “Let’s go.”

As they walked, the Philosopher kept looking to both sides and tried to start up a conversation with his escorts. But Yavtukh was silent; even Dorosh was uninterested in talking. It was a hellish night. A whole pack of wolves was howling in the distance. And even the barking of the dogs was somehow terrifying.

“It seems something else is howling: That’s not a wolf,” Dorosh said.

Yavtukh was silent. The Philosopher could not find anything to say.

They neared the church and entered its decrepit wooden vaults, which showed how little the master of the estate had concerned himself with God and with his own soul. Yavtukh and Dorosh went away as they had before, and the Philosopher remained

© Columbia University Press

alone. Everything was just the same. Everything looked threateningly familiar as it had before. He stopped for a moment. In the middle of the church the coffin of the horrible witch stood just as immobile. “I’m not going to be afraid, honest to God, I’m not going to be afraid!” he said, and drawing a circle around himself as before, he began to recall all his incantations. The silence was terrifying; the candles flickered and flooded the whole church with light. The Philosopher turned over one page, then turned another, and noticed that he was reading something completely different from what was written in the book. With terror he crossed himself and began to sing. This emboldened him a bit; the reading started up again, and the pages flashed by one after another. Suddenly . . . amid the silence . . . the iron lid of the coffin broke open with a crash and the corpse got up. It was still more terrifying than the first time. Its teeth clashed against each other in a terrifying way, its lips were convulsed, and incantations rushed from it with a wild squealing. A whirlwind flew through the church, the icons fell to the ground, broken panes of the windows flew down from above. The doors tore off their hinges, and an overwhelming force of monsters flew into God’s church. The terrifying noise from their wings and the scraping of their talons filled the whole church. Everything was flying and soaring, seeking the Philosopher everywhere.

The very last traces of drunkenness left Khoma’s brain. He just kept crossing himself and reading the prayers haphazardly. All the while he could hear the evil powers rushing around him, almost touching him with the tips of their wings and their repulsive tails.

He didn’t have the courage to look at them; all he could see was some kind of huge monster occupying the whole wall, enveloped in tangled hair as if in a forest; two eyes with brows slightly lifted looked through the network of hair in a terrifying way. Above it,

Viy

\ 61

© Columbia University Press

62 \

Viy

something in the form of a huge bubble hovered in the air, with a thousand pincers and scorpion stingers extending out from it. Black earth hung on them in clumps. The monsters were all looking at him, searching for him, and couldn’t see him because he was surrounded by the mystical circle.21 “Bring Viy! Go get Viy!” resounded the words of the corpse.

And suddenly the church became silent; one could hear the wolves howling in the distance, and soon the sound of heavy steps echoed throughout the church; looking sideways, he could see that they were leading some kind of squat, burly, splay-footed person.

He was all covered by black earth. His legs and arms, with earth scattered over them, protruded like sinewy, strong roots. He stepped heavily, constantly stumbling. His long eyelids hung down to the very ground. Khoma noticed with horror that his face was made of iron. They led him by the arms and placed him right by the spot where Khoma was standing.

“Lift my eyelids: I cannot see!” Viy said in an underground voice—and the whole mob rushed to lift his eyelids.

“Don’t look!” some kind of inner voice whispered to the Philosopher. He couldn’t resist and he looked.

“There he is!” Viy screamed, pointing his iron finger at him.

And they all threw themselves onto the Philosopher. He crashed lifeless to the ground, and his spirit immediately flew out of him from terror.

The rooster’s cry resounded. This was the second cry; the gnomes had failed to hear the first one. The frightened spirits rushed helter-skelter to the windows and doors in order to fly out as fast as they could, but it was no use: They remained there, stuck to the doors and windows. When the priest came in, he stopped at the sight of such a desecration of God’s holy shrine and did not dare to hold the funeral service in such a place. And so the church remained

© Columbia University Press

forever with the monsters stuck to the doors and windows; it was overgrown by trees, roots, weeds, and wild blackthorn; and now no one can find the way to it.22

■□■ When rumors reached Kyiv about this, and the Theologian Khalyava finally learned of the fate of the Philosopher Khoma, he spent a whole hour thinking about it. During the intervening time great changes had happened to him. Happiness had smiled on him.

After finishing his course of study he was made the bell ringer in the highest bell tower, and he almost always appeared with a smashed nose, because the wooden staircase in the bell tower had been built in a very slapdash fashion.

“Did you hear what happened to Khoma?” Tiberius Gorobets said to him. He had meanwhile become a Philosopher himself and was sporting a brand-new mustache.

“That was God’s will for him,” said the bell ringer Khalyava. “Let’s go to a tavern and drink to his memory!”

The young Philosopher, who had begun to enjoy his rights with the passion of an enthusiast, so that his trousers, and his frock coat, and even his cap gave off a smell of alcohol and shag tobacco, immediately expressed his willingness to partake.

“Khoma was a really good fellow!” the bell ringer said, when the lame tavern keeper had placed his third tankard in front of him.

“He was a notable fellow! And he perished for no good reason.”

“I know why he perished: because he was afraid. If he hadn’t been afraid, the witch couldn’t have done anything to him. All you have to do is cross yourself and spit right on her tail, and then nothing will happen to you. I know all about it. After all, here in Kyiv all the women who sit in the bazaars are witches.”

Viy

\ 63

© Columbia University Press

64 \

Viy

To this the bell ringer nodded his head as a sign of agreement.

But when he noticed that his tongue could no longer utter a single word, he carefully got up from the table and went staggering off to hide in the most distant spot in the tall weeds. At the same time, according to his old custom, he didn’t neglect to swipe an old boot sole that was lying there on a bench.

© Columbia University Press

THE PORTRAIT

I The little picture gallery at the Shchukin Market stalls attracted more people than anywhere else.1 This little shop indeed presented the most varied collection of strange wonders. The paintings were mostly in oil, covered with dark green varnish, in tawdry, dark yellow frames. A winter scene with white trees; a thoroughly red evening resembling the glow of a conflagration; a Flemish peasant with a pipe and a splayed arm, who looked more like a turkey in fancy cuffs than a person—these were the usual subjects. In addition there were several engraved likenesses: a portrait of the Persian prince Khosrow Mirza in a sheepskin cap, and portraits of some generals with crooked noses, wearing tricorn hats. The doors of such a shop are usually hung with whole sheaves of the kind of pictures that attest to the native talent of the Russian. One of them depicts Princess Miliktrisa Kirbitievna, another the city of Jerusalem, whose houses and churches have been unceremoniously flooded with red paint, engulfing part of the ground as well as two

Š Columbia University Press

66 \

The Portrait

Russian peasants in mittens, saying their prayers.2 Usually there are not many buyers for such works of art, but to make up for it, there are heaps of onlookers. Inevitably a hard-drinking footman is gaping in front of them, holding covered dishes of dinner from a tavern for his master, who will doubtless have to slurp some soup that is none too hot. Inevitably a soldier is standing there, that cavalier of the flea market, who’s hoping to sell two penknives, and a tradeswoman from the Okhta neighborhood with her box full of shoes for sale. Each of them admires the pictures in a particular way. The peasants usually poke them with their fingers; the cavaliers do a serious inspection; servant boys and workshop boys laugh and mock each other with the caricature drawings; old footmen in coarse wool overcoats look just in order to have a chance to gape a bit; and the tradeswomen, young Russian peasant women, hurry here by instinct, in order to hear what people are chattering about and see what they’re looking at.

Just then the young artist Chertkov, who was passing by, stopped involuntarily in front of the shop. His old overcoat and far from foppish dress showed that he was the kind of man who is selflessly dedicated to his work and has no time to worry about fashionable attire, always so mysteriously attractive to young people.

He stopped in front of the shop and first laughed inwardly at these monstrous paintings. Finally, he was irresistibly overcome by meditation. He began to think about the question, who could possibly need works like these? That the common Russian people stare in wonder at cheap woodcuts of the stories of Yeruslan Lazarevich, of The Glutton-Drunkard, of Foma and Yeryoma—this did not strike him as strange.3 The things they depicted were quite accessible and clear for the common people. But where were the buyers for these gaudy, filthy oil paintings? Who needed these Flemish peasants, these red-and-azure landscapes, which displayed a sort of pretension to a somewhat higher stage of art, but which expressed instead

© Columbia University Press

the deep debasement of art? If these had been the works of a child who was submitting to an involuntary whim, if they had had no regularity at all and had not preserved even the most rudimentary conventions of mechanistic drawing; if they had been entirely in the mode of caricature, but if the slightest bit of effort had glimmered through the caricature, some kind of impulse to produce something resembling nature—but one could find nothing of the sort in them.

A senile dull-wittedness, a senseless inclination, or more precisely a force they could not resist, had guided the hands of their creators.

Who had labored over them? And there was no doubt that it was one and the same person who had labored, because there were the same colors, the same style, the same practiced, accustomed hand, which belonged more likely to a crudely built automaton than to a person.

He was still standing in front of those filthy paintings and looking at them, but not really looking at them at all any more, while the owner of the art store, a grayish man of about fifty, in a coarse wool overcoat, with a chin that had long gone unshaven, was telling him that the paintings were “of the very highest quality” and had just come from the exchange, the varnish hadn’t yet dried and they hadn’t been framed. “Look for yourself, I swear on my honor that you’ll be satisfied.” All these seductive speeches flew right

by Chertkov’s ears. Finally, in order to cheer up the owner a bit, he picked up some dusty paintings from the floor. These were old family portraits whose descendants would probably never be found.

Almost mechanically he began to wipe the dust off one of them.

A slight blush flamed up on his face, the blush that signifies secret pleasure at something unexpected. He began to rub impatiently with his hand, and soon he saw a portrait in which a masterly brush was clearly evident, although the colors seemed somewhat dull and darkened. It was an old man with an anxious and even malicious expression on his face. On his lips there was a cutting, venomous The Portrait

\ 67

© Columbia University Press

68 \

The Portrait

smile, and along with it a sort of fear; a sickly ruddiness was lightly spread across his face, disfigured by wrinkles; his eyes were large, dark, and dim; but at the same time a kind of strange vitality could be seen in them. It seemed that this portrait depicted a miser who had spent his life over his money chest, or one of those unfortunate people who their whole lives are tormented by the happiness of others. Overall, the face retained the vivid imprint of a southern physiognomy. Swarthiness, hair as black as pitch with streaks of gray showing through—this is not encountered in residents of the northern provinces. The whole portrait bespoke a certain unfinishedness, but if it had been completed to perfection, an expert would have gone mad trying to guess how the most perfect creation of Van Dyck had ended up in Russia and found its way to the little shop in Shchukin Market.4 With pounding heart the young artist put the portrait aside and began going through the others to see if anything else of the kind was to be found, but all the others formed a completely different world, and only demonstrated that this guest had ended up among them through foolish chance. Finally Chertkov asked about the price. The sly merchant, who had noticed, thanks to the artist’s interest, that the portrait was worth something, scratched behind his ear and said, “Well, you know, ten rubles would be a small price.”

Chertkov reached into his pocket.

“I’ll give eleven!” rang out behind him.

He turned and saw that a crowd of people had gathered and that one gentleman in a cloak had, like him, been standing in front of the painting for a long time. Chertkov’s heart began to beat hard and his lips began to quiver, like a man who feels that an object he has been searching for is about to be taken away from him. After looking attentively at the new customer, he was somewhat reassured, seeing that he was in clothes that were no better than his own. He said in a trembling voice, “I’ll give you twelve rubles, the painting is mine.”

© Columbia University Press

“Proprietor! The painting is mine, here are fifteen rubles,” said the customer.

Chertkov’s face flinched convulsively, he caught his breath, and he said involuntarily, “Twenty rubles.”

The merchant rubbed his hands in pleasure, seeing that the customers were haggling among themselves to his advantage. The crowd grew denser around the buyers. They had caught the scent that an ordinary sale had turned into an auction, which is always so interesting, even for bystanders. Finally they drove the price up to fifty rubles. Almost in despair, Chertkov cried out, “Fifty,” recalling that all he had was fifty rubles, at least part of which he was supposed to use for rent, and also to buy paint and a few other necessities. His opponent gave up at that point—the sum had apparently exceeded his means as well—and the painting was Chertkov’s. He took a bill out of his pocket, threw it in the merchant’s face, and greedily grasped the painting. But suddenly he jumped away from it, overcome by terror. The dark eyes of the painted old man looked in such a lifelike and at the same time deathlike way that it was impossible not to feel fear. It seemed as if, by some inexplicably strange force, a part of life had been retained in them. These were not painted eyes; they were living eyes, human eyes. They were motionless, but they would probably not have been so horrible if they had moved. Some sort of savage feeling—not terror, but that inexplicable sensation that we feel at the appearance of something strange, something that represents a disorder in nature, or rather a kind of insanity of nature—that same feeling caused almost everyone to cry out.

Trembling, Chertkov passed his hand over the canvas, but the canvas was smooth. The effect produced by the portrait was universal: the crowd rushed in horror away from the shop; the customer who had been competing with him moved away fearfully. The dusk had thickened just at that time, seemingly in order to make this incomprehensible phenomenon even more horrible. Chertkov didn’t have The Portrait

\ 69

© Columbia University Press

70 \

The Portrait

the strength to stay there any longer. Not daring to think of taking the portrait with him, he ran out into the street. The fresh air, the roar of traffic on the road, the talk of the crowd, seemed to refresh him for the moment, but his soul was still gripped by an oppressive feeling. No matter how he turned his gaze about him at the surrounding objects, still his thoughts were occupied only with the extraordinary phenomenon.

“What is it?” he thought to himself. “Art or some kind of supernatural magic, emerging independently of the laws of nature?

What a strange, incomprehensible problem! Or is there a certain boundary line for a human being, up to which higher perception leads him, but when he steps over it, the human being steals something that is not to be created by human labor, he tears something living out of the life that animated the original? Why is it that this passing over the line set as a boundary for the imagination is so horrible? Or is it that after imagination, after impulse, there finally follows reality, that horrible reality onto which the imagination is pushed off its axis by an external shove, that horrible reality that appears to the one who thirsts for it when, wishing to comprehend a beautiful person, he arms himself with an anatomical knife, opens up the person’s viscera and sees a repulsive person? Incomprehensible! Such an amazing, horrible vitality! Or is an excessively faithful imitation of nature just as cloying as a dish with an excessively sweet taste?”

With such thoughts he entered his tiny room in a small wooden building on the Fifteenth Line of Vasilievsky Island, a room in which his rudimentary student work lay scattered in every corner—copies from ancient models that were careful and precise and demonstrated that the artist was trying to grasp the fundamental laws and inner proportions of nature.5 He examined them for a long time, and finally his thoughts began moving one after the other and were expressed almost in words—so vividly did he feel what he was reflecting on!

© Columbia University Press

“It’s been a year now that I’ve been laboring over this dry, skeletal work! I try with all my powers to find out that which is given so miraculously to the great creators and seems to be the fruit of a moment’s swift inspiration. Hardly do they touch brush to canvas than a man appears, free, unfettered, just as he was created by nature; his movements are lifelike, unconstrained. To them this is given all at once, but I have to labor my whole life long; spend my whole life studying boring principles and elements, give my whole life up to insipid work that offers no response to my feelings. There are my daubings! They are faithful, they resemble the originals; but if I were to try to produce something of my own, it would come out all wrong. The leg won’t stand so surely and easily; the arm won’t rise so lightly and freely; for me the turn of the head will never be as natural as for them—and the conception, and those inexpressible phenomena . . . No, I will never be a great artist!”

His reflections were cut short by the entrance of his valet, a lad of about eighteen, in a Russian peasant shirt, with a pink face and red hair. Without ceremony he began to pull off Chertkov’s boots, while the latter remained plunged in his reflections. This lad in the red shirt was his manservant and model, cleaned his boots, yawned in his tiny anteroom, ground his paints, and soiled his floor with his dirty feet. Having taken the boots, he threw Chertkov a dressing gown and was leaving the room when he suddenly turned his head back and said loudly, “Master, should I light a candle or not?”

“Yes, do,” Chertkov answered absentmindedly.

“Oh, and the landlord came by,” the filthy valet added offhandedly, following the praiseworthy custom of all people of his profession—mentioning as a postscript the most important thing.

“The landlord came by and said that if you don’t pay him, he’ll throw all your paintings out the window along with your bed.”

“Tell the landlord not to worry about the money,” Chertkov answered. “I managed to get the money.”

The Portrait

\ 71

© Columbia University Press

72 \

The Portrait

At these words he reached for the pocket of his tailcoat, but suddenly remembered that he had left all his money at the shop in payment for the portrait. He began mentally reproaching himself for his foolishness in running out of the shop for no reason, frightened by an insignificant incident, and not taking either the money or the portrait. He resolved to go to the merchant first thing the next day and take the money back, considering himself completely justified in refusing to make such a purchase, especially since his domestic circumstances did not permit him any unnecessary expenses.

The light of the moon lay on his floor in the form of a bright white window, encompassing part of the bed and ending on the wall. All the objects and paintings hanging in his room seemed to be smiling, sometimes catching with their edges a part of this eternally beautiful radiance. At that moment he looked at the wall as if by chance and saw on it that same strange portrait that had so impressed him in the shop. A light trembling passed involuntarily over his body.

The first thing he did was call his valet-model and ask him how the portrait had gotten there and who had brought it; but the valetmodel swore that no one had visited except the landlord, who had come in the morning and had had nothing but a key in his hands.

Chertkov could feel his hair start to move on his head. Sitting down by the window, he struggled to convince himself that there couldn’t be anything supernatural going on, that his boy might have fallen asleep at that moment, that the owner of the portrait could have sent it after finding out his address by some special happenstance . . .

In short, he began to adduce all those trite explanations that we use when we want what happened to have happened just the way we think it did. He made a point of not looking at the portrait, but his head kept turning to it involuntarily, and it seemed that his gaze was stuck to the strange depiction. The old man’s motionless gaze was unbearable; his eyes absolutely shone, absorbing the moonlight, and their vitality was so terrifying that Chertkov involuntarily

© Columbia University Press

covered his eyes with his hand. It seemed as if a tear was trembling on the old man’s eyelashes; the bright twilight into which the sovereign moon had transformed the night intensified the effect; the canvas disappeared, and the terrifying face of the old man moved forward and looked out of the frame as if out of a window.

Attributing the portrait’s supernatural effect to the moon, whose miraculous light possesses the secret property of lending objects part of the sounds and colors of another world, Chertkov ordered his servant to quickly give him the candle he was fumbling with, but the expressiveness of the portrait did not lessen in the slightest.

The moonlight, merging with the radiance of the candle, lent the portrait a still more incomprehensible and at the same time strange vitality. Seizing a sheet, Chertkov began to cover the portrait, wrapping it up three times so that it could not shine through the sheet, but all the same, whether as the result of a powerfully disturbed imagination, or whether his own eyes, exhausted by intense strain, had attained a fleeting, transient knack, it seemed to him for a long time as if the gaze of the old man was gleaming through the canvas.

Finally he decided to put out the candle and lie down in his bed, which was blocked off by screens that hid the portrait from him.

In vain did he wait for sleep. The most distressing thoughts drove away that calm state that brings sleep with it. Anguish, vexation, the landlord demanding money, the unfinished paintings that were creations of impotent impulses, poverty—all these things moved before him, and one took the place of the other. And whenever he succeeded in driving them away for a moment, the magical portrait would push its way into his imagination like a sovereign, and it would seem as if its death-dealing eyes were gleaming through a chink in the screens. He had never before felt such a heavy weight on his soul. The moonlight, which contains so much music when it invades the lonely bedroom of a poet and carries infantile, enchanting half-dreams over the head of his bed—that same moonlight did The Portrait

\ 73

© Columbia University Press

74 \

The Portrait

not bring him musical reveries; his reveries were painful. Finally he fell into something that was not sleep, but a kind of half-oblivion, that oppressive state when with one eye we see the approaching visions of dreams, and with the other we see surrounding objects in a vague form. He saw the surface of the old man’s image detach itself and come down from the portrait, just as the top layer of froth comes off of boiling liquid; this surface image rose into the air and floated closer and closer to him and finally came right up to his bed. Chertkov felt his breath being taken away; he made an effort to raise himself up—but he couldn’t move his arms. The old man’s eyes burned dimly and fastened themselves on him with all their magnetic force.

“Do not be afraid,” said the strange old man in an intimate tone, and Chertkov noticed a smile on his lips that seemed to sting him with its grin and which illuminated the dull wrinkles of his face with its bright vitality. “Do not be afraid of me,” the strange phenomenon said. “You and I will never be separated. You’ve thought up a very stupid occupation: What makes you want to sweat for ages over the alphabet when you have long been able to read fluently? You think that by long efforts you’ll be able to comprehend art, that you will win and receive something for it? Yes, you’ll receive something . . .” and at this his face became strangely distorted and a motionless laughter was expressed in all his wrinkles, “you’ll receive the enviable right to throw yourself into the Neva River from Saint Isaac’s Bridge or to tie up your neck with a kerchief and hang yourself from the first available nail; and as for your works, some dauber will buy them up for a ruble and cover them with primer so he can paint some ugly red face on top. Give up your foolish idea! Everything on earth is done for the sake of profit. You’d do better to take your brush and paint portraits of the whole town! Take on anything they commission, but don’t fall in love with your work, don’t sit over it day and night; time flies fast

© Columbia University Press

and life does not stop. The more paintings you can slap together in a day, the more money and fame you’ll have in your pocket. Give up this garret and rent a luxurious apartment. I love you and that’s why I’m giving you this advice; I will also give you money if you’ll just come to me.” At these words the old man again expressed on his face the same motionless, terrifying laughter.

An incomprehensible trembling came over Chertkov and emerged as a cold sweat on his face. Gathering all his strength, he raised his arm and finally half rose from the bed. But the image of the old man had become dim, and he only caught sight of it going back into its frame. Chertkov got up anxiously and began to pace around the room. In order to refresh himself a little, he went up to the window. The moon’s radiance still lay on the roofs and the white walls of the houses, although some small storm clouds had begun to pass more frequently across the sky. All was quiet; now and then one could hear the distant jingling of a cabby’s droshky as he drowsed in some obscure lane, lulled to sleep by his lazy nag as he waited for a late fare.6 Chertkov finally convinced himself that his imagination was excessively upset and had presented to him in a dream the creation of his own disturbed thoughts. He went up to the portrait again. The sheet completely covered it from sight, and it seemed that only a little spark could be seen through it from time to time. Finally he fell asleep and slept until morning.

On awakening he long felt himself to be in that unpleasant condition that overcomes a person after coal-gas poisoning: His head ached unpleasantly. It was dim in the room, and an unpleasant dampness drizzled in the air and seeped through the chinks in his windows, which were blocked up by paintings or by stretched and primed canvases. Soon there was a knock at the door, and his landlord came in accompanied by the district police inspector, the appearance of whom is just as unpleasant for insignificant people as the ingratiating face of a petitioner is for the rich. The landlord of The Portrait

\ 75

© Columbia University Press

76 \

The Portrait

the small building in which Chertkov lived was one of those creatures who usually are owners of buildings on the Fifteenth Line of Vasilievsky Island, or on the Petersburg Side, or in a distant corner of Kolomna; a creature the likes of which is very numerous in Russia and whose character is as hard to define as the color of a worn-out frock coat.7 In his youth he was both a captain and a loudmouth, he was also employed in civilian business, he was a master at giving a good flogging, he was both quick and efficient, and a dandy, and stupid; but in his old age he had merged all these vivid peculiarities within himself into a kind of dim indefiniteness. He was already a widower, already retired; he no longer played the dandy, or boasted, or got into fights; he only loved to drink tea and chatter all kinds of nonsense while drinking it; he would walk around his room and trim the tallow candle-end; precisely at the end of each month he would call on his tenants for the rent; he would go out into the street with a key in his hand in order to look at the roof of his building; he would chase the yard sweeper several times out of his kennel, where he would hide in order to sleep—in short, he was a retired person who, after a wild life and a bumpy ride with post-horses, has nothing left but banal habits.

“Be so good as to see for yourself,” the landlord said, turning to the police inspector and spreading his arms. “Be so good as to take charge and inform him.”

“I must inform you,” said the district police inspector, hooking his hand behind the loop on his uniform, “that you must without fail pay the rent that you have owed for three months.”

“I would be glad to pay, but what can I do when I have no money?” Chertkov said coolly.

“In that case, the landlord must take your personal property equal in value to the sum of the rent, and you must immediately move out, this very day.”

“Take whatever you want,” Chertkov answered almost insensibly.

© Columbia University Press

“Many of these paintings are done with some skill,” the police inspector continued, looking through some of them. “But it’s a pity that they’re not finished and the colors aren’t too vivid . . . Maybe you didn’t have enough money to buy paint? And what is this painting wrapped up in linen?”

At this, the police inspector, approaching the painting without ceremony, pulled the sheet off it, because these gentlemen always permit themselves a bit of liberty when they see utter defenselessness or poverty. The portrait seemed to amaze him, because the extraordinary vitality of the eyes produced an equal effect on everyone. While inspecting the painting he squeezed its frame firmly, and since the hands of police employees are always somewhat crudely fashioned, the frame suddenly split. A small board fell onto the floor together with a roll of gold coins that banged heavily to the ground, and several glittering little discs rolled in all directions. Chertkov greedily rushed to pick them up and tore out of the policeman’s hands several three-ruble coins that he had picked up.

“How can you say you don’t have any money,” the police inspector said, smiling pleasantly, “when you have so many gold coins?”

“This money is sacred to me!” Chertkov exclaimed, fearful of the policeman’s expert hands. “I must keep it, it was entrusted to me by my late father. But in order to satisfy you, here’s the money for the rent!” At these words he threw a few coins to the landlord.

The physiognomy and manner of the landlord and of the worthy guardian of the morals of drunken cabbies changed in a single moment.

The policeman began to make apologies and to assure Chertkov that he was only carrying out the prescribed formalities, and that he did not in any case have the right to compel him; and in order to assure Chertkov of this even more, he offered him the prize of some snuff. The landlord assured him that he had merely been having a joke, and he made his assurances with the kind of oaths The Portrait

\ 77

© Columbia University Press

78 \

The Portrait

and shamelessness that are usually employed by a merchant in the Gostiny Dvor shopping arcade.8 But Chertkov ran out and decided not to remain any longer in his former apartment. He didn’t have time to think about the strange nature of this incident. Inspecting the roll, he could see more than a hundred three-ruble coins in it. His first task was to rent a chic apartment. The apartment he happened to find seemed to have been prepared specially for him: four large rooms in a row, big windows, all the advantages and conveniences an artist could wish for! Lying on a Turkish sofa and looking through the sheet-glass windows at the growing and fleetingly glimpsed waves of people, he sank into a self-satisfied oblivion and was amazed at his fate, which only yesterday had crawled along with him in a garret. His unfinished and finished paintings were hung about the colossal, well-proportioned walls; among them hung the mysterious portrait, which he had obtained in such a unique manner. He again began to think about the origin of the unusual vitality of its eyes. His thoughts turned to the half-dream he had had, and finally to the magical treasure that was hidden in its frame. Everything led him to the conclusion that some kind of story was connected with the existence of the portrait and that perhaps even his own existence was linked to this portrait. He jumped up from his sofa and began to inspect the portrait carefully: in the edge of the frame there was a compartment concealed by a thin board that was so skillfully closed up and made even with the surface that no one could have found out about its existence if the heavy finger of the Police Inspector had not broken through the little board. He put the portrait back in its place and looked at it again. The vitality of the eyes no longer seemed so terrifying to him in the bright light that filled his room through the huge windows and the sound of the crowds in the street that thundered in his ears, but that vitality contained something unpleasant, so that he endeavored to turn away from the portrait as soon as possible.

© Columbia University Press

At that time his doorbell rang, and a respectable middle-aged lady with a tiny waist entered his apartment, accompanied by a young girl of about eighteen; a footman in a rich livery opened the door for them and remained in the anteroom.

“I have come to you with a request,” the lady said in the affectionate tone ladies use with artists, French hairdressers, and all those people who are born for the pleasure of others. “I have heard about your gifts . . .” (Chertkov was amazed at this sudden fame of his.)

“I would like you to paint a portrait of my daughter.”

At this the daughter’s pale little face turned toward the artist, who, if he had been an expert on the heart, would have immediately read on it the few volumes of its history. A childish passion for balls, the anguish and boredom of the prolonged periods before dinner and after dinner, the desire to run about among the many guests at an outdoor party in a dress of the latest fashion, an impatience to see her girlfriend in order to say, “Oh, my darling, how bored I was,” or to announce what kind of trimming Madame Sichler had made for the Princess B—’s dress . . . That is all that the young visitor’s face expressed—a pale face, almost without expression, with a tinge of sickly yellowness.9 “I would like you to begin right away,” the lady continued. “We can give you an hour.”

Chertkov rushed to his paints and brushes, took up a stretched and primed canvas, and settled down to work.

“I must give you some advance warning about my Annette,” said the lady, “which will lighten your labor somewhat. Languor has always been noticeable in her eyes and even in all the features of her face; my Annette is very sensitive, and I confess I never give her modern novels to read!” The artist looked as hard as he could but discerned no signs of languor. “I would like you to depict her simply in her family circle or, even better, alone in the open air, in the green shade, so that nothing would indicate that she was on The Portrait

\ 79

© Columbia University Press

80 \

The Portrait

her way to a ball. Our balls, I must confess, are so boring and so soul-destroying that I truly don’t understand what pleasure there is in attending them.”

But it was written most distinctly all over the daughter’s face and even the face of the respectable lady herself that they never missed a single ball.

Chertkov spent a moment reflecting on how to harmonize these small contradictions, and finally decided to choose a prudent middle course. Besides, he was enticed by the desire to conquer the difficulties and make art triumph by preserving the ambiguous expression of the portrait. His brush threw onto the canvas the first fog, the artistic chaos; the features taking shape began slowly to be distinguished and to emerge. He pressed up close to the model, his original, and was already beginning to capture those ineffable features that in a faithful copy lend even the most insipid original a kind of character that constitutes a high triumph of truth. A sweet trembling began to overcome him when he felt that he had finally noticed and would perhaps express that which is very rarely expressed successfully.

Only talent knows this enjoyment, inexplicable and progressively heightening. Under his brush the face of the portrait seemed involuntarily to acquire that coloration that was a sudden discovery even for him; but the original began to fidget and yawn so much in front of him that the still inexperienced artist found it difficult to catch its constant expression in fits and starts and at odd moments.

“I think that’s enough for the first time,” the respectable lady pronounced.

God, how horrible! His soul and power had been stimulated and wanted to have free rein. Hanging his head and throwing down his palette, he stood in front of his painting.

“By the way, I was told that you can finish a portrait completely in two sittings,” the lady said, going up to the painting, “but so far you’ve done only a sketch. We’ll come tomorrow at the same time.”

© Columbia University Press

The artist wordlessly saw his guests out and was left in unpleasant reflections. In his cramped garret no one had interrupted him when he sat at his work, commissioned by no one. With vexation he set aside the portrait he had begun and wanted to take up his other unfinished works. But how could it be possible to replace thoughts and feelings that have penetrated to the soul with new ones that the imagination has not yet managed to fall in love with? Throwing his brush aside, he left the house.

Youth is fortunate in that a multitude of different roads run before it, that its lively, fresh soul is accessible to a thousand different types of enjoyment; and thus Chertkov found distraction in almost the first moment. A few rubles in the pocket—and what is beyond the power of youth, filled with strength! Besides, a Russian, especially a nobleman or an artist, has this strange characteristic: as soon as he has a half-kopeck in his pocket, the whole world can go hang and he’s not afraid of anything. After the money he had paid in advance for the apartment, he had about thirty three-ruble coins left. And he squandered all thirty in a single evening. First he ordered the most superb dinner, drank two bottles of wine and didn’t take the change, hired a fancy carriage just in order to ride to a theater that was located a few steps from his apartment, treated three of his friends in a pastry shop, made a visit to yet another place, and returned home without a kopeck in his pocket.10 Throwing himself on the bed, he fell into a deep sleep, but his dreams were just as incoherent as on the first night, and his chest was just as tight, as if it felt something heavy on it; he saw through the chink in his screens that the depiction of the old man had detached itself from the canvas and with an anxious expression was counting and recounting piles of money, gold was pouring from his hands . . . Chertkov’s eyes blazed; it seemed that his feelings recognized in the gold an inexplicable charm that had been unknown to him up to that time. The old man beckoned him with a finger and The Portrait

\ 81

© Columbia University Press

82 \

The Portrait

showed him a whole mountain of gold coins. Chertkov convulsively reached out his hand and woke up. Having awakened, he went up to the portrait, shook it, cut its frame open on all sides, but didn’t find hidden money anywhere. Finally he gave up and decided to work, promising himself not to sit for a long time and not to get carried away by the alluring brush.

At that time the lady from the day before came with her pale Annette. The artist put his portrait on the easel, and this time his brush flew more quickly. The sunny day and bright illumination gave a kind of special expression to the original, and many subtleties that had not been noticeable before were revealed. His soul again began to burn with effort. He tried to capture the tiniest point or feature, even the very yellowness and uneven coloring of the yawning and exhausted beauty’s face, with the kind of precision that inexperienced artists permit themselves, imagining that the truth will please others the same way it pleases them. His brush had just started to capture the general expression of the whole when an annoyed “Enough!” resounded in his ears and the lady went up to his portrait.

“Oh, my God! What have you painted?” she cried out in vexation. “You’ve made Annette yellow; she has some kind of dark spots under her eyes; she looks as if she’s taken several vials of medicine.

No, for the love of God, fix your portrait. That’s not her face at all.

We’ll come tomorrow at the same time.”

Chertkov threw down his brush in vexation. He cursed himself, and his palette, and the affectionate lady, and her daughter, and the whole world. He sat starving in his magnificent room and didn’t have the strength to take up a single painting. The next day, rising early, he seized the first work that came to hand. It was a picture of Psyche that he had started long ago; he put it on the easel with the intention of forcing himself to continue working on it.11 At that moment the lady from the day before came in.

© Columbia University Press

“Oh, Annette, look, look at this!” the lady exclaimed with a joyful air. “Oh, what a good resemblance! It’s charming!

Charming! The nose, the mouth, the eyebrows! How can we thank you for this beautiful surprise? How sweet! How good that this arm is raised a bit. I see that you truly are the great artist they told me about.”

Chertkov stood dumbfounded when he saw that the lady had mistaken his Psyche for a portrait of her daughter. With the shyness of a novice, he began to assure her that in this weak study he had wanted to depict Psyche; but the daughter took this as a compliment to herself and smiled sweetly, a smile shared by her mother.

A hellish thought flashed in the artist’s head, a feeling of vexation and fury fortified it, and he decided to profit by this.

“Allow me to ask you to sit for me a little longer today,” he said, turning to the blonde, who was pleased this time. “You can see that I haven’t done the dress at all yet, because I wanted to paint it all from nature with greater precision.”

Quickly he dressed his Psyche in the clothing of the nineteenth century; he slightly touched the eyes and lips, made the hair somewhat lighter, and gave the portrait to his visitors. He was rewarded with a bundle of banknotes and an affectionate smile of gratitude.

But the artist stood as if rooted to the spot. His conscience was tormenting him; he was overcome by that fastidious, mistrustful fear for his unsullied name that is felt by a youth who carries in his soul the nobility of talent, a fear that forces him, if not to destroy, then at least to hide from the world those works in which he himself sees imperfection, a fear that forces him to prefer enduring the contempt of the whole crowd rather than the contempt of a true connoisseur. It seemed to him that a terrible judge was standing before his painting and, shaking his head, reproaching him for shamelessness and lack of talent. What wouldn’t he give to get it back! He wanted to run after the lady, tear the portrait from her hands, rip it The Portrait

\ 83

© Columbia University Press

84 \

The Portrait

up and stomp on it, but how could he do it? Where should he go?

He didn’t even know his visitor’s name.

But from that time a happy change took place in his life. He expected his name to be covered in infamy, but it turned out quite the contrary. The lady who had commissioned the portrait went into raptures about this extraordinary artist, and our Chertkov’s studio filled with visitors wishing to double, and if possible increase tenfold, their own images. But the fresh, still innocent Chertkov, who felt in his soul that he was unworthy of taking on such an extraordinary task, in order to somewhat make amends and atone for his crime, decided to take up his work with all possible diligence, to double the exertion of his powers, which was the only thing that would produce miracles. But his intentions met with unforeseen obstacles. The visitors whose portraits he was painting were for the most part impatient, busy people in a hurry, and therefore, as soon as his brush began to create something a bit out of the ordinary, a new visitor would burst in and display his head in a most pompous way, burning with the desire to see it on canvas as soon as possible, and the artist would hurry to finish his work quickly.

His time was finally so filled up that he could not spend a single minute in reflection; and inspiration, continually destroyed at its very birth, finally got out of the habit of visiting him. Finally, in order to make his work go faster, he began to confine himself to well-known, defined, monotonous, long worn-out forms. Soon his portraits resembled those family depictions by the old artists, which are so often encountered in all the lands of Europe and in all corners of the world, where the ladies are depicted with their arms folded on their breasts and holding flowers in their hands, and the cavaliers in uniform with one hand tucked inside their jackets. Sometimes he wished to offer a new, not yet hackneyed posture that would be distinguished by originality and lack of constraint, but, alas! All that is unconstrained and easy is obtained by the poet and artist only

© Columbia University Press

in a most constrained way, and is the fruit of great exertions. In order to offer a new, bold expression, to grasp a new secret in painting, he would have to think for a long time, turning his eyes away from everything that surrounded him, flying away from everything worldly and from life. But he didn’t have time for this, and besides he was too exhausted by his daily work to be ready to receive inspiration; and the world he was using as a model to paint his works was too ordinary and monotonous to stimulate and stir his imagination. The deeply pondering and at the same time motionless face of the director of a department; the face of an Uhlan cavalry captain, handsome but always of the same type; the pale face of a St. Petersburg beauty with its forced smile; and many others that were just too ordinary—that is what appeared in turn every day before our painter. It seemed that his very brush had finally taken on the insipidity and lack of energy that marked his originals.

The banknotes and gold that constantly flashed before him finally put the virginal impulses of his soul to sleep. He shamelessly profited by the weakness of people who, in exchange for an extra feature of beauty added by the artist to their images, were ready to forgive him all his deficiencies, even if that beauty damaged the resemblance itself.

Chertkov finally became a quite fashionable painter. The whole capital applied to him. His portraits could be seen in everyone’s studies, bedrooms, drawing rooms, and boudoirs. True artists shrugged their shoulders when they looked at the works of this favorite of all-powerful chance. In vain did they try to find in him a single feature of real truth, tossed onto the canvas by passionate inspiration.

It was just faces with regular features, almost always good looking, because the concept of beauty maintained a foothold in the artist, but there was no knowledge of the heart, the passions, or even the habits of man—nothing that would speak of a powerful development of subtle taste. Some who knew Chertkov were amazed at this The Portrait

\ 85

© Columbia University Press

 86  \

The Portrait

strange event, because they had seen in his first efforts the presence of talent, and they tried to solve an incomprehensible enigma: How could a gift be extinguished in its prime, rather than developing in full brilliance?

But the self-satisfied artist did not hear this talk and gloried in his universal fame, throwing his gold coins around and beginning to believe that everything on earth is ordinary and simple, that there is no such thing as a revelation from on high, and that everything must of necessity be subsumed under a strict order of tidiness and monotony. His life was reaching the years when everything that breathes of impulse begins to shrink within a person, when the powerful violin bow reaches the soul more faintly and does not twine about the heart with piercing sounds, when contact with beauty no longer transforms virginal powers into fire and flame, but all the burnedout feelings become more open to the sound of gold, listen more attentively to its alluring music, and little by little, imperceptibly, allow it to put them completely to sleep. Fame cannot satiate and give enjoyment to one who has stolen it and not earned it; it produces a constant excitement only in one who is worthy of it. And so all his feelings and impulses turned toward gold. Gold became his passion, his ideal, his terror, his enjoyment, and his goal. Bundles of banknotes grew in his chests. And like everyone who is given this terrible gift, he became boring, closed to everything and indifferent to everything. It seemed that he was ready to turn into one of those strange creatures who are sometimes encountered in the world, at whom a person full of energy and passion looks with horror, and who seem to him like living bodies that contain corpses within themselves. But a certain event powerfully shook him and gave his life a completely different turn.

One day he saw on his desk a note in which the Academy of Fine Arts asked him, as a worthy member, to come and give his judgment about a new work that had been sent from Italy, by a Russian artist

Š Columbia University Press

who was perfecting his art there. This artist was one of his former comrades, who had borne within himself a passion for art from an early age; with the fiery power of a toiler he had plunged into it with his whole soul, and for its sake, tearing himself away from his friends, relatives, and his favorite habits, without any financial assistance he had rushed to an unknown land. He endured poverty, degradation, even hunger, but with a rare selflessness, despising everything, was insensible to everything but his beloved art.

Upon entering the hall, Chertkov found a crowd of visitors gathered around the painting. The deepest silence, of a kind rarely encountered among a crowd of connoisseurs, reigned everywhere on this occasion. Chertkov assumed the significant physiognomy of an expert and approached the painting; but God, what he saw there!

Pure, unsullied, beautiful as a bride, the artist’s work stood before him. And if only the slightest desire to shine, if only a perhaps excusable vanity, if only a thought of showing itself off to the mob had been evident there—no, not a one! It rose up humbly. It was simple, innocent, and divine, like talent, like genius. The amazingly beautiful figures grouped themselves without constraint, freely, without touching the canvas, and, amazed by so many gazes directed at them, seemed to bashfully lower their beautiful eyelashes. In the divine features of the faces breathed those secret phenomena that the soul cannot, does not, know how to recount to another person; that which was expressed lay inexpressibly on them; and all this was tossed onto the canvas so easily, so humbly and freely, that it seemed to be the fruit of the artist’s momentary inspiration, a thought that had suddenly dawned upon him. The whole painting was—an instant, but an instant for which a whole human life is nothing but preparation. Involuntary tears were ready to roll down the faces of the visitors surrounding the painting. It seemed that all tastes, all bold, irregular deviations of taste, were merged into a silent hymn to the divine work. Motionless, with mouth open, Chertkov stood The Portrait

\ 87

© Columbia University Press

88 \

The Portrait

in front of the painting, and finally, when the visitors and experts began little by little to stir and to discuss the merits of the work, and when they finally turned to him and asked him to make his thoughts known, he regained consciousness. He wanted to assume an ordinary, indifferent air, wanted to offer the usual sort of banal opinion that stale, hard-hearted artists express: that the work was good and the artist’s talent was evident, but that one would wish for the idea and the finishing to be better executed in many places—but the words died on his lips, tears and sobs broke out discordantly in answer, and like a madman he ran out of the hall.

For about a minute he stood motionless and insensible in the middle of his magnificent studio. His whole being, his whole life was awakened in a single instant, as if youth had returned to him, as if the extinguished sparks of talent had flamed up anew. My God! To ruin so pitilessly all the best years of his youth, to destroy, to put out the spark of a fire that had perhaps been flickering in his breast and that would perhaps by now have developed in majesty and beauty, that would perhaps also have provoked tears of amazement and gratitude! And to ruin all that, to ruin it without any pity!

It seemed as if at that moment those efforts and impulses that he had once known came to life again in his soul. He seized a brush and approached a canvas. The sweat of effort broke out on his face, he was transformed into one desire, and one may say that he burned with one thought: He wanted to depict a fallen angel. This idea was the one that was most in harmony with the state of his soul. But, alas! His figures, poses, groups, and thoughts came out onto the canvas in a constrained and incoherent way. His brush and imagination had confined themselves too much to one standard, and the impotent impulse to transgress the boundaries and fetters that he had laid on himself immediately resulted in incorrectness and error.

He had neglected the tedious, long ladder of cumulative knowledge and the first basic laws of future greatness.

© Columbia University Press

In vexation he removed all his works from his room, works marked by the dead pallor of superficial fashion. He locked the door and ordered that no one be admitted, and set to work like a passionate youth. But, alas! At every step he was stopped by his ignorance of the most primary elements. A simple, insignificant technical problem cooled off his impulse and stood as a threshold that his imagination could not jump over. Sometimes the sudden phantom of a great thought would dawn upon him, his imagination would see in the dark distance something that, if he could capture it and toss it onto the canvas, could be made into something unusual and at the same time accessible to everyone’s soul. A star of the miraculous sparkled in the indistinct fog of his thoughts, because he did in fact possess the phantom of talent; but God! Some insignificant convention that every schoolboy knows, some dead anatomical rule—and his thought would die, the impulse of his impotent imagination would freeze in its unnarrated, undepicted state; his brush would involuntarily turn to its rote forms: the arms were folded in a single manner learned by heart, the head did not dare to take an unusual turn, even the folds of a dress smacked of something memorized and did not want to obey and drape onto an unfamiliar position of the body. And he felt, he felt and saw this himself! Sweat poured from him, his lips trembled, and after a long pause during which all his feelings rebelled within him, he again set to work, but when one is past thirty it is harder to study the boring ladder of difficult rules and of anatomy; it is even harder to comprehend suddenly that which develops slowly and is obtained by long efforts, great exertions, deep selflessness.

Finally he knew that horrible torment that sometimes appears in nature as a striking exception, when a weak talent strives to manifest itself on a scale that exceeds its scope and it fails to manifest itself, that torment that in a young man gives birth to great deeds but in one who has passed beyond the boundary of dreams turns The Portrait

\ 89

© Columbia University Press

90 \

The Portrait

into a futile thirst, that terrible torment that makes a person capable of horrible crimes.

He was overcome by a horrible envy, envy to the point of fury.

His face became bilious when he saw a work that carried the stamp of talent. He would gnash his teeth and devour it with the death-dealing gaze of the basilisk.12 Finally in his soul was born the most hellish intention that a person ever nourished, and with mad strength he rushed to carry it out. He began to buy up all the best works that art produced. After buying a painting for a high price, he would carefully carry it to his room, and then with the fury of a tiger he would throw himself on it, rip it, tear it up, cut it up into pieces and stomp on them, accompanying his actions with a horrible laugh of hellish enjoyment. As soon as a fresh work appeared somewhere, breathing with the fire of a new talent, he would use all his efforts to buy it at any cost. The innumerable riches he had amassed afforded him the means to satisfy this hellish desire. He untied all his sacks of gold and opened up his money chests. Never had a monster of ignorance destroyed as many works of beauty as did this ferocious avenger. And people who carried within themselves the spark of divine knowledge, thirsty only for the great, were pitilessly, inhumanly deprived of these holy, beautiful works, in which great art had lifted the veil from heaven and shown to the human being a part of his own inner world, filled with sounds and sacred mysteries.

Nowhere, in no corner, could they hide from his rapacious passion, which knew no mercy. His sharp-sighted, fiery eye penetrated everywhere and could find the trace of an artistic brush even in the dust of neglect. At all the auctions where he appeared, everyone despaired in advance of obtaining an artistic creation. It seemed as if angry heaven had purposely sent this horrible scourge into the world, wishing to take away all its harmony. This horrible passion cast a terrible coloration onto his face. His face was almost always bilious; his eyes flashed almost insanely; his beetling brows and

© Columbia University Press

forehead, always crisscrossed by wrinkles, gave him a kind of savage expression and separated him completely from the peaceful inhabitants of the earth.

Fortunately for the world and the fine arts, such a strained and violent life could not last long. The size of his passions was too irregular and colossal for life’s weak forces. The fits of fury and madness began to occur more often, and finally they turned into the most horrible illness. A severe fever, combined with galloping consumption, overcame him so fiercely that in three days only a shadow of him was left. Added to this were all the signs of hopeless madness. Sometimes several people were unable to restrain him.

He began to have visions of the long forgotten living eyes of the unusual portrait, and then his fury was horrible. All the people around his bed seemed to him to be horrible portraits. This portrait doubled, multiplied fourfold before his eyes, and finally he had the vision that all the walls were hung with these horrible portraits that fixed their immobile living eyes on him. The terrible portraits looked at him from the ceiling, from the floor, and moreover he could see the room getting larger and more spacious in order to accommodate more of these motionless eyes. The doctor who had the responsibility of treating him and who had already heard something of his strange story, tried with all his powers to discover the secret relationship between the visions that appeared to him and the events of his life, but he had no success. The patient did not understand or feel anything but his torments, and in a piercing, inexpressibly harrowing voice he cried out and prayed for them to take away the implacable portrait with the living eyes, the location of which he would describe with a degree of detail that was strange for a madman. In vain did they employ all their efforts to find the magical portrait. They rummaged through everything in the house, but couldn’t find the portrait. Then the patient raised himself up anxiously and again began to describe its location with the kind The Portrait

\ 91

© Columbia University Press

92 \

The Portrait

of precision that demonstrated the presence of a clear and penetrating mind; but all their searches were in vain. Finally the doctor concluded that it was nothing more than a particular phenomenon of madness. Soon his life was cut short in a final, now silent, burst of suffering. His corpse was terrifying. They also could find nothing of his huge wealth, but seeing the cut-up pieces of those lofty works of art, whose worth exceeded millions, they understood the horrible use his wealth had been put to.

II Many coaches, droshkies, and carriages stood in front of the entrance to a house in which an auction was being held, an auction of the belongings of one of those rich art connoisseurs who sweetly sleep their whole life away absorbed in zephyrs and cupids, who innocently pass as Maecenases, and for this purpose ingenuously spend the millions that were amassed by their prosperous fathers, and sometimes even by their own previous labors. The long hall was filled with a motley crowd of visitors who had come flying like birds of prey onto an abandoned corpse. There was a whole flotilla of Russian merchants from the Gostiny Dvor shopping arcade and even from the flea market, in dark-blue German frock coats. Here their aspect and physiognomy were somehow firmer and more impudent, and were devoid of that cloying obsequiousness that is so evident in the Russian merchant. They did not at all stand on ceremony, despite the fact that present in the hall were many of those notable aristocrats before whom, in another context, they would be ready with their bowing to sweep away the dust brought in by their own boots. Here they were completely free and easy, they unceremoniously poked at the books and paintings, trying to find out the quality of the goods, and they boldly outbid the prices set by connoisseur Counts. Present here were many of those inevitable

© Columbia University Press

auction visitors who resolve every day to go to an auction instead of breakfast; connoisseur aristocrats, who consider it their duty not to miss a chance to increase their collection and who have no other occupation between twelve and one o’clock; finally, those noble gentlemen whose clothes and pockets are extremely worn, who appear every day without any self-interested motive, but solely in order to see how it will all end, who will offer more, who less, who will outbid whom, and who will end up in possession. Many paintings were scattered about without any order. They were mixed up with furniture and books bearing the monograms of the previous owner, who probably had never had the commendable curiosity to look inside them. Chinese vases, marble tabletops, new and antique furniture with curving lines, with griffins, sphinxes, and lion’s paws, gilded and without gilding, chandeliers, old oil lamps—all of it was piled up and not at all in the same kind of order as in the shops.

It all represented a kind of chaos of the arts. In general we have a strange feeling when we see an auction. It seems to evoke something similar to a funeral procession. The hall in which it takes place is always gloomy; the windows, blocked up with furniture and paintings, afford only scanty light; silence is spread over everyone’s faces; and the voices: “A hundred rubles!” “One ruble twenty kopecks!”

“Four hundred rubles fifty kopecks!”—which come from the lips in a long, drawn-out way, are somehow savage to the ear. But an even greater impression is made by the funereal voice of the auctioneer, who bangs his little hammer and sings a requiem for the poor arts that are so strangely brought together here.

This auction, however, had not yet begun. The visitors were inspecting various objects that were thrown in a heap on the floor.

Meanwhile a small crowd had stopped in front of one portrait. It depicted an old man with such a strange vitality in his eyes that it had riveted their attention against their will. One had to acknowledge that the artist had true talent. Although the work had not been The Portrait

\ 93

© Columbia University Press

94 \

The Portrait

finished, still it carried the clear mark of a powerful brush, but at the same time the supernatural vitality of the eyes aroused an involuntary feeling of reproach toward the artist. They felt that this was the height of truthfulness, that only a genius could have depicted truth to such a degree, but that this genius had too boldly crossed over the boundaries set for the human will. Their attention was broken by a sudden exclamation from a certain rather elderly visitor. “Oh, that’s the one!” he cried with a violent movement, and fixed his eyes motionlessly on the portrait. Such an exclamation naturally ignited everyone’s curiosity, and several of the people inspecting the painting could not help but turn to him and say: “You probably know something about this portrait?”

“You are not mistaken,” replied the man who had made the involuntary exclamation. “Indeed I know the history of this portrait better than anyone else. Everything convinces me that it must be the same portrait about which I would like to speak. Since I notice that you are all interested in finding out about it, I am prepared to satisfy you to some degree right now.”

The visitors expressed their gratitude with nods of their heads and prepared to listen with great attention.

“No doubt,” he began, “few of you are well familiar with that part of the city known as Kolomna. Its character is sharply distinguished from that of other parts of the city. The mores, occupations, means of support, and customs of the inhabitants are completely different from those of other people. Nothing here resembles a capital city, but at the same time it doesn’t resemble a provincial town either, because the fragmentation of a multifarious and, if I may say, civilized life has penetrated even here and appears in the kind of subtle details that can only be generated by a populous capital city. This is a completely different world, and as you ride into the secluded Kolomna streets, you seem to hear your young desires and impulses abandoning you. The life-giving,

© Columbia University Press

rainbow-colored future does not show itself here. Here everything is quietude and retirement. This is where the sediment forms out of the movements of the capital city. And in fact, this is the retreat of retired civil servants whose pensions do not exceed five hundred rubles a year; widows who used to live on the labors of their husbands; people of modest means who have a pleasant acquaintance with law proceedings in the highest courts and thus have condemned themselves to live here their whole lives; retired cooks who spend all day knocking about the markets, chattering nonsense with the peasant in the little grocery store and getting five kopecks’ worth of coffee and four kopecks’ worth of sugar every day; finally, that whole category of people that I will call ashlike, whose clothes, faces, and hair possess a kind of dim, ashlike appearance. They resemble a gray day when the sun does not blind us with its bright shining, when no storm whistles, accompanied by thunder, rain, and hail, but when it’s simply neither one thing nor the other in the sky: A fog settles and takes away all the sharp features from objects. The faces of these people are somehow reddish-rust, their hair is also reddish; their eyes are almost always devoid of sparkle; their clothing is also thoroughly drab and presents that turbid color that appears when you mix all the colors together, and in general their appearance is thoroughly drab. This category includes retired theater ushers; fifty-year-old titular councillors who’ve been dismissed; retired military men, nurslings of Mars with a two-hundred-ruble pension, a knockedout eye, and a swollen lip.13 These people are completely devoid of passion; they don’t care a damn about anything. They walk without paying any attention to any objects; they are silent without thinking about anything. In their room there is only a bed and a liter bottle of pure Russian vodka, which they monotonously suck all day without any bold rush of blood to the head, aroused by a strong swig—the kind of swig a young German craftsman, The Portrait

\ 95

© Columbia University Press

96 \

The Portrait

that student of Meshchanskaya Street, the sole proprietor of the sidewalk after midnight, loves to take for himself on Sundays.

“Life in Kolomna is always monotonous. Rarely does a coach thunder in the peaceful streets, with the possible exception of the one in which some actors are riding and which disturbs the general quietude with its ringing, thundering, and clattering. Here almost everyone is a pedestrian. Seldom does a cabby, almost always without a passenger, drag lazily by, hauling along with himself the hay for his humble nag. Apartment rent is rarely as high as a thousand rubles. Most apartments are fifteen to twenty or thirty rubles a month, not counting the many little corners that go for four rubles fifty kopecks a month, along with heat and morning coffee.

Widows of civil servants who receive a pension are the most respectable inhabitants of this neighborhood. They behave themselves very well, they sweep their rooms cleanly and talk to their female neighbors and acquaintances about the high price of beef, potatoes, and cabbage; they very often have a young daughter, a taciturn, silent creature, but sometimes quite comely nevertheless; they also keep a nasty little dog and an antique clock with a sadly ticking pendulum.

These same civil servants’ widows occupy the best quarters, the ones that cost from twenty to thirty and sometimes even forty rubles. After them come the actors, whose salaries do not permit them to move out of Kolomna. They are a free-wheeling people, like all artists, who live for pleasure. Sitting in their dressing gowns, they either carve little knickknacks out of bone or repair their pistols, or glue together various useful household objects out of cardboard, or play checkers or cards with a visiting friend and spend the morning that way; they do the same thing in the evening, often adding in a rum punch. After these big shots, this Kolomna aristocracy, follows an unusual collection of small fry, and for the observer it is just as hard to enumerate all the people occupying the various corners and nooks of a single room as to give names to the multitude of insects

© Columbia University Press

that are generated in old vinegar. What people you encounter there!

Old women who pray, old women who get drunk, old women who get drunk and pray at the same time, old women who make ends meet through incomprehensible means, who like ants drag old rags and linen from the Kalinkin Bridge to the flea market in order to sell them there for fifteen kopecks. In a word, all the pitiful and unfortunate sediment of humanity.

“Naturally, sometimes these people suffer great financial shortages that do not allow them to lead their usual poor lives. They must often take out emergency loans in order to extricate themselves from their circumstances. Then one finds among them those people who are called by the resounding name of capitalists and who can supply sums from twenty to a hundred rubles at various rates of interest, almost always excessive. These people little by little accumulate a fortune that sometimes allows them to acquire their own little home. But among these moneylenders there was one unlike all the rest, a strange creature by the name of Petromikhali. Whether he was a Greek or an Armenian or a Moldavian—no one knew, but at the least he had completely southern facial features. He always wore a capacious Asiatic robe, he was tall, his face had a dark olive complexion, and his black beetling eyebrows with a touch of gray and also his mustache lent him a frightening appearance. No expression was discernible on his face. It was almost always motionless, and his striking southern physiognomy presented a strange contrast to the ashlike inhabitants of Kolomna. Petromikhali did not at all resemble the abovementioned moneylenders of this secluded part of the city.

He could offer any sum that was asked of him. Naturally, the rates of interest for this were also unusual. His dilapidated house with its multitude of annexes was located in the Goat’s Bog neighborhood.

It would not have been so decrepit if its owner had laid out even a little bit of cash for repairs, but Petromikhali absolutely refused to make any expenditures. All the rooms of the house, excluding The Portrait

\ 97

© Columbia University Press

98 \

The Portrait

the small hole he himself occupied, were cold storerooms in which were scattered piles of vases made of porcelain, gold, and jasper, all sorts of trash, even furniture that was brought to him as security by debtors of various ranks and callings, because Petromikhali didn’t scorn anything, and although he could lend rubles by the hundreds of thousands, he was also ready to offer a sum no larger than one ruble. Old, worn-out linen, broken chairs, even torn boots—he was ready to take everything into his storerooms, and a beggar could have no fear in coming to him with a bundle in his hand. Costly pearls that perhaps had once entwined the most enchanting neck in the world were kept in his dirty iron trunk along with a fifty-year-old lady’s ancient snuffbox, a diadem that had risen over the alabaster brow of a great beauty, and the diamond ring of a poor civil servant who had received it as a reward for his tireless labors.

“But it must be noted that people were forced to turn to him only by the most dire necessity. His conditions were so onerous that they dispelled any desire. But strangest of all, at first his interest rates did not seem very high. By means of his strange and unusual computations he arranged them in such an inexplicable way that they grew at a terrible progression, and even auditors’ clerks could not fathom this incomprehensible rule, all the more since it seemed to be based on the laws of strict mathematical truth. They saw sums that were clearly exaggerated, but they also saw that there was no mistake in these calculations. Pity, like all the other passions of a feeling person, could never reach him, and no supplications could incline him to a deferment or to a lessening of the payment. Several times they found at his door unfortunate old women, ossified from the cold, whose dark-blue faces, frozen limbs, and dead, outstretched arms seemed even after death still to be begging him for mercy. This often aroused a general indignation, and the police tried several times to investigate more thoroughly the acts of this strange man, but the district police inspectors always managed to fend them

© Columbia University Press

off under various pretexts and to present the business in a different light, despite the fact that they had not received a penny from him.

But wealth has such a strange force that people believe in it the way they believe in a state banknote. Without even showing itself, it can invisibly move everyone like fawning servants. This strange creature would sit cross-legged on his blackened divan, motionlessly receiving petitioners, only slightly twitching his brow as a sign of greeting, and one never heard anything superfluous or extraneous from him.

Nevertheless there were rumors that he sometimes gave out money for nothing, without demanding its return, but that he would propose such a condition that everyone ran from him in horror, and even the most garrulous housewives did not have the strength to move their lips to tell others about it. Those who did have the courage to accept the money he gave them turned yellow, withered away, and died without daring to reveal the mystery. “In this part of the town a certain artist who was then famed for his truly beautiful works owned a small house. This artist was my father. I can show you some of his works that display a decided talent. His life was quite placid. He was the kind of modest, pious painter that lived only in the religious Middle Ages. He could have had great fame and acquired a great fortune if he had made up his mind to take the many jobs that were offered him from all sides, but he preferred to work on religious subjects, and for a small sum he would agree to paint the entire iconostasis of a parish church.

He often had need of money, but he never brought himself to have recourse to the horrible moneylender, although he always had the means to pay back his debt, because all he had to do was to sit down and paint a few portraits and the money would be in his pocket. But he was so sorry to tear himself away from his work, he was so sad to part with his beloved idea for even a short time, that he would rather have sat starving in his room for several days, which is what he would always have done if he had not had a passionately beloved The Portrait

\ 99

Š Columbia University Press

100 \

The Portrait

wife and two children, one of whom you now see before you. But one time his extremity became so great that he was about ready to go see the Greek, when suddenly the news spread that the horrible moneylender was at the point of death. This incident struck him so powerfully that he was ready to acknowledge it as having been sent on purpose from above in order to hinder his intention, when he met in his entryway a panting old woman, the woman who carried out three duties for the moneylender: cook, yard sweeper, and valet. The old woman, who had quite lost the habit of talking while serving her strange master, indistinctly muttered a few incoherent, abrupt words, from which my father could learn only that her master had urgent need of him and asked that he bring his paints and brushes with him. My father could not imagine what he could be needed for at such a time, and moreover with his paints and brushes, but spurred by curiosity, he grabbed his box of painting supplies and set off with the old woman.

“Only with difficulty could he force his way through the crowd of beggars who were clustering around the dwelling of the dying moneylender, nourishing the hope that maybe now, finally, before death, this sinner would repent and dispense a small part of his innumerable riches. He went into a small room and saw, stretching out almost to its whole length, the body of the Asian, which at first he thought already dead, so stretched out and immobile was it. Finally the moneylender lifted his shriveled head, and his eyes became so terribly fixed that my father began to tremble. Petromikhali uttered a muffled exclamation and finally said: ‘Paint my portrait!’ My father was amazed at such a strange desire. He began to explain to him that this was no longer the time to think of such a thing, that he should reject all earthly desires, that he had only a few minutes left to live and that therefore it was time to reflect on his former deeds and to express repentance to the Most High. ‘I don’t want anything; paint my portrait!’ Petromikhali said in a firm voice, while his face

© Columbia University Press

was seized by such convulsions that my father would probably have left if he had not been stopped by a feeling that is quite excusable in an artist struck by an unusual subject for his brush. The face of the moneylender indeed was one of those that constitute a treasure for the artist. With terror and at the same time a kind of secret desire, he set up a canvas on his knees, not having an easel, and began to paint.

The thought of later using this face in a painting in which he wished to depict a man possessed by demons that are expelled by the powerful word of the Savior, this thought compelled him to intensify his zeal. He hurriedly sketched an outline and the first shadows, afraid every minute that the moneylender’s life would suddenly be cut short, because death seemed to be hovering on his lips. From time to time the moneylender would emit a wheeze and would anxiously fix his terrible gaze on the painting. Finally something resembling joy flashed in his eyes when he saw how his features were taking shape on the canvas.

“Afraid for the moneylender’s life at every moment, my father decided to work on the ultimate refinement of the eyes first of all.

This was the most difficult subject, because the feeling depicted in them was quite unusual and inexpressible. He labored over them for about an hour and finally captured to perfection the fire that was already going out in the moneylender, his original. With a secret pleasure he walked a short distance away from the painting in order to have a better look at it, and he jumped away from it in horror when he saw living eyes gazing at him. An incomprehensible terror took possession of him to such a degree that, throwing down his palette and paints, he rushed to the door; but the terrible, almost half-dead body of the moneylender rose from his bed and grabbed him with his emaciated hand, ordering him to continue working. My father crossed himself and swore that he would not continue. Then this horrible creature tumbled off his bed so that his bones rattled, gathered all his strength, his eyes flashed with vitality, The Portrait

\ 101

© Columbia University Press

102 \

The Portrait

his arms embraced my father’s legs, and, crawling, he kissed the hem of his clothes and implored him to finish painting the portrait. But my father was implacable and was merely amazed at the strength of the moneylender’s will, which overcame the very approach of death.

“Finally the desperate Petromikhali, with extraordinary force, pulled a chest out from under the bed, and a terrible pile of gold fell to my father’s feet. Seeing that even then he remained adamant, the moneylender collapsed at his feet, and a whole stream of incantations began to flow from his lips, which had been silent up until then.

It was impossible not to feel a kind of horrible and, if one may say, repulsive compassion. ‘Kind man! Man of God! Man of Christ!’ this living skeleton said with an expression of despair. ‘I conjure you by your small children, by your beautiful wife, by the grave of your father, finish my portrait! Work on it just one more hour! Listen, I will reveal a secret to you.’ At these words a deathly pallor began to appear more clearly on his face. ‘But never reveal this secret to anyone—neither to your wife, nor to your children. If you do, you will die, and they will die, and you will all be unfortunate. Listen, if you do not take pity now, I will ask no further. After death I must go to the one to whom I would not wish to go. There I must suffer the kind of torments you have never heard of even in your dreams; but I can avoid going to him for a long time, for as long as our earth exists, if only you finish my portrait. I have learned that half of my life will pass into my portrait if only it is painted by a skillful painter.

You see that a part of life has already remained in the eyes; it will be in all the other features too when you have finished. And although my body will perish, half of my life will remain on earth and I will escape the torments for a long time yet. Finish the painting! Finish the painting! Finish the painting!’ this strange creature cried out in a harrowing and dying voice. My father was even more possessed by horror. He could feel his hair stand on end from this horrible secret, and he dropped the brush that he had been on the point

© Columbia University Press

of raising, touched by the moneylender’s entreaties. ‘So you don’t want to finish painting me?’ Petromikhali said in a wheezing voice.

‘Then take my portrait for yourself. I give it to you as a gift.’ At these words something like a terrible laugh was expressed on his lips. Life seemed to flash once more in his features, and a minute later there remained before my father a dark-blue corpse. My father did not want to touch the brushes and paints that had painted those apostate features, and ran out of the room.

“In order to divert the unpleasant thoughts brought on by this incident, he walked around the city for a long time and returned home toward evening. The first object that met his eye in his studio was the portrait he had painted of the moneylender. He asked his wife, the woman who worked in the kitchen, and the yard sweeper, but they all answered decisively that no one had brought the portrait, and no one had even come while he was away. This caused him to ponder for a moment. He approached the portrait and involuntarily turned his eyes away, overwhelmed by revulsion from his own work. He ordered that it be taken down and carried away to the attic, but the whole time he felt a sort of strange burden, the presence of thoughts that frightened him. But most of all he was struck when he went to bed by the following almost unbelievable incident: He clearly saw Petromikhali come into his room and stand at the end of his bed. Petromikhali looked at him for a long time with his living eyes, and finally began to propose such horrible things to him, wished to give his art such a hellish direction, that my father leaped out of bed with a painful moan, penetrated by a cold sweat, by an unbearable weight on his soul, and also by the most ardent indignation. He could see the magical depiction of the dead Petromikhali recede into the frame of the portrait, which was again hanging before him on the wall.

“He resolved to burn this accursed product of his hands that very day. As soon as the fireplace was lit, he threw the portrait into the The Portrait

\ 103

© Columbia University Press

104 \

The Portrait

flaming fire and watched with secret delight as the canvas’s frame cracked, and the still wet paint hissed. Finally all that remained of its existence was a heap of cinders. And when that heap began to fly out the chimney in a light dust, it seemed that the vague image of Petromikhali flew away with it. He felt a certain lightening of the burden on his soul. With the feelings of a man who has recovered from a lengthy illness he turned to the corner of the room where an icon hung that he had painted in order to express pure repentance, and he saw with horror that before him stood that same portrait of Petromikhali, whose eyes seemed to have acquired even more vitality, so that even his children uttered a cry when they looked at it. This produced an extraordinary impression on my father. He resolved to confide everything to our parish priest and to ask his advice about how to proceed in this unusual business. The priest was a sensible man and was also devoted with warm love to his duties. He immediately appeared, at the first call from my father, whom he respected as a most worthy parishioner. My father did not consider it necessary to take him aside and resolved to tell him of this incomprehensible incident right there, in the presence of my mother and their children. But scarcely had he uttered his first word when my mother suddenly cried out in a muffled voice and fell senseless onto the floor. Her face was covered by a terrible pallor, her lips remained motionlessly open, and all her features were twisted in convulsions. My father and the priest ran to her and saw with horror that she had accidentally swallowed a dozen needles she had been holding in her mouth. The doctor came and declared that she could not be cured. Some needles had remained lodged in her throat, others had passed into her stomach and internal organs, and my mother died a horrible death.

“This incident had a powerful influence on my father’s whole life. From that time a kind of gloom took possession of his soul.

Seldom did he do any work; he almost always remained silent

© Columbia University Press

and avoided any society. But meanwhile the horrible image of Petromikhali with his living eyes began to persecute him more constantly, and often my father felt a surge of such desperate, savage thoughts that he himself involuntarily shuddered. All that which settles like black sediment in the depths of a person, which is destroyed and expelled by education, noble deeds, and contemplation of the beautiful—all of that he felt rebelling and ceaselessly striving to come out and develop in all its depraved perfection.

The gloomy state of his soul was precisely of the kind that would cause him to seize upon this black side of man. But I must note that the strength of my father’s character was unparalleled; the power he exerted over himself and his passions was incomprehensible; his convictions were firmer than granite, and the stronger the temptation, the more he strove to oppose it with the indestructible power of his soul. Finally, weakened by this struggle, he resolved to pour out and bare himself entirely by depicting the whole tale of his sufferings to that same priest who had almost always given him healing with his meditative speeches.

“This was at the beginning of autumn. The weather was beautiful, the sun was shining with a fresh autumn light. The windows of our rooms were open; my father was sitting with the worthy priest in his studio; my brother and I were playing in the room next to it.

Both these rooms were on the second floor, which formed the mezzanine of our little house. The door to the studio was slightly ajar. I happened to glance through the opening, saw my father move closer to the priest, and even heard him say: ‘Finally I will reveal this whole secret . . .’ Suddenly a short cry caused me to turn around: my brother was not there. I went up to the window and— my God! I will never be able to forget this incident: on the pavement lay the corpse of my brother, soaked with blood. In playing he had probably bent carelessly out the window and fallen, no doubt head first, because his head was smashed. I will never forget this The Portrait

\ 105

© Columbia University Press

106 \

The Portrait

horrible accident. My father stood motionless before the window, crossed his arms on his chest and raised his eyes to heaven. The priest was overcome by terror when he remembered the horrible death of my mother, and he himself requested that my father preserve this horrible secret.

“After this my father sent me to the Cadet Corps military school, where I spent the whole time of my education, while he retired to a monastery in a secluded little town, surrounded by wilderness, where the poor North offered only a wild nature, and he solemnly took monastic vows. He bore all the heavy obligations of that office with such submissiveness and humility, he led his whole life of toil with such humility combined with enthusiasm and ardent faith, that apparently nothing criminal could have the power to touch him. But the terrible image with the living eyes, the image he himself had traced, persecuted him even in this almost tomblike seclusion. When the Father Superior learned of my father’s unusual talent as a painter, he charged him to decorate the church with some icons. One had to see with what lofty religious humility he labored over his work. In strict fasting and prayer, in deep meditation and seclusion of the soul he prepared for his feat. He spent whole nights over his holy depictions, and perhaps that is why you will rarely find works even by significant artists that would bear the stamp of such truly Christian feelings and thoughts.

In his righteous men there was such heavenly tranquility, in his penitents such heartfelt grief, as I have very seldom encountered even in paintings by famous artists. Finally all his thoughts and desires were fixed on the goal of depicting the Divine Mother, meekly extending her arms over the praying people. He labored over this work with such self-sacrifice and such forgetfulness of himself and the whole world that a part of the tranquility that was poured out by his brush in the features of the divine protectress of the world seemed to have passed into his own soul. At least,

© Columbia University Press

the terrible image of the moneylender ceased to visit him, and the portrait disappeared, no one knew where.

“Meanwhile my education in the Cadet Corps ended. I graduated as an officer, but to my great regret, circumstances did not allow me to see my father. We were immediately sent to the army in the field, which, because of the war declared by the Turks, was located on the border.14 I will not bore you with stories about my life spent among campaigns, bivouacs, and hot skirmishes. Suffice it to say that labors, dangers, and a hot climate changed me completely, so that those who knew me before could not recognize me at all. My tanned face, huge mustache, and loud, hoarse voice gave me a completely different physiognomy. I was a merry fellow, never thought about tomorrow, loved to empty an extra bottle with a comrade, to talk nonsense with pretty girls, to let fall some foolish word without thinking about it—in short, I was a carefree military man. But as soon as the campaign was over, I considered it my first duty to visit my father.

“When I rode up to the secluded monastery, I was possessed by a strange feeling that I had never before experienced: I felt that I was still tied to one creature, that there was still something incomplete in my condition. The secluded monastery in the midst of a pale, bare nature induced a kind of poetic oblivion in me and gave a strange, indefinite direction to my thoughts, the kind we usually feel in the heart of autumn, when the leaves rustle under our feet, there is not a single leaf over our heads, the black branches appear as a sparse network, the ravens caw in the distant heights, and we involuntarily hasten our step as if trying to gather our scattered thoughts. A multitude of blackened wooden annexes surrounded the stone building.

I entered under long galleries, rotted through in places, turned green with moss, which were located near the cells, and I asked for the monk Father Grigory. This was the name my father had taken when he became a monk.15 His cell was pointed out to me.

The Portrait

\ 107

© Columbia University Press

108 \

The Portrait

“I will never forget the impression he made on me. I saw an old man on whose pale, exhausted face there seemed to be not one feature, not one thought, of the earthly. His eyes, accustomed to being fixed toward heaven, had taken on the impassive look, permeated by an unearthly fire, that dawns on artists only in moments of inspiration. He was sitting motionless before me like a saint looking down onto the praying people from a canvas onto which the hand of an artist has transferred him; it seemed that he had not noticed me at all, although his eyes were turned in the direction from which I had entered his room. I did not want to reveal myself to him yet, and so I simply asked for his blessing like a travelling pilgrim; but what was my amazement when he said: ‘Greetings, my son, Leon!’

I was astounded by this: I had parted with him when I was only ten.

Moreover, even people who had seen me not so long ago did not recognize me. ‘I knew that you would come to me,’ he continued.

‘I asked this of the Most Pure Virgin and the Holy Saint, and I was awaiting you with every passing hour, because I feel my end coming near and I want to reveal an important secret to you. Come, my son, and let us pray together first!’ We went into the church, and he led me up to a large painting depicting the Mother of God blessing the people. I was struck by the deep expression of divinity on her face.

He lay for a long time cast down before the picture, and finally, after a long silence and meditation, he came out with me.

“Then my father recounted to me everything you have just heard. I believed the truth of the story because I myself was a witness to many sad incidents in our lives. ‘Now I will tell you, my son,’ he added after this story, ‘what was revealed to me by the saint who appeared to me, unrecognized by anyone but me in the midst of a large gathering of people, as I was honored by the merciful Creator with such an inexpressible blessing.’ At these words my father crossed his arms and fixed his eyes on heaven, completely devoted to Him with his whole being. And I finally

© Columbia University Press

heard that which I am now preparing to recount to you. You must not be amazed at the strangeness of his words. I saw that he was in that state of the soul that takes possession of a man when he experiences strong, unbearable misfortunes; when, wishing to gather all his strength, all the iron strength of his soul, and not finding it to be sufficiently powerful, he devotes himself entirely to religion, and the stronger the oppression of his misfortunes, the more ardent are his spiritual contemplations and prayers. He no longer resembles that quiet, meditative hermit who moored himself to his wilderness as if to a longed-for pier, with the desire to rest from life and to pray with Christian humility to the One to whom he has become closer and more accessible; on the contrary, he becomes something like a giant. The ardor of his soul has not been extinguished, but on the contrary strives and breaks out of him with greater strength. Then he turns entirely into a religious flame. His head is eternally filled with miraculous dreams. At every step he sees visions and hears revelations; his thoughts are whitehot; his eye no longer sees anything that belongs to the earth; all his movements, consequences of his eternal striving toward one thing, are filled with enthusiasm. From the very first I noted this state in him and I mention it so that the words I heard from him will not seem too amazing to you. “ ‘My son!’ he said to me after a long, almost motionless fixing of his eyes toward heaven. ‘Soon, soon will come the time when the tempter of the human race, the Antichrist, will be born into the world. That time will be horrible. It will be right before the end of the world. He will gallop by on a giant steed, and great will be the torments endured by those who remain true to Christ. Listen, my son: The Antichrist has long wished to be born, but he cannot, because he must be born in a supernatural manner. But in our world everything has been arranged by the Omnipotent in such a way that everything happens in a natural order, and therefore The Portrait

\ 109

© Columbia University Press

 110  \

The Portrait

no forces, my son, can help the Antichrist break through into the world. But our earth is dust before the Creator. According to His laws, it must collapse, and with each day the laws of nature will become weaker, and therefore the boundaries holding back the supernatural will become more pregnable. The Antichrist is being born even now, but only a certain part of him is striving to appear in the world. He chooses man himself as his dwelling and appears in those people whose angel seems to have forsaken them at their very birth and who are branded with a terrible hatred for people and for everything that is the work of the Creator. Such a one was that amazing moneylender whom I, accursed one, dared to depict with my criminal brush. It is he, my son, he was the Antichrist himself. If my criminal hand had not dared to depict him, he would have withdrawn and disappeared, because he could not live longer than the body in which he had confined himself. In those repulsive living eyes a demonic feeling was preserved. Be amazed, my son, at the horrible might of the demon. He tries to penetrate everything: our deeds, our thoughts, and even the very inspiration of the artist.

Innumerable will be the victims of this hellish spirit, who lives invisibly, with no image, on the earth. It is that black spirit that breaks into us even in a moment of the most pure and holy meditations.

Oh, if my brush had not stopped its hellish work, he would have done even more evil, and there are no human powers that can stand against him, because he chooses precisely the time when the greatest misfortunes befall us. Woe, my son, to poor humanity! But listen to what the Mother of God herself revealed to me in an hour of holy vision. When I was laboring over the depiction of the most pure visage of the Virgin Mary, shedding tears of repentance for my past life and abiding long in fasting and prayer, in order to be more worthy of depicting her divine features, I was visited, my son, by an inspiration, and I felt that a higher power dawned on me and an angel raised up my sinful hand, and I felt my hair start to move on

Š Columbia University Press

my head, and my soul trembled all over. Oh, my son! For the sake of that moment I would take upon myself a thousand torments. And I myself marveled at what my brush had depicted. At that time the most pure visage of the Virgin appeared to me in a dream, and I learned that as a reward for my labors and prayers, the supernatural existence of that demon in the portrait would not be eternal, and if someone would solemnly recount his story after fifty years at the first new moon, his power would be extinguished and dispersed like dust, and that I could convey this to you right before my death. It has been thirty years that he has been living from that time; there are twenty years ahead. Let us pray, my son!’ At this he fell down on his knees and turned into nothing but prayer.

“I confess that internally I ascribed all these words to his inflamed imagination, heightened by ceaseless fasting and prayers, and therefore out of respect I did not wish to make any remark or comment. But when I saw how he raised his withered arms toward heaven, with what deep grief he fell silent, destroyed within himself, with what inexpressible tenderness he prayed for those who had not had the strength to withstand the hellish seducer and had destroyed everything lofty in their souls, with what passionate sorrow he prostrated himself, and how the speaking tears flowed down his face, and in all his features was expressed nothing but silent sobbing— oh! Then I did not have the strength to enter into cold reflection and to analyze his words.

“Several years passed after his death. I did not believe this story and did not even think much about it, but I could never recount it to anyone. I do not know why it was, but I always felt something holding me back. Today without any goal I dropped in to this auction and for the first time I told the story of this unusual portrait— so that I involuntarily begin to wonder whether today is that new moon about which my father spoke, because in fact twenty years have passed since that time.”

The Portrait

\ 111

© Columbia University Press

 112  \

The Portrait

Here the narrator stopped, and the listeners who had heeded him with undistracted interest involuntarily turned their eyes to the strange portrait, and to their amazement noticed that its eyes no longer preserved that strange vitality that had so struck them at first. Their amazement increased still further when the features of the strange picture almost imperceptibly began to disappear, the way breath disappears from a pure steel surface. Something cloudy remained on the canvas. And when they went up closer to it, they saw an insignificant landscape. So the visitors, in leaving, wondered for a long time whether they had really seen the mysterious portrait, or whether it had been a daydream that had appeared for an instant to eyes wearied by long inspection of old paintings.

1835

Š Columbia University Press

NEVSKY AVENUE

T

here is nothing better than Nevsky Avenue, at least in St. Petersburg. For St. Petersburg it is everything. This street shines in every way—it’s the beauty of our capital city! I know that not one of the city’s pale civil service inhabitants would exchange Nevsky Avenue for all possible blessings. It’s not only the man who is twenty-five years of age, who has a splendid mustache and an amazingly well-tailored frock coat, who’s enraptured with Nevsky Avenue, but even the man who has white whiskers sprouting from his chin and a head as smooth as a silver platter.1 And the ladies! Oh, the ladies find Nevsky Avenue even more pleasing. And who doesn’t find it pleasing? The moment you ascend to Nevsky Avenue, you catch the scent of pure promenading.

Even if you have some necessary, obligatory business to do, as soon as you ascend to the avenue, you will surely forget all about your business. This is the only place where people appear not out of obligation, where they have not been driven by necessity and the mercantile interest that enfolds all of St. Petersburg. It seems

© Columbia University Press

114 \

Nevsky Avenue

that a person you encounter on Nevsky Avenue is less of an egoist than the ones you meet on Morskaya, Gorokhovaya, Liteinaya, Meshchanskaya, and other streets, where avarice and greed and necessity are expressed on both pedestrians and the people flying by in coaches and droshkies.2 Nevsky Avenue is St. Petersburg’s universal means of communication. The inhabitant of the Petersburg Side or Vyborg District who has not visited his friend who lives in Peski or the Moscow Turnpike neighborhood for several years can be assured that he will meet him here without fail.3 No address directory or inquiry office can supply such reliable information as Nevsky Avenue. All-powerful Nevsky Avenue! The sole entertainment available in St. Petersburg, so poor in outdoor amusements!4 How cleanly its sidewalks are swept, and my God, how many feet have left their traces on it! The clumsy, muddy boot of a retired soldier, under whose weight it seems the very granite cracks; and the miniature slipper, light as smoke, of a young lady who turns her little head to the shining windows of a store the way a sunflower turns to the sun; and the clanking saber of a hope-filled ensign, which makes a sharp scratch on it—everyone vents on it the power of strength or the power of weakness. What a rapid phantasmagoria takes place on it in the course of a single day! How many changes it undergoes in the course of only twenty-four hours!

Let us begin with the very earliest morning, when all of St. Petersburg smells of hot, freshly baked bread, and the city is filled with old women in tattered dresses and mantles, who are carrying out their raids on the churches and on compassionate passersby.

Then Nevsky Avenue is empty. The solid store proprietors and their clerks are still sleeping in their fine linen nightshirts or lathering their noble cheeks and drinking coffee; beggars are gathering at the doors of the pastry shops, where a sleepy Ganymede, who yesterday flitted around like a fly with cups of hot chocolate, comes crawling out with a broom in his hand, without a tie, and tosses them stale pies

© Columbia University Press

and scraps.5 Impoverished people trudge along the streets: Sometimes the avenue is crossed by Russian peasants, hurrying to work, in boots spattered with lime, boots that could not be washed clean even by the waters of the Catherine Canal, famous for its purity.6 It is usually indecent for ladies to walk at that time, because the Russian common folk like to employ harsh expressions of the sort that the ladies will probably never hear even in the theater. Sometimes a sleepy civil servant will trudge by with a portfolio under his arm, if his route to the Department lies across Nevsky Avenue. One may state decisively that at that time, that is, before twelve o’clock, Nevsky Avenue is not anyone’s goal, it serves only as a means: It gradually fills with persons who have their own occupations, their own worries, their own annoyances, but who are not thinking about the avenue at all. The Russian peasant is talking about a ten-kopeck piece or seven two-kopeck copper coins, old men and old women are gesticulating or talking to themselves, sometimes with dramatic gestures, but no one listens to them or laughs at them, with the sole exception, perhaps, of the urchins in coarse motley smocks, carrying empty liter flasks or finished boots, who run along Nevsky Avenue like lightning.7 At that time, no matter what you wear, even if you have a peaked cap on instead of a hat, even if your collar is sticking up too far out of your necktie—no one will notice.

At twelve o’clock, tutors of all nations make their incursions onto Nevsky Avenue with their charges in cambric collars. English Joneses and French Coques walk arm in arm with the charges that have been entrusted to their parental care and explain to them with seemly solidity that the signs over the stores are made so that by means of them one might learn what is located in the stores themselves. Governesses—pale English misses and rosy Slavs— walk majestically behind the slight, fidgety girls in their care, ordering them to raise their shoulders a little higher and to stand up straighter. In short, at this time Nevsky Avenue is a pedagogical Nevsky Avenue

\ 115

© Columbia University Press

116 \

Nevsky Avenue

Nevsky Avenue. But the closer it gets to two o’clock, the fewer the tutors, pedagogues, and children. They are finally displaced by their affectionate sires, who walk arm in arm with their variegated, multicolored, weak-nerved helpmates. Little by little their company is joined by all those who have completed their important domestic tasks, such as: talking to their doctor about the weather and about a small pimple that has popped up on their nose; inquiring about the health of their horses and their children, who by the way display great talents; reading a theater poster and an important article in the newspapers about the personages who have arrived and departed; and finally drinking a cup of coffee and tea. They are also joined by those whom an enviable fate has endowed with the blessed rank of civil servant on special commission. They are also joined by those who serve in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs and who are distinguished by the nobility of their occupations and habits. My God, what splendid posts and offices there are! How they elevate and delight the soul! But, alas! I am not in the civil service and have been deprived of the pleasure of seeing how elegantly the supervisors treat themselves.

Everything you encounter on Nevsky Avenue, everything is filled with propriety: the men in their long frock coats with their hands in their pockets, the ladies in pink, white, and pale-blue satin redingotes and little hats. Here you will encounter unique whiskers, which have been tucked under the necktie with unusual and amazing skill; velvety whiskers, satiny whiskers, whiskers as black as coal, but, alas, these whiskers are the sole property of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. Providence has denied black whiskers to those serving in other departments; they must wear red whiskers, which is unpleasant for them in the highest degree. Here you will encounter marvelous mustaches that cannot be described by any pen or any brush; mustaches to which the best part of a life has been devoted—the object of long vigils by day and by night, mustaches

© Columbia University Press

that have had the most ravishing perfumes and fragrances poured onto them and have been anointed by the most precious and rare types of pomade, mustaches that are rolled in fine vellum paper for the night, mustaches that breathe of the extremely touching devotion their possessors feel for them and that are the envy of passersby. Anyone on Nevsky Avenue will be blinded by a thousand types of little hats, dresses, scarves—particolored, light, which keep the devotion of their lady owners sometimes for two whole days. It seems as if a whole sea of butterflies has suddenly ascended from the stems of plants and is billowing in a brilliant swarm over the black beetles of the male sex. Here you will encounter the kind of waists that you have never dreamed of: slim, narrow waists, no thicker than the neck of a bottle, which will cause you to walk respectfully aside, so as not to shove them incautiously with an impolite elbow; your heart will be overcome by timidity and fear lest an incautious breath should cause this most charming creation of nature and art to snap in two. And the ladies’ sleeves you will encounter on Nevsky Avenue! Oh, how lovely! They somewhat resemble two hot-air balloons, so that the lady would suddenly ascend into the air if the man were not holding onto her, because it is as easy and pleasant to raise a lady into the air as it is to raise a glass of champagne to one’s lips.

Nowhere do people bow to each other upon meeting so nobly and easily as on Nevsky Avenue. Here you will encounter a unique smile, a smile that is the summit of artistry, sometimes the kind of smile that causes you to melt with pleasure, sometimes the kind that makes you see yourself as lower than the grass and causes you to hang your head, sometimes the kind that makes you feel taller than the Admiralty spire and causes you to raise your head again.8 Here you will encounter people talking about a concert or about the weather with unusual nobility and a feeling of their own dignity.

Here you will encounter a thousand incomprehensible characters and phenomena. Oh, Creator! What strange characters you will Nevsky Avenue

\ 117

© Columbia University Press

118 \

Nevsky Avenue

encounter on Nevsky Avenue! There is a multitude of those people who when they meet you will inevitably look at your boots, and if you pass by them, they will turn around to look at your coattails.

To this very day I cannot understand why this happens. At first I thought that they were shoemakers, but it isn’t that at all. For the most part they work in various civil service departments, and many of them can write a memorandum from one government office to another in the most superb manner; or they are people who occupy themselves with strolling and reading newspapers in pastry shops— in a word, for the most part, they are all decent people.

At this blessed time from two to three o’clock in the afternoon, which might be called the movable capital city of Nevsky Avenue, the main exposition of all the best works of man takes place. One displays a dandified frock coat with the best beaver trim, another displays a beautiful Grecian nose, a third bears superb whiskers, a fourth—a pair of pretty little eyes and an amazing little hat, a fifth—a talisman ring on a dandified pinky finger, a sixth—a little foot in an enchanting slipper, a seventh—a necktie that arouses amazement, an eighth—a mustache that strikes people with astonishment. But three o’clock strikes, and the exposition ends, the crowd thins out . . . At three o’clock there is a new change.

Suddenly spring arrives on Nevsky Avenue: It is all covered with civil servants in green uniforms. Hungry titular, court, and other kinds of councillors try with all their might to hasten their step.9 Young collegiate registrars, gubernial and collegiate secretaries hurry to make use of the remaining time and walk along Nevsky Avenue with the kind of bearing that flat out denies that they have been sitting in an office for six hours. But the old collegiate secretaries and titular and court councillors walk quickly, their heads bent: They couldn’t care less about occupying themselves with scrutinizing the passersby; they have not yet torn themselves away from their cares; their heads are filled with a muddle and a whole

© Columbia University Press

archive of business that they’ve begun and not finished. For a long time they see instead of a shop sign a file full of papers or the fat face of the Chancellery administrator.

From four o’clock Nevsky Avenue is empty, and you will most likely not encounter a single civil servant on it. A seamstress from one of the stores will run across Nevsky Avenue with a box in her hands; the pitiful victim of a philanthropic court clerk, cast out into the world in a rough wool coat; an oddball from out of town, for whom all hours of the day are the same; a long tall Englishwoman with a reticule and a book in her hands; an artisan from a cooperative, a Russian man in a frock coat of thick cotton with its waist gathered at the back, with a narrow beard, who lives his whole life in a slipshod way, in whom everything is moving—his back, and his arms, and his legs, and his head—as he passes politely along the sidewalk; sometimes a lowly craftsman; you will not encounter anyone else on Nevsky Avenue.

But as soon as dusk falls on the buildings and streets and the policeman on duty covers himself with bast matting and scrambles up a ladder to light the streetlamp, and those prints that don’t dare to show themselves in broad daylight start to peep out of the low little windows of the stores, then Nevsky Avenue again comes to life and begins to stir.10 Then that mysterious time sets in when the lamps lend everything a sort of alluring, miraculous light. You will encounter quite a few young people, bachelors for the most part, in warm frock coats and overcoats. At that time one senses a kind of goal, or rather something that resembles a goal, something extraordinarily unaccountable. Everyone’s steps speed up and become quite uneven. Long shadows flash along the walls and the roadway and nearly reach the Police Bridge with their heads. Young collegiate registrars and gubernial and collegiate secretaries spend a long time strolling along, but for the most part the old collegiate registrars and titular and court councillors sit at home, either because they are Nevsky Avenue

\ 119

© Columbia University Press

120 \

Nevsky Avenue

married folk or because the German woman cooks who live with them prepare very tasty meals. Here you will encounter respectable old men, who at two o’clock stroll along Nevsky Avenue with such solemnity and such amazing nobility. You will see them running just like the young collegiate registrars, in order to peek under the little hat of a lady they have glimpsed from afar, whose thick lips and cheeks, plastered with rouge, are so fancied by many of the men out for a stroll, but most of all by the shop clerks, cooperative artisans, and merchants, who always stroll in a whole crowd, wearing German frock coats and usually arm in arm.

“Stop!” shouted Lieutenant Pirogov at that moment, tugging the sleeve of a young man in a tailcoat and cloak who was walking with him. “Did you see her?”

“I saw her, she’s marvelous, she’s a perfect Bianca of Perugino.”11 “Who are you talking about?”

“About her, the one with the dark hair. And what eyes! My God, what eyes! Her whole posture, and her contours, and the setting of her face—they’re miracles!”12 “I’m talking about the blonde who passed behind her in that direction. Why don’t you follow the brunette, if she pleased you so much?”

“Oh, how could I!” the young man in the tailcoat exclaimed, blushing. “As if she were one of those who walk along Nevsky Avenue in the evenings. She must be a very well-born lady,” he continued with a sigh, “her cloak alone is worth about eighty rubles!”

“You simpleton!” Pirogov shouted, pushing him by force in the direction where her brightly colored cloak was fluttering. “Get going, you nincompoop, you’ll let her slip away! And I’ll go after the blonde.”

The two friends went their separate ways.

© Columbia University Press

“We know all about your type,” Pirogov thought to himself with a self-satisfied and self-confident smile. He was convinced that no beautiful woman could possibly resist him.

The young man in the tailcoat and cloak walked timidly and tremulously in the direction of the multicolored cloak fluttering in the distance, which would spread out with a bright gleam as it approached the light of the streetlamp, then would instantly be covered in darkness as it moved away from it. His heart was pounding, and he involuntarily quickened his pace. He didn’t dare to think of obtaining the right to the attention of the beautiful woman who was flying into the distance, much less admitting such a dark idea as the one Lieutenant Pirogov had hinted at; he just wanted to see her house, to note where this lovely creature, who seemed to have flown down from heaven right onto Nevsky Avenue and would probably fly away no one knows where, had her dwelling place. He flew so quickly that he was constantly pushing stately gentlemen with gray whiskers off the sidewalk.

This young man belonged to that class that constitutes a somewhat strange phenomenon here and belongs to the citizenry of St. Petersburg just as much as a face that appears to us in a dream belongs to the world of substance. This exceptional estate is very unusual in the city where everything is either civil servants, or merchants, or German craftsmen. He was an artist. Isn’t that a strange phenomenon? A Petersburg artist! An artist in the land of snows, an artist in the land of Finns, where everything is wet, smooth, flat, pale, gray, and foggy. These artists do not at all resemble Italian artists, as proud and fiery as Italy and its sky. On the contrary, they are for the most part a kind, gentle folk, shy, carefree, who love their art, who drink tea with two friends in a small room, modestly discussing their beloved subject and quite disregarding anything superfluous. Such an artist is always inviting some old

Nevsky Avenue

\ 121

© Columbia University Press

122 \

Nevsky Avenue

beggar woman to his place and forcing her to sit for a whole six hours so that he can transfer her pitiful, impassive countenance onto canvas. He draws a perspective of his room, in which there is all sorts of artistic trash: plaster hands and feet, which have been rendered coffee-colored by time and dust, broken easels, a palette turned upside down, a friend playing the guitar, walls stained by paint, with an opened window through which one can glimpse the pale Neva River and some poor fishermen in red peasant shirts.

These artists always put a kind of gray, turbid coloration on everything—the indelible imprint of the north. For all that, they labor over their work with true enjoyment.

They often harbor true talent in themselves, and if only the fresh air of Italy were to waft onto them, that talent would probably develop just as freely, broadly, and brightly as a plant that is finally taken out of a room into the pure air. They are generally very timid: A decoration with a star and a thick epaulet cause them such embarrassment that they involuntarily lower the price of their works. They sometimes like to play the dandy, but this dandyism always seems a little too striking and somewhat resembles a patch. You’ll sometimes encounter them wearing an excellent tailcoat and a soiled cloak, or an expensive velvet vest and a frock coat all covered with paint. In exactly the same way you’ll sometimes see on one of their unfinished landscape paintings a nymph sketched in upside down, which the artist, who couldn’t find any other place, tossed onto the soiled primer of his previous work, which he had once painted with great relish. An artist of this kind never looks straight into your eyes, and if he does, he does it in a kind of turbid, indefinite way; he does not pierce you with the hawkish gaze of an observer or the falconine glance of a cavalry officer. This is because at one and the same moment he is seeing your features and the features of some plaster Hercules that stands in his room, or he’s imagining his own painting that he’s planning to create. That is why he often gives incoherent

© Columbia University Press

answers, sometimes not to the point, and the objects that are mixed up in his head increase his timidity even more.

Such is the genus to which the young man we have described belonged, the artist Piskaryov—shy, timid, but bearing the sparks of feeling in his soul, sparks that were ready to turn into flame at an opportune moment. With secret trembling he hurried after the object that had so impressed him, and it seemed that he was amazed at his own audacity. The unknown creature to whom his eyes, thoughts, and feelings now clung suddenly turned her head and glanced at him. My God, what divine features! The loveliest, most blindingly white brow was shadowed by hair as beautiful as agate. These marvelous tresses curled, and some of them, falling out from under her little hat, brushed her cheeks, which were touched by a faint, fresh rosiness, called forth by the cold of the evening.

Her lips were closed by a whole swarm of the loveliest reveries.

Everything that remains from the memories of childhood, everything that leads to daydreaming and quiet inspiration by shining lamplight—all of that seemed to be combined and merged and reflected in her harmonious lips. She glanced at Piskaryov, and his heart began to tremble from that glance; she glanced sternly, a feeling of indignation emerged on her face at the sight of such an insolent pursuit; but anger itself was bewitching on that beautiful face.

Overcome by shame and timidity, he stopped, his eyes lowered; but how could he lose this divinity and not find the holy place to which it had descended for its sojourn? These were the thoughts that came to the young dreamer, and he made up his mind to pursue her. But so as not to allow her to notice it, he kept at a good distance, he looked from side to side in a carefree way, inspecting the shop signs, and meanwhile he did not let a single step of the unknown woman escape his vision. The number of passersby diminished, and the street became quieter. The beauty looked back, and it seemed to him as if a slight smile flashed on her lips. He started trembling all Nevsky Avenue

\ 123

© Columbia University Press

124 \

Nevsky Avenue

over and couldn’t believe his eyes. No, it was the streetlamp’s deceptive light that expressed the semblance of a smile on her face; no, it was his own daydreams laughing at him. But he gasped for breath, everything inside him turned into an indefinite trembling, all his senses burned, and everything in front of him was swathed in a fog.

The sidewalk rushed beneath his feet, the coaches with their galloping horses seemed to be motionless, the bridge stretched out and snapped apart at its arch, a building stood with its roof downward, a police booth toppled toward him, and the sentry’s halberd along with the golden words and painted scissors on a shop sign seemed to be gleaming on the very eyelashes of his eyes.13 And all this was produced by a single glance, a single turn of a pretty little head.

Hearing nothing, seeing nothing, heeding nothing, he rushed after the light traces of the beautiful little feet, trying to moderate the speed of his own steps, which flew in time with the beating of his heart. Sometimes he would be overcome by doubt—was the expression on her face really so well disposed?—and then he would stop for a moment, but the beating of his heart, the insuperable strength and disquiet of all his senses, urged him forward. He didn’t even notice how a four-story building suddenly rose up before him, all four rows of windows, shining with lights, looked at him all at once, and the entryway fence repulsed him with its iron shove.

He saw the unknown woman fly up the stairs, look back, place a finger to her lips, and give him a sign to follow her. His knees were trembling; his senses and thoughts were burning; a lightning bolt of joy pierced his heart with its unbearable tip. No, this was no longer a daydream! My God! So much happiness in a single instant! Such a miraculous life in two minutes!

But wasn’t this all happening in a dream? Could it really be true? He was ready to give up his whole life in exchange for a single heavenly glance from this woman, he considered it an inexpressible blessing that he had been able to come near her dwelling

© Columbia University Press

place—could it really be true that she was now so well disposed and attentive to him? He flew up the stairs. He was not feeling any earthly idea; he was not warmed by the flame of an earthly passion, no, at that moment he was as pure and chaste as a virginal youth, still breathing with an indefinite spiritual need for love. And that which in a debauched man would arouse impertinent thoughts, that very thing, on the contrary, made his thoughts more holy. The trust that the beautiful weak creature had shown him, this trust placed upon him a vow of knightly severity, the vow to slavishly carry out all her commands. He only wished that these commands would be as difficult and hard to carry out as possible, so that he would need an even greater exertion of his powers in order to fly to overcome them. He had no doubt that there was some secret and most important occurrence that had caused the unknown woman to put her faith in him, that he would probably be required to perform significant services, and he felt in himself the strength and resolve for any task.

The staircase twisted, and along with it his swift daydreams twisted. “Be careful!” her voice resounded like a harp, and it filled all his veins with new tremors. At the dark top of the fourth story the unknown woman knocked at a door—it opened, and they went in together. A rather handsome woman met them with a candle in her hand, but she looked at Piskaryov in such a strange and insolent way that he involuntarily lowered his eyes. They entered the room.

Three female figures in various corners appeared before his eyes.

One was laying out some cards; another was sitting at a piano and playing a pitiful simulacrum of an old polonaise with two fingers; the third was sitting in front of a mirror, combing out her long hair, and having no thought of abandoning her toilette upon the entrance of an unknown person. A sort of unpleasant disorder, the kind one only encounters in the carefree room of a bachelor, reigned over everything. Quite good quality furniture was covered with dust; Nevsky Avenue

\ 125

© Columbia University Press

126 \

Nevsky Avenue

a spider was covering an ornamental cornice with its web; through the slightly open door of the next room a spurred boot gleamed and the piping of a uniform showed red; a loud male voice and female laughter resounded without the slightest restraint.

My God, where had he come to! At first he didn’t want to believe it and began to scrutinize more closely the objects that filled the room, but the bare walls and the uncurtained windows showed no sign of the presence of a careful housewife; the raddled faces of these pitiful creatures, one of whom sat down almost right in front of his nose and looked him over just as calmly as if he were a stain on a stranger’s clothes—all of this convinced him that he had come to that revolting refuge where pitiful debauchery has made its home base, debauchery engendered by the meretricious civilization and terrible overpopulation of the capital city. It was that refuge where man has blasphemously crushed and ridiculed everything pure and holy that adorns life, where woman, that beauty of the world, the crown of creation, has been turned into a strange, ambiguous being, where together with the purity of her soul she has been deprived of everything feminine, has revoltingly adopted the manners and insolence of a man, and has ceased to be that weak, splendid being who is so different from us. Piskaryov measured her from head to foot with amazed eyes, as if still not convinced that she was really the same person who had cast such a spell on him and carried him away on Nevsky Avenue. But she stood before him just as beautiful; her hair was just as splendid; her eyes still seemed heavenly to him.

She was fresh; she was only seventeen years old; it was obvious that horrible debauchery had only recently overtaken her; it still had not dared to touch her cheeks, they were fresh and slightly shaded by a subtle rosiness—she was splendidly beautiful.

He stood motionless before her and was ready to start daydreaming just as naively as he had before. But the beauty got bored by his long silence and gave him a significant smile, looking straight into

© Columbia University Press

his eyes. This smile was filled with a sort of pitiful insolence. It was just as strange and just as inappropriate to her face as an expression of piety is to the ugly mug of a bribe taker or a bookkeeper’s ledger is to a poet. He shuddered. She opened her pretty mouth and started saying something, but it was all so stupid, so vulgar . . . As if a person’s intellect abandons them along with their chastity. He did not want to hear any more. He was extremely ridiculous and as simple as a little child. Instead of taking advantage of her good favor, instead of rejoicing at such a chance, as no doubt any other man would have rejoiced in his place, he took to his heels at full speed, like a wild goat, and ran out into the street.

Hanging his head in despair, he sat in his room like a pauper who has found a priceless pearl and immediately dropped it into the sea.

“Such a beauty, such divine features—and where? In what kind of place!” That is all he was able to utter.

Indeed, we are never so powerfully overcome by pity as when we see beauty touched by the pestilential breath of debauchery.

Let ugliness make friends with it, but beauty, tender beauty . . . in our thoughts it can only be merged with chastity and purity. The beautiful woman who had cast such a spell on poor Piskaryov was in fact a miraculous, unusual phenomenon. Her residence in that contemptible realm seemed even more unusual. All her features were so purely formed, the whole expression of her splendid face was marked by such nobility, that it was impossible to think that debauchery had unsheathed its terrible claws over her. She would have been the priceless pearl, the whole world, the whole paradise, the whole wealth of her passionate spouse. She would have been a splendid, quiet star in an obscure family circle, and with one movement of her splendid lips she would have given sweet orders.

She would have been a divinity in a crowded hall, on a bright parquet floor, by shining candlelight, receiving the silent homage of the crowd of admirers lying prostrate at her feet. But, alas! By the Nevsky Avenue

\ 127

© Columbia University Press

128 \

Nevsky Avenue

horrible will of the hellish spirit that thirsts to destroy the harmony of life, she had been cast with a guffaw into his abyss.

Imbued with tormenting pity, he sat before his candle with its burnt wick. Midnight had long passed, the tower bell pealed half past twelve, and he sat motionless, sleepless, without active wakefulness. Somnolence, taking advantage of his motionlessness, had already begun to quietly overcome him, the room had already begun to disappear, only the light of the candle glimmered through the reveries that were overcoming him, when suddenly a knock at the door caused him to shudder and come to. The door opened, and a footman in a rich livery entered. A rich livery had never peeped into his lonely room, moreover at such an unusual hour . . . He was bewildered and looked at the footman with impatient curiosity.

“The lady,” the footman said with a polite bow, “whose home you were good enough to visit a few hours ago, has ordered me to invite you to come see her and has sent a coach for you.”

Piskaryov stood there in silent amazement, thinking, “A coach, a footman in livery! No, there must be some mistake . . .”

“Listen, my dear man,” he said timidly. “You have probably come to the wrong place. No doubt the lady sent you to get someone else, not me.”

“No, sir, I am not mistaken. Was it not you who were good enough to accompany my lady on foot to her home which is on Liteinaya Street, in a room on the fourth floor?”

“It was.”

“Well then, please come quickly, my lady wishes to see you without fail and asks you to come to see her at her house.”

Piskaryov ran down the stairs. Indeed a coach was waiting outside. He got in, the doors slammed, the stones of the roadway thundered under the wheels and the hooves—and an illuminated perspective of buildings with bright signs rushed past the coach windows. Piskaryov was thinking the whole way and could not

© Columbia University Press

figure out this incident. Her own house, the coach, the footman in rich livery—he simply could not reconcile all this with the room on the fourth floor, the dusty windows, and the out-of-tune piano.

The coach stopped at a brightly illuminated entrance, and he was immediately impressed: a row of equipages, the talking of coachmen, brightly illuminated windows, and the sounds of music.

The footman in rich livery helped him out of the coach and respectfully accompanied him into the entryway flanked by marble columns, with a doorman dripping with gold, with cloaks and fur coats thrown about, with a bright lamp. An airy staircase with shining banisters, perfumed with fragrances, led upward. He was already on it, he had already ascended into the first ballroom, where he became frightened and lurched backward at his first step because of the horrible crowd. The unusually motley collection of faces caused him acute consternation: It seemed to him that a demon had crumbled the whole world into a multitude of various pieces and had mixed them all together with no meaning or sense.

Gleaming ladies’ shoulders and black tailcoats, chandeliers, lamps, airy flying gauze, ethereal ribbons, and a fat contrabass peeping out from behind the railings of the magnificent music gallery— everything looked brilliant to him. He saw all at one time so many respectable old men and half-old men with stars on their tailcoats, ladies who stepped onto the parquet floor so lightly, proudly, and gracefully, or who were sitting in rows, he heard so many French and English words, and the young men in black tailcoats were filled with such nobility, they spoke and were silent with such dignity, they were so skilled at saying nothing superfluous, they joked so majestically, they smiled so respectfully, they had such superb whiskers, they were so skilled at showing off their excellent hands when they adjusted their neckties, the ladies were so airy, so plunged into perfect self-satisfaction and rapture, they lowered their eyes so enchantingly, that . . . but the humbled look of Nevsky Avenue

\ 129

© Columbia University Press

130 \

Nevsky Avenue

Piskaryov as he leaned on a column in fear showed at a glance that he had completely lost his bearings.

At that time the crowd had surrounded a dancing group. They flew about, entwined by the transparent creations of Paris, in dresses woven of air itself; their glittering little feet carelessly touched the parquet and were more ethereal than if they had not touched it at all. But one of them was more beautiful than them all, more sumptuously and brilliantly dressed. An inexpressible, most subtle combination of taste was spilled all over her attire, and nevertheless it seemed as if she had not given it a care and it had just poured out involuntarily all by itself. She both looked and did not look at the surrounding crowd of spectators, her splendid long eyelashes were indifferently lowered, and the glittering whiteness of her face was even more blinding when a slight shadow lay on her charming brow as she bowed her head.

Piskaryov made every effort to move the crowd aside and scrutinize her, but to his great annoyance, a huge head with dark curly hair kept blocking his view, and the crowd was pressing on him so that he did not dare to move either forward or back, fearing that he might somehow shove a privy councillor. But now he had finally managed to make his way forward and looked at his clothes in order to put them into seemly order. Heavenly Creator, what is this! He was wearing a frock coat that was all splattered with paint: In his hurry to leave, he had forgotten to change into a decorous outfit. He blushed up to his ears, lowered his head, and wanted to disappear, but there was nowhere he could disappear to: Gentlemen of the bedchamber in brilliant costume had moved together behind him to form a solid wall.14 Now he wanted to be as far away as possible from the beautiful woman with the splendid brow and eyelashes. In terror he raised his eyes to see whether she was looking at him: My God! She was standing before him . . . But what is this? What is this?

“It’s her!” he cried, almost at the top of his voice. In fact, it was her,

© Columbia University Press

the same woman he had encountered on Nevsky and accompanied to her dwelling.

Meanwhile she raised her eyelashes and looked at everyone with her clear gaze. “Oh my, oh my, how beautiful!” was all he could utter with bated breath. She cast her eyes over the whole circle of people, who were thirstily vying to catch her attention, but she quickly averted her eyes with fatigue and inattention and met the eyes of Piskaryov. Oh, what heaven! What paradise! Creator, give me the strength to bear it! Life cannot contain this, it will destroy and carry off my soul! She gave a sign, not with her hand, not with the bowing of her head, no, in her shattering eyes the sign was expressed by such a subtle, unnoticeable expression that no one could have seen it, but he saw it, he understood it. The dance went on for a long time; the exhausted music seemed to be going out, dying away, and then it would break out again, squealing and thundering; finally—the end!

She sat down, her breast rose under the fine smoke of gauze; her hand (oh, Creator, what a miraculous hand!) fell onto her knees, crushed her airy dress, and the dress seemed to breathe music, and its subtle lilac color set off the bright whiteness of that splendid hand still more visibly. If he could only touch it—and nothing more! No other desires—they were all too impertinent . . . He stood behind her chair, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe.

“Were you bored?” she said. “I was also bored. I see that you hate me . . .” she added, lowering her long eyelashes.

“Hate you! Me? I . . .” Piskaryov, utterly bewildered, wanted to say, and he would probably have uttered a heap of incoherent words, but at that moment a chamberlain approached with witty, pleasant remarks, with a beautifully curled forelock on his head. He pleasantly displayed a row of rather handsome teeth and with each of his sharp witticisms he drove a sharp nail into Piskaryov’s heart. At last, luckily, one of the people standing by addressed some question to the chamberlain.

Nevsky Avenue

\ 131

© Columbia University Press

132 \

Nevsky Avenue

“How unbearable this is!” she said, raising her heavenly eyes to him. “I’ll take a seat at the other end of the room; meet me there!”

She slipped through the crowd and disappeared. He pushed the crowd aside like a maniac and was already there.

So, it was her! She was sitting there like a queen, more beautiful than anyone, more splendid than anyone, and was trying to catch sight of him.

“You are here,” she said quietly. “I will be frank with you: The circumstances of our meeting probably seemed strange to you.

Do you really think that I could belong to that contemptible class of creatures in which you encountered me? My actions will seem strange to you, but I will reveal a secret to you: Will you be capable,” she said, gazing at him fixedly, “of never betraying it?”

“Oh, yes! Yes! Yes!” But at that moment an elderly man came up, started talking to her in a language Piskaryov didn’t understand, and offered her his arm. She looked at Piskaryov with a pleading glance and gave him a sign to stay where he was and await her return, but in a fit of impatience he was incapable of obeying any orders even from her lips. He set off after her, but the crowd separated them. He could no longer see the lilac dress. He passed anxiously through room after room and mercilessly shoved aside everyone he met, but in all the rooms were sitting big shots playing whist, plunged into deathlike silence. In one corner of the room a few elderly men were arguing about the advantages of military service over civil service; in another, some people in superb tailcoats were tossing off light remarks about the multivolume works of a hard-working poet.

Piskaryov felt an elderly man with a respectable appearance grab the button of his tailcoat and offer for his consideration a most judicious remark, but he rudely shoved him aside, not even noticing that he had a fairly significant decoration around his neck. Piskaryov ran into another room—and she was not there. Into a third—she was

© Columbia University Press

not there either. “Where can she be? Give her to me! Oh, I cannot live without catching a glimpse of her! I want to hear out what she had to say”—but all his searching was in vain. Agitated, exhausted, he huddled into a corner and looked at the crowd, but his strained eyes started to present everything to him in a kind of unclear form.

Finally he could quite distinctly see the walls of his own room.

He raised his eyes; before him stood the candlestick with the fire almost gone out deep inside it. The whole candle had melted away; the tallow had spilled onto his table.

So he had been sleeping! My God, what a dream! Why did he have to wake up? Why couldn’t he have waited just one more minute? She would surely have appeared again! The annoying light of day looked into his windows with its unpleasant, dull radiance.

The room was in such gray, turbid disorder . . . Oh, how revolting reality is! How can it compare with a dream? He quickly got undressed, lay down in bed, and wrapped himself up in the blanket, wishing to summon for a moment the dream that had flown away. Sleep did in fact come without delay, but it presented to him something quite different from what he wanted to see: First Lieutenant Pirogov appeared with a pipe, then the Academy watchman, then an actual state councillor, then the head of a Finnish woman whose portrait he had once wanted to paint, and other such nonsense.

He lay in bed right up to noontime, wishing to fall asleep, but she did not appear. If only she would show her splendid features for a moment, if only her light step would rustle for a moment, if only her bare arm, as bright as empyrean snow, would flash before his eyes.

Casting everything aside, forgetting everything, he sat looking crushed and hopeless, full of nothing but a single dream. He had no desire to touch anything. Without interest, without life, his eyes looked out the window into the courtyard, where a dirty water carrier was pouring water that froze as soon as it hit the air, and the goaty Nevsky Avenue

\ 133

© Columbia University Press

134 \

Nevsky Avenue

voice of a peddler rattled: “Old clothes for sale.” Everyday things and actual things struck his hearing strangely. He sat like that right until evening and then jumped eagerly into bed. He struggled with sleeplessness for a long time, and finally overcame it. Again he had a dream, a vulgar, nasty dream. “My God, have mercy: Show her to me at least for a moment, just one moment!” He again waited for evening, again fell asleep, again dreamed of a civil servant who was both a civil servant and a bassoon; oh, this was intolerable! Finally she appeared! Her little head and her ringlets . . . she was looking . . . Oh, for so short a time! Again a fog, again some stupid dream.

Finally dreams became his life, and from that time his whole life took a strange turn. One might say that he slept while he was awake and stayed awake while he was asleep. If anyone had seen him sitting silently in front of an empty table or walking along the street, they would probably have taken him for a lunatic or someone destroyed by strong drink. His gaze was devoid of any significance, his natural absentmindedness had finally expanded and had imperiously banished all feelings and movements from his face. He came to life only as night set in.

This condition disordered his energies, and his most horrible torment was that finally sleep began to abandon him entirely.

Wishing to save sleep, his only source of wealth, he employed all possible means to restore it. He had heard that there was a means for restoring sleep—all one had to do was to take opium. But where could he get this opium? He remembered a certain Persian, the owner of a store that sold shawls, who when they met almost always asked him to paint a beautiful woman for him. Piskaryov resolved to go see him, supposing that he would no doubt have some of this opium. The Persian received him sitting on a divan with his legs crossed under him.

“What do you need opium for?” he asked.

Piskaryov told him about his insomnia.

© Columbia University Press

“Fine, I’ll give you some opium, but just paint me a beautiful woman. She should be a really fine beauty! Her eyebrows should be black and her eyes as large as olives, and I should be lying next to her and smoking a pipe! Do you hear? She should be fine! She should be a beauty!”15 Piskaryov promised to do it all. The Persian left for a moment and returned with a little jar filled with a dark liquid, poured part of it into another jar and gave it to Piskaryov with the instruction that he use no more than seven drops dissolved in water. He eagerly grabbed the precious jar, which he would not have traded for a pile of gold, and ran home as fast as he could.

When he got home, he poured a few drops into a glass of water, swallowed it, and collapsed into his bed to fall asleep.

My God, what joy! It was her! Again her! But now she looked quite different. Oh, how nicely she sits by the window of a bright little house in the country! Her attire breathes the kind of simplicity that swathes only the thoughts of a poet. The way her hair is arranged . . . Oh, Creator, what a simple hairstyle and how it becomes her! A short kerchief was lightly thrown onto her shapely little neck; everything about her was modest, everything about her bore the secret, inexplicable sense of good taste. How sweet was her graceful walk! How musical was the sound of her steps and of her simple little dress! How pretty was her arm, encircled by a bracelet made of hair!16 She spoke to him with tears in her voice: “Do not despise me. I am not at all the person you take me for. Look at me, look carefully and tell me: Am I really capable of what you think I am?”—“Oh! No, no! Let he who dares to think that, let him . . .”

But he woke up, deeply moved, devastated, with tears in his eyes.

“It would be better if you had not existed at all! If you had not lived in the world but had been the creation of an inspired artist!

I would never have left the canvas, I would have eternally looked at you and kissed you. I would have lived and breathed through you, Nevsky Avenue

\ 135

© Columbia University Press

136 \

Nevsky Avenue

as through the most splendid daydream, and I would have been happy then. No desires would have extended any further. I would have summoned you as a guardian angel in sleep and in waking, and I would have awaited you when I had occasion to depict the divine and the holy. But now . . . what a horrible life! What use is her life?

Is the life of a madman pleasant for his relatives and friends, who once loved him? My God, what is our life! An eternal discord between dreams and substance!”

Such were the ideas that constantly occupied him. He thought of nothing, he ate almost nothing, and he awaited evening and his desired vision with impatience, with the passion of a lover. The constant directing of his thoughts at a single object finally took such power over his whole existence and imagination that his desired image appeared to him almost every day, always in a situation that was the opposite of reality, because his thoughts were quite pure, like the thoughts of a child. By means of these dreams the object itself somehow became pure and was completely transformed.

The drafts of opium made his thoughts white-hot, and if ever there had been a man enamored to the last degree of madness, impetuously, horribly, ruinously, restlessly, that unfortunate man was he.

Of all his dreams one was more delightful for him than all the rest. In it he saw his studio, he was so cheerful, he sat so pleasurably with his palette in his hands! And she was right there. She was already his wife. She was sitting next to him, leaning her charming elbow on the back of his chair, and was looking at his work. In her languid, tired eyes was depicted a burden of bliss; everything in his room breathed of paradise; it was so bright, so neat and clean. Oh, Creator! She bent her charming little head on his chest . . . He had never had a better dream. After it he got up feeling fresher and less absentminded than before. Strange thoughts were born in his head.

“Perhaps,” he thought, “she has been inveigled into debauchery by

© Columbia University Press

some horrible involuntary chance occurrence; perhaps the movements of her soul are inclined to repentance; perhaps she would herself wish to tear herself out of her horrible condition. Can I really tolerate her ruin with indifference, especially when all I have to do is offer my hand to save her from foundering?” His thoughts extended even further. “No one knows me,” he said to himself, “and no one cares about me, and I don’t care about anyone either. If she expresses pure repentance and changes her way of life, I will marry her. I should marry her, and I will probably do much better than many men who marry their housekeepers or even the most contemptible creatures, as so often happens. But my feat will be selfless and perhaps even great. I will return to the world the most splendid of its adornments.”

Having formed such a harebrained plan, he felt color flaming up on his face. He went up to the mirror and took fright at his own sunken cheeks and pale face. He began to get dressed with great care. He washed up, smoothed his hair, put on a new tailcoat and a dandyish waistcoat, threw on his cloak and went out into the street.

He breathed in the fresh air and felt freshness in his heart, like a convalescent person who has decided to go out for the first time after a lengthy illness. His heart pounded when he approached the street he had not set foot on since their fateful meeting.

It took him a long time to find the building; his memory seemed to have betrayed him. He walked down the street twice and didn’t know which building to stop in front of. Finally one of them seemed to him to be the one. He quickly ran up the stairs and knocked at the door. The door opened, and who came out to meet him? His ideal, his mysterious image, the original of his dreamy pictures, the one he lived by, lived so horribly, so tormentingly, so sweetly. She herself was standing before him. He began to tremble; he could hardly keep on his feet from weakness, as he was seized by a burst of joy. She stood before him looking just as splendidly beautiful, although her Nevsky Avenue

\ 137

© Columbia University Press

138 \

Nevsky Avenue

eyes were sleepy, and pallor was stealing onto her face, which was no longer quite as fresh—but all the same she was splendid.

“Oh!” she cried when she saw Piskaryov, and she rubbed her eyes (it was already two o’clock). “Why did you run away from us the other day?”

He collapsed onto a chair and looked at her.

“I just now woke up; they brought me home at seven o’clock this morning. I was so drunk,” she added with a smile.

Oh, it would be better if you were mute and completely deprived of speech, than to utter such things! She had suddenly showed him her whole life as if in a panorama. Nevertheless, despite all this, he steeled his heart and made up his mind to try and see if his exhortations would have any effect on her. Gathering his courage, in a trembling and at the same time ardent voice he began to represent her horrible situation to her. She listened to him attentively and with the feeling of amazement that we express when we see something unexpected and strange. With a slight smile she looked at her friend who was sitting in the corner, who had stopped cleaning out her comb and was also listening to the new preacher with great attention.

“It’s true, I’m poor,” Piskaryov finally said after a long and didactic exhortation, “but we will toil, we will vie with each other in striving to improve our life. There is nothing more pleasant than to be obligated to one’s own self for everything. I will sit working on my paintings, you will sit next to me and inspire my work while embroidering or doing some other kind of handiwork, and we will not suffer any want.”

“How could that be!” she interrupted his speech with an expression of contempt. “I’m not a laundress or a seamstress, and I’m not about to start working.”

My God! Her whole base, contemptible life was expressed in these words—a life filled with emptiness and idleness, the true companions of debauchery.

© Columbia University Press

“Marry me!” caught up her friend, who up to then had been sitting silently in the corner. “If I become a wife, I’ll sit just like this!”

While saying this she put a stupid expression on her pitiful face, which made the beauty burst out laughing.

Oh, this was too much! He had no strength to endure this. He rushed out, having lost all feelings and thoughts. His mind became turbid. Stupidly, with no goal, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, he wandered around all day. No one would have been able to tell whether he spent the night somewhere or not. It was not until the next day that by some stupid instinct he arrived at his apartment, pale, looking horrible, with disheveled hair and traces of madness on his face. He locked himself in his room and would not let anyone in, and asked for nothing. Four days passed, and his locked-up room did not open a single time. Finally a week passed, and his room was still locked up. They threw themselves at the door, they started calling him, but there was no answer. Finally they broke the door down and found his lifeless corpse with its throat cut. The bloody razor lay on the floor. One could tell from the convulsively spread arms and the terribly distorted face that his hand had been unsteady and that he had suffered for a long time before his sinful soul had left his body.

Thus the victim of a mad passion perished, poor Piskaryov— quiet, timid, humble, as simple-hearted as a child, carrying within himself a spark of talent that would perhaps have blazed broadly and brightly in the course of time. No one wept over him; no one was to be seen near his inanimate corpse but the usual figure of the district police inspector and the indifferent countenance of the police physician. They transported his coffin quietly, without any religious rites, to Okhta. The only person walking after it and crying was a soldier-watchman, and only because he had drunk one too many liters of vodka.17 Even Lieutenant Pirogov failed to come to look at the corpse of the poor unfortunate man to whom in life he had Nevsky Avenue

\ 139

© Columbia University Press

140 \

Nevsky Avenue

given his lofty patronage. By the way, he had no time for this at all: He was occupied by an extraordinary event. But let us turn to him.

I do not like corpses and deceased people, and I always find it unpleasant when my path is crossed by a long funeral procession and a disabled soldier, dressed in a sort of Capuchin cloak, takes some snuff with his left hand because his right hand is holding a torch.18 I always feel annoyance in my soul when I see a rich catafalque and a coffin lined with velvet; but my annoyance is mixed with sadness when I see a drayman pulling a pauper’s pine coffin, not covered with anything, and with just one old beggar woman who met them at the crossroads and has gone trudging after them because she has nothing else to do.

It seems that we left Lieutenant Pirogov at the point when he parted with poor Piskaryov and went rushing after the blonde.

This blonde was a light, rather interesting little creature. She kept stopping in front of every store and feasting her eyes on the sashes, kerchiefs, earrings, gloves, and other trifles that were displayed in the windows, constantly twirling around, gaping in all directions, and looking behind her. “You are mine, my little darling!” Pirogov said with self-confidence, continuing his pursuit and covering his face with the collar of his overcoat so as not to encounter any of his acquaintances. But it wouldn’t hurt to inform the reader what kind of person Lieutenant Pirogov was.

But before we say what kind of person Lieutenant Pirogov was, it wouldn’t hurt to say a few things about the society to which Pirogov belonged. There are officers who constitute a kind of intermediate class of society in St. Petersburg. At an evening party or a dinner at the home of a state councillor or an actual state councillor, who has earned his rank by virtue of forty years of labor, you will always find one of them. A few pale daughters, as colorless as St. Petersburg, of whom some are past their prime, a tea table, a piano, domestic dancing—all of this is inseparable from the bright epaulet that

© Columbia University Press

shines in the lamplight, between a well-mannered blonde and the black tailcoat of a brother or a friend of the family. It is extremely difficult to stir up these cold-blooded maidens and get them to laugh. For that you need great skill or rather no skill at all. You have to talk in a way that is neither too intelligent nor too funny, so that your talk is full of the kind of trivia that women like. In this area one must give the abovementioned gentlemen their due. They have a particular talent for making these colorless beauties laugh and listen.

Exclamations smothered by laughter: “Oh, stop it! Aren’t you ashamed to make me laugh so?”—these exclamations are their best reward.

Among the higher classes these officers appear very seldom, or rather never. They have been crowded out by what they call in those circles aristocrats, but all the same they are considered learned and well-educated people. They love to expound on literature; they praise Bulgarin, Pushkin, and Grech, and speak with contempt and witty barbs about A. A. Orlov.19 They do not miss a single public lecture, whether it is about bookkeeping or even forestry. In the theater, no matter what the play, you will always find one of them, unless the play is something like Filatka, which greatly offends their fastidious taste.20 They are constantly at the theater. They are the most advantageous people for the theater administration. They especially like to hear good poetry in a play, and they also like to loudly call the actors back to the stage. Many of them who teach in state institutions or prepare students to enter state institutions are finally able to acquire a cabriolet and a pair of horses. Then their circle becomes more expansive. They finally manage to marry a merchant’s daughter who knows how to play the piano, who has a hundred thousand or so in cash and a heap of bearded relatives. But they cannot attain such an honor until they have earned at least the rank of colonel. Because Russian beards, despite the fact that they still smell faintly of cabbage, do not by any means want to see their daughters married to anyone other than a general or at least a colonel.21 Nevsky Avenue

\ 141

© Columbia University Press

142 \

Nevsky Avenue

Such are the main features of this sort of young man. But Lieutenant Pirogov had many talents that belonged to him alone.

He could superbly declaim lines of verse from Dmitry Donskoy and Woe from Wit, and he was particularly skilled at emitting smoke rings from his pipe so successfully that he could suddenly string about ten of them one after another.22 He could very pleasantly tell the joke about how a cannon is one thing and a unicorn gun is quite another.23 But it is difficult to list all the talents with which fate had endowed Pirogov. He loved to talk about an actress and a dancer, but not in the same harsh terms in which a young ensign expresses himself on that subject. He was very satisfied with his rank, to which he had been recently promoted, and although sometimes he would lie on a divan and say: “Oh, oh! Vanity, all is vanity!

What does it signify that I am a lieutenant?”—secretly he was very flattered by his new dignity. He would often try to hint at it in conversation, and once on the street when he ran across a copying clerk who seemed to him to be impolite, he immediately stopped him and in a few harsh words gave him to understand that it was a lieutenant standing before him, and not some other kind of officer.

He tried to expound this all the more eloquently in view of the fact that two quite handsome ladies were passing by. In general Pirogov displayed a passion for everything elegant and gave his encouragement to the artist Piskaryov, but this perhaps arose from the fact that he very much wished to see his own manly physiognomy in a portrait. But that’s enough about Pirogov’s qualities. Man is such a wondrous being that sometimes it’s impossible to list all his virtues right away—the more closely you look, the more new peculiarities appear, and to describe them would be an endless task.

So Pirogov did not cease pursuing the unknown woman, engaging her with questions from time to time, to which she would answer sharply, abruptly, and with indistinct sounds. Through the dark Kazan Gates they entered Meshchanskaya Street, a street of tobacco

© Columbia University Press

stores and groceries, German craftsmen, and Finnish nymphs.24 The blonde started running faster and flitted through the gates of a somewhat dingy building. Pirogov followed her. She ran up a dark, narrow staircase and went through a door that Pirogov also maneuvered his way through. He found himself in a large room with black walls and a sooty ceiling. A heap of iron screws, metalworker’s tools, shining coffeepots, and candlesticks was on the table; the floor was littered with copper and iron filings. Pirogov immediately put two and two together and saw that this was the apartment of an artisan.

The unknown woman flitted through a side door. He very nearly hesitated for a moment, but following the Russian rule, he resolved to go forward. He entered a room that was quite unlike the first one and was very neatly arranged, showing that the master of the house was a German. He was struck by an unusually strange sight.

Before him sat Schiller—not the Schiller who wrote William Tell and the History of the Thirty Years’ War, but the famous Schiller, the master tinsmith of Meshchanskaya Street. Next to Schiller stood Hoffmann—not the writer Hoffmann, but the fairly good shoemaker from Ofitserskaya Street, a great friend of Schiller.25 Schiller was drunk and was sitting on a chair, stamping his foot and saying something heatedly. All this would not have amazed Pirogov, but he was amazed by the extraordinarily strange position of the figures.

Schiller was sitting with his somewhat thick nose stuck out and his head raised upward, and Hoffmann was holding him by this nose with two fingers and twirling the blade of his shoemaker’s knife on its very surface. These two personages were speaking German, and therefore Lieutenant Pirogov, whose knowledge of German did not go beyond “guten Morgen,”* could not understand what was going on. Schiller’s words, however, consisted of the following: “I do not

* good morning

Nevsky Avenue

\ 143

© Columbia University Press

144 \

Nevsky Avenue

want it, I do not need a nose!” he said, waving his arms. “I use three pounds of snuff on one nose per month. And I pay in a Russian nasty store, because a German store doesn’t keep Russian snuff, I pay in a Russian nasty store forty kopecks for each pound; that comes to a ruble twenty kopecks; twelve times a ruble twenty kopecks comes to fourteen rubles forty kopecks. Do you hear, my friend Hoffmann? For one nose, fourteen rubles forty kopecks!

And on holidays I use rappee, because I don’t want to take Russian nasty snuff on holidays. I sniff two pounds of rappee per year, at two rubles a pound. Six plus fourteen—twenty rubles forty kopecks on snuff alone.26 It’s highway robbery! I ask you, my friend Hoffmann, isn’t that right?” Hoffmann, who was drunk himself, answered in the affirmative. “Twenty rubles forty kopecks! I am a Swabian German; I have a king in Germany. I do not want my nose! Cut my nose off!

Here’s my nose!”

And if not for the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Pirogov, Hoffmann would without doubt have cut off Schiller’s nose for no good reason, because he had already brought his knife into the position he used for cutting out a sole.

It seemed very annoying to Schiller that an unknown, uninvited person was so inappropriately interfering with him. Despite the fact that he was in the intoxicating daze of beer and wine, he felt that it was unseemly to be found in such a state and in the middle of such an action in the presence of an outside witness. Meanwhile Pirogov made a slight bow and said with his characteristic pleasantness: “Please excuse me . . .”

“Get out!” Schiller drawled.

Lieutenant Pirogov was taken aback. This kind of treatment was quite new to him. The smile that had started to faintly appear on his face suddenly disappeared. With a sense of aggrieved dignity he said: “This is strange, my good sir . . . You probably didn’t notice . . .

I am an officer . . .”

© Columbia University Press

“What’s an officer to me! I am a Swabian German. Me myself ” (at this Schiller pounded the table with his fist) “will be an officer: a year and a half as a Junker, two years as a lieutenant, and tomorrow I’m right away an officer. But I don’t want to serve. I’ll do this to an officer: foo!”—at this Schiller brought his palm to his lips and blew on it.

Lieutenant Pirogov could see that there was nothing left for him to do but to withdraw, but this kind of treatment, which was not at all appropriate for his rank, was unpleasant for him. He kept stopping on the staircase, as if wishing to gather his courage and think of a way to make Schiller feel how impertinent he had been.

Finally he reasoned that Schiller could be excused because his head was full of beer. Besides, the image of the pretty blonde appeared to him, and he decided to consign the incident to oblivion. Early in the morning of the next day, Lieutenant Pirogov appeared at the workshop of the master tinsmith. In the front room he was met by the pretty blonde, who asked in a severe voice, which suited her little face wonderfully well: “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, hello, my lovely! You don’t recognize me? You little rogue, what pretty little eyes!”—with these words Lieutenant Pirogov wished to raise her chin with his finger in a very sweet way.

But the blonde uttered a skittish exclamation and asked with the same severity: “What can I do for you?”

“You can let me see you, there’s nothing more I need,” Lieutenant Pirogov said, smiling pleasantly, and came closer to her, but noticing that the skittish blonde wanted to slip through the door, he added: “I need to order some spurs, my lovely. Can you make me some spurs? Although no spurs are needed in order to love you—a bridle would be more useful. What pretty little hands!”

Lieutenant Pirogov was always very amiable in expressions of this kind.

“I’ll call my husband right now,” the German woman exclaimed and went out, and in a few minutes Pirogov saw Schiller emerging Nevsky Avenue

\ 145

© Columbia University Press

146 \

Nevsky Avenue

with sleepy eyes, having barely come to his senses after yesterday’s drinking bout. Looking at the officer, he recalled as if in a hazy dream the incident of the day before. He didn’t remember exactly what had happened, but he felt that he had done something stupid, and therefore he received the officer with a very severe look.

“For spurs I cannot ask less than fifteen rubles,” he said, wishing to get rid of Pirogov, because as an honorable German, he was very ashamed to look at a person who had seen him in an indecent situation. Schiller liked to drink without any witnesses, with two or three friends, and during such times he would lock even his own workmen out.

“Why are they so expensive?” Pirogov asked affectionately.

“German workmanship,” Schiller said coolly, stroking his chin.

“A Russian will undertake it for two rubles.”

“Very well, in order to prove that I like you and wish to make your acquaintance, I will pay fifteen rubles.”

Schiller had to stop and think for a moment: As an honorable German, he felt a little ashamed. Wishing to dissuade him from making the order, he declared that he could not make them in less than two weeks. But Pirogov expressed his complete consent, without any attempts at contradiction.

The German fell into thought and started pondering how he could do his work in such a way that it would actually be worth fifteen rubles. At that moment the blonde came into the workshop and started rummaging on the table, which was covered by coffeepots.

The lieutenant took advantage of Schiller’s musing, approached her and squeezed her arm, which was bare right up to the shoulder.

Schiller really did not like this.

“Meine Frau!”* he shouted.

* My wife!

© Columbia University Press

“Was wollen Sie doch?” * “Gehen Sie to the kitchen!”† The blonde withdrew.

“So in two weeks?” Pirogov said.

“Yes, in two weeks,” Schiller answered, pondering. “I have a lot of work right now!”

“Good-bye! I’ll come see you.”

“Good-bye!” Schiller answered and locked the door behind him.

Lieutenant Pirogov made up his mind not to abandon his quest, despite the fact that the German woman had given him an explicit rebuff. He could not understand how it was possible to resist him, all the more since his amiability and brilliant rank gave him full rights to her attention. One must, however, say that Schiller’s wife, for all her comeliness, was very stupid. But stupidity is a particularly charming feature in a pretty wife. At least I’ve known many husbands who are enraptured by the stupidity of their wives and see in it all the signs of an infantile innocence. Beauty works perfect miracles. All spiritual defects in a beautiful woman, instead of evoking revulsion, become unusually attractive; in these women, vice itself breathes with comeliness; but let beauty disappear—and the woman must be twenty times more intelligent than a man in order to inspire if not love then at least respect. But for all her stupidity, Schiller’s wife was always true to her obligations, and therefore it was fairly difficult for Pirogov to succeed in his bold undertaking. But there is always a certain enjoyment involved in overcoming obstacles, and the blonde became more interesting to him from day to day. He began to come quite frequently to inquire about his spurs, so that Schiller finally got sick of it. He made every effort to finish making the spurs as soon as possible. Finally they were ready. * What do you want? † Go to the kitchen!

Nevsky Avenue

\ 147

© Columbia University Press

148 \

Nevsky Avenue

“Oh, what excellent workmanship!” Lieutenant Pirogov shouted when he saw the spurs. “My Lord, how well made they are! Our general doesn’t have spurs like this.”

A feeling of self-satisfaction spread over Schiller’s face. His eyes became rather merry, and he was quite reconciled to Pirogov.

“A Russian officer is an intelligent man,” he thought to himself.

“So you must be able to make a mounting, say for a dagger or other things?”

“Oh, yes, I certainly can,” Schiller said with a smile.

“Then make me a mounting for my dagger. I will bring it to you.

I have a very fine Turkish dagger, but I would like to make a different mounting for it.”

This was a bombshell for Schiller. He suddenly knit his brow.

“Now I’ve done it!” he thought, cursing himself inwardly for inviting another job. He considered it dishonorable to refuse, and moreover the Russian officer had praised his workmanship. After shaking his head, he expressed his consent, but the kiss that Pirogov impudently planted on the very lips of the pretty blonde as he went out completely bewildered him.

I consider it not superfluous to acquaint the reader somewhat more closely with Schiller. Schiller was a perfect German, in the full sense of the word. When he was only twenty years old, at that happy time when a Russian lives without a care in the world, Schiller had already measured out his whole life and never made any exceptions in any case. He made a rule of getting up at seven o’clock, having dinner at two, being exact in everything, and getting drunk every Sunday. He made a rule of amassing a capital of fifteen thousand over ten years, and this was as true and irrefutable as fate, because a civil servant will sooner forget to peek into his superior’s anteroom than a German will change his word. He never increased his expenditures in any case, and if the price of potatoes got higher than usual, he would not add a single kopeck, but would simply reduce

© Columbia University Press

the quantity he bought, and although he sometimes was somewhat hungry, he got used to it nevertheless. His punctiliousness extended to the fact that he made it a rule to kiss his wife no more than twice in a twenty-four-hour period, and in order not to kiss her an extra time, he never put more than one spoonful of pepper in his soup; however, this rule was not so strictly observed on Sundays, because then Schiller drank two bottles of beer and one bottle of caraway-seed vodka, which, however, he always complained about.27 He drank in a quite different way from an Englishman, who puts the door on the hook right after dinner and gets blind drunk all by himself. On the contrary, as a German, he always drank in an inspired way, either with the shoemaker Hoffmann or with the carpenter Kuntz, also a German and a great drunkard. Such was the character of the noble Schiller, who finally found himself in an extraordinarily awkward position. Although he was phlegmatic and a German, nevertheless Pirogov’s actions aroused something like jealousy in him. He wracked his brains and could not think how to rid himself of this Russian officer. Meanwhile Pirogov, smoking a pipe in the circle of his comrades—because Providence has so arranged that wherever there are officers, there are pipes—smoking a pipe in the circle of his comrades, would hint meaningfully, with a pleasant smile, about a little intrigue with a pretty German woman, with whom he said he was already on quite friendly terms, and whom in fact he had nearly lost all hope of winning over.

One day he was strolling along Meshchanskaya Street, stealing looks at the building that sported Schiller’s sign with its coffeepots and samovars. To his great joy he caught sight of the blonde’s little head, leaning out the window and inspecting the passersby.

He stopped, waved at her, and said, “Guten Morgen!” The blonde bowed to him, as an acquaintance.

“Is your husband home?”

“Yes,” the blonde answered.

Nevsky Avenue

\ 149

© Columbia University Press

150 \

Nevsky Avenue

“When is he not at home?”

“He’s not at home on Sundays,” the stupid little blonde said.

“That’s not bad,” Pirogov thought to himself. “I can take advantage of that.”

And the next Sunday he appeared before the blonde out of the blue. Indeed Schiller was not at home. The pretty mistress of the house was frightened, but Pirogov acted rather cautiously this time, he behaved very respectfully, and as he bowed, he showed off all the beauty of his lithe, well-belted figure. He made some jokes in a very pleasant and polite manner, but the stupid little German woman responded to everything with one-syllable words. Finally, after coming at her from all sides and seeing that nothing engaged her, he proposed that they dance. The German woman agreed instantly, because German women are always lovers of dancing. Pirogov based his hopes on this most of all: In the first place, it would give her pleasure, in the second place, it would show off his tournure and his agility, and in the third place, while dancing he could get as close as possible to her, embrace the pretty German woman, and lay the foundation for everything.

In short, he deduced a complete success from this. He began a gavotte, knowing that German women need to proceed gradually.

The pretty German stepped out into the middle of the room and raised her splendid little foot. This position so enraptured Pirogov that he rushed to kiss her. The German woman began screaming and thereby increased her charm in Pirogov’s eyes even more; he covered her with kisses. All of a sudden the door opened and Schiller came in with Hoffmann and the carpenter Kuntz. All these worthy craftsmen were as drunk as cobblers.

But I leave it to the reader to judge how angry and indignant Schiller was.

“You churl!” he screamed with the greatest indignation, “how can you dare to kiss my wife? You are a scoundrel, not a Russian

© Columbia University Press

officer. The devil take it, my friend Hoffmann, I am a German, not a Russian pig!”

Hoffmann answered in the affirmative.

“Oh, I do not want to have horns! Take him, my friend Hoffmann, by the collar, I do not want,” he continued, wildly waving his arms, with his face looking like the red cloth of his waistcoat. “I’ve been living in Petersburg for eight years, I have a mother in Swabia, and my uncle is in Nürnberg. I am a German, not a horned side of beef!

Strip him, my friend Hoffmann! Hold him by the arms and legs, my Kamerad Kuntz!”28 And the Germans seized Pirogov by the arms and legs.

In vain did he struggle to fight them off. These three craftsmen were the heftiest of all the St. Petersburg Germans, and they behaved so roughly and rudely with him that I confess I simply cannot find words to depict this lamentable event.

I am sure that Schiller had a bad fever the next day, that he was shaking like a leaf, expecting the police to arrive at any minute, and that he would have given God knows what if only the event of the day before had taken place in a dream. But there is no changing what has happened. Nothing could compare with Pirogov’s anger and indignation. The mere thought of such a horrible insult drove him wild. He considered Siberia and the lash to be the most lenient punishment for Schiller. He flew home in order to get dressed and go straight to the general, to describe the riotous conduct of the German craftsmen in the most dramatic colors. At the same time he planned to submit a written petition to the General Staff Headquarters. If the General Staff assigned an insufficient punishment, then he would go straight to the State Council, and if necessary to the sovereign himself.29 But it all ended somehow strangely: He stopped into a pastry shop along the way, ate two puff pastries, read a couple of items in the Northern Bee, and emerged in a less angry frame of mind.30 Nevsky Avenue

\ 151

© Columbia University Press

152 \

Nevsky Avenue

Besides, the pleasant, cool evening caused him to take a little stroll along Nevsky Avenue; by nine o’clock he had calmed down and thought that it was not a good idea to bother the general on a Sunday, besides he had no doubt been called away somewhere, and so he set off for an evening party at the home of the administrator of the Board of Control, where there was a very pleasant gathering of civil servants and officers. He passed the evening there with great pleasure, and so distinguished himself in dancing the mazurka that he sent not only the ladies but even the cavaliers into raptures.

“Our world is wondrously arranged!” I thought the other day as I walked along Nevsky Avenue and recalled these two events. “How strangely, how incomprehensibly does our fate play games with us!

Do we ever get what we wish for? Do we ever attain that which it seems our powers have been purposely prepared for? Everything turns out quite the reverse. Fate has given one man the most splendid horses, and he rides out with them indifferently, without noticing their beauty at all—while another man, whose heart burns with a passion for horses, walks on foot and has to content himself with clicking his tongue when they lead a trotter past him. One man has an excellent cook, but unfortunately, he has such a small mouth that it won’t admit more than two little pieces; another has a mouth the size of the arch of the General Staff Building, but, alas!

He has to content himself with a German dinner of nothing but potatoes. How strangely our fate plays games with us!”31 But strangest of all are the events that happen on Nevsky Avenue.

Oh, do not trust that Nevsky Avenue! I always wrap myself up more tightly in my cloak when I walk along it, and I try not to look at the objects I meet at all. All is deception, all is daydream, all is not what it seems! You think that that gentleman who is strolling along in a beautifully tailored frock coat is very rich? Nothing of the sort: He consists entirely of his frock coat. You imagine that those two fat men who have stopped in front of a church that is being built

© Columbia University Press

are judging its architecture? Not at all: They are talking about how strangely two crows have perched facing each other. You think that that enthusiast who is waving his arms is talking about how his wife threw a ball out the window at an officer who was completely unknown to her? Not at all: He is talking about Lafayette.32 You think that those two ladies . . . but trust the ladies least of all.

Don’t look into the windows of the stores so much: The trifles that are displayed in them are splendid, but they smell of a terribly large quantity of banknotes. But God forbid that you peek under the ladies’ little hats! No matter how the cloak of a beauty flutters in the distance, I absolutely refuse to follow it and sate my curiosity.

Get away, for the love of God, get away from the streetlamp! And pass by quickly, as quickly as possible. You will be lucky if you get away with just having it spill its stinking oil on your dandyish tailcoat.

But besides the streetlamp, everything breathes of deception. It lies at all times of day, that Nevsky Avenue, but most of all when night presses onto it in a condensed mass and marks out the white and pale-yellow walls of the buildings, when the whole city turns into thunder and glitter, myriad coaches tumble off the bridges, the postilions shout and bounce on the horses, and when the demon himself lights the lamps for the sole purpose of showing everything not as it really is.

Nevsky Avenue

\ 153

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

DIARY OF A MADMAN

October 3.

Today an unusual incident took place. I got up rather late in the morning, and when Mavra brought me the boots she had cleaned, I asked her what time it was. When I heard that it had struck ten o’clock quite a while ago, I hurried to get dressed as soon as possible. I confess I would not have gone to the Department at all, knowing in advance the sort of sour face the head of our section would make. For a long time now he’s been saying to me: “What’s all that senseless mess in your head, my good man? Sometimes you rush around like mad, at times you mix up your work so that Satan himself wouldn’t be able to figure it out, you put a small letter in the title, you don’t indicate either the date or the number.” The damned heron! He probably envies me because I sit in the director’s private study and sharpen the quill pens for His Excellency.1 In short, I would not have gone to the Department if not for my hope of seeing the paymaster and perhaps coaxing that Jew into giving me at least a little of my salary in advance. He’s a real creature! My dear

© Columbia University Press

156 \

Diary of a Madman

God, the Last Judgment will come sooner than he’ll give anyone some money a month in advance! You can ask until you burst, even if you’re in the direst of straits, he won’t give it to you, the grayhaired devil. And at home his own kitchen woman hits him on the cheeks. The whole world knows about it. I do not understand the advantage of serving in the Department. There are no resources at all. Now in the Provincial Administration, in the Judicial Board and Finance Board, it’s quite a different matter: In those offices you look and there’s a clerk who’s huddled into a corner writing. He’s wearing a nasty old frock coat, his ugly mug makes you want to spit, but just look at the country house he’s renting! Don’t even try to bring him gilt porcelain teacups: “That’s a present for a doctor,” he says; give him a pair of trotters, or a droshky, or a beaver-fur coat that costs three hundred rubles. He looks so quiet and humble, he speaks so delicately—“Please lend me your little penknife so I can mend my little quill”—and then he’ll fleece a petitioner so that all he has left is his shirt. It’s true, on the other hand, that our office is noble, there’s such cleanliness as you’ll never ever see in the Provincial Administration: tables made of mahogany, and all the supervisors address you in the most polite fashion.2 Yes, I confess, if not for the nobility of the place, I would have left the Department long ago.

I put on my old overcoat and took my umbrella, because it was pouring rain. There was no one on the streets; all I saw were peasant women covering their heads with the hems of their skirts, and Russian merchants under umbrellas, and errand boys. Of the nobility the only person I saw was a civil servant like me. I saw him at the crossroads. As soon as I saw him, I immediately said to myself: “Hey! No, my dear man, you’re not going to the Department, you’re hurrying after that woman who’s running ahead of you, and you’re looking at her little feet.” What knaves we civil servants are! Honest to God, no officer has anything on us. If some girl in a little hat walks by, one of our kind will hook onto her without fail. While I

© Columbia University Press

was thinking this, I saw a coach rolling up to the store I was walking by. I recognized it right away: It was our director’s coach. “But he has no reason to go to a store,” I thought, “It’s probably his daughter.”

I pressed up against the wall. A footman opened the doors, and she flitted out of the coach like a little bird. How she looked right and left, how she flashed her eyebrows and eyes . . . My dear God! I’m ruined, utterly ruined. And why should she go out riding in such rainy weather? Now just try and tell me that women don’t have a great passion for all those rags. She didn’t recognize me, and I tried to wrap myself up as much as possible, because I was wearing a very soiled overcoat, an old-fashioned one to boot. Now people are wearing cloaks with long collars, but my coat had short ones, one on top of the other; and the cloth was not at all decatized.3 Her little doggie, who hadn’t managed to jump into the store, was left on the street. I know this little doggie. Her name is Madgie.

I had been there barely a minute when I suddenly heard a thin little voice: “Hi there, Madgie!” Well, I’ll be! Who is that talking?

I looked around and saw two ladies walking under an umbrella: one old, one young; but they had already passed by, and next to me again rang out: “Shame on you, Madgie!” What the devil!

I saw Madgie exchanging sniffs with a little doggie who was walking behind the ladies. “Hey!” I said to myself, “this can’t be, am I drunk or something? But that only rarely happens to me.”—“No, Fidèle, you’re quite wrong”—I saw Madgie say it myself—“I was, arf, arf!

I was, arf , arf, arf! very ill.” Oh, you little doggie! I confess I was quite amazed to hear her speaking in a human fashion. But later, when I thought it all through carefully, I stopped being amazed. In reality, many such examples have happened in the world before.

They say that in England a fish swam out and said two words in such a strange language that scientists have been trying for three years to determine what it is and to this day have not discovered anything.

I also read in the newspapers about two cows who came into a Diary of a Madman

\ 157

© Columbia University Press

158 \

Diary of a Madman

shop and asked for a pound of tea.4 But I confess I was much more amazed when Madgie said, “I wrote to you, Fidèle; Polkan probably didn’t bring my letter!” May I not receive my salary! I have never in my life heard that a dog could write.5 Only a nobleman can write correctly. It’s true, there are a few merchant’s clerks and even serfs who can sometimes write a little bit; but their writing is mechanical for the most part: no commas, no periods, no style.

This amazed me. I confess, recently I’ve begun to sometimes hear and see things that no one else has ever seen or heard. “Let me just follow this little doggie,” I said to myself, “and find out what she is and what she thinks.”

I opened my umbrella and set off after the two ladies. They crossed over to Gorokhovaya Street, turned into Meshchanskaya Street, from there into Stolyarnaya Street, finally they went toward the Kokushkin Bridge and stopped in front of a large building.

“I know that building,” I said to myself. “That’s Zverkov’s House.”

What a big, cumbersome building! All kinds of folk live there: so many cooks, so many newcomers! And so many of my sort, civil servants—they’re like dogs, sitting one on top of another. I have a good friend who lives there, who plays the trumpet very well.

The ladies went up to the fifth floor.6 “Good,” I thought, “I won’t go there now, but I’ll note the place and will not fail to make use of it at the first opportunity.”

October 4.

Today is Wednesday, and therefore I was working in our supervisor’s private study. I purposely came early, sat down, and sharpened all the quill pens. Our director must be a very intelligent man. His whole study is filled with bookcases full of books. I read the titles of some of them. It’s all erudition, such erudition that there’s no access for people like me: It’s all either

© Columbia University Press

in French or in German. And just look into his face. Whew, what importance shines in his eyes! I have never once heard him say a superfluous word. Except perhaps when you give him a paper, he’ll ask: “What’s it like outside?”—“It’s wet out, Your Excellency!” No, there’s no comparing him with people like me!

A statesman. I notice, however, that he has a particular liking for me. If his daughter too . . . Oh, canaillerie! . . . It’s nothing, it’s nothing, silence!7 I started reading the Bee. What a stupid folk the French are!

What is it that they want? Honest to God, they should take them all and flog them with birch rods! In the same paper I read a very pleasant depiction of a ball, described by a Kursk landowner.

Kursk landowners write very well.8 After this I noticed that it had already struck half past twelve, and our boss hadn’t come out of his bedroom. But at around one thirty, an event occurred that no pen could describe. The door opened, I thought it was the director, and I jumped up from the chair with some papers; but it was she, she herself! Saints alive, how she was dressed! The dress she was wearing was as white as a swan! Whew, how sumptuous! And the look she gave: the sun, honest to God, the sun! She bowed and said: “Has Papá not been here?” Oh, my, my! What a voice! A canary, truly, a canary! “Your Excellency,” I wanted to say, “do not give the order to execute me, but if you want to execute me, then execute me with your own little hand, my general.” But damn it, my tongue refused to obey me, and I said only: “He has not, madam.” She looked at me, at the books, and dropped her kerchief. I rushed headlong, slipped on the damned parquet floor and very nearly unstuck my nose from my face, but I caught myself and retrieved the kerchief. Oh, Holy Ones, what a kerchief! So fine, made of cambric—ambergris, perfect ambergris! It simply breathes General-hood. She thanked me and just barely grinned, so that her sugary little lips almost didn’t move, and then she went out. I sat there for another hour, when Diary of a Madman

\ 159

© Columbia University Press

160 \

Diary of a Madman

suddenly a footman came and said: “Go home, Aksenty Ivanovich, the master has left the house.” I cannot abide the society of footmen.

They’re always lounging around in the anteroom, and they can never be bothered even to nod. And that’s not all: once one of those knaves took it into his head to offer me snuff without getting up from his seat. Do you have any idea, you stupid lackey, that I am a civil servant, I am of noble descent. But I took my hat and put my overcoat on myself, because these gentlemen will never give you your hat, and I left. At home I mostly just lay on my bed. Then I copied out some very good lines of verse: “An hour passed without my sweetie, / I thought a year had passed instead; / My life is hateful, yes, indeedy, / Sometimes I think I’m better dead.” Pushkin must have written it.9 In the evening I wrapped myself up in my overcoat, walked to Her Excellency’s front entrance, and waited a long time for her to come out and get in her coach, so that I could see her one more little time—but no, she didn’t come out.

November 6.

The head of our section made me furious. When I arrived at the Department, he called me over and started talking to me like this: “Now please tell me, what are you doing?”—“What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m not doing anything,” I replied. “Well, you just think things over! After all, you’re over forty now—it’s time to get some sense into your head. What are you imagining?

You think I don’t know all your pranks? You’re dangling after the director’s daughter! Well, just look at yourself, just think, what are you? You’re a zero, nothing more. You don’t have a penny to your name. Just look in the mirror at your face, you don’t have a chance in the world!” Damn it, he thinks just because his face looks like an apothecary’s vial, and he has a wisp of hair on his head that’s curled into a forelock, and he holds it upright and smears it with some kind

© Columbia University Press

of “Rosette” pomade, because of all that he thinks that he’s the only one who can do anything. I understand, I understand why he’s so mad at me. He’s envious; perhaps he saw some signs of good favor that were rendered to me preferentially. I spit on him! What a big deal, to be a court councillor! He’s hung a gold chain on his watch, he orders boots that cost thirty rubles a pair—damn him to hell!

What am I, a commoner, a tailor, or a noncommissioned officer’s child? I am a nobleman. I can earn a good rank myself. I’m only forty-two years old—that’s the time when your career gets going in earnest. Just you wait, my friend! I’ll get to be a colonel, too, and maybe, God willing, something even bigger. I’ll make myself a reputation even better than yours. How did you get it into your head that there are no decent people besides yourself? Give me a Rutsch tailcoat of a fashionable cut and let me tie on a necktie just like yours—then you won’t be able to hold a candle to me.10 I don’t have any affluence—that’s the problem.

November 8.

I went to the theater. They were doing the Russian idiot Filatka.

I laughed a lot. They also did a vaudeville with funny verses about attorneys, especially a certain collegiate registrar; they were written with great licentiousness, so that I was amazed that the censor had passed them, and about merchants they said right out that they deceive people and that their sons go on benders and try to become noblemen.11 There was also a very funny couplet about journalists, that they love to abuse everything and that the author asks the public to defend him. Writers are writing very funny plays these days. I love to go to the theater. As soon as you have half a kopeck in your pocket, you just can’t help going. Some of my fellow civil servants are such pigs, though. They won’t go to the theater at all, the peasants; maybe only if you give them a free ticket. One actress Diary of a Madman

\ 161

© Columbia University Press

162 \

Diary of a Madman

sang so well. I recalled the other one . . . eh, canaillerie! . . . it’s nothing, it’s nothing . . . silence.

November 9.

At eight o’clock I set off for the Department. The head of our section pretended that he didn’t notice me coming in. I also pretended that there was nothing between us. I looked over some papers and collated them. I left at four o’clock. I went by the director’s apartment, but no one was to be seen. After dinner I mostly just lay on my bed.

November 11.

Today I was sitting in our director’s private study, I sharpened twenty-three quill pens for him and for her, ay! ay! . . . for Her Excellency I sharpened four pens. He really likes to have a lot of pens standing ready. Ooh! The head he must have! He’s always silent, but in his head, I think, he’s constantly thinking things over.

I would like to know what he thinks about most of all, what is brewing in that head. I would like to take a closer look at the life of these gentlemen, all these équivoques and courtly tricks—what are they like, what do they do in their society—that is what I would like to know!12 I planned several times to strike up a conversation with His Excellency, but damn it, my tongue just wouldn’t obey me: All I could say was whether it was cold or warm outside, and I couldn’t utter another word. I would like to peek into the parlor where you can sometimes see the door open, and beyond the parlor into another room. Oh, what rich décor! What mirrors and porcelains!

I would like to peek in there, into the part of the house where Her Excellency is—that’s where I would like to go! Into the boudoir: to see all those little jars, little vials, flowers of a kind you’re afraid to

© Columbia University Press

breathe on; how her clothes lie there strewn about, clothes that are more like air than clothes. I would like to peek into the bedroom . . . that’s where the miracles are, I bet, that’s where there’s a kind of paradise that doesn’t exist in heaven. To look at the little bench on which she puts her little foot when she gets out of bed, how she puts a little stocking as white as snow on that little foot . . . ay! ay! ay!

It’s nothing, it’s nothing . . . silence.

But today it was as if a light shone on me: I remembered that conversation between the two little doggies that I had heard on Nevsky Avenue. “Good,” I thought to myself, “I’ll find out everything now. I must take possession of the correspondence those wretched little doggies carried on with each other. I’ll probably find out a thing or two from it.” I confess, once I was about to call Madgie over and say: “Listen, Madgie, we’re alone now; I’ll even lock the door, if you wish, so no one will see—tell me everything you know about the young lady, who is she really and what is she like? I swear to you that I will not reveal it to anyone.” But the cunning little doggie tucked in her tail, shrank up to half her size, and went out the door quietly, as if she hadn’t heard anything. I have long suspected that dogs are much more intelligent than people. I was even convinced that they can talk, but that they are obstinate somehow. The dog is an extraordinary politician: It notices everything, all a person’s steps. No, no matter what, I will go to Zverkov’s House tomorrow, interrogate Fidèle, and if possible, take possession of all the letters that Madgie wrote to her.

November 12.

At two o’clock in the afternoon I set off with the firm intention of seeing Fidèle and interrogating her. I cannot stand cabbage, the smell of which comes billowing out of all the groceries on Meshchanskaya Street; moreover, such a hell can be smelled coming out from under Diary of a Madman

\ 163

© Columbia University Press

164 \

Diary of a Madman

the gates of every building that I held my nose and ran as fast as I could. And the vile craftsmen send out such a quantity of soot and smoke from their workshops that it’s absolutely impossible for a noble person to take a stroll here. When I made my way to the sixth floor and rang the bell, a girl came out, not entirely bad-looking, with little freckles. I recognized her. She was the same one who had been walking with the old woman. She blushed slightly, and I immediately put two and two together: You’re looking for a suitor, my little darling. “What do you want?” she said. “I need to have a talk with your little doggie.” The girl was so stupid! I immediately recognized how stupid she was! The doggie ran up, barking. I wanted to seize her, but the filthy little thing almost caught my nose with her teeth. But I caught sight of her bed in the corner. Oh, that’s just what I need! I went up to it, rummaged through the straw in the wooden box and, to my unusual satisfaction, I pulled out a small sheaf of little pieces of paper. When the nasty little doggie saw this, she first bit me on the calf, and then when she sniffed out that I had taken the papers, she began to squeal and nuzzle up to me, but I said: “No, my darling, farewell!”—and I took off running. I think the girl mistook me for a madman, because she got extremely scared. When I got home I wanted to get to work right away and decipher these letters, because I have some trouble seeing by candlelight. But Mavra took it into her head to wash the floor. These stupid Finns are always worried about cleanliness at the wrong moment. So I went out to take a stroll and think this incident over. Now, finally, I will find out all their doings, their thoughts, all these mainsprings, and I will finally find out everything. These letters will reveal everything to me.

Dogs are an intelligent folk, they know all the political relationships, and therefore it’s certain that everything will be there: the portrait of that man and all his dealings. There will also be something about the one who . . . it’s nothing, silence! I came home toward evening.

I mostly just lay on my bed.

© Columbia University Press

November 13.

Well, all right, let’s see: The letter is fairly legible. But all the same there’s still something doggy about the handwriting. Let’s read it: Dear Fidèle, I simply cannot get used to your petit-bourgeois name.

Really, couldn’t they have given you a better one? Fidèle, Rose— how vulgar! But let’s set all that aside. I am very glad that we got the idea of writing to each other.

The letter is written very correctly. The punctuation and even the letter yat are all in the right place.13 Even the head of our section would have a hard time writing this well, although he’s always saying he studied in a university somewhere. Let’s keep going: It seems to me that to share one’s thoughts, feelings, and impressions with another is one of the highest blessings on earth.

Hmm! This idea has been gleaned from a certain work translated from the German. I can’t remember the title.

I say this based on experience, although I have not run around the world any farther than the gates of our house. Does not my life flow by in pure pleasure? My young lady, whom Papá calls Sophie, loves me madly.

Ay, ay! . . . . It’s nothing, it’s nothing. Silence!

Papá often caresses me too. I drink tea and coffee with cream. Oh, ma chère, I must tell you that I see absolutely no pleasure in the huge gnawed-up bones that our Polkan gobbles in the kitchen.

Diary of a Madman

\ 165

© Columbia University Press

166 \

Diary of a Madman

Bones are good only when they come from game birds, and then only if no one has sucked the marrow out of them. It’s very nice to mix several gravies together, but only if there are no capers or greens in them; but I know nothing worse than the custom of giving dogs pieces of bread rolled up into little balls. Some gentleman sitting at the table, who’s had all sorts of trash in his hands, starts crumbling up the bread with those hands, calls you to him, and sticks the little ball in your mouth. It’s impolite to refuse, so you eat it; it’s disgusting, but you eat it. . . .

The devil only knows what this is! What nonsense! As if there weren’t some better subject to write about. Let’s look at another page. Maybe there’ll be something more sensible.

I am most willing to inform you about all the events that take place in our house. I have already told you a few things about the main gentleman, whom Sophie calls Papá. He is a very strange person.

Ah! Finally! Yes, I knew it: They have a political point of view on all subjects. Let’s see what they say about Papá: . . . a very strange person. He is silent most of the time. He speaks very rarely; but a week ago he was constantly talking to himself: “Will I get it or not?” He’d take a piece of paper in one hand, close his other empty hand, and say: “Will I get it or not?” Once he even addressed the question to me: “What do you think, Madgie? Will I get it or not?” I couldn’t understand anything at all, I sniffed his boot and went away. Then, ma chère, a week later Papá came in looking overjoyed. The whole morning, gentlemen in uniforms were coming to see him and congratulating him on something. At the table he was more cheerful than I’d ever seen him, he kept telling

© Columbia University Press

jokes, and after dinner he picked me up, held me to his neck, and said: “Look, Madgie, what is this?” I saw some kind of little ribbon.

I sniffed it, but I could find no fragrance whatsoever; finally I licked it, on the sly: It was a little salty.

Hmm! This doggie, it seems to me, is a little too . . . if only they don’t whip her! Ah! So he’s ambitious! I must take that into consideration.

Farewell, ma chère, I have to run and so on . . . and so on. . . .

Tomorrow I will finish the letter. Well, hello! I’m with you again now. Today my young lady Sophie. . . .

Ah! Well, let’s see what about Sophie. Oh, canaillerie! . . . It’s nothing, it’s nothing . . . let’s continue. . . . my young lady Sophie was in an extraordinary flurry. She was getting ready to go to a ball, and I was overjoyed that in her absence I would be able to write to you. My Sophie is always extremely happy to go to a ball, although she almost always gets angry while dressing.

I simply cannot understand, ma chère, what pleasure there is in going to a ball. Sophie comes home from a ball at six o’clock in the morning, and I can almost always guess from her pale and emaciated appearance that they didn’t give the poor girl anything to eat there. I confess I could never live like that. If I were not given some gravy with grouse or some roasted chicken wings, then . . . I don’t know what would happen to me then. Gravy with porridge is also good. But carrots, or turnips, or artichokes are never any good. . . .

An extremely uneven style. It’s immediately evident that it was not written by a person. It begins properly but ends with dogginess.

Diary of a Madman

\ 167

© Columbia University Press

168 \

Diary of a Madman

Let’s look at another little letter. It’s kind of longish. Hmm! And the date is not indicated.

Oh, my dear! How perceptible is the coming of spring. My heart is beating as if it is ever awaiting something. There is an eternal hum in my ears, so that often I lift my leg and stand for a few minutes, listening at the doors. I will reveal to you that I have many suitors.

Often I sit in the window and look them over. Oh, if you only knew what freaks there are among them. There’s one most clumsily built mutt, he’s terribly stupid, stupidity is just written on his face, he walks pompously down the street and imagines that he is the most distinguished personage, he thinks that everyone is staring at him in wonderment. Not at all. I didn’t pay him any attention, as if I didn’t even see him. And what a terrifying mastiff stops in front of my window! If he stood on his hind legs, which the ruffian certainly does not know how to do—he would be a whole head taller than my Sophie’s Papá, who is also somewhat tall and stout. This oaf must be horribly insolent. I growled at him, but he didn’t care a bit. If only he had grimaced! He stuck out his tongue, drooped his enormous ears, and looked in the window—what a peasant! But please don’t think, ma chère, that my heart is indifferent to all pursuit,—oh, no . . . If you saw a certain cavalier who climbed over the fence of the house next door, by the name of Trésor. Oh, ma chère, what a sweet muzzle he has!

Ugh, the hell with it! What trash! And how can you fill letters with such silly things. Give me a person! I want to see a person; I demand food—the kind that would nourish and delight my soul; and instead of that I get trivia like this . . . let’s turn the page and see if it won’t get better: . . . Sophie was sitting at her little table and sewing something.

I was looking out the window, because I like to inspect the passersby.

© Columbia University Press

When suddenly the footman came in and said: “Teplov!”—“Ask him in,” Sophie cried and rushed to embrace me. “Oh, Madgie, Madgie! If only you knew who it is: He has dark hair, he’s a gentleman of the bedchamber, and what eyes he has! They’re black and as bright as fire,” and Sophie ran off to her room.14 A moment later a young gentleman of the bedchamber with black whiskers came in, went up to the mirror, smoothed his hair, and looked around the room. I growled and sat down in my place. Sophie soon came out and gaily bowed in response to him scraping his foot; and I just kept looking out the window, as if I didn’t notice anything, but I bent my head a little to the side and tried to hear what they were talking about. Oh, ma chère!

What nonsense they were talking! They were talking about how a certain lady danced one figure instead of another; they also talked about how someone named Bobov in his jabot looked very much like a stork and nearly fell down; how someone named Lidina imagines that she has blue eyes, when in fact they are green—and that kind of thing. “What if,” I thought to myself, “you compare the gentleman of the bedchamber with Trésor!” Heavens! What a disparity! In the first place, the gentleman of the bedchamber has a perfectly smooth broad face and whiskers all around, as if he had tied it up with a black kerchief; while Trésor has a thin little muzzle, and a white spot right on his forehead. Trésor’s waistline cannot be compared with the gentleman of the bedchamber’s. And his eyes, his ways, his manner, are quite different. Oh, what a disparity! I don’t know, ma chère, what she sees in her Teplov. Why is she so enraptured with him?

It seems to me too, that there’s something not right here. It cannot be that a gentleman of the bedchamber could have enchanted her so. Let’s see what comes next: It seems to me that if she likes this gentleman of the bedchamber, soon she’s going to start liking that civil servant who sits in Papá’s Diary of a Madman

\ 169

© Columbia University Press

170 \

Diary of a Madman

private study. Oh, ma chère, if you only knew what a freak he is.

He looks just like a turtle in a sack . . .

What civil servant could that be?

He has a very strange last name. He always sits and sharpens quill pens. The hair on his head is very similar to hay. Papá always sends him on errands instead of the servants.

It seems to me that this nasty little doggie is referring to me. But who says my hair is like hay?

Sophie can’t help laughing when she looks at him.

You’re lying, you damned doggie! What a nasty tongue! As if I don’t know that this is because of envy. As if I don’t know whose tricks these are. These are the tricks of the head of our section. After all, he swore implacable hatred—and he keeps trying and trying to hurt me, at every step he tries to hurt me. But let’s look at one more letter.

Perhaps the whole business will reveal itself there.

Ma chère Fidèle, please forgive me for not writing for so long.

I was in perfect ecstasy. That writer was absolutely right when he said that love is a second life. Meanwhile there are great changes going on in our house right now. The gentleman of the bedchamber comes to see us every day. Sophie is in love with him to the point of madness. Papá is very cheerful. I even heard from our Grigory, who sweeps the floor and almost always talks to himself, that there will be a wedding soon, because Papá wants to see Sophie marry either a general or a gentleman of the bedchamber or a military colonel without fail . . .

© Columbia University Press

What the devil! I can’t read any more . . . It’s all about either a gentleman of the bedchamber or a general. Everything that’s best in the world falls to the lot of either gentlemen of the bedchamber or generals. You find some poor treasure for yourself, you think you can reach it with your hand—and a gentleman of the bedchamber or a general tears it away from you. The devil take it! I would like to become a general myself: not in order to be given her hand and so on—no, I would like to be a general merely in order to see how they dangle around and do all those courtly tricks and équivoques, and then to say to them that I spit on you both. The devil take it. It’s annoying! I tore the letters of the stupid little doggie into pieces.

December 3.

It cannot be. It’s a pack of lies! There’s not going to be a wedding!

So what if he’s a gentleman of the bedchamber. After all, that’s nothing but a title; it’s not a visible thing that you can hold in your hands.

After all, being a gentleman of the bedchamber doesn’t give you a third eye in your forehead. After all, his nose isn’t made of gold, it’s just like mine or like anyone’s; after all, he smells with it, he doesn’t eat with it; he sneezes with it, he doesn’t cough with it. Several times I’ve tried to get at the question of where all these differences originate. Why am I a titular councillor and for what reason am I a titular councillor? Perhaps I’m a count or a general, and I only seem to be a titular councillor? Perhaps I myself do not know who I am.

After all, there are so many examples in history: There’s some simple person, not even a nobleman maybe, but simply a petit-bourgeois or even a peasant—and suddenly it is discovered that he is really a grand dignitary of some sort, or sometimes even the sovereign.

When a peasant can turn out to be such a thing, what might come of a nobleman? Suppose for example I enter wearing a general’s

Diary of a Madman

\ 171

© Columbia University Press

172 \

Diary of a Madman

uniform: I have an epaulet on my right shoulder, and an epaulet on my left shoulder, and a pale-blue ribbon across my chest—well?15 What will my lovely one sing then? What will Papá himself, our director, say? Oh, he’s a most ambitious man! He’s a Mason, he’s certainly a Mason, although he pretends to be this and that, but I immediately noticed that he’s a Mason: If he offers his hand to somebody, he only sticks out two fingers.16 Can I really not be awarded the rank of governor-general or quartermaster, or some other sort of rank, right this minute? I would like to know why I am a titular councillor? Why a titular councillor and nothing else?

December 5.

I spent the whole morning today reading newspapers. There are strange things going on in Spain. I couldn’t decipher them completely. They write that the throne is vacant and that the high officers of state find themselves in a difficult situation with regard to selecting an heir and that there may be rebellions because of this.

This seems extremely strange to me. How can the throne be vacant?

They say that a doña is supposed to ascend to the throne. A doña cannot ascend to the throne. That simply cannot be. On the throne there must be a king. But they say there is no king—it cannot be that there is no king. The state cannot be without a king. There is a king, but he is in obscurity somewhere. Or perhaps he is right there, but some sort of familial reasons, or fears about the reaction of neighboring powers, such as France and other lands, are forcing him to conceal himself, or there are some other reasons.

December 8.

I was on the point of going to the Department, but various reasons and reflections held me back. I just couldn’t get the Spanish

© Columbia University Press

affairs out of my head.17 How can it be that a doña could become the queen? They won’t permit it. In the first place, England will not permit it. And then there are the political affairs of all Europe: The Austrian emperor, our sovereign . . . I confess, these events have so destroyed and shaken me that I could do absolutely nothing all day. Mavra remarked to me that at the table I was extremely distracted. Indeed it seems that in my absentmindedness I threw two plates to the floor and they immediately smashed to bits.

After dinner I went to the ice hills.18 I could not derive anything instructive from it. I mostly just lay on my bed and meditated on the Spanish affairs.

The Year 2000, April 43.

Today is a day of the greatest festivity! There is a king in Spain.

He has been found. This king is me. I found out about it only this very day. I confess that I felt as if I had been struck by lightning.

I cannot understand how I could have thought and imagined that I was a titular councillor. How could that crazy idea have gotten into my head? It’s a good thing no one back then figured it out and stuck me in a madhouse. Now everything has been revealed to me. Now I see everything as if on the palm of my hand. But before this—I can’t understand it—before this everything lay before me in a kind of mist. And I think this all originates from the fact that people imagine that the human brain is located in the head; not at all: It is blown here by a wind from the direction of the Caspian Sea. First of all I announced to Mavra who I am. When she heard that the king of Spain was standing before her, she threw up her hands and nearly died of fright. The stupid woman has never seen a king of Spain before. But I tried to calm her down and assure her in gracious words that I was benevolent and that I was not at all angry with her for sometimes doing a bad job of cleaning Diary of a Madman

\ 173

© Columbia University Press

174 \

Diary of a Madman

my boots. After all, she’s from the peasant-worker class. They are forbidden to speak of lofty matters. She got scared because she was convinced that all kings in Spain resemble Philip II. But I explained to her that there is no resemblance at all between me and Philip, and that I do not have a single Capuchin.19 . . . I did not go to the Department . . . The hell with it! No, my friends, you will not be able to lure me now; I’m not going to copy your nasty papers any more!

Marchtober 86.

Between day and night.

Today our administrator came to tell me to go to the Department, and that it’s been three weeks since I’ve gone to work.

Just for laughs I went to the Department. The head of our section thought that I would bow to him and apologize, but I looked at him indifferently, not too angrily and not too benevolently, and sat at my place, as if not noticing anyone. I looked at all that office riffraff and thought: “What if you knew who is sitting among you . . .

My Lord God! What a senseless mess you’d start up, and the head of the section himself would start bowing to me deeply, the way he does to the director.” They put some papers in front of me so that I would make a précis. But I didn’t lay a finger on them. A few minutes later everyone started fussing around. They said the director was coming. Many of the civil servants vied with each other to run and show themselves to him. But I didn’t move from my spot.

When he was passing through our section, everyone buttoned up their tailcoats, but I did nothing at all! What kind of a director is this! That I should get up for him—never! What kind of director is he? He’s a cork, not a director. Just an ordinary cork, a simple cork, nothing more. The kind you use to stop up bottles. I was amused most of all when they shoved a piece of paper at me to sign. They

© Columbia University Press

thought that I would write at the very end of the sheet: Desk Head So-and-so. Not on your life! In the most important space, where the director of the Department is supposed to sign, I wrote: “Ferdinand VIII.” You should have seen what reverential silence reigned; but I just motioned with my hand, saying, “No signs of your subjecthood are necessary!” and I left.

From there I went right to the director’s apartment. He was not home. The footman did not want to let me in, but I said such things to him that he was forced to give way. I passed through right to the dressing room. She was sitting in front of the mirror; she jumped up and stepped away from me. But I did not tell her that I was the king of Spain. I said only that a kind of happiness awaited her that she could not even imagine, and that despite the intrigues of our enemies, we would be together. I did not want to say any more and I left. Oh, that perfidious creature—woman! Only now have I grasped what a woman is. Up to now no one has found out who she is in love with: I am the first to discover it. Woman is in love with the devil. Yes, seriously. The natural philosophers write silly things about how she is this and that—she loves the devil and no one else. See her over there, looking through her lorgnette from the first-tier boxes. You think she is looking at that fat man with the star on his breast? Not at all, she is looking at the devil who is standing behind him. Now he’s hidden himself in the man’s tailcoat.

Now he’s motioning to her from there with his finger! And she will marry him. She will. And all those high-ranking fathers of theirs, all those who wriggle around and try to get into the Court and say that they’re patriots and so on: High incomes, that’s what those patriots want! They’ll sell their mother, their father, their God for money, the ambitious climbers, the Christ-sellers! It’s all ambition, and it’s ambition because there is a tiny little blister under the tongue, and in it is a tiny worm the size of the head of a pin, and this is all made by a barber who lives on Gorokhovaya Street. I don’t Diary of a Madman

\ 175

© Columbia University Press

176 \

Diary of a Madman

remember his name; but it is reliably known that he, together with a certain midwife, wants to spread Mohammedanism throughout the whole world, and because of this, they say, in France a large part of the people already profess the faith of Mohammed.

No date of any sort.

The day had no date.

I was walking along Nevsky Avenue incognito. The Sovereign Emperor rode by. The whole city took off their caps, and I as well, but I gave no sign at all that I was the king of Spain. I considered it unseemly to reveal myself right there in front of everyone; because first of all I must present myself to the Court. The only thing that was stopping me was that I still do not have a king’s attire. I have to acquire at least some kind of mantle. I wanted to order it from a tailor, but they are utter asses, and besides, they neglect their work entirely, they’ve gotten involved in shady deals and mostly pave the street with stones. I decided to make a mantle out of my new uniform, which I had only worn twice. But so that those scoundrels wouldn’t ruin it, I decided to sew it myself, after locking the door so no one would see. I cut it all up with scissors, because it had to be of a completely different cut.

I do not remember the date.

There was also no month.

It was the devil knows what.

The mantle is quite finished and sewn. Mavra screamed when I put it on. But I have still not made up my mind to present myself to the Court. To this day there has not been a delegation from Spain.

Without delegates it is unseemly. There will be no weight to my dignity. I expect them any moment now.

© Columbia University Press

The first.

I am extremely surprised at the slowness of the delegates. What could have stopped them? Could it really be France? Yes, that is the most nonfavorable power. I went to the post office to inquire whether the Spanish delegates had arrived. But the postmaster is extremely stupid, he knows nothing. No, he said, there are no Spanish delegates here, but if you are pleased to write some letters, we will accept them at the established rate. The devil take it! What letters? Letters are nonsense. Letters are written by apothecaries . . .

Madrid. Februarius the 30th.

And so, I am in Spain, and it happened so quickly that I could hardly come to my senses. This morning the Spanish delegates came to my house, and I got into a coach with them. The unusual speed seemed strange to me. We traveled so quickly that in half an hour we reached the Spanish border. But you know that there are now cast-iron roads throughout Europe, and the steamships go extremely fast.20 Spain is a strange land: When we entered the first room, I saw a multitude of people with shaved heads. However, I guessed that these must be either grandees or soldiers, because they shave their heads. The behavior of the state chancellor, who led me by the hand, seemed extremely strange to me. He pushed me into a small room and said: “Sit here, and if you call yourself King Ferdinand, I’ll beat it out of you.” But knowing that this was nothing but a test, I answered in the negative—for which the chancellor hit me twice on the back with a stick so painfully that I almost cried out, but I restrained myself, recalling that this is the knightly custom when one is initiated into a high rank, because in Spain to this day they maintain knightly customs. When I was left alone, I decided to occupy myself with affairs of state. I discovered that China and Spain are one and the Diary of a Madman

\ 177

© Columbia University Press

178 \

Diary of a Madman

same country, and it is only out of ignorance that they are considered separate states. I advise everyone to deliberately write “Spain” on a piece of paper, and it will turn out as “China.”

But I was extremely distressed by an event that is to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow at seven o’clock a strange phenomenon will take place: The earth will sit down on the moon. Even the famous English chemist Wellington writes about this.21 I confess that I experienced sincere alarm when I imagined the unusual tenderness and fragility of the moon. After all, they usually make the moon in Hamburg, and they do a very bad job of it. I am amazed that England does not turn its attention to this. It is made by a lame cooper, and it is clear that he’s a fool and doesn’t have the slightest idea about the moon. He put in a tarred cable and a portion of low-grade lamp oil, and because of that there is a horrible stench all over the earth, so that you have to hold your nose. And because of that the moon itself is such a tender orb that people cannot live there, and only noses live there now. And for that very same reason we cannot see our noses, for they are all located on the moon. And when I imagined that the earth is a heavy substance and might grind our noses into flour when it sits down, I was overcome by such alarm that I put on my stockings and shoes and hurried to the hall of the State Council, in order to give an order to the police not to allow the earth to sit down on the moon. The shaven grandees, of whom I found a great multitude in the hall of the State Council, were very intelligent folk, and when I said: “Gentlemen, let us save the moon, because the earth wants to sit down on it”—they all instantly rushed to carry out my monarchical desire, and many of them climbed up the wall in order to catch the moon; but at that moment the grand chancellor came in. When they saw him, they all ran off in different directions. I, as the king, remained alone. But the chancellor, to my amazement, hit me with a stick and chased me into my room. Such is the power of folk customs in Spain!

© Columbia University Press

January of the same year, which happened after February.

To this day I cannot understand what kind of country Spain is.

The folk customs and the etiquette of the Court are quite unusual.

I do not understand, I do not understand, I absolutely do not understand anything. Today they shaved my head, despite the fact that I shouted with all my might that I did not wish to become a monk. But I can no longer remember what happened to me when they started dripping cold water on my head.22 I have never before experienced such a hell. I was ready to go into such a rage that they could hardly restrain me. I do not understand the significance of this strange custom at all. It’s a stupid, senseless custom! The thoughtlessness of the kings who have not yet abolished it is inconceivable for me. Judging by all the probabilities, I have a hunch: have I not fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, and is not the person I took for the chancellor really the grand inquisitor himself?23 The only thing I cannot understand is how a king could be subjected to the Inquisition. Of course, it could be the work of France, especially Polignac.24 Oh, that knave Polignac! He swore to hurt me until the day that I die. And now he keeps on and on persecuting me; but I know, my friend, that the Englishman is directing you. The Englishman is a great politician. He wriggles around everywhere. The whole world knows that when England takes snuff, France sneezes.

The 25th.

Today the grand inquisitor came into my room, but when I heard his steps coming from afar, I hid under the chair. When he saw I wasn’t there, he began to call me. At first he shouted: “Poprishchin!”—I didn’t say a word. Then: “Aksenty Ivanovich! Titular councillor! Nobleman!” I kept silent. “Ferdinand VIII, king of Spain!”

I wanted to stick my head out, but then I thought: “No, brother, Diary of a Madman

\ 179

© Columbia University Press

180 \

Diary of a Madman

you won’t fool me! We know all about your type. You’re going to pour cold water on my head again.” But he saw me and chased me out from under the chair with a broom. That damned stick strikes extremely painfully. Nevertheless, I was rewarded for all this by today’s discovery: I found out that every rooster has a Spain, which is located under his feathers. The grand inquisitor, however, left me in a fury, threatening me with some sort of punishment. But I completely disregarded his powerless malice, knowing that he functions like a machine, as the tool of the Englishman. raey 349

Feb 34 ruary

No, I have no strength left to endure it. My God! What they are doing to me! They are pouring cold water on my head! They do not hearken, do not see, do not listen to me. What have I done to them?

Why are they tormenting me? What do they want of poor me?

What can I give them? I have nothing. I do not have the strength, I cannot bear all their torments, my head is burning, and everything is spinning before my eyes. Save me! Take me! Give me a troika of steeds, swift as a whirlwind! Take your seat, my coachman; ring, my bells; rise up, steeds, and carry me away from this world! Far, far away, so that nothing, nothing can be seen. Out there the sky swirls before me; a little star is sparkling in the distance; the forest rushes by with dark trees and the moon; a blue-gray mist floats under our feet; a string is plucked in the mist; on one side is the sea, on the other side Italy; I can see Russian huts off over there. Is that my dark-blue house I can see in the distance? Is it my mother sitting by the window?

Mother, save your poor son! Drop a little tear on his sick little head!

See how they are tormenting him! Clasp your poor little orphan to your breast! There is no place for him in the world! He is being persecuted! Mother! Have pity on your sick little child! . . . And did you know that the Dey of Algiers has a bump right under his nose?25

© Columbia University Press

THE CARRIAGE

T

he little town of B— became a merrier place when the *** Cavalry Regiment was billeted there. Before that it was terribly boring. It used to be that when you’d drive through and look at the squat little wattle-and-daub houses with their unbelievably sour aspect, something indescribable would happen in your heart. You’d feel the kind of anguish you’d feel if you had lost at cards, or said a really stupid thing at the wrong moment— in a word: not good. The clay on the houses was crumbling from the rains, and their walls had turned from white to piebald; the roofs were mostly thatched, as is customary in our southern towns; the mayor had long ago ordered that the little groves be cut down, to improve the view. You wouldn’t encounter a single soul on the streets, unless maybe a rooster crossed the roadway, which was as soft as a pillow from the dust that lay seven inches thick and would turn to mud from the slightest bit of rain, and then the streets of the little town of B— would be filled with those stout animals that the mayor calls Frenchmen. When they stick their serious snouts out of their mud baths, they raise such an oinking that all the traveler

© Columbia University Press

182 \

The Carriage

can do is urge his horses on faster. But it’s not easy to come across a traveler in the little town of B—. Only very, very rarely does a landowner who owns eleven peasant souls, wearing a nankeen frock coat, clatter along the roadway in a kind of half-britzka, halfwagon, looking out from under a pile of flour sacks and lashing his bay mare, with a foal running behind her.1 Even the market square has a somewhat mournful aspect: The tailor’s house is situated very stupidly, with its facade stuck on at an angle; on the opposite side they’ve been building a stone construction with two windows in it for about fifteen years; beyond that a fashionable board fence stands all by itself, painted gray to match the color of the mud. This fence was erected as a model for other structures by the mayor in the time of his youth, when he had not yet acquired the habit of sleeping immediately after the midday meal and drinking a decoction flavored with dried gooseberries before going to bed. Most of the other constructions are of wattle. In the middle of the square are tiny shops; in them you can always see a bundle of ring-shaped rolls, a peasant woman in a red scarf, a pood of soap, a few pounds of bitter almonds, shot for shooting, some poplin, and two shop assistants who are always near the door playing a game in which they pitch iron spikes into a ring.2 But as soon as the cavalry regiment was billeted in the little town of B—, everything changed. The streets got more colorful and lively—in short, they took on a completely different look. The squat houses often saw a nimble, well-built officer with a plume on his head walking by as he went to see his comrade to have a chat about promotions, about the most excellent tobacco, or sometimes to stake his droshky on a card. This droshky could be called the regimental droshky, because without ever leaving the regiment it had made the full rounds. Today a major would be riding in it, tomorrow it would appear in a lieutenant’s stable, and in a week, just look, it’s again being greased with lard by the major’s batman.

© Columbia University Press

The wooden lath fence between the houses was all sprinkled with soldiers’ peaked caps hung out to dry in the sun; a gray military overcoat would always be hanging on somebody’s gate; in the lanes you would encounter soldiers with mustaches as bristly as boot brushes. You could see these mustaches everywhere. If some lower-class townswomen gathered at the market with their baskets, then mustaches would inevitably peep out from behind their shoulders. On the main square, mustachioed soldiers would always be dressing down some country clodhopper, who would just utter little groans, bulging his eyes upward.3 The officers livened up local society, which up to that time consisted only of the judge, who lived in the same house with a deacon’s wife, and the mayor, who was a sensible man but who spent positively the whole day sleeping: from the midday meal until evening and from evening until the midday meal. Society became more populous and amusing when the brigadier-general moved his quarters here. Neighboring landowners of whose existence no one could have guessed hitherto started coming to the district town more frequently, in order to see the gentleman officers and sometimes to play a game of faro, the rules of which were only foggily preserved in their heads, so preoccupied with planting, their wives’ errands, and hares.4 I am very sorry that I cannot recall what the occasion was that prompted the brigadier-general to give a big dinner party. There were enormous preparations for it. The clattering of the cooks’ knives in the general’s kitchen could be heard as soon as you came through the town gates. The contents of the whole market had been confiscated for the dinner, so that the judge and his deaconess had nothing to eat but buckwheat flapjacks and farina porridge. The small courtyard of the general’s quarters was filled with droshkies and carriages. The company consisted of men: the officers and a few of the neighboring landowners. The most notable of the landowners was Pifagor Pifagorovich Chertokutsky, one of the chief aristocrats The Carriage

\ 183

© Columbia University Press

184 \

The Carriage

of the B. district, who made the biggest fuss at the nobility elections and would always arrive in a fashionable equipage.5 He had previously served in one of the cavalry regiments and was one of its most important and visible officers. At least, he was visible at many balls and gatherings, wherever their regiment roamed; by the way, you can ask the maidens of the Tambov and Simbirsk Provinces about that. It’s quite possible that he would have spread his favorable reputation in other provinces as well, if he had not had to resign his commission because of a certain incident of the kind that’s usually called an “unpleasant story.” Whether he had slapped somebody in the face once upon a time or somebody had slapped him, I don’t remember exactly, but the point is that he was asked to resign.

Nevertheless, he did not lose any of his importance because of this: He wore a tailcoat with a high waist in the style of a military uniform, he had spurs on his boots and a mustache under his nose, because without that the noblemen might have thought that he had served in the infantry, which he would contemptuously call sometimes the infantile-ry, and sometimes the infantarium.

He would visit all the populous fairs to which the innards of Russia, consisting of mamas, children, daughters, and fat landowners, would travel to enjoy the britzkas, cabriolets, tarantasses, and such coaches as no one has ever even dreamed of. He would sniff out with his nose where a cavalry regiment was billeted, and he would always come to visit the gentleman officers. He would jump very nimbly down from his elegant carriage or droshky right in front of them and would make their acquaintance very quickly. At the last elections he gave a splendid dinner for the noblemen, at which he declared that if only they elected him marshal of the nobility, he would put them on the very best footing. In general he behaved in a lordly fashion, as they say in the districts and the provinces; he married a rather pretty woman, who came with a dowry of two hundred souls and several thousands in capital. The capital was

© Columbia University Press

immediately spent on a team of six truly excellent horses, gilded locks for the doors, a tame monkey for the house, and a French butler.

The two hundred souls along with his own two hundred were put in hock for the sake of some commercial dealings. In short, he was a landowner of the proper kind . . . A pretty substantial landowner.

Besides him, there were a few other landowners at the general’s dinner, but there’s no need to speak of them. The rest of the guests were all military men of the same regiment and two staff officers, a colonel and a rather fat major. The general himself was hefty and corpulent, but a good commander, the officers said. He spoke in a deep, imposing bass voice. The dinner was extraordinary: The sturgeon, white sturgeon, sterlet, bustard, asparagus, quail, partridge, and mushrooms made it clear that the cook had not eaten any hot food since the day before and that four soldiers with knives in their hands had been working to assist him all night long making fricassées and gelées. The huge number of bottles—tall ones of Lafite, short-necked ones of madeira—the splendid summer day, the whole row of windows opened, the dishes of ice on the table, the last unbuttoned button of the gentleman officers’ jackets, the rumpled shirtfronts of the owners of capacious tailcoats, the conversation crisscrossing the table, dominated by the general’s bass voice and lubricated by champagne—everything was in harmony with itself.

After dinner they all got up with a pleasant heaviness in their stomachs, and after lighting up pipes with long and short stems, they went out onto the porch with cups of coffee in their hands.

The uniforms of the general, the colonel, and even the major were completely unbuttoned, so that you could catch a glimpse of their noble suspenders made of silk, but the gentleman officers, maintaining due respect, kept their uniforms buttoned except for the last three buttons.6 “You can take a look at her now,” the general said. “Please, my dear man,” he added, turning to his adjutant, a rather nimble young The Carriage

\ 185

© Columbia University Press

186 \

The Carriage

man of pleasant appearance, “order the bay mare brought out! So you’ll see for yourselves.” The general drew on his pipe and blew out smoke. “She’s not in perfect shape. This damned hole of a town, there isn’t a decent stable. The horse—puff, puff—is quite decent!”

“Pray tell me, Your Excellency—puff, puff—have you had her a long time?” Chertokutsky said.

“Puff, puff, puff—well—puff—not so long. It’s only two years since I took her from the stud-farm!”

“And did you, pray tell me, obtain her already broken in or did you, pray tell me, break her in here?”

“Puff, puff, puh, puh, puh . . . uh . . . uh . . . ff—here,” the general said, disappearing completely into smoke.

Meanwhile a soldier jumped out of the stable, the clatter of hooves was heard, and finally another one appeared, wearing a white duster, with a huge black mustache, leading by the bridle a quivering, frightened horse who when she suddenly raised her head almost lifted the squatting soldier into the air along with his mustache. “Come on now, Agrafena Ivanovna!” he said, leading her up to the porch.7 The mare was named Agrafena Ivanovna. As strong and wild as a beautiful woman of the south, she crashed her hooves against the wooden porch and suddenly stopped.

The general lowered his pipe and started to look at Agrafena Ivanovna with a satisfied air. The colonel himself came down from the porch and took Agrafena Ivanovna by the muzzle. The major himself patted Agrafena Ivanovna on the leg, and the others clicked their tongues at her.

Chertokutsky came down from the porch and came at her from the rear. The soldier, standing at attention and holding the bridle, looked right into the visitors’ eyes, as if he wanted to leap up into them.

“A very, very good mare!” Chertokutsky said, “a beautifully formed horse! Pray tell, Your Excellency, how is her gait?”

© Columbia University Press

“She has a good gait; but . . . the devil only knows, that fool medic gave her some kind of pills, and now she’s been sneezing for two days.”

“A very, very good mare. Pray tell, Your Excellency, do you have a commensurate equipage?”

“Equipage? But this is a saddle horse.”

“I know that; but I asked Your Excellency in order to find out whether you have a commensurate equipage for your other horses.”

“Well, my equipages are not too adequate. I must confess I’ve long wanted to have the latest model carriage. I wrote about it to my brother, who’s now in St. Petersburg, but I don’t know whether he will send one or not.”

“It seems to me, Your Excellency,” the colonel remarked, “that there is no better carriage than a Viennese one.”

“You’re quite correct—puff, puff, puff.”

“Your Excellency, I have an extraordinary carriage of real Viennese workmanship.”

“Which one? The one you came in?”

“Oh, no. That’s the one I ride around in, just for my own travels, but this one . . . it’s amazing, it’s as light as a feather; and when you sit in it, if Your Excellency will permit me to say, it’s just as if your nanny were rocking you in a cradle!”

“So it’s a very easy ride?”

“Very, very easy; pillows, springs—it’s all as if it were painted in a picture.”

“That’s good.”

“And it’s so roomy! At least, Your Excellency, I have never seen such a roomy carriage before. When I was in the service, I could fit ten bottles of rum and two pounds of tobacco in the compartments; besides that, I always had about six uniforms with me, linen, and two pipes with stems as long, if Your Excellency will permit me to say, as a tapeworm, and you could fit a whole bull into the side pockets.”8 The Carriage

\ 187

© Columbia University Press

188 \

The Carriage

“That’s good.”

“I paid four thousand for it, Your Excellency.”

“Judging by the price, it must be very fine. Did you buy it yourself?”

“No, Your Excellency, I acquired it by accident. It was bought by my friend, a rare person, my childhood comrade, with whom you would have gotten along perfectly. With us it was—what’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine. I won it from him at cards. Your Excellency, wouldn’t you care to do me the honor of paying me a visit to have dinner and take a look at the carriage at the same time?”

“I don’t know what to say to that. For me to go alone is somehow . . . Would you permit me to come along with the gentleman officers?”

“I most humbly beg the gentleman officers to come as well.

Gentlemen, I would consider it a great honor to have the pleasure of seeing you in my home!”

The colonel, the major, and the other officers thanked him with a courteous bow.

“Your Excellency, I am of the opinion that if you’re going to buy a thing, then it must be a good thing, and if it’s bad, then there’s no reason to acquire it. When you do me the honor of coming to see me tomorrow, I’ll show you a few articles that I have myself introduced into my household arrangements.”

The general looked at him and blew smoke out of his mouth.

Chertokutsky was extremely pleased that he had invited the gentleman officers to his house. In his head he was ordering pâtés and sauces in advance. He kept glancing very happily at the gentleman officers, who also seemed to double their good favor toward him, which was evident from their eyes and the small bodily movements they made resembling half-bows. Chertokutsky began addressing them in a more familiar fashion, and his voice got more relaxed.

It was a voice that was laden with pleasure.

© Columbia University Press

“There, Your Excellency, you will make the acquaintance of the mistress of the house.”

“I’d be delighted,” the general said, smoothing his mustache.

After this, Chertokutsky wanted to set off immediately for home in order to prepare everything for the reception of the guests and tomorrow’s dinner in good time. He had already almost picked up his hat, but strangely it somehow turned out that he stayed for a while. Meanwhile the card tables had been set up in the room. Soon the whole company divided into parties of four for whist and took their seats in various corners of the general’s rooms.

They brought candles. Chertokutsky took a long time deciding whether he should sit down to a game of whist or not. But since the gentleman officers had started urging him, it seemed to him to be very incompatible with the rules of social life to refuse. He took a seat. Without his noticing it a glass of punch appeared before him, which he drained on the spot without even thinking. After playing two rubbers, Chertokutsky again found a glass of punch at hand, which he also drained without thinking, saying beforehand: “Gentlemen, it’s time for me to go home, indeed it’s time.” But he again took a seat for a second round.

Meanwhile the conversation in various corners of the room had taken a quite particular turn. Those playing whist were largely silent, but the men who weren’t playing and were sitting on divans around the room were conversing among themselves. In one corner a staff cavalry captain, propped up sideways on a pillow, pipe between his teeth, was recounting his amorous adventures in a free and fluent way and had completely mastered the attention of the little circle gathered around him. One extraordinarily fat landowner, with short arms that looked a bit like two full-grown potatoes, was listening with an unusually sweet expression and only occasionally made the effort to reach behind his broad back with his short arm to get his snuffbox out. In another corner a fairly heated argument had The Carriage

\ 189

© Columbia University Press

190 \

The Carriage

started up about squadron drill, and Chertokutsky, who had already managed twice to discard a jack instead of a queen, suddenly started interrupting the others’ conversations and shouting from his corner: “In what year?” or “Which regiment?”—not noticing that sometimes his question was completely irrelevant.

Finally, a few minutes before supper, the whist ended, but it continued in words, and it seemed everyone’s heads were full of whist. Chertokutsky distinctly recalled that he had won a lot, but his hands didn’t move to take anything, and after getting up from the table he stood for a long time in the position of a man whose handkerchief is missing from his pocket. Meanwhile supper was served. It goes without saying that there was no shortage of wines and that Chertokutsky, almost against his will, was obliged to pour some into his glass sometimes, simply because there were bottles standing to his left and right.

An extremely long conversation started up at the table, but it was strangely conducted. One landowner who had served in the 1812 campaign narrated a battle that had never taken place, and then, for some utterly unknown reason, he took a cork out of a decanter and stuck it into the puff pastry dessert.9 In short, when they started to disperse it was three in the morning, and the coachmen had to take some of the personages into their arms as if they were shopping packages. Chertokutsky, despite all his aristocratism, bent so far over in his carriage and with such a sweep of his head that when he got home he brought with him two burrs in his mustache.

Everyone in the house was fast asleep. The coachman had a hard time finding the valet, who led the master through the parlor and turned him over to the maid. Chertokutsky somehow managed to follow her to the bedroom, where he lay down next to his young and pretty wife, who was lying in the most enchanting position, in a nightgown as white as snow. The movement caused by her spouse’s falling onto the bed woke her up. Stretching, raising her

© Columbia University Press

eyelashes, and quickly squinting three times, she opened her eyes with a half-angry smile; but seeing that this time he had absolutely no intention of showing her any affection, she turned onto her other side in annoyance, and placing her fresh cheek on her hand, fell asleep soon after he did.

It was already that time of day that in the country is not called early when the young mistress of the house awoke next to her snoring spouse. Recalling that he had come home after three in the morning the night before, she took pity on him and decided not to wake him up. Putting on the bedroom slippers that her husband had ordered for her from St. Petersburg and wearing a white blouse that draped on her body like flowing water, she went into her dressing room, washed with water that was as fresh as herself, and approached the dresser. She looked at herself twice and saw that she was quite pretty today. This apparently insignificant circumstance caused her to spend exactly two extra hours sitting in front of the mirror.

Finally she got dressed in a very charming outfit and went out into the garden to get some fresh air. As if on purpose, just then it was as beautiful a time as a July summer day can boast of. The sun, entering the noonday, was burning with all the power of its rays, but under the dense dark avenues of trees it was cool to walk, and the flowers warmed by the sun tripled their scent. The pretty mistress of the house completely forgot that it was twelve o’clock and her husband was still sleeping. She could already hear the after-dinner snoring of two coachmen and one postboy who were sleeping in the stables behind the garden. But she kept on sitting in the densely shaded avenue, from which she had a view of the highway, and she was absentmindedly looking at its deserted emptiness, when suddenly a cloud of dust that appeared in the distance attracted her attention. Looking more closely, she soon saw several equipages. In front was a light, open two-seat carriage; in it was sitting the general The Carriage

\ 191

© Columbia University Press

192 \

The Carriage

with thick epaulets that gleamed in the sunlight, and next to him the colonel. Behind that carriage followed another, with four seats; in it were sitting a major and the general’s adjutant and two more officers opposite them; behind the carriage followed the well-known regimental droshky, which on this occasion was in the possession of the corpulent major; behind the droshky came a four-seat bon voyage, in which four officers were sitting with a fifth on top of their arms . . . behind the bon voyage three officers were cutting a fine figure on splendid dapple-bay horses.

“Could they be coming to visit us?” the mistress of the house thought. “Oh, my God! Indeed, they’ve turned onto the bridge!”

She screamed, threw up her hands, and set off running over the garden beds and flowers right into her husband’s bedroom. He was dead asleep.

“Get up, get up! Get up right now!” she screamed, pulling on his arm.

“Huh?” Chertokutsky said, stretching himself without opening his eyes.

“Get up, poopsie-pooh! Can’t you hear? We have guests!”

“Guests, what guests?” After he said this, he produced a little moo, like the one a calf emits when seeking his mother’s teats with his snout. “Mmmm . . .” he growled, “schnookums, stick out your little neck so I can kiss it.”

“Darling, get up, quickly, for the love of God. The general and the officers! Oh, my God, you have burrs in your mustache.”

“The general? Oh, is he already coming? Why didn’t anyone wake me up, dammit? The dinner, what about the dinner, is everything ready in the proper way?”

“What dinner?”

“Didn’t I order it?”

“You? You came home at four in the morning, and no matter what I asked you, you didn’t say anything. I didn’t wake you up,

© Columbia University Press

poopsie-pooh, because I felt sorry for you. You hadn’t slept at all . . .”

She said the latter words in an extraordinarily languid and pleading voice.

Chertokutsky, his eyes bulging, lay for a moment in bed as if struck by lightning. Finally he jumped up from the bed in nothing but his nightshirt, forgetting for a moment that this was utterly indecent.

“Oh, what a horse I am!” he said, hitting himself in the forehead.

“I invited them to dinner. What is to be done? Are they far away?”

“I don’t know . . . they should be here any minute.”

“Darling . . . hide! Hey, who’s there! You, girl! Go on, what are you afraid of, you little fool? The officers are going to be here any minute. Tell them that the master is not at home, tell them that I won’t be here at all, that I left first thing in the morning, got it? And tell all the servants, get going now!”

After saying this, he quickly grabbed his dressing-gown and ran off to hide in the coach house, supposing that he would be completely safe there. But after he took up a stance in a corner of the building, he saw that even here he could be seen somehow. “Now here’s what would be better,” flashed in his head, and in an instant he flung down the stairs to a carriage that was standing nearby, jumped in, closed the doors behind him, covered himself with the leather apron for greater safety, and fell completely silent, curled up in his dressing-gown.10 Meanwhile the equipages rode up to the porch.

The general got out and shook himself, then came the colonel, straightening the plume on his hat. Then the fat major jumped out of his droshky, holding his saber under his arm. Then the slim second lieutenants and the ensign who had been sitting on top of their arms jumped out of the bon voyage, and finally the officers who had cut a fine figure on their horses got down from their saddles.

The Carriage

\ 193

© Columbia University Press

194 \

The Carriage

“The master is not at home,” said the footman, coming out onto the porch.

“What do you mean he’s not at home? But surely he’s going to be here for dinner?”

“No, sir. The master left for the whole day. It is possible that he will return tomorrow at about this time.”

“That’s a good one!” the general said. “How can that be?”

“I must confess, this is quite a thing,” said the colonel, laughing.

“But really, how can anyone behave like that?” the general continued with displeasure. “Pfft . . . The devil . . . Well, if you aren’t going to be at home, why thrust your invitations on us?”

“Your Excellency, I cannot understand how anyone could do this,” said one of the young officers.

“What?” the general said, who had the habit of always uttering this interrogative particle when speaking with a subaltern.

“I said, Your Excellency: How can a person act in such a manner?”

“Naturally . . . Well, if it didn’t work out, at least let us know, or else don’t invite us.”

“Well, Your Excellency, there’s nothing to be done, let’s go back!” the colonel said.

“Of course, there’s no recourse. But anyway, we could take a look at the carriage even without him. He probably didn’t take it with him. Hey, who’s there? Come here, my boy!”

“What is your pleasure?”

“Are you the groom?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Show us the new carriage your master recently acquired.”

“Please come into the coach house!”

The general and the officers set off for the coach house.

“Here, if you please, I’ll roll it out a little ways, it’s dark in here.”

“Enough, enough, that’s good!”

© Columbia University Press

The general and the officers walked around the carriage and attentively inspected the wheels and the springs.

“Well, it’s nothing special,” the general said. “It’s the most ordinary carriage.”

“It’s not much to look at,” the colonel said, “there’s nothing fine about it at all.”

“It seems to me, Your Excellency, that it is certainly not worth four thousand,” one of the young officers said.

“What?”

“I said, Your Excellency, that it seems to me that it is not worth four thousand.”

“Four thousand! It’s not worth two. There’s nothing about it at all. Maybe there’s something special inside . . . Please unfasten the apron, my dear man . . .”

And to the eyes of the officers appeared Chertokutsky, sitting in his dressing-gown and curled up in an unusual fashion.

“Ah, you’re here!” the general said in amazement.

After saying this, the general immediately slammed the door shut, covered Chertokutsky with the apron again, and left together with the gentleman officers.

The Carriage

\ 195

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

THE NOSE

I On March 25 an unusually strange event occurred in St. Petersburg.

The barber Ivan Yakovlevich, who lives on Ascension Avenue (his last name has been lost, and even on his sign, which depicts a gentleman with a soaped-up cheek and the inscription “And bloodletting too,” nothing more is displayed), the barber Ivan Yakovlevich woke up rather early and caught the scent of hot bread.1 He raised himself up a little on his bed and saw that his spouse, a rather estimable lady who very much liked to drink coffee, was taking some freshly baked loaves of bread out of the oven.

“Today, Praskovia Osipovna, I’m not going to have coffee,” Ivan Yakovlevich said, “but instead I’d like to eat some nice hot bread with onions.”

(That is, Ivan Yakovlevich would have liked to have both the one and the other, but he knew that it was quite impossible to demand two things at once, for Praskovia Osipovna really disliked such whimsies.) “Let the fool eat bread; that’s better for me,” his spouse

© Columbia University Press

198 \

The Nose

thought to herself, “There’ll be an extra portion of coffee left.” And she threw a loaf onto the table.

For the sake of propriety, Ivan Yakovlevich put his tailcoat on over his shirt, sat down at the table, sprinkled salt, prepared two onions, took a knife in his hands, and assuming a dignified air, started cutting the bread. Having cut the loaf of bread into two halves, he looked into the middle, and to his amazement, saw something white. Ivan Yakovlevich poked it cautiously with the knife and felt it with his finger. “It’s solid!” he said to himself.

“What could it be?”

He stuck his fingers in and pulled out—a nose! Ivan Yakovlevich dropped his hands in surrender; he started rubbing his eyes and feeling it: a nose, it really was a nose! And it even seemed to be the nose of someone he knew. Horror was depicted on Ivan Yakovlevich’s face. But this horror was as nothing compared to the indignation that took possession of his spouse.

“Where did you cut that nose off, you beast?” she screamed angrily. “You swindler! You drunk! I’ll report you to the police myself! What a bandit! Three different people have told me that when you’re shaving them you pull their noses so hard they barely stay attached.”

But Ivan Yakovlevich was more dead than alive. He had recognized that this nose belonged to none other than Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov, whom he shaved every Wednesday and Sunday.

“Wait, Praskovia Osipovna! I’ll wrap it in a rag and put it in the corner. Let it lie there for a little while, and then I’ll take it out.”

“I don’t even want to hear it! You want me to let a cut-off nose lie around in my room? You piece of overbrowned crust! All he knows how to do is run his razor over his strop, and soon he won’t be in any condition to do his duty, the trollop, the scoundrel! You think I’m going to answer to the police for you? Oh, you slob, you stupid

© Columbia University Press

blockhead! Get it out of here! Out! Take it wherever you want!

Don’t let me see hide nor hair of it!”

Ivan Yakovlevich stood there as if he’d been struck dead. He thought and thought—and didn’t know what to think.

“The devil knows how this happened,” he finally said, scratching behind his ear. “Whether it’s because I came home drunk last night or not, I can’t tell for sure. But everything indicates that this must be an impossible event: For bread is a baked thing, and a nose is something else entirely. I can’t understand it at all!”

Ivan Yakovlevich fell silent. The thought that the police would find the nose on him and blame him for it caused him to lose his senses.

He could already see the policeman’s crimson collar, beautifully embroidered with silver, the sword . . . and his whole body trembled.

Finally, he got his underwear and his boots, pulled on all that stuff, and accompanied by the harsh admonitions of Praskovia Osipovna, wrapped the nose in a rag and went out to the street.

He wanted to stick it under something, either to stick it under a bollard near a gate, or to drop it somehow accidentally, and then turn off into a lane. But as luck would have it, he kept running into acquaintances, who would immediately begin an interrogation: “Where are you going?” or “Who are you going to shave at this hour?”—so that Ivan Yakovlevich just couldn’t find the right moment.

Then he had almost managed to drop it, but the policeman on duty pointed his halberd at him, saying, “Pick it up! You dropped something there!” And Ivan Yakovlevich was forced to pick up the nose and hide it in his pocket. He was overcome by despair, especially because there were more and more people on the street as the stores and shops started opening up.

He decided to go to Saint Isaac’s Bridge. Maybe he could succeed in throwing it into the Neva? But I am somewhat remiss for not saying anything yet about Ivan Yakovlevich, a person who was estimable in many respects.

The Nose

\ 199

© Columbia University Press

200 \

The Nose

Ivan Yakovlevich, like any respectable Russian artisan, was a terrible drunkard. And although he spent every day shaving other people’s chins, his own was always unshaven. Ivan Yakovlevich’s tailcoat (Ivan Yakovlevich never wore a frock coat) was piebald; that is, it was black, but covered with brownish-yellow and gray spots. His collar was shiny, and in the place of three of his buttons there hung only threads. Ivan Yakovlevich was a great cynic, and when Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov would say to him as usual while he was shaving him: “Ivan Yakovlevich, your hands are always smelly!”—then Ivan Yakovlevich would answer him with a question: “Why should they be smelly?”—“I don’t know, my boy, but they are,” the collegiate assessor would say, and Ivan Yakovlevich, after taking a pinch of snuff, in recompense would spread lather on Kovalyov’s cheek, and under his nose, and behind his ear, and under his chin—in short, wherever he felt like it.

This estimable citizen found himself now on Saint Isaac’s Bridge.

First he looked all around, then he bent over the railing, as if he wanted to look under the bridge to see whether there were a lot of fish running, and he quietly threw in the rag with the nose in it.

He felt as if a ten-pood weight had suddenly fallen from him; Ivan Yakovlevich even grinned.2 Instead of going to shave the chins of civil servants, he set off for an establishment with a sign saying “Snacks and Tea” to order a glass of rum punch, when suddenly at the end of the bridge he noticed a district police inspector of noble appearance, with broadly spreading whiskers, a tricorn hat, and a sword. He froze; and meanwhile the police inspector beckoned him with his finger and said: “Come over here, my good man!”

Ivan Yakovlevich, who knew the formalities, took off his cap while still at a distance, approached nimbly, and said: “Good morning, Your Honor!”

“No, no, my boy, none of that ‘honor’ stuff; just tell me, what were you doing there, standing on the bridge?”

© Columbia University Press

“Honest to God, sir, I was on my way to shave people, and I was just looking to see whether the river was running fast.”

“You’re lying, you’re lying! You’re not going to get off that easily.

Be so good as to answer me!”

“I would be happy to shave Your Worship twice or even three times a week without any question,” Ivan Yakovlevich answered.

“No, my friend, that’s nothing! I am shaved by three barbers, and they consider it a great honor. So now be so good as to tell me what you were doing over there?”

Ivan Yakovlevich turned pale . . . But here the event is completely covered by a fog, and absolutely nothing is known about what happened next.

II Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov woke up rather early and went “brrr” with his lips—which is what he always did when he woke up, although he himself could not explain why. Kovalyov stretched and ordered that he be given the little mirror that stood on the table.

He wanted to look at a pimple that had popped up on his nose the evening before; but to his extreme amazement, he saw that instead of a nose he had a completely smooth space! Taking fright, Kovalyov ordered some water and wiped his eyes with a towel: Indeed, there was no nose! He began to feel with his hand to see whether or not he was asleep. It seemed he wasn’t asleep. Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov jumped up from the bed and shook himself: There was no nose! He immediately ordered that he be given his clothes so he could get dressed, and he set off flying straight to the chief of the St. Petersburg police.

But meanwhile it is necessary to say something about Kovalyov so that the reader might see what sort of collegiate assessor he was.

The collegiate assessors who receive that rank with the help of The Nose

\ 201

© Columbia University Press

202 \

The Nose

learned diplomas cannot at all be compared with those collegiate assessors who are created in the Caucasus.3 These are two quite particular types. The learned collegiate assessors . . . But Russia is such a marvelous land that if you say something about one collegiate assessor, then all the collegiate assessors from Riga to Kamchatka will inevitably take it as referring to themselves. And the same goes for all other ranks and offices. Kovalyov was a collegiate assessor of the Caucasus. He had only been at that rank for two years and therefore could not forget about it for a single moment, and so as to lend himself nobility and weight, he never called himself “Collegiate Assessor,” but always “Major.”4 “Listen, honey,” he would usually say when he met a woman selling shirtfronts on the street, “come see me at home; my apartment is on Garden Street. Just ask, does Major Kovalyov live here?—Anyone will show you.” But if he met a really pretty one, he would supplement this with a secret injunction, adding, “Darling, be sure to ask for Major Kovalyov’s apartment.” For this very same reason we will henceforth call this collegiate assessor—major.

Major Kovalyov had the habit of taking a stroll along Nevsky Avenue every day. The collar of his shirtfront was always extremely clean and starched. He had the kind of whiskers that one can still see on provincial and district surveyors, architects, and regimental doctors, as well as people performing various police duties, and in general on men who have plump, ruddy cheeks and who play Boston very well: These whiskers reach the very middle of the cheek and go right up to the nose.5 Major Kovalyov wore a multitude of carnelian seals, some with coats of arms and some engraved with “Wednesday,” “Thursday,” “Monday,” etc.6 Major Kovalyov had come to St. Petersburg out of necessity, namely to find a position becoming to his rank: if he could manage it, a position as vice-governor, and if not, then as administrator in some prominent department. Major Kovalyov was not averse to getting

© Columbia University Press

married as well, but only provided that the bride would bring with her two hundred thousand in capital. And thus the reader can now judge for himself the situation of this Major when he saw instead of a rather handsome and moderate-sized nose a very stupid, flat, and smooth space.

As luck would have it, there was not a single cabby on the street, and he had to go on foot, wrapped up in his cloak and covering his face with a kerchief, pretending he had a nosebleed. “But perhaps I imagined it. It can’t be that a nose would disappear for some foolish reason,” he thought, and went into a pastry shop on purpose to look into the mirror. Luckily, there was nobody in the pastry shop. Little boys were sweeping the rooms and setting up chairs; some of them, with sleepy eyes, were bringing out hot little pies on trays; yesterday’s newspapers, stained with coffee, were lying around on the tables and chairs. “Well, thank God nobody’s here,” he said, “now I can take a look.” He went timidly up to the mirror and took a look. “The devil only knows! What rubbish!” he said, and spat. “If only there were something instead of my nose, but there’s nothing!”

Biting his lips in annoyance, he came out of the pastry shop and decided, contrary to his usual habit, not to look at anyone and not to smile at anyone. Suddenly he stopped dead by the doors of a house. An inexplicable phenomenon occurred before his eyes: A coach stopped in front of the entryway, the coach doors opened, a gentleman in a uniform jumped out, his back bent, and started running up the stairs. What horror and at the same time amazement did Kovalyov feel when he realized that this was his very own nose! At this unusual sight it seemed to him that everything he saw had turned upside down; he felt that he could hardly stay standing, but he resolved to await his return to the coach at all costs, trembling all over as if in a fever. Two minutes later the nose did indeed emerge. He was in a uniform with gold embroidery, The Nose

\ 203

© Columbia University Press

204 \

The Nose

with a large stand-up collar; he was wearing suede trousers and had a sword at his side. Judging by his plumed hat he bore the rank of state councillor. All signs indicated that he was going somewhere on a visit. He looked both ways, shouted to the coachman, “Let’s go!”—got into the coach, and rode away.7 Poor Kovalyov almost lost his mind. He didn’t know how to even think about such a strange event. Indeed, how could it be that a nose that just yesterday was on his face and could neither ride nor walk—was in a uniform! He started to run after the coach, which luckily went only a little distance and stopped in front of the Kazan Cathedral.8 Kovalyov hurried to the cathedral, made his way through a row of old beggar women with their faces bandaged up leaving two openings for their eyes, at whom he always used to have a good laugh, and went into the church. There were not many worshippers in the church. They were all standing around the entrance doors.

Kovalyov felt so upset that he had no strength to pray, and he kept looking for that gentleman in all the corners. Finally, he caught sight of him standing off to the side. The nose had completely hidden his face in his big stand-up collar and was praying with an expression of the greatest piety.

“How can I approach him?” Kovalyov thought. “Judging by everything, his uniform, his hat, he is a state councillor. The devil knows how to do it!”

He began coughing gently near him, but the nose did not for a moment abandon his pious position and kept making low bows.9 “My dear sir,” Kovalyov said, inwardly forcing himself to take courage, “my dear sir . . .”

“What can I do for you?” the nose said, turning around.

“It’s strange to me, my dear sir . . . it seems to me . . . you should know your place. And suddenly I find you, and where? In a church.

You must agree . . .”

© Columbia University Press

“Pardon me, I cannot make any sense of what you wish to say. . . .

Explain yourself.”

“How can I explain it to him?” Kovalyov thought. He got up his nerve and began: “Of course, I . . . by the way, I am a major. You must agree that it is improper for me to walk around without a nose. A tradeswoman who sells peeled oranges on Resurrection Bridge can sit there without a nose; but with plans to obtain . . . and moreover being acquainted with ladies in many homes: Mrs. Chekhtaryova, the wife of a state councillor, and others . . . Judge for yourself . . .

I don’t know, my dear sir.” (At this Major Kovalyov shrugged his shoulders.) “Forgive me . . . if one looks at this in accordance with the rules of duty and honor . . . you yourself can understand . . .”

“I understand absolutely nothing,” the nose answered. “Express yourself in a more satisfactory manner.”

“My dear sir . . .” Kovalyov said with a feeling of his own dignity, “I do not know how to understand your words . . . The whole affair seems to be quite obvious . . . Or do you want to . . . After all, you are my very own nose!”

The nose looked at the major, and his brows knitted slightly.

“You are mistaken, my dear sir. I am my own separate self.

Moreover, there cannot be any intimate relations between us.

Judging by the buttons on your uniform, you serve in a different department.”

After saying this, the nose turned away and continued praying.

Kovalyov was quite confused and didn’t know what to do or even what to think. At that moment the pleasant rustling of a lady’s dress was heard. A middle-aged lady all decorated with lace came near, and with her a slim girl wearing a white dress that very sweetly showed off her slender waist, as well as a pale-yellow hat as light as a puff pastry. Behind them a tall footman with huge whiskers and as many as a dozen collars came to a stop and opened his snuffbox.

The Nose

\ 205

© Columbia University Press

206 \

The Nose

Kovalyov walked up closer to them, pulled out the cambric collar of his shirtfront, straightened the seals that were hanging on his golden chain, and smiling in all directions, directed his attention to the weightless lady, who like a spring blossom was bowing slightly and bringing her little white hand with its half-transparent fingers to her forehead. The smile on Kovalyov’s face grew even broader when from under her hat he caught sight of her round, dazzlingly white little chin and part of her cheek, shaded by the color of the first spring rose. But suddenly he jumped away as if he had burned himself. He recalled that instead of a nose he had absolutely nothing, and tears squeezed out of his eyes. He turned around in order to tell the gentleman in the uniform point-blank that he was only pretending to be a state councillor, that he was a rogue and a rascal, and that he was nothing more than his very own nose . . . But the nose was no longer there. He had managed to gallop off, probably to go visit someone else.

This plunged Kovalyov into despair. He went back and stood for a minute under the colonnade, looking searchingly in all directions to see if he could tell where the nose was. He remembered very well that his hat was plumed and that his uniform had gold embroidery, but he hadn’t noticed his overcoat, or the color of his coach or his horses, or even whether there was a footman sitting in back and what kind of livery he was wearing. Moreover, there was such a multitude of coaches rushing back and forth and so quickly that it was hard to take note of them. But even if he could take note of one of them, he had no means of stopping it. It was a beautiful sunny day. There were hundreds of people on Nevsky Avenue; a whole flowery waterfall of ladies was pouring onto the sidewalk beginning from the Police Bridge and reaching Anichkov Bridge.10 Here came a court councillor of his acquaintance, whom he always called lieutenant colonel, especially if there were other people around.11 Here came Yarygin, a desk head in the Senate, a great friend who always lost when he

© Columbia University Press

bid eight in a game of Boston.12 Here was another major who had obtained an assessorship in the Caucasus, waving his arm to beckon Kovalyov over . . .

“Oh, the devil take it!” Kovalyov said. “Hey, cabby, take me right to the chief of police!”

Kovalyov got into the droshky and kept shouting to the cabby: “Go like a bat out of hell!”13 “Is the chief of police in?” he shouted as he came into the entrance hall.

“No, sir,” the doorman answered. “He just left.”

“Well, I never!”

“Yes,” the doorman added, “it wasn’t that long ago, but he left.

If you had come just a moment earlier, you might have caught him at home.”

Without taking the kerchief from his face, Kovalyov got back in the cab and shouted in a desperate voice: “Let’s go!”

“Where?” the cabby said.

“Go straight!”

“What do you mean, straight? There’s a turn here: right or left?”

This question gave Kovalyov pause and caused him to think again. In his situation he ought to appeal to the City Police Board, not because his situation had any direct connection to the police, but because the Police Board’s dispositions would be much faster than those in other offices. To seek satisfaction from the authorities in the office where the nose had declared himself to be serving would be foolhardy, because one could see from the nose’s own replies that nothing was sacred for this person and he would be capable of lying in this case just as he had lied when he claimed that he had never seen him. So Kovalyov was about to give the order to go to the Police Board, when he again had the thought that this rogue and swindler, who had already behaved in such an unscrupulous fashion on their first meeting, might easily take advantage of the The Nose

\ 207

© Columbia University Press

208 \

The Nose

opportunity to slip out of town—and then all searching would be in vain or could take a whole month, God forbid. Finally, it seemed that heaven itself made him see the light. He decided to apply directly to the advertising department of the newspaper in order to place a timely announcement with a detailed description of all the nose’s traits, so that anyone who met it could immediately present it to him or at least let him know about its place of residence. And so, having resolved on this, he ordered the cabby to drive to the newspaper advertising department, and the whole way there he never ceased punching him in the back with his fist, saying: “Faster, you rascal! Faster, you swindler!”—“Hey now, master!” the cabby would say, shaking his head and using the reins to lash his horse, whose coat was long-haired, like a lapdog’s. Finally the droshky stopped, and Kovalyov ran panting into a small reception room, where a gray-haired clerk wearing an old tailcoat and glasses was sitting at a desk, his quill pen in his mouth, counting copper coins that had been brought in.

“Who is it here who accepts advertisements?” Kovalyov shouted. “Oh, hello there!”

“My compliments, sir,” the gray-haired clerk said, raising his eyes for a moment and lowering them again to the piles of money that were laid out.

“I wish to publish . . .”

“Permit me. Please wait a moment,” the clerk said, writing a number on a piece of paper with one hand and moving two beads on an abacus with the fingers of his left hand.

A footman with braiding on his livery, whose appearance showed that he resided in an aristocratic home, was standing by the desk with a note in his hands, and considered it seemly to display his sociability: “Would you believe it, sir, the little doggie isn’t worth eighty kopecks, at least I wouldn’t pay even four kopecks for it; but the Countess loves it, honest to God, she loves it—and so the

© Columbia University Press

person who finds it will get a hundred rubles! If we’re talking in a seemly way, the way you and I are talking right now, people really don’t share their tastes in common. If you’re a dog fancier, then get a pointer or a poodle. Don’t begrudge five hundred rubles, pay a thousand, but you should get a good dog for that.”

The estimable clerk listened to this with a dignified air and at the same time was calculating how many letters there were in the note the footman had brought. To either side stood a multitude of old women, merchants’ clerks, and yard sweepers, all holding notes. In one it was stated that a coachman of sober conduct was being offered for service; another offered to sell a gently used carriage that had been exported from Paris in 1814; another was offering a nineteen-year-old serving girl trained for laundry work and good for other types of work as well; a durable droshky missing all its springs; a fiery young dapple-gray horse, seventeen years of age; new turnip and radish seeds received from London; a country villa with all the appurtenances: two horse stalls and an area on which one might cultivate a superb birch or fir grove; there was also a call to those wishing to buy old shoe soles, with an invitation to appear at the auction house every day from eight to three in the morning.14 The room that was accommodating this whole company was small, and the air in it was extremely dense, but Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov could not catch the scent, because he had covered himself with a kerchief and because his nose itself was located in God knows what locality.

“My dear sir, permit me to ask you to . . . I have a great need,” he finally said impatiently.

“Right away! Right away! Two rubles forty-three kopecks!

This very minute! One ruble sixty-four kopecks!” the gray-haired gentleman said, tossing the notes into the faces of the old women and yard sweepers. “What can I do for you?” he finally said, turning to Kovalyov.

The Nose

\ 209

© Columbia University Press

210 \

The Nose

“I ask you to, . . .” Kovalyov said, “A great swindle or roguery has occurred, to this moment I have not been able to find out what. I am only asking you to publish a notice that the person who presents this rascal to me will receive a handsome reward.”

“Permit me to ask, what is your last name?”

“No, why do you need my last name? I cannot tell you that.

I have many acquaintances: Chekhtaryova, the wife of a state councillor, Palageya Grigoryevna Podtochina, the wife of a staff officer . . . What if they find out, God forbid! You can simply write: a collegiate assessor, or even better, a person occupying the rank of major.”

“And is it your house-serf who’s run away?”

“What house-serf? That wouldn’t be such a big swindle! The runaway is my . . . nose . . .”

“Hmm! What a strange name! And did this Mr. Nosov steal a large sum from you?”

“Not Nosov, nose . . . You’re on the wrong track! My nose, my own nose has disappeared to an unknown location. The devil wanted to play a trick on me!”

“In what manner did it disappear? For some reason I can’t fully understand this.”

“I have no way of telling you in what manner, but the main thing is that he is now riding around town and calling himself a state councillor. And for that reason, I ask you to announce that the person who catches him should present him to me immediately and at the earliest possible moment. Judge for yourself—indeed, how can I be without such a noticeable part of the body? This isn’t some little toe that I could hide in my boot, and no one would see it wasn’t there. I frequent the home of Chekhtaryova, the wife of a state councillor, on Thursdays.

Palageya Grigoryevna Podtochina, the wife of a staff officer, and her very pretty daughter, are also very good acquaintances of

© Columbia University Press

mine, and you can judge for yourself, how can I now . . . I can’t go see them now at all.”

The clerk was lost in thought, as was signified by his firmly compressed lips.

“No, I cannot place such an advertisement in the newspapers,” he said finally, after a long silence.

“What? Why?” “Just so. The newspaper might lose its reputation. If anyone can write that his nose ran away, then . . . As it is, they’re saying that a lot of preposterous things and false rumors are being printed.”

“In what way is this preposterous? There’s nothing of the sort here.”

“It only seems to you that there isn’t. Just last week we had a case. A civil servant came in just the way you did now, he brought a note, it came to two rubles seventy-three kopecks, and the whole advertisement said only that a poodle with a black coat had run away. It would seem there was nothing in it. But it turned out to be a libelous pasquinade: The poodle was a paymaster, I don’t remember in what department.”

“But I’m not advertising about a poodle, but about my very own nose, which means, almost the same as about my own self.”

“No, I absolutely cannot place such an advertisement.”

“Even though my nose really has disappeared!”

“If it’s disappeared, then that’s a case for a physician. They say there are people who can attach any kind of nose you want. But by the way, I see you must be a person of a cheerful nature who likes to have a joke in good company.”

“I swear to you, as God is my witness! All right, if it’s come to that, I’ll show you.”

“Why trouble yourself!” the clerk continued, taking a pinch of snuff. “But all right, if it isn’t too much trouble,” he added with a gesture of curiosity, “then I would like to take a look.”

The Nose

\ 211

© Columbia University Press

212 \

The Nose

The collegiate assessor removed the kerchief from his face.

“Indeed, it’s extremely strange!” the clerk said, “The place is quite smooth, like a freshly cooked pancake. Yes, it is unbelievably flat!”

“Well, now are you going to argue with me? You can see for yourself that you simply must print the advertisement. I will be particularly grateful to you, and I am very glad that this accident afforded me the pleasure of making your acquaintance . . .”

The major, as one can see, had decided on this occasion to be a bit of a toady.

“To print it is, of course, not a large matter,” the clerk said, “but I can foresee no profit in it for you. If you wish, give the note to someone with a skillful pen to describe it as a rare product of nature and publish a brief article in the Northern Bee” (here he took another dose of snuff) “for the benefit of youth” (here he wiped his nose) “or just for general interest.”

The collegiate assessor was utterly bereft of hope. He lowered his eyes to the bottom of the newspaper, where plays were announced.

His face was getting ready to smile, seeing the name of a pretty actress, and his hand reached for his pocket to see if there was a dark-blue five-ruble note in it, because in Kovalyov’s opinion, staff officers should sit in orchestra seats—but the thought of the nose ruined everything!

The clerk himself, it seemed, was touched by Kovalyov’s awkward situation. Wishing to lighten his affliction somewhat, he considered it seemly to express his sympathy in the following words: “Truly, I find it deplorable that such an anecdote has happened to you.

Would you not care to take a little snuff? It dispels headaches as well as inclinations toward sadness. It’s good even with respect to hemorrhoids.”

Saying this, the clerk extended his snuffbox to Kovalyov, deftly tucking under it the lid bearing the portrait of a lady in a hat.

This thoughtless action made Kovalyov lose his patience.

© Columbia University Press

“I don’t understand how you can find a place for jokes,” he said angrily, “do you really not see that the thing I would need for sniffing is precisely what I don’t have? The devil take your snuff! I can’t even look at it, and not only your nasty cheap stuff, but even if you were offering me rappee.”15 After saying this, he left the newspaper office, deeply frustrated, and set off to see the district police superintendent, who was a great lover of sugar. In his house the entire entrance hall, which was also his dining room, was filled with loaves of sugar that had been brought to him by merchants wishing to show their friendship. At that moment the cook was removing the superintendent’s uniform jackboots; his sword and all his military paraphernalia were already hung in their peaceful corners, and his little three-year-old son was already touching his terrifying tricorn hat; and he, after his life of battle and fighting, was preparing to taste the pleasures of peacetime.

Kovalyov came in just when he had stretched, grunted, and said, “Aahh, I’m going to have a nice sleep for a couple of hours!” And thus one could anticipate that the collegiate assessor’s arrival came at a quite inopportune moment. I’m not sure that he would have been received very cordially even if he had brought several pounds of tea or broadcloth along with him. The superintendent was a great patron of the arts and manufactures, but he preferred a government banknote to everything else. “This is a real thing,” he would usually say, “there is nothing better than this thing. It doesn’t ask for anything to eat, it doesn’t take up much space, it always fits into your pocket, if you drop it, it doesn’t get hurt.”

The superintendent received Kovalyov somewhat coldly and said that the after-dinner hour was not the right time to carry out an investigation, that nature itself had decreed that after a person has eaten his fill he should rest a little while (from this the collegiate assessor could see that the superintendent was not unfamiliar with the sayings of the ancient sages), that a respectable man would not The Nose

\ 213

© Columbia University Press

214 \

The Nose

have had his nose torn off, and that there are all kinds of majors in the world who don’t even keep their underwear in a seemly condition and who hang around in indecent places.

That hit him right between the eyes! We must note that Kovalyov was a person who was extremely quick to take offense. He could forgive everything that was said about himself but could never excuse anything that related to his office or rank. He even considered that in theatrical plays one could let pass everything that related to subaltern officers, but that it was quite impermissible to attack staff officers.16 The reception by the superintendent so affronted him that he shook his head and said with a feeling of dignity, spreading his arms somewhat apart: “I confess, after such offensive remarks on your part I cannot add anything more,” and went out.

He came home nearly dead on his feet. It was already dusk. After all these failed pursuits, his apartment seemed sad or extremely disgusting. As he came into the entrance hall, he saw his footman Ivan on the stained leather divan, lying on his back spitting at the ceiling and repeatedly hitting the very same spot rather successfully. Such indifference on the part of his servant enraged him. He hit him on the forehead with his hat, saying, “You pig, you’re always wasting your time doing stupid things!”

Ivan suddenly jumped up from his place and rushed to take off Kovalyov’s cloak.

As he entered his room, the major, tired and sad, flung himself into an armchair, and after sighing a few times, said: “My God! My God! Why such a misfortune? If I were missing an arm or a leg—all the same, it would be better; if I were missing my ears—it would be terrible, but still bearable; but without a nose a person is the devil knows what: not a bird, not a citizen, just take him and throw him out the window! And it would be one thing if it had been cut off in war or at a duel, or if I myself were the cause, but it disappeared for no reason at all, it disappeared in vain, for nothing!

© Columbia University Press

But no, it cannot be,” he added after thinking a bit. “It’s unbelievable that my nose disappeared. It can’t be believed at all. Probably it is either happening in a dream, or I’m simply having a vision.

Perhaps somehow by mistake I drank the vodka I rub on my chin after shaving instead of water. That idiot Ivan didn’t take it away and I probably grabbed it by mistake.”

In order to convince himself that he was indeed not drunk, the major pinched himself so painfully that he shrieked. This pain convinced him that he was acting and living in waking reality. He slowly approached the mirror and squinted his eyes at first, thinking that perhaps the nose would appear in its place, but at the same moment he jumped back, saying: “What a pasquinadesque appearance!”

It was indeed inexplicable. If a button had disappeared, or a silver spoon, or a watch, or something like that; but to disappear, and who was it who disappeared? And in his own apartment at that! After taking all these circumstances into consideration, Major Kovalyov speculated that the likeliest explanation was that the blame fell on none other than Podtochina, the staff officer’s wife, who wanted him to marry her daughter. He did like to flirt with her, but he always avoided a definitive outcome. When the staff officer’s wife announced to him point-blank that she wanted to marry her daughter off to him, he quietly sailed away with his compliments, saying that he was still young, that he needed to be in the service for another five years so that he would be exactly forty-two years old.

And so the staff officer’s wife, probably in revenge, had decided to ruin him, and for this purpose she had hired some witchy-women, because it was impossible to imagine that the nose had been cut off. No one had come into his room; the barber Ivan Yakovlevich had shaved him on Wednesday, and all day Wednesday and even all day Thursday his nose had been intact. He remembered and knew this very well; moreover, he would have felt pain, and no doubt the wound could not have healed so quickly and been as smooth as a The Nose

\ 215

© Columbia University Press

216 \

The Nose

pancake. He tried to make plans mentally: Should he bring the staff officer’s wife to court by formal procedure, or should he go to see her himself and establish her guilt? His meditations were interrupted by a light that shone through all the cracks in the doors, which made him aware that Ivan had lit the candle in the entrance hall. Soon Ivan himself appeared, carrying it in front of him and brightly illuminating the whole room. Kovalyov’s first movement was to grab the kerchief and cover the place where his nose had been yesterday, so that the servant, who was indeed stupid, would not gape at this oddity on his master.

Ivan had hardly had time to go off into his kennel when an unfamiliar voice was heard in the entrance hall, saying: “Does Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov live here?”

“Come in. Major Kovalyov is here,” Kovalyov said, hastily jumping up and opening the door.

There entered a handsome police official with whiskers that were not too light but not dark either and somewhat plump cheeks, the same one who was standing at the end of Saint Isaac’s Bridge at the beginning of our story.

“Pray tell, did you lose your nose?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“It has been found.”

“What are you saying?” Major Kovalyov shouted. Joy took away his power of speech. He stared alertly at the police officer standing before him, on whose plump lips and cheeks the flickering light of the candle was gleaming. “How did it happen?”

“By a strange accident. We intercepted him when he was almost on his way out of town. He had already gotten into a post chaise and was planning to go to Riga. He had a passport that had long ago been drawn up in the name of a certain civil servant. The strange thing is that at first, I took him for a gentleman. But luckily, I had my glasses with me, and I immediately saw that it was a nose. You see,

© Columbia University Press

I’m nearsighted, and if you stand in front of me all I can see is that you have a face, but I can’t perceive either your nose or your beard, nothing. My mother-in-law, that is, my wife’s mother, also can’t see at all.”

Kovalyov was beside himself.

“Where is it? Where? I’ll run over there right now.”

“Don’t trouble yourself. Knowing that you need it, I brought it with me. The strange thing is that the main accessory in this affair is a swindler of a barber on Ascension Street, who is now sitting in the lockup. I’ve long suspected him of drunkenness and theft, and three days ago he swiped a dozen buttons from a store. Your nose is exactly the same as it was.”

At this the policeman reached into his pocket and pulled out the nose, wrapped in a piece of paper.

“Yes, that’s it!” Kovalyov shouted. “That’s really it! Please stay and have a cup of tea with me.”

“I would be most pleased to do so, but I cannot. From here I have to run over to the jail . . . The prices for all sorts of provisions have risen enormously . . . My mother-in-law lives with us, that is, my wife’s mother, and we have children; the eldest in particular shows great promise. He’s a very intelligent little boy, but we have absolutely no means of providing for his education.”

Kovalyov took the hint and, grabbing a red ten-ruble note from the table, he stuck it into the inspector’s hands. The inspector clicked his heels, went out the door, and at almost the same moment Kovalyov could hear his voice out on the street, where he was giving an admonition right in the teeth to a stupid peasant who had just driven his cart onto the boulevard.

After the policeman left, the collegiate assessor remained in a kind of indefinite state for a few minutes, and only several minutes later was he capable of seeing and feeling: such was the oblivion into which his unexpected joy had plunged him. He took the recovered The Nose

\ 217

© Columbia University Press

218 \

The Nose

nose into his cupped hands protectively and again inspected it attentively.

“Yes, that’s it, it’s really it!” Major Kovalyov said. “There’s the pimple on the left side that popped up yesterday.”

The major nearly burst out laughing from joy.

But nothing on this earth lasts for a long time, and thus even joy is not as vivid the second moment as it is the first; the third moment, it becomes still weaker, and finally it merges unnoticeably with the normal state of one’s soul, just as a circle created on the water by a falling pebble finally merges with the smooth surface.

Kovalyov began meditating and realized that the business was not over yet: The nose had been recovered, but it had to be stuck on, situated in its place.

“What if it won’t stick?”

At this question he had posed to himself, the major turned pale.

With a feeling of inexplicable terror, he rushed to the table and pulled the mirror close to him, so he would not by chance stick the nose on crookedly. His hands were trembling. Carefully and deliberately he applied it to its former place. Oh, horrors! The nose would not stick! He brought it up to his mouth, warmed it a little with his breath, and again brought it up to the smooth place located between his two cheeks; but the nose would not stay on by any means.

“Come on! Come on, now! Get on there, you idiot!” he said to it. But the nose seemed to be made of wood and kept falling to the table with a strange sound, as if it were a cork. The major’s face twisted convulsively. “Will it really not grow back on?” he said in fright. But no matter how many times he tried to put it into its very own place, his efforts were as unsuccessful as before.

He called Ivan and sent him to get the doctor who occupied the best apartment on the bel étage of the same building.17 This

© Columbia University Press

doctor was an impressive-looking man with beautiful pitch-black whiskers and a fresh, healthy doctor’s wife, a man who ate fresh apples in the morning and kept his mouth exceptionally clean, rinsing it every morning for almost three quarters of an hour and polishing his teeth with five different sorts of little brushes. The doctor arrived immediately. After asking how long ago the misfortune had occurred, he lifted Major Kovalyov by the chin and flicked him with his thumb on the very place where his nose had been before, causing the Major to throw his head back so hard that he hit the back of it against the wall. The physician said that this was all right, and after advising him to move away from the wall a little bit, he told him to first bend his head to the right, and after feeling the place where the nose had been before, he said, “Hmm!” Then he told him to bend his head to the left, and said, “Hmm!”— and in conclusion he again flicked him with his thumb, so that Major Kovalyov jerked his head like a horse whose teeth are being inspected. After carrying out this test, the physician shook his head and said: “No, it’s impossible. You’d better leave it like that, because you could make it even worse. Of course, one could stick it back on. I could probably stick it back on for you right now, but I assure you it would be worse for you.”

“That’s a fine thing! How am I supposed to remain without a nose?” Kovalyov said. “It couldn’t be any worse than it is now. It’s simply the devil knows what! Where can I show myself with this kind of pasquinadery? I have a fine set of acquaintances. For example, today I’m supposed to appear at evening parties in two different homes. I am acquainted with many people: the state councillor’s wife Chekhtaryova; Podtochina, the staff officer’s wife . . . although after what she’s done now, I won’t have any dealings with her except through the police. Would you be so kind,” Kovalyov uttered in an imploring voice, “is there no remedy? Just stick it on somehow.

Even if it isn’t good, if only it would stay on. I could even prop it up The Nose

\ 219

© Columbia University Press

220 \

The Nose

with my hand a little in dangerous situations. Moreover, I’ll refrain from dancing, so as not to harm it by some incautious movement.

Be assured, everything that relates to gratitude for your house calls, as far as my means allow . . .”

“Would you believe it,” the doctor said in a voice that was neither loud nor soft, but extremely affable and magnetic, “I never treat people for mercenary motives. That is against my principles and my healing art. It’s true, I do charge for house calls, but solely in order not to offend people by refusing. Of course, I would stick your nose back on, but I assure you on my honor, if you do not trust my words alone, that it would be much worse. You’d do better to leave it up to the action of nature itself. Wash the place often with cold water, and I assure you that without a nose you will be just as healthy as if you had it. And the nose itself I advise you to put into a jar full of alcohol or, even better, to pour in two tablespoons of aqua regia and warmed-up vinegar—and then you can charge a decent sum for it.18 I would even take it myself, as long as you don’t ask too high a price.”

“No, no! I won’t sell it for any sum!” Major Kovalyov screamed in desperation. “It would be better if it disappeared!”

“Excuse me!” the doctor said, taking his leave. “I just wanted to help you . . . What is to be done! At least you saw how hard I tried.”

After saying this, the doctor left the room with a noble bearing.

Kovalyov had not even perceived his face, and in his deep oblivion he saw only the cuffs of his shirt, white and clean as snow, peeping out of the sleeves of his black tailcoat.

He resolved the very next day, before making a formal complaint, to write to the staff officer’s wife to see whether she would agree to return to him that which she owed him. The content of the letter was as follows:

© Columbia University Press

My Dear Madam, Alexandra Grigoryevna!19 I cannot understand this strange action on your part. Please be assured that, by acting in such a manner, you will not gain anything and will not in the slightest coerce me into marrying your daughter.

Please believe me, I know all about the story with regard to my nose, just as the fact that you and no one other than you are the main accessories in this business. Its sudden separation from its place, its flight and disguise, now in the form of a civil servant, now in the form of itself, are nothing more than the result of sorcery carried out either by you or those who practice the same noble occupations as yourself. For my part I consider it my duty to advise you: If the abovementioned nose is not back in its place this very day, I will be compelled to resort to the defense and protection of the law.

However, with the greatest respect for you, I have the honor of being Your obedient servant, Platon Kovalyov My Dear Sir, Platon Kuzmich!

Your letter amazed me exceedingly. I must frankly admit that I did not at all expect it, especially with regard to the unjust reproaches on your part. I advise you that I never received in my home the civil servant you mention, either in disguise or in his true form. It’s true, Filipp Ivanovich Potanchikov has visited me. And although indeed he has sought the hand of my daughter, being himself of good, sober conduct and great erudition, I never gave him any hopes.

You also mention a nose. If you mean by this that I wished to lead you around by the nose, that is, to give you a formal refusal, I am amazed that you yourself are saying that, when I, as you well know,

The Nose

\ 221

© Columbia University Press

222 \

The Nose

was of the exact opposite opinion, and if you are now asking in a legitimate fashion for my daughter’s hand in marriage, I am prepared this very minute to give you satisfaction, for this has always been the object of my most keen desire, in hopes of which I remain always at your service, Alexandra Podtochina20

“No,” Kovalyov said after he had read the letter. “She is truly not guilty. It cannot be! The letter is written in a way that could not be written by a person who was guilty of a crime.” The collegiate assessor was conversant in this matter, because he had been sent on investigations several times when he was still in the Caucasus region. “By what means, by what fates did this occur? Only the devil can figure it out!” he said finally, dropping his hands in surrender.

Meanwhile rumors about this unusual event had spread throughout the whole capital, and as usual, not without special additions.

At that time, everyone’s minds were attuned to the extraordinary.

Not long ago the public had been fascinated by the experiments in the operation of magnetism. Also, the story of the dancing chairs on Stables Street was still fresh, and thus it is not surprising that soon people began to say that the nose of Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov was going for a walk on Nevsky Avenue every day at exactly three o’clock.21 Every day a multitude of curious people would gather. Someone said that supposedly the nose had been in Junker’s store—and such a crowd and crush formed near Junker’s store that the police had to intervene. One speculator of estimable appearance, with side-whiskers, who would sell various dry confectionary pastries in front of the entrance to the theater, built beautiful, durable wooden benches on purpose, and invited the curious to stand on them for eighty kopecks per customer. One distinguished colonel left home early in the morning for this very purpose and

© Columbia University Press

made his way through the crowd with great difficulty. But to his great indignation, he saw in the shop window instead of a nose an ordinary woolen undershirt and a lithographed picture depicting a girl straightening her stocking and a dandy with an open waistcoat and a small beard looking at her from behind a tree—a picture that had been hanging in the same place for more than ten years now.

Walking away, he said in vexation: “How can they confuse the people with such stupid and implausible rumors?”

Then a rumor spread that it wasn’t on Nevsky Avenue that Major Kovalyov’s nose was taking his walk, but in the Tauride Gardens, that supposedly he’d been there for a long time now; that when Khosrow Mirza had still been residing there, he had been quite amazed at this strange sport of nature.22 Several of the students from the Surgical Academy set off there. One prominent, estimable lady sent a special letter to the keeper of the gardens asking him to show her children this rare phenomenon and, if possible, to accompany it with an explication that would be instructive and edifying for youths.

All these incidents greatly gladdened the hearts of all those society men, indispensable guests at evening receptions, who loved to make ladies laugh, and whose reserves had been completely exhausted at this time. A small group of estimable and well-intentioned people were extremely unhappy. One gentleman said indignantly that he did not understand how in this enlightened age such absurd inventions could be spread, and that he was amazed that the government did not turn its attention to it. This gentleman, as we see, belonged to the category of gentlemen who would like to get the government mixed up in everything, even in their daily quarrels with their wives. Following this . . . but here again the whole event is hidden by a fog, and absolutely nothing is known about what happened then.

The Nose

\ 223

© Columbia University Press

224 \

The Nose

III Utter nonsense happens in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all: Suddenly that very nose who drove around in the rank of state councillor and caused such commotion in the city found himself, as if nothing had happened, in his place, that is, namely, between Major Kovalyov’s two cheeks. This happened on the seventh of April.23 After waking up and looking by chance into the mirror, he saw: the nose!—he grabbed it with his hand—it was really the nose! “Oho!” Kovalyov said, and in his joy he nearly started dancing a barefoot trepak all over his room, but the entrance of Ivan prevented him.24 He ordered that he be given his washing accoutrements immediately, and as he washed he looked at himself in the mirror one more time: the nose! As he dried himself with a towel, he looked in the mirror again: the nose!

“Ivan, take a look, it seems I have a pimple on my nose,” he said, and meanwhile he was thinking, “It’ll be bad if Ivan says: No, sir, not only is there no pimple, there’s no nose either!”

But Ivan said: “No, sir, there’s no pimple: The nose is clean!”

“Excellent, the devil take it!” the major said to himself and snapped his fingers. At that moment the barber Ivan Yakovlevich peeped in the door, but as timorously as a cat who’s just been whipped for stealing fatback.

“Tell me in advance: Are your hands clean?” Kovalyov shouted at him when he was still at a distance.

“Yes, they are.”

“You’re lying!”

“Honest to God, sir, they’re clean.”

“Well, just watch out.”

Kovalyov took a seat. Ivan Yakovlevich covered him with a cloth, and in one instant, with the help of his brush, he turned his whole

© Columbia University Press

chin and part of his cheek into the kind of crème that is served at merchants’ birthday parties.

“Just look at that!” Ivan Yakovlevich said to himself, looking at the nose, and then he bent Kovalyov’s head the other way and looked at it from the side. “There it is! Well, really, what do you know,” he continued, and looked at the nose for a long time. Finally, gently, with the kind of protectiveness one can only imagine, he raised two fingers in order to grab it by its little tip. This was Ivan Yakovlevich’s system.

“Now, now, now, watch out!” Kovalyov shouted.

Ivan Yakovlevich dropped his hands in surrender. He was dumbfounded and more flustered than he had ever been. Finally he began carefully tickling Kovalyov under his chin with the razor, and although it was extremely inconvenient and difficult for him to shave without holding onto the sniffing part of the body, nevertheless, somehow resting his rough thumb on Kovalyov’s cheek and lower gum, he finally overcame all obstacles and shaved him.

When everything was done, Kovalyov hastened to get dressed immediately, hired a cab, and went right to the pastry shop. As he entered, he shouted while still at a distance: “Boy, give me a cup of hot chocolate!” And at the same moment he went up to the mirror: There was the nose! He cheerfully turned back and with a satirical air, slightly squinting, looked at two military men, one of whom had a nose no bigger than a waistcoat button. Then he set off for the office of the department in which he was trying to wangle a position as a vice-governor, and if that failed, then as an administrator.

Passing through the waiting room, he glanced into the mirror: There was the nose! Then he went to see another collegiate assessor, or major, a great joker, to whom he often said in reply to various prickly remarks: “Oh, I know you, you’re a real needler!” On the way he thought: “If even the Major doesn’t split his sides laughing when he sees me, then that’s a sure sign that every blessed thing is The Nose

\ 225

© Columbia University Press

226 \

The Nose

sitting in its proper place.” But the collegiate assessor showed no sign. “Good, good, the devil take it!” Kovalyov thought to himself.

Along the way he encountered the staff officer’s wife Podtochina with her daughter, bowed to them, and was greeted with joyful exclamations: That meant it was all right, he had no visible damage.

He spent a long time talking to them and, taking out his snuffbox on purpose, he spent a long time in front of them stuffing his nose at both entrances, saying to himself, “There you go, you womenfolk, you tribe of hens! And all the same I won’t marry your daughter. Just for the fun of it, par amour, if you wish!” And from that time Major Kovalyov went promenading around, as if nothing had happened, on Nevsky Avenue, and in the theaters, and everywhere. And the nose also sat on his face as if nothing had happened, showing no sign that he had absented himself in all directions. And after that Major Kovalyov was always seen in a good humor, smiling, running after absolutely all the pretty ladies, and even stopping once at a store in the Gostiny Dvor shopping arcade and buying the ribbon for an Order of some sort, no one knows for what reason, because he himself was not a knight of any Order at all.

So that is the story that happened in the northern capital city of our vast nation! Only now, after thinking it all over, do we see that there is a lot about it that is implausible. Not even to speak of the fact that the supernatural separation of the nose and his appearance in various places in the form of a state councillor is indeed strange— how did Kovalyov not realize that you cannot go to a newspaper office to place an advertisement about a nose? I’m not saying this because I think it costs too much to pay for an advertisement: That’s nonsense, and I am not one of those mercenary people. But it’s unseemly, it’s awkward, it’s not good! And also—how did the nose find itself in a baked loaf of bread, and what about Ivan Yakovlevich himself? . . . No, I can’t understand this at all, I absolutely do not understand! But the strangest and most incomprehensible thing

© Columbia University Press

of all—is that writers can choose such plots. I confess, this is quite unfathomable, this is really . . . no, no, I do not understand at all. In the first place, there is absolutely no benefit to the fatherland; in the second place . . . but in the second place there’s no benefit either.

I simply do not know what it is . . .

But for all that, although, of course, one may concede both this, that, and the other, one may even . . . well, but aren’t there preposterous things everywhere? All the same, after all, when you really think about it, truly, there is something to all this. No matter what you say, such events do happen in the world—they happen rarely, but they do happen.

The Nose

\ 227

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

ROME (A Fragment)

T

ry to look at the lightning when it splits the coal-black storm clouds and unbearably shivers out a whole flood of brilliance. Such are the eyes of Annunziata, a woman from Albano.1 Everything about her recalls those ancient times when marble came to life and sculptors’ chisels gleamed. Her thick pitch-black hair rises in two rings of a weighty plait over her head and spills onto her neck in four long curls. No matter which way she turns the radiant snow of her face, her image has been entirely engraved on your heart. If she stands in profile—her profile breathes a wondrous nobility, and a beauty of line is drawn such that no brush has ever created. If she turns her nape with her marvelous hair tucked up high, showing her gleaming neck shining from behind, and the beauty of shoulders the like of which the world has never seen—even then she is a miracle! But most miraculous of all is when she looks directly with her eyes into your eyes, striking cold and faintness into your heart. Her rich voice rings like copper. No lithe panther can compare with her in the swiftness, power, and pride of its movements. Everything in her is the crown of creation,

© Columbia University Press

230 \

Rome

from her shoulders to her classical breathing leg and to the last toe of her foot. No matter where she goes, she carries a painting with her: If she hurries to the fountain in the evening with a hammered copper vase on her head—all the surroundings that embrace her are penetrated by a marvelous harmony: The miraculous lines of the Alban Hills recede more ethereally into the distance, the depths of the Roman sky are a darker blue, the cypress tree flies upward more straightly, and the Roman stone pine, that beauty among southern trees, is outlined against the sky more finely and purely with its umbrella-shaped crown, which almost floats in the air.

And everything—the fountain itself, where the women of Albano have already crowded together into a swarm on the marble steps, one above the other, talking to one another in their strong silvery voices, as the water spurts in a sonorous diamantine arc into the copper tubs they hold up to the fountain in turn—the fountain itself, and the crowd itself—everything, it seems, is there for her, in order to display her triumphant beauty more brightly, in order that one could see how she is the leader of all, just as an empress is the leader of her court retinue.

On a feast day, when the dark gallery of trees leading from Albano to Castel Gandolfo is all full of festively dressed folk, when under its dusky vaults one can glimpse foppish minenti in their velvet finery, with bright sashes and a golden flower on their felt hats; donkeys plod along or rush at a gallop with half-closed eyes, picturesquely carrying the shapely and strong women of Albano and Frascati, whose white headdresses glisten into the distance; or not at all picturesquely, with difficulty and stumbling, they drag along a tall motionless Englishman in a pea-green waterproof mackintosh, who has crooked his legs into a sharp angle, so as not to catch onto the ground with them; or they carry an artist in a smock, with a wooden box on a strap and a cunning Van Dyck beard; and the shadows and the sun pass by turns over the whole group—even then, even on

© Columbia University Press

that feast day, it is far better with her present than without her.2 Out of the dusky darkness in the depths of the gallery she emerges, all sparkling, all brilliance. The purple cloth of her Albano finery flashes like a hot coal touched by the sun. A marvelous feast day flies out of her face to meet everyone. And after encountering her they all stop as if rooted to the ground—the foppish minente with the flower behind his hat, who utters an involuntary exclamation; and the Englishman in the pea-green mackintosh, displaying a question mark on his immobile face; and the artist with the Van Dyck beard, who stops in one spot longer than anyone else, thinking: “There you would have a marvelous model for Diana, for proud Juno, for the seductive Graces, and for all women who have ever been transferred to canvas!”—and at the same time thinking audaciously: “There you would have a paradise, if such a marvel were to adorn my humble studio forever!”

And who is that man whose gaze is fixedly following her even more irresistibly? Who is keeping watch over her talk, her movements, and the movements of the thoughts on her face? A twentyfive-year-old youth, a Roman prince, the descendant of a family that at one time was the honor, pride, and ignominy of the Middle Ages, and is now desolately fading away in a magnificent palace filled with frescoes by Guercino and the Caraccis, with a gallery of darkened pictures, with faded damasks, lapis lazuli tables, and a maestro di casa* whose hair is white as snow.3 Not long ago the prince could be seen on the Roman streets, with his dark eyes shooting their fiery lights from behind the cloak thrown over his shoulder, with a nose contoured in a classical line, with the ivory whiteness of his brow and the wafting silky tress cast onto that brow. He had appeared in Rome after a fifteen years’ absence, a proud youth instead of the child he had been only recently. * butler

Rome

\ 231

© Columbia University Press

232 \

Rome

But the reader absolutely must know how all this came to pass, and so we will hastily run through the story of his life, which was still young but already abundant in many powerful impressions.

His early childhood passed in Rome. He was educated in the usual way for Roman grandees whose families are living out their last days. The role of teacher, tutor, under-tutor, and everything else was played by a priest, a strict classicist, an admirer of the letters of Pietro Bembo, the works of Giovanni della Casa, and five or six of Dante’s cantos, which he would read, inevitably accompanying the reading with powerful exclamations: “Dio, che cosa divina!” *—and then two lines later: “Diavolo, che divina cosa!” †—which constituted the whole of his artistic evaluation and critique, after which he would turn the conversation to broccoli and artichokes, his favorite subject, since he knew very well which was the best season to eat veal and in which month one should start eating kid goat, who loved to chat about all this when he met his fellow priest friend on the street, who very cleverly covered his fat calves in tight black silk stockings after first sticking woolen ones under them, and who regularly once a month did a purge with the medicine olio di ricino in a cup of coffee, and who got fatter with every day and hour, as all priests do.4 Naturally, the young prince did not learn much under such tutelage. He learned only that the Latin language is the father of Italian, that there are three sorts of monsignors—one sort who wear black stockings, another who wear lilac stockings, and the third sort who are almost the same as cardinals; he learned several letters from Pietro Bembo to the cardinals of his day, mostly congratulatory ones; he learned very well the Via del Corso, where he went for walks with the priest, and the Villa Borghese, and two or three shops where the priest would stop to buy paper, pens, and * Oh God, what a divine thing! † Oh devil, what a divine thing!

© Columbia University Press

snuff, and the apothecary shop where he bought his olio di ricino.5 This constituted the entire horizon of information for the pupil.

The priest hinted in vague and unsteady outlines about other lands and states: that there is the land of France, a rich land, that the English are good merchants and love to travel, that Germans are drunkards, and that in the north there is the barbarian land of Muscovy, where they have such cold frosts that they can cause the human brain to burst. The pupil would probably not have gone further than this in his information until he reached the age of twenty-five, if the old prince had not suddenly gotten it into his head to change the old method of upbringing and give his son a European education, a decision that might partly be attributed to the influence of a certain French lady at whom he had recently started constantly directing his lorgnette in all the theaters and festive gatherings, continually sticking his chin into his huge white lace frill and tidying the black curl of his wig.

The young prince was sent to Lucca to the university. During his six-year stay there, his vivid Italian nature, which had drowsed under the boring supervision of the priest, unfolded. It turned out that the youth had a soul eager for choice delights and an observant mind. The Italian university, where scholarship dragged along, hidden in stale scholastic forms, could not satisfy modern youth, which was already sensing vivid, fragmentary hints of real scholarship that were flying across the Alps. The French influence became noticeable in northern Italy. It was wafted there along with fashions, vignettes, vaudevilles, and the high-strung products of the unbridled French muse, a muse that was monstrous, ardent, but sometimes not devoid of signs of talent.6 The powerful political movement in the newspapers, beginning with the July Revolution, found a response even here. People dreamed of a return to Italy’s perished glory, and they looked with indignation at the hateful white uniform of the Austrian soldier.7 But the Italian nature, which Rome

\ 233

Š Columbia University Press

234 \

Rome

loved peaceful pleasures, did not flare up in a rebellion, the kind a Frenchman would not hesitate to start; everything ended with just an insuperable desire to spend time in Europe beyond the Alps, the real Europe. Its eternal movement and brilliance flashed enticingly in the distance. That is where newness was, the opposite of Italian decrepitude, that is where the nineteenth century and European life were beginning. The soul of the young prince powerfully strove to go there, hoping for adventures and society, and a heavy feeling of sadness overcame him each time he saw how utterly impossible this was. He knew the unbending despotism of the old prince, with whom it was beyond his power to get along—when suddenly he received a letter from him, which commanded him to go to Paris, to finish his studies in the university there, and to wait in Lucca only for the arrival of his uncle in order to set off together with him.

The young prince jumped for joy, kissed all his friends, treated them all in an osteria* outside town, and two weeks later he was on his way, with a heart ready to encounter every object with joyful pounding. When they had crossed the Simplon Pass, a pleasant thought ran through his head: He was on the other side, he was in Europe! The wild hideousness of the Swiss mountains, which were piled up without perspective, without ethereal distances, somewhat horrified his gaze, which was accustomed to the loftily calm, coddling beauty of Italian nature. But he brightened up at the sight of the European cities, the magnificent bright hotels, the conveniences that were arranged for the traveler, who could make himself comfortable as if he were at home. The dandified cleanliness, the brilliance—all of this was new to him.

In the German cities he was somewhat struck by the strange formation of the German’s body, deprived of the shapely harmony of beauty, the feeling for which is innate to the Italian breast; * tavern

© Columbia University Press

the German language also struck unpleasantly on his musical ear.

But already he saw the French border before him, and his heart shuddered. The fluttering sounds of the fashionable European language caressed and kissed his hearing. With secret pleasure he caught their slippery rustle, which back in Italy had seemed to him something lofty, purified of all convulsive movements of the kind that accompany the powerful languages of the southern people, who do not know how to keep themselves within bounds. An even greater impression was made on him by a particular sort of woman—ethereal and fluttering. He was struck by this evanescent creature with her barely defined ethereal forms, with her small foot, with her slender airy figure, with the responsive fire in her gazes, and with her ethereal, almost unarticulated speeches. He awaited Paris with impatience, populated it with towers, palaces, created his own image of it, and finally, with trembling heart, he caught sight of the imminent signs of the capital city: glued-up posters, gigantic letters, multiplying post chaises, omnibuses . . . finally the houses of the faubourg began to fly by.

And now he was in Paris, disjointedly embraced by its monstrous exterior, struck by the movement, the brilliant streets, the disorder of roofs, the thicket of chimneys, the unarchitectural joined-together masses of houses, of stores all pasted up with dense patchwork, the hideousness of the bare, unsupported side walls, the innumerable mixed-up crowds of golden letters that crawled onto the walls, the windows, the roofs, and even the chimneys, the bright transparency of the lower stories, consisting entirely of mirrorlike panes of glass. There it is, Paris, that eternally agitated volcanic crater, that fountain sending out the sparks of news, enlightenment, fashion, elegant taste, and petty but powerful laws, from which even those who condemn them are powerless to tear themselves away, that great exhibition of everything produced by craftsmanship, artistry, and every talent hidden in the obscure corners of Europe, Rome

\ 235

© Columbia University Press

236 \

Rome

the thrill and the favorite dream of a twenty-year-old man, the exchange and trade fair of Europe! Like one thunderstruck, unable to collect himself, he started walking through streets that were filled to the brim with all kinds of people and striated by the routes of the moving omnibuses, impressed now by the sight of a café that sparkled with unheard-of kingly decoration, now by the famous covered arcades, where he was deafened by the muffled sound of several thousand noisy steps of the crowd moving in one mass, which consisted almost entirely of young people, and where he was blinded by the throbbing brilliance of stores illuminated by light that fell through the glass ceiling into the gallery; now stopping in front of posters that appeared before his eyes by the millions in a motley crowd, shouting about twenty-four daily performances and an innumerable multitude of all sorts of musical concerts; now finally losing his bearings completely, when this whole magical pile flared up in the evening by the magical illumination of gaslight—all the buildings suddenly became transparent, shining powerfully from below; the windows and panes of glass in the stores seemed to disappear, to vanish completely, and everything that lay inside them was left out on the street unguarded, sparkling and reflected by the mirrors into the depths.8 “Ma quest’è una cosa divina!”* the lively Italian kept repeating.

His life began to flow by in a lively way, in the same way as the life of many Parisians and the crowd of young foreigners who come to Paris. At nine o’clock in the morning, having leaped out of bed, he was already in a magnificent café with fashionable frescoes behind glass, with a ceiling covered in gold, with the long pages of journals and newspapers, with a noble flunky passing among the customers carrying a magnificent silver coffeepot in his hand. There he drank his thick coffee out of an enormous cup with sybaritic delight, * What a divine thing this is!

© Columbia University Press

lounging on an elastic, springy divan and recalling the low-ceilinged, dark Italian cafés with an untidy bottega carrying unwashed glasses.

Then he got started reading the colossal journal pages and recalled the sickly, nasty journals in Italy, the Diario di Roma, Il Pirato, and others like that, where they published harmless political news and anecdotes that might almost have been about Thermopylae and King Darius of Persia.9 Here, on the contrary, a seething pen was visible everywhere.

Question after question, exclamation after exclamation—it seemed everyone was bristling with all their might: This one threatened that things were about to change and foretold the destruction of the state.

Every barely noticeable movement of the Chambers and of the ministries swelled into a movement of enormous scope between refractory parties and was heard as an almost desperate cry in the journals.10 The Italian even felt terrified as he read them, thinking that a revolution was going to flare up the next day. He left the periodical room as if in a daze, and only Paris itself with its streets could instantly drive this whole burden out of his head.

Its brilliance that fluttered over everything and its motley movement, after this heavy reading, seemed like ethereal little flowers running along the edge of an abyss. In one instant he was entirely transplanted to the street and became an utter gawker, just like everyone else. He gawked at the bright, ethereal saleswomen, just entering their spring prime, who filled all the Paris stores, as if the stern appearance of a man would be unseemly and would flash as a black spot behind the sheet-glass windows. He watched their chic slender hands, washed in all sorts of soaps, alluringly sparkling as they wrapped candy in paper, while their eyes were fixed brightly and attentively on the passersby; in another place he watched the silhouette of a light-haired little head that bent picturesquely, dropping its long eyelashes to the pages of a fashionable novel, not seeing that a swarm of young men had gathered around her, examining her ethereal snowy little neck and every little hair on her head, listening Rome

\ 237

© Columbia University Press

238 \

Rome

to the very oscillation of her breast produced by her reading. He also gawked at a bookshop, where black vignettes appeared darkly, like spiders, on ivory paper, vignettes that were flung onto the paper boldly, in the heat of the moment, so that sometimes it was impossible to make out what they were, and the strange letters looked like hieroglyphics. He also gawked at a machine that occupied an entire store all by itself and operated behind a mirrorlike glass, rolling an enormous drum to pulverize chocolate. He gawked at shops where the Paris “crocodiles” would stop for whole hours at a time, hands stuck in their pockets and mouths wide open, where a huge red lobster lay on a bed of greens, a turkey stuffed with truffles showed its bulk, with the laconic inscription “300 francs,” and yellow and red fish flashed their golden feathers and tails in glass vases.11 He also gawked at the broad boulevards that regally passed across all of crowded Paris, where in the midst of the city, trees the size of six-story buildings stood, where onto the asphalt sidewalks flocked a crowd of visitors and a swarm of homegrown Parisian lions and tigers, not always accurately depicted in stories. And having gawked to his heart’s content and to satiety, he climbed up to a restaurant where the mirrored walls had long been shining with gaslight, reflecting innumerable crowds of ladies and men, talking loudly as they sat at the small tables scattered around the room.

After dinner he hurried to the theater, only bewildered about which one to choose: Each one of them had its own celebrity, each one had its author, its actor. Newness was everywhere. Over there gleams a vaudeville, lively and flighty as a Frenchman himself, new every day, entirely created during three minutes of leisure, making people laugh from beginning to end thanks to the inexhaustible caprices of the actor’s gaiety; over there is a passionate drama. And he couldn’t help but compare the dry, meager dramatic stage of Italy, where they just kept repeating old man Goldoni, which everyone knew by heart, or new little comedies, so innocent and naive that

© Columbia University Press

they would bore a child; he compared that meager group with this lively, hurried dramatic deluge, where everything was forged while the iron was hot, where everyone feared only that newness would grow cold.12 After laughing, getting excited, and looking his fill, weary and exhausted by his impressions, he would return home and fling himself onto his bed, which as everyone knows is the only thing a Frenchman needs in his room; he uses public places for his study, dinner, and evening illumination.

Nevertheless, the prince did not forget to combine all this multifarious gawking with the occupations of the mind, which his soul impatiently demanded. He undertook to hear all the famous professors. The lively and often ecstatic speech, the new points and aspects noted by the loquacious professor, were unexpected for the young Italian. He felt the scales starting to fall from his eyes, he felt objects he had never noticed before rising before him in a new, bright form, and the odds and ends of knowledge he had picked up, which for most people die for lack of use, awakened and, regarded with a new eye, became firmly established in his memory forever.

He also made sure not to miss a single famous preacher, social commentator, orator in Chamber debates, or any of the things Paris makes a loud noise in Europe with. Despite the fact that he didn’t always have the means, and that the old prince sent him an allowance for a student, not for a prince, nevertheless he managed to find the opportunity to be everywhere, to obtain access to all the celebrities the European tabloid newspapers were trumpeting as they repeated one another, he even came face to face with those fashionable writers whose strange works had struck his young, ardent soul as well as the souls of others, and in whom everyone thought they heard strings that had not before been touched, twists of the passions that had not before been captured. In short, the life of the Italian took on a broad, multifarious form, embraced by the whole vast brilliance of European activity. All at once, in a Rome

\ 239

© Columbia University Press

240 \

Rome

single day—carefree gawking and agitated arousal, easy work for the eyes and a strained mind, a vaudeville in a theater, a preacher in a church, the political whirlwind of journals and parliament Chambers, applause in auditoriums, the overwhelming thunder of the Conservatory orchestra, the airy gleaming of the dancing stage, the loud clatter of street life—what a gigantic life for a twenty-five-year-old youth! There is no better place than Paris; he would not exchange such a life for anything. What happiness and pleasure to live in the very heart of Europe, where as you walk you rise up higher, you feel that you are a member of the great universal society! The thought even began to spin in his head that he would renounce Italy entirely and stay forever in Paris. Italy now seemed to him to be a dark, moldy corner of Europe, where all life and movement had died out.

So passed four fiery years of his life—four years that were exceedingly significant for the youth—and toward the end of them many things appeared in a different form than they had before. He became disenchanted with many things. Paris itself, which eternally draws foreigners to it, the eternal passion of the Parisians, seemed to him much, much different than it had before. He saw how all the multifariousness and activity of its life disappeared without conclusion or fruitful spiritual residue. In the movement of its eternal seething and activity, he now saw a strange inactivity, a terrible realm of words instead of deeds. He saw how every Frenchman seemed to work only in his own red-hot head; how this reading of huge journal pages ate up the whole day and did not leave a single hour for practical life; how every Frenchman was brought up on this strange whirlwind of bookish politics that was moved by printing presses, and while still alien to the class to which he belonged, still not having learned in practice all his rights and relationships, he adhered to one party or another, ardently and passionately took all its interests to heart, stood fiercely against his opponents without yet knowing by sight either his own interests, or those of

© Columbia University Press

his opponents . . . and the Italian finally became heartily sick of the very word “politics.”

In the movement of trade, the intellect, everywhere, in everything, he saw only a strained effort and striving for newness. One person endeavored with all his might to gain the upper hand over another, if only for one moment. The merchant used all his capital for the decoration of his store alone, in order to entice the crowd with brilliance and magnificence. Book literature resorted to illustrations and typographical luxury in order to attract people’s cooled attention. Stories and novels endeavored to seize the reader with the strangeness of unheard-of passions, the monstrosity of exceptions to human nature. Everything seemed to insolently obtrude itself and offer itself without being invited, like a lewd woman who tries to catch a man on the street; everything tried to stretch its hand higher than the others, like a surrounding crowd of annoying beggars. In scholarship itself, in its inspired lectures, the merit of which he could not help but acknowledge, he now noticed everywhere the desire to show off, to boast, to display oneself; everywhere there were brilliant episodes, but not the solemn, majestic flow of the entire whole. Everywhere there were efforts to raise up facts that had not before been noticed and to give them a huge influence, sometimes to the detriment of the harmony of the whole, in order to keep for oneself the honor of a discovery; finally, almost everywhere there was audacious self-assurance and nowhere the humble consciousness of one’s own ignorance—and he recalled a verse with which the Italian Alfieri, in a caustic spiritual mood, had reproached the French: Tutto fanno, nulla sanno, Tutto sanno, nulla fanno; Gira volta son Francesi, Più gli pesi, men ti danno.13 Rome

\ 241

© Columbia University Press

242 \

Rome

He was seized by a melancholy spiritual mood. In vain did he try to distract himself, to become friends with the people he respected, but his Italian nature was incompatible with the French element.14 Friendship would start up quickly, but in a single day the Frenchman would manifest himself down to the last trait: The next day there was nothing more to learn about him, one could not dip into his soul with a question further than a certain depth, the point of a thought would pierce no further; and the Italian’s feelings were too strong to encounter a full response in the Frenchman’s light nature.

And he found a kind of strange emptiness even in the hearts of those whom he could not help but respect. He saw finally that, for all its brilliant features, for all its noble impulses, its chivalrous flashes, the whole nation was something pale, incomplete, the kind of ethereal vaudeville that it had itself originated. No majestically sedate idea could take repose in it. Everywhere there were hints of an idea but no ideas themselves; everywhere there were semi-passions but no passions, everything was unfinished, tossed off, sketched with a swift hand; the whole nation was a brilliant vignette, not the painting of a great master.

Whether it was that the spleen that had abruptly overcome him gave him the possibility of seeing everything this way, or whether it was the Italian’s inner feeling, true and fresh—one or the other, but Paris with all its brilliance and noise quickly became an oppressive wilderness for him, and he involuntarily chose its obscure, remote extremities. He went only to the Italian opera now, only there did his soul seem to take rest, and the sounds of his native language now grew before him in all their potency and plenitude. And the Italy he had forgotten began to appear to him more frequently, in the distance, in a kind of enticing light; with each day its beckoning calls became more audible, and he finally decided to write to his father to ask permission to return to Rome, saying that he saw no need to remain in Paris any longer. For two months he got no answer,

© Columbia University Press

nor even the usual bills of exchange that he should have long ago received. At first, he waited impatiently, knowing the capricious character of his father, but finally he was overcome by anxiety.

Several times a week he visited his banker, and he always got the same answer, that there was no news from Rome. Despair was about to flare up in his soul. His means of support had long ago run out, he had long ago taken out a loan from his banker, but that money too had long ago been spent, he had long been dining, breakfasting, and living by means of haphazard debts; people were starting to look at him askance and unpleasantly—if only he had had some kind of news from any of his friends. At this moment he powerfully felt his solitude.

In anxious expectation he wandered in this city that had wearied him to death. In the summer he found it all the more intolerable: The visiting crowds had scattered off to the mineral waters, to the hotels and roads of Europe. The phantom of emptiness could be seen in everything. The houses and streets of Paris were unbearable, its gardens languished crushingly between houses scorched by the sun. Like a dead man he would stop on a massive, heavy bridge overlooking the Seine, on its stifling embankment, trying in vain to lose himself in something, to gaze at something with absorption; a boundless anguish was devouring him, and a nameless worm was gnawing at his heart. Finally, fate had mercy on him—and one day the banker handed over a letter. It was from his uncle, who informed him that the old prince was no more, and that he could come to dispose of his inheritance, which required his personal presence, because it was in great disarray. Enclosed with the letter was a meager banknote that would hardly be enough for the journey and for paying off a quarter of his debts. The young prince did not want to delay a single moment; he managed somehow to persuade the banker to defer the debt, and he took a place in an express coach.

Rome

\ 243

© Columbia University Press

244 \

Rome

It seemed as if a terrible weight fell from his soul when Paris disappeared from sight and the fresh air of the fields breathed on him. In two days he was already in Marseille, he did not want to rest for even an hour, and the same evening he transferred to a steamer.

The Mediterranean Sea seemed like home to him: It washed the shores of his fatherland; he already felt fresher merely looking at its endless waves. It would be difficult to explain the feeling that enveloped him at the sight of the first Italian city—it was magnificent Genoa. Its motley campaniles, striped churches built of white and black marble, and its whole multitowered amphitheater, which suddenly surrounded him from all sides, rose before him in twofold beauty when the steamer arrived at the dock. He had never seen Genoa before. The playful motley of houses, churches, and palaces in the fine air of the sky, which gleamed with an inconceivable blueness, was unique. After descending to the shore, he suddenly found himself in those dark, marvelous, narrow streets paved with flagstones, with only a narrow little strip of blue sky overhead. He was struck by the closeness between the tall, huge houses, the absence of the clatter of carriages, the little triangular squares, and the crooked lines of the streets that passed between them like tight corridors, filled with the shops of the Genoese silversmiths and goldsmiths. The picturesque lace veils of the women, barely stirred by the warm sirocco; their firm step and ringing talk in the streets; the open doors of the churches, the smell of incense that wafted out of them—all this breathed on him with something distant, something past. He remembered that for many years he had not been in church, which had lost its pure, lofty significance in those intellectual lands of Europe where he had been. He went in quietly and knelt in silence by the magnificent marble columns and prayed for a long time, himself not knowing for what: He prayed that Italy had accepted him, that the desire to pray had descended on him, that his soul felt festive—and this prayer was probably the best one.

© Columbia University Press

In short, he carried Genoa along with him as a beautiful stopover: It was there that he received Italy’s first kiss.

With the same luminous feeling he saw Livorno, unpopulated Pisa, and Florence, which he had not known well before. The heavy faceted dome of its cathedral, the dark palaces of regal architecture, and the austere grandeur of the small city looked at him majestically.

Then he hurried across the Appenines, accompanied by the same bright spiritual mood, and when, after a six-day journey, he saw in the luminous distance, against the pure sky, the marvelously rounded dome—oh! How many feelings crowded together at once in his breast!15 He did not know and could not convey them; he examined every little hill and declivity. And now, finally, here was the Ponte Molle, the city gates, and now he was embraced by that beauty among squares, the Piazza del Popolo; he saw Monte Pincio with its terraces, staircases, statues, and people strolling on the heights.16 My God! How his heart began to pound! The cab rushed along the Via del Corso, where he had once walked with the priest when he was innocent and simplehearted and knew only that the Latin language is the father of Italian. Now again all the buildings he knew by heart appeared before him: Palazzo Ruspoli with its enormous café, Piazza Colonna, Palazzo Sciarra, Palazzo Doria; finally, he turned into the lanes that are so reviled by foreigners, lanes not seething with life, where one encountered only occasionally the shop of a barber with lilies painted over the door, and the shop of a hatter, with a broad-brimmed cardinal’s hat sticking out of the door, and a nasty little shop where wicker chairs were made right there on the street.17 Finally, the coach stopped in front of a palace in the style of Bramante.18 There was no one in the bare, untidy entrance hall. On the staircase he was met by the decrepit maestro di casa, because the doorman with his mace had as usual gone to the café, where he spent all his time. The old man ran to open the shutters and to Rome

\ 245

© Columbia University Press

246 \

Rome

gradually illuminate the stately halls. A sad feeling took possession of the prince—a feeling that can be understood by anyone who comes home after several years of absence, when every single thing seems even older and emptier, and when every object one knew in childhood speaks oppressively—and the more cheerful the incidents connected to it were, the more crushing the sadness they convey to the heart. He passed through a long row of halls, inspected the study and bedroom where not so long ago the old owner of the palace would fall asleep in his bed under a canopy with tassels and a coat of arms, and then would go out to his study in his dressing gown and slippers to drink a glass of donkey’s milk, for the purpose of putting on weight; the dressing room, where he would primp with the refined care of an old coquette and then set off in a carriage with his footmen for a stroll at the Villa Borghese, constantly directing his lorgnette at an Englishwoman who also came there to have a stroll. On the tables and in the drawers, one could still see the remnants of the rouge, white pigment, and all sorts of ointments that the old man used to make himself look younger. The maestro di casa declared that two weeks before his death he had formed the firm intention of getting married and had consulted on purpose with foreign doctors about how he could maintain con onore i doveri di marito; but that one day, after he had made two or three visits to some cardinals and a prior, he returned home exhausted, sat in his armchair, and died the death of a righteous man, although his death would have been even more blessed if, as the maestro di casa said, he had thought to send two minutes earlier for his father confessor, il padre Benvenuto.19 The young prince listened to all this absentmindedly, not applying his thoughts to anything.

After resting from his journey and his strange impressions, he started dealing with his own affairs. He was struck by their terrible disorder. Everything from small to large was in a senseless, entangled state. Four endless lawsuits over crumbling palaces and lands

© Columbia University Press

in Ferrara and Naples, income laid waste for three years in advance, debts and beggarly scarcity amid magnificence—that is what met his eye. The old prince was an incomprehensible combination of miserliness and opulence. He kept an enormous staff of servants, who never received any wages, nothing but their liveries, and contented themselves with handouts from the foreigners who came to see the picture gallery. The prince had gamekeepers, stewards, footmen who rode out with him on the back of his carriage, footmen who never rode anywhere and would sit all day long in the neighboring café or osteria, talking all kinds of nonsense. He immediately dismissed all this riffraff, all the gamekeepers and huntsmen, and kept only the old maestro di casa; he abolished the stables almost entirely, selling the horses that were never used; he summoned lawyers and disposed of his lawsuits, or at least made it so that of the four only two remained, abandoning the others as being completely useless; he resolved to limit himself in everything and to lead his life with the strictest economy. This was not hard for him to do, because he had become accustomed early on to limiting himself. He also had no difficulty in renouncing any association with his own class—which, by the way, consisted of only two or three families that were living out their days, a society that had been brought up haphazardly on the echoes of French education, plus a rich banker who gathered a circle of foreigners around himself, plus some unapproachable cardinals, unsociable and hard-hearted people who spent their time in seclusion, playing tresette (a form of the “fools” card game) with their butler or barber.20 In short, he utterly secluded himself, he started to study Rome, and in that respect he started to resemble a foreigner who at first is struck by its petty, lackluster exterior, by its stained, dark houses, and asks in bewilderment as he wanders from lane to lane: Where is the enormous, ancient Rome?—and then he recognizes it, when little by little out of the cramped lanes, ancient Rome Rome

\ 247

© Columbia University Press

248 \

Rome

begins to emerge, here in a dark archway, there in a marble cornice embedded in a wall, here in a darkened porphyry column, there in a pediment in the midst of a stinking fish market, here in an intact portico in front of a modern church; and finally in the distance, where the living city ends entirely, it rises tremendously amidst thousand-year-old ivies and aloes in the middle of the open plains in the form of the immense Colosseum, triumphal arches, the remains of the boundless palaces of the Caesars, the imperial baths, temples, and tombs, scattered about the fields; and the stranger no longer sees its present-day cramped streets and lanes, he is all enveloped by the ancient world: In his memory arise the colossal images of the Caesars; the shouts and applause of the ancient crowd strike his ear . . .

But he was not like a foreigner devoted only to Livy and Tacitus, who runs past everything to get to the ancient world, wishing in a burst of noble pedantry to level the whole modern city to the ground—no, he found everything equally beautiful: the ancient world, which stirred from under a dark architrave; the powerful Middle Ages, which had left everywhere the traces of artist-giants and the magnificent largesse of the popes; and finally, stuck onto them both, the new age with its thronging new population.21 He liked the way they merged into one, he liked these signs of a populous capital city and a wilderness together: a palace, columns, grass, wild bushes climbing the walls, the palpitating market amid the dark, silent hulks shadowed from below, the lively cry of the fishmonger by the portico, and the lemonade seller with the airy little shop decorated with greenery in front of the Pantheon. He liked the very homeliness of the dark and untidy streets, he liked the absence of yellow and other light colors on the houses, he liked the idyll in the middle of the city: a herd of goats resting on the street pavement, the shouts of the urchins, and a sort of invisible presence of a luminous, solemn silence on everything, a silence that embraced you.

© Columbia University Press

He liked these incessant suddennesses, unexpectednesses, that struck you in Rome.

Like a hunter who goes out in the morning to the chase, like an ancient knight seeking adventures, he would set off every day to seek out more and more new miracles, and he would stop involuntarily when suddenly in the middle of an insignificant lane there would rise before him a palace breathing an austere, dusky grandeur.

Its heavy, indestructible walls were composed of dark travertine, its top was crowned by a magnificently set colossal cornice, the great door was faced by marble beams, and the windows looked majestic, laden with luxurious architectural ornamentation. Or how suddenly, unexpectedly, a small square would peep out along with a picturesque fountain that sprayed itself as well as its granite steps, disfigured by moss; how a dark, dirty street would unexpectedly end with the playful architectural decoration of Bernini, or an obelisk soaring upward, or a church and a monastery wall blazing with the brilliance of the sun against the dark-azure sky, with cypresses as black as coal.22 And the more deeply the streets receded, the more frequently there rose up palaces and architectural creations by Bramante, Borromini, Sangallo, della Porta, Vignola, Buonarotti— and finally he clearly understood that only here, only in Italy, could one sense the presence of architecture and its austere majesty as a form of art.23 His spiritual delight was still loftier when he moved into the interior of the churches and palaces, where arches, flat piers, and round columns made of all possible types of marble mixed with ones made of basalt, lapis lazuli cornices, porphyry, gold, and antique stones, were all combined in harmony, subjected to the well-considered idea, and above them all rose the immortal creation of the paintbrush. They were loftily beautiful, these well-considered ornamentations of the hall, full of regal majesty and architectural luxury, which always knew how to respectfully bow before painting Rome

\ 249

Š Columbia University Press

250 \

Rome

in that fruitful age when the artist was both an architect and a painter and even a sculptor all at the same time. The powerful creations of the paintbrush, which will never be repeated today, rose gloomily before him on the darkened walls, still ineffable and impossible to imitate. Going ever deeper into the contemplation of them, he felt how his taste, the pledge of which had been preserved in his soul, was developing. And compared with this majestic, beautiful luxury, how base did the luxury of the nineteenth century now seem to him, the petty, insignificant luxury that was good only for decorating stores, bringing to the fore the activity of craftsmen in gilding, furniture, wallpaper, carpentry, and a pile of other crafts, and depriving the world of the Raphaels, the Titians, and the Michelangelos, reducing art to the level of craftsmanship.24 How base this luxury seemed to him, striking only the first glance and then viewed indifferently, compared to the majestic idea of decorating walls with the eternal creations of painting, compared to this beautiful idea the owner of a palace had, to give himself an eternal object of enjoyment in his hours of rest from business and from the noisy clamor of life, when he could seclude himself in a corner, on an antique sofa, far from everyone, silently fixing his gaze and at the same time entering more deeply in soul into the mysteries of painting, invisibly maturing in the beauty of his soul’s thoughts. For art greatly elevates a person, lending nobility and a marvelous beauty to the movements of the soul. Compared to this immutable, fruitful luxury, which surrounded a person with objects that moved and educated the soul, how base did present-day petty ornaments seem to him, which are broken and tossed aside every year by agitated fashion, the strange, incomprehensible spawn of the nineteenth century, before which wise men silently bowed, the blighter and destroyer of everything that is colossal, majestic, and holy. With these meditations, the thought came to him involuntarily: Is this not the reason for the indifferent coldness that envelops the present-day age, the

© Columbia University Press

mercantile, base calculation, the early dulling of feelings that have not yet had time to develop and arise? They have carried the icons out of the temples—and the temple is no longer a temple; bats and evil spirits inhabit it.

The more closely he looked, the more he was struck by the unusual fruitfulness of that age, and he involuntarily exclaimed: “When and how were they able to do all that!” This magnificent side of Rome seemed to grow before his eyes with every passing day. Galleries and galleries, with no end to them . . . Over there, in that church as well, a miracle of painting has been preserved. And there on that crumbling wall, a fresco that is about to disappear still has the power to amaze. And there, atop raised marbles and pillars collected from ancient pagan temples, gleams a plafond that was decorated by an unfading paintbrush. All of this resembled hidden gold mines covered by ordinary earth, known only to the miner.

What fullness he felt in his soul every time he returned home; how different was this feeling, embraced by the serene solemnity of silence, from those agitated impressions that senselessly filled his soul in Paris, when he would return home tired, exhausted, seldom able to verify the sum of his impressions.

Now Rome’s unsightly, darkened, stained exterior, so reviled by foreigners, seemed to him even more in harmony with these inner treasures. After all this, it would have been unpleasant for him to emerge onto a fashionable street with gleaming stores, foppish people, and equipages—it would be distracting and blasphemous.

He preferred this modest silence of the streets, this special expression of the Roman populace, this phantom of the eighteenth century that still flashed along the street, now in the form of a black-clothed priest with a tricorn hat, black stockings, and shoes, now in the form of an antique purple cardinal’s coach with gilded axles, wheels, cornice rails, and coats of arms—all this seemed to be in harmony with the pomp of Rome: these lively, unhurried folk, picturesquely Rome

\ 251

© Columbia University Press

252 \

Rome

and calmly walking about the streets, with a half-cloak or a jerkin thrown onto their shoulders, without the burdensome expression on their faces that had so struck him on the blue-jacketed workers and the whole populace of Paris. Here even destitution appeared in a kind of bright form, carefree, unfamiliar with agony and tears, carelessly and picturesquely extending its hand; the vivid regiments of monks, who cross the streets in long white or black vestments; the dingy red-haired Capuchin whose light-camel color suddenly flashes in the sun; finally, the population of artists who have gathered from all corners of the world, who have abandoned here the narrow shreds of European apparel and now appear in free, picturesque garb; their majestic, imposing beards, copied from the portraits of Leonardo da Vinci and Titian, which are so unlike those monstrous, narrow little beards that the Frenchman reshapes and clips five times a month.25 Here the artist has felt the beauty of long wavy hair and has allowed it to spill out in curls. Here even the German with his crooked legs and the unwieldiness of his figure has taken on a dignified expression, spreading his golden locks over his shoulders, draping himself with the ethereal folds of a Greek tunic or the velvet attire known as “cinquecento,” which only artists in Rome have adopted.26 The traces of austere serenity and quiet labor are reflected in their faces. The very conversations and opinions heard on the streets, in the cafés, in the osterias, were opposite to or unlike those that he had heard in the cities of Europe. Here there was no talk about stocks falling in value, about debates in the Chambers, about Spanish affairs: Here one heard people talking about an ancient statue that had recently been discovered, about the merits of the painting of the great masters, arguments and disagreements rang out about the work of a new artist that had been exhibited, talk about folk festivals, and finally, private conversations in which the person revealed himself, the kind of conversations that have been crowded out of Europe by boring social

© Columbia University Press

discussions and political opinions, which have driven the heartfelt expression from people’s faces.

Often, he would leave the city in order to look around its environs, and then he was struck by different miracles. The mute, deserted Roman fields were beautiful, sprinkled with the remains of ancient temples, with an inexpressible serenity spreading all around, in one place flaming with solid gold from the yellow flowers that merge together, in another place gleaming with the fiery color of a fanned coal from the petals of wild poppy.27 These fields presented four marvelous views in all four directions. From one side—they connected with the horizon in a single sharp, flat line, the arches of the aqueducts seemed to be standing in the air and were as if pasted onto the gleaming silver sky. From another side—the hills shone over the fields, not tearing themselves away choppily and hideously, as in Tyrol or Switzerland, but curving in harmonious, flowing lines, and as they inclined, illuminated by the marvelous luminosity of the air, they were ready to fly off into the sky; along their base ran the long arcade of the aqueducts, resembling a long foundation, and the top of the hills seemed to be an ethereal continuation of the marvelous construction, and the sky above them was no longer silver, but the inexpressible color of a spring lilac. From the third side—these fields were also crowned with hills, which rose up closer and higher, protruding more powerfully with their front rows and receding into the distance in ethereal ledges. The fine light-blue air clothed them in a marvelous spectrum of colors; and through this ethereal blue veil shone the barely visible houses and villas of Frascati, in one place finely and lightly touched by the sun, in another place receding into the bright mist of the dusty groves that were barely visible in the distance. And when he suddenly turned back, then the fourth side of the view appeared to him: The fields ended with Rome itself. The corners and lines of the houses, the roundness of the domes, the statues of St. John Lateran, and the majestic dome Rome

\ 253

© Columbia University Press

254 \

Rome

of St. Peter shone sharply and clearly, with St. Peter’s dome growing higher and higher the farther one got from it, and finally remaining imperiously alone on the entire half-horizon, when the whole city had completely disappeared.28 He loved even more to look at these fields from the terrace of one of the villas in Frascati or Albano at the hour of the setting sun. They seemed then to be a boundless sea, shining and rising out of the dark railings of the terrace; their declivities and lines disappeared in the light that embraced them. At first, they still seemed greenish, and one could still see tombs and arches scattered about them here and there; then they let a pale yellow shine through them in the rainbow hues of light, barely showing the ancient remains, and finally, they became more and more purple, swallowing up even the immense dome itself and merging into a single dense crimson, and only the golden strip of the sea sparkling in the distance divided them from the horizon, which was the same purple as the fields. Nowhere, never before had he had occasion to see a field transformed into flame just like the sky. For a long time, full of inexpressible rapture, he would stand looking at such a view, and then he would stand there simply, not enraptured, having forgotten everything, when the sun itself had disappeared, the light of the horizon quickly went out, and the light of the darkened fields went out even more quickly, in a single instant; the evening established its dark image everywhere, as fireflies rose up over the ruins in fiery fountains, and the clumsy winged insect that flies standing up, like a person, known as a “devil,” senselessly hit him in the eyes. Only then did he feel the coming cold of the southern night penetrate him all through, and he hastened to the city streets so as not to catch a southern fever.29 Thus his life flowed by in the contemplation of nature, arts, and antiquities. In the midst of this life he felt more than ever the need to penetrate more deeply into the history of Italy, which he had known up to now only in episodes and fragments; without that

© Columbia University Press

history, the present seemed incomplete to him, and he avidly set about reading archives, chronicles, and notes. Now he could read them not like a stay-at-home Italian who enters body and soul into the events he reads about and does not see the mass of the whole from behind the people and events that surround him. Now he could look over everything calmly, as if from a Vatican window. His sojourn outside Italy, in sight of the noise and movement of active peoples and states, served as a strict corrective to all his conclusions and imparted a versatility and an all-encompassing quality to his eye. As he read now, he was even more struck, and at the same time more impartially struck, by the majesty and brilliance of the past epoch of Italy. He was amazed by such a rapid, multifarious development of humanity in such a cramped corner of the earth, by such a powerful movement of all forces. He saw how humanity seethed here, how each city spoke its own language, how each city had whole volumes of history, how all at once, all the forms and types of civic life and government arose here: the agitated republics of strong, refractory characters and the absolute despots among them; a whole city of kingly merchants, entangled by occult governmental threads beneath the phantom of the sole power of the doge; foreigners summoned to live among the locals; powerful thrusts and repulsions in the bowels of an insignificant little city; the almost fairytale brilliance of the dukes and monarchs of tiny lands; Maecenases, patrons, and persecutors; a whole series of great men who came into collision with each other all at the same period; the lyre, the compass, the sword, and the palette; temples that were erected in the midst of battles and unrest; enmity, bloody revenge, magnanimous traits, and heaps of romantic events of private life in the midst of a political and social whirlwind and the marvelous connection between them: such an astounding expansion of all aspects of political and private life, such an awakening in such a cramped space of all the elements of the person, of the sort that Rome

\ 255

Š Columbia University Press

256 \

Rome

happens in other places only in parts and over large expanses!30 And all of this disappeared and passed suddenly, everything froze like cooled lava, and it was all thrown out of the memory of Europe like old, worthless trash. Nowhere, not even in the journals, did poor Italy show its uncrowned brow, an Italy deprived of political significance and of influence on the world along with it.

“Will its glory,” he thought, “really never be resurrected? Are there really no means for recovering its past brilliance?” And he recalled the time when he was still at the university in Lucca, and he had raved deliriously about the renewal of Italy, he remembered how it was the cherished idea of youth, how over their drinks the youths would dream of it good-naturedly and simpleheartedly; and now he saw how myopic those youths were and how myopic politicians are when they reproach the people for their nonchalance and laziness. He now sensed with perturbation a great finger before which mute humanity is cast into the dust—a great finger that traces world events from on high. It summoned from Italy’s milieu its own persecuted citizen, a poor Genoese, who all by himself killed his fatherland by showing the world an unknown land and other broad routes.31 The world horizon expanded, the movements of Europe began to seethe with a vast sweep, ships began rushing around the world, setting in motion the powerful forces of the north. The Mediterranean Sea was left empty; like a river channel that has grown shallow, bypassed Italy grew shallow. Venice stands, reflecting its extinguished palaces in the waves of the Adriatic, and the heart of a foreigner is penetrated by lacerating compassion when the bent-over gondolier draws him under the desolate walls and ruined railings of the silent marble balconies. Ferrara has grown mute, inducing fright with the wild gloominess of its ducal palace.

Italy’s leaning towers and architectural miracles look desolate over the country’s whole expanse, as they find themselves in the midst of a generation that is indifferent to them. A ringing echo resounds in

© Columbia University Press

the once noisy streets, and the poor cab rides up to a dirty osteria that has taken up residence in a magnificent palace. Italy has ended up in a beggar’s sackcloth, and the pieces of its darkened regal clothing hang on it in dusty rags.

In a spasm of spiritual compassion, he was ready to burst into tears. But a consoling, majestic idea came all by itself into his soul, and he sensed by means of another, higher instinct that Italy had not died, that its irresistible, eternal dominion over the whole world could be perceived, that its great genius eternally floated over it, that genius which had at the very beginning bound up the fate of Europe in its breast, which had introduced the cross into the dark European forests, which had seized with its civic spear the savage people on the edge of those forests, which had first seethed here with world trade, cunning politics, and the complexity of civic mainsprings, and which then rose up in all the brilliance of the intellect, crowning its brow with the holy crown of poetry, and which when Italy’s political influence had begun to disappear, had unfolded over the world with triumphant wonders—arts that granted humanity unknown delights and divine feelings that had not before risen out of the bosom of its soul. When in turn the age of art had hidden itself, and people, plunged into calculation, had grown cold to it, it floated and spread above the world in the howling wails of music, and on the banks of the Seine, the Neva, the Thames, the Moscow River, the Mediterranean and Black Seas, within the walls of Algiers and on distant, recently savage islands, enraptured applause thunders for resonant singers. Finally, the genius of Italy now threateningly holds sway in the world by means of its very decrepitude and ruin: These majestic architectural miracles have remained like phantoms to reproach Europe for its petty Chinese luxury, its toylike fragmentation of thought. And this marvelous collection of defunct worlds, and the charm of their combination with eternally blossoming nature—all this exists in order to awaken the world, in order that Rome

\ 257

© Columbia University Press

258 \

Rome

the inhabitant of the north, as if through a dream, would sometimes imagine this south, in order that the dream of it would tear him out of the milieu of a cold life devoted to occupations that make the soul go stale—would tear him out, shining for him with a prospect that recedes unexpectedly into the distance, with a vision of the nocturnal Colosseum by moonlight, with Venice as it beautifully dies, with the invisible heavenly brilliance and the warm kisses of the miraculous air—in order that at least once in his life he would be a beautiful person . . .

At such a solemn moment the prince was reconciled with the ruin of his fatherland, and then he could see in everything the embryos of an eternal life, an eternally better future, which the world’s eternal Creator eternally prepares for it. At such moments, he very often became lost in thought about the present-day significance of the Roman people. He saw in it material that was as yet untapped. Not once had it yet played a role in Italy’s brilliant epoch.

The names of Italy’s popes and aristocratic houses had been noted on the pages of history, but the people had remained unnoticed.

They had not been engaged by the course of interests that moved within and outside them. They had not been touched by education and had not flung up in a whirlwind the forces hidden inside them.

Something infantilely noble was contained in their nature. This pride in the Roman name, as a result of which part of the city, considering themselves the descendants of the ancient quirites, would never enter into marriages with other parts of the city.32 These features of their character, a mixture of amiability and passions, which display the people’s bright nature: A Roman has never forgotten either an evil or a good, he is either good or evil, either a spendthrift or a miser, virtues and vices exist in their virgin layers and have never been mixed into indefinite images, as in an educated person, all of whose nasty little passions are under the supreme control of egoism. This incontinence and this urge to splurge money

© Columbia University Press

on everything—the habit of powerful peoples—all this had significance for the prince. This bright, unfeigned merriment, which other peoples no longer have—wherever he had been, it seemed to him that they tried to amuse the common people; here, on the contrary, the people amused themselves. The people themselves want to be participants, at Carnival time you can hardly restrain them, they are ready to squander everything they have saved over a year during that week and a half; they’ll plant everything into their costume alone: They’ll dress up as a clown, a woman, a poet, a doctor, a count, they’ll talk nonsense and give lectures to people who are listening and not listening. And this merriment embraces everyone like a whirlwind—from the forty-year-old to the little child: The very last old bachelor, who has nothing to dress up in, will turn his jerkin inside out, smear his face with soot, and run there, to the motley crowd. And this merriment comes right out of their soul; it is not the effect of intoxication—these very same people will hiss away a drunk if they meet one on the street.

Then there are the features of innate artistic instinct and feeling: He had seen a simple woman point out to an artist an error in his painting; he had seen how this feeling was involuntarily expressed in picturesque clothing, in church decorations, how in Genzano the people would deck the streets with carpets made of flowers, how the multicolored flower petals turned into colors and shadows, on the pavement would emerge patterns, cardinals’ coats of arms, a portrait of the Pope, monograms, birds, beasts, and arabesques.33 How on the eve of Easter Sunday the sellers of victuals, the pizzicaroli, would deck out their shops: hams, sausages, white bladders, lemons, and leaves were turned into a mosaic and formed a plafond; rounds of parmesan and other cheeses, lying one on top of another, were turned into columns; tallow candles formed the fringe of a mosaic curtain that was draped over the inner walls; whole statues were molded out of fatback as white as snow, historical Rome

\ 259

© Columbia University Press

260 \

Rome

groups of Christian and Biblical content, which the amazed spectator mistook for alabaster—the whole shop turned into a bright temple, shining with gilded stars, skillfully illuminated by hanging bottles, and reflecting endless piles of eggs in the mirrors.34 For all this, taste is needed, and the pizzicarolo did this not for the sake of earnings, but in order that other people would admire it and he himself could admire it.

Finally, the Italians are a people in whom a feeling of their own worth is alive: Here they are il popolo, not the mob, and they bear in their nature the direct elements of the times of the original quirites; they could not be perverted even by the incursions of foreigners, who debauch inactive nations and engender in the taverns and along the roads a despised class of people by whom the traveler often judges the people as a whole. The very absurdity of government decrees, that incoherent pile of all sorts of laws, which originated at all different times and relations and have not been abolished to this day, among which there are even edicts from the time of the ancient Roman republic—all this did not eradicate the lofty feeling of justice in the people. The people condemn the unjust claimant, they hiss at the coffin of the deceased, and they magnanimously harness themselves to the chariot carrying the body of one who is dear to the people. The very acts of the clergy, which are often seductive and in other places would engender debauchery, have almost no effect on the Italian people: They know how to separate religion from its hypocritical practitioners and have not been infected by the cold idea of unbelief. Finally, need and poverty themselves, the inevitable lot of a stagnant state, do not lead the people to grim villainy: They are cheerful and endure everything, and only in novels and stories do they cut people’s throats on the streets. All this seemed to him to be the nature of a powerful, untapped people, for whom some kind of serious task was being prepared in the future. It was as if European enlightenment had intentionally not touched this

© Columbia University Press

people and instilled its cold process of improvement in its breast.

The very clerical administration, that strange surviving phantom of past times, remained as if in order to protect the people from outside influence, so that none of their ambitious neighbors could infringe on the people’s personality, in order that its proud national character could remain hidden until the proper time. Moreover, here in Rome there was no sense of something dead; in the very ruins and magnificent poverty of Rome there was not that oppressive, penetrating feeling that involuntarily envelops a person who contemplates the monuments of a nation that has died while still alive. Here there was the opposite feeling; here there was a luminous, solemn serenity.

And every time he pondered all this, the prince involuntarily gave himself up to his meditations and started to suspect a kind of mysterious significance in the words “eternal Rome.”

The result of all this was that he tried to come to know his people more and more. He watched them on the streets, in the cafés, each of which had its set of customers: antique dealers in one, shooters and hunters in another, cardinals’ servants in a third, artists in a fourth, all of Roman youth and Roman foppishness in a fifth; he watched them in the osterias, the purely Roman osterias, where foreigners do not go, where a high Roman nobleman sometimes sits down next to a minente, and the whole company takes off their frock coats and ties on hot days; he watched them in the picturesquely unsightly little suburban taverns with airy paneless windows, where the Romans would flock in whole families and companies to dine, or as they put it, far allegria.* He would sit down and have dinner with them, entering eagerly into conversation, very often amazed at the simple common sense and lively originality of the tales of these simple, illiterate city dwellers. But most of all he had occasion to come to know the people at the time of the rites and * make merry

Rome

\ 261

© Columbia University Press

262 \

Rome

festivals, when the whole population of Rome would come to the surface and an innumerable multitude of beautiful women, unsuspected up to now, would suddenly appear—beauties whose images flicker only in bas-reliefs and in ancient anthology poems.35 These full gazes, alabaster shoulders, pitch-black hair styled in a thousand different ways—raised up on the head or thrown back and pierced by a golden arrow, the arms, the proud gait, everywhere the features and hints of serious classical beauty, not the light charm of graceful women. Here women seemed like the buildings of Italy—they are either palaces or hovels, either beauties or hideous; there is no middle ground: There are no pretty women. He delighted in them as he delighted in lines in a beautiful narrative poem that struck one as different from the rest and that visited a refreshing trembling on the soul.

But soon these delights were joined by a feeling that declared powerful battle on all other things—a feeling that summoned from the depths of his soul powerful human passions, that raised a democratic rebellion against the lofty autocracy of the soul: He saw Annunziata. And that is how we have finally made our way to the bright image that illumined the beginning of our tale.

It was at the time of Carnival.

“I won’t go to the Corso today,” the Principe* said to his maestro di casa as he left the house. “I’m getting tired of the Carnival, I prefer the summer festivals and rites . . .”

“But is this really a Carnival?” the old man said. “This is a Carnival for children. I remember the Carnival: when there was not a single coach on the entire Corso, and music thundered all night long; when painters, architects, and sculptors invented whole groups, histories; when the people—the prince must understand: all the

* Prince

© Columbia University Press

people, all—all the goldsmiths, frame-makers, mosaicists, the beautiful women, the whole Signoria, all the nobili,* all, all, all . . . o quanta allegria!† That is when it was a real Carnival, but what kind of Carnival is it now? Eh!” the old man said and shrugged his shoulders, then said “Eh!” again and shrugged his shoulders; and then again he said: “E una porcheria.”‡36 Then in his spiritual spasm the maestro di casa made an unusually strong gesture with his arm, but he quieted down when he saw that the prince was long gone. He was already on the street.

Not wishing to participate in the Carnival, he had taken with him neither a mask, nor an iron netting on his face, and throwing on a cloak, wanted only to make his way across the Corso to get to the other half of the city. But the crowd of people was too dense.

Hardly would he shove his way between two people when he was treated to some flour poured on him from above; a motley harlequin hit him on the shoulder with a rattle as he flew by with his columbine; confetti and bunches of flowers flew into his face; from both sides his ears started to hum: on one side a count, on the other a physician, reading him a long lecture about what was contained in his gastric intestine.37 He did not have the strength to make his way between them, because the crowd of people was growing; a string of carriages, no longer able to move, had stopped. The attention of the crowd was occupied by a daredevil who was striding on stilts as high as the houses, risking at any minute to be knocked off his feet and to crash down to his death on the pavement. But it seemed he had no worries about that. He was toting on his shoulders the effigy of a giant, holding it with one hand and bearing in the other a sonnet written on a piece of paper with a paper tail affixed to it * nobility † oh, what joy ‡ It’s a dirty mess.

Rome

\ 263

© Columbia University Press

264 \

Rome

of the kind one sees on a paper kite, and shouting at the top of his voice: “Ecco il gran poeta morto. Ecco il suo sonetto colla coda!” (“Here is the great deceased poet! Here is his sonnet with a tail!”)38 This daredevil had caused the crowd behind him to become so dense that the prince could hardly catch his breath.

Finally, the whole crowd moved forward, behind the daredevil and the deceased poet; the chain of carriages started to move, which made him very happy, although the movement of the people had knocked off his hat, which he now rushed to pick up. After he picked up his hat, he also raised his eyes and was rooted to the spot: Before him stood an unheard-of beauty. She was wearing a shining Albano costume, in a row with two other beautiful women, who compared with her as the night to the day. This was a miracle in the highest degree. Everything had to turn darker in the presence of this brilliance. Looking at her, it became clear why Italian poets compared beautiful women to the sun. This truly was the sun, complete beauty. Everything that is scattered and gleams separately in the beauties of the world, all this was gathered together here.

Glancing at her chest and bosom, it became obvious what was lacking in the chests and bosoms of other beauties. Compared to her thick, gleaming hair, all other hair would seem sparse and dull.

Her arms existed in order to turn everyone into an artist—like an artist, he would have looked at them eternally, not daring to breathe.

Compared to her legs, the legs of Englishwomen, German women, French women, and the women of all other nations would seem like splinters of wood; only the ancient sculptors had retained the lofty idea of their beauty in their statues. This was complete beauty, created in order to blind all and sundry!

Here one did not need to have some particular kind of taste— here all tastes had to merge, everyone had to prostrate themselves— the believer and the unbeliever would fall before her as before the sudden appearance of a divinity. He saw how all the people that

© Columbia University Press

were there stared at her in wonderment, how the women expressed an involuntary amazement, mixed with delight, in their faces, and repeated: “O bella!”*—how everyone there seemed to have turned into artists and were looking fixedly at her alone. But on the face of the beauty was written nothing but attention to the Carnival: She was looking only at the crowd and the masks, not noticing the eyes directed at her, barely hearing the men standing behind her in velvet jerkins, probably relatives who had come with them.

The prince set about questioning the people standing near him, asking who this marvelous beauty was and where she was from.

But everywhere he got in answer only a shrug of the shoulders accompanied by a gesture and the words: “I don’t know, she must be a foreigner.”39 Immobile, holding his breath, he devoured her with his eyes. The beauty finally turned her full eyes to him, but immediately became embarrassed and turned them away in another direction. He was awakened by a shout: In front of him a huge cart had stopped. The crowd of people in the cart, wearing masks and pink smocks, called him by name and started shaking flour onto him, accompanying it by one long exclamation: “Ooh, ooh, ooh!”

And in a single moment he had been sprinkled from head to toe with white dust, to the loud laughter of all the neighbors surrounding him. White as snow all over, with even his eyelashes white, the prince hurried home to change his clothes.

By the time he ran home and changed his clothes, only an hour and a half remained before the Ave Maria.40 Empty coaches were returning from the Corso: The people who had been sitting in them had moved to the balconies, to watch the crowd that never ceased to move, awaiting the horse race. At the turn onto the Corso he encountered a cart full of men in jerkins and radiant women with

* Oh, what a beautiful woman!

Rome

\ 265

© Columbia University Press

266 \

Rome

wreaths of flowers on their heads, with tambourines and drums in their hands. It seemed that the cart was merrily returning home, its sides were decorated with garlands, the spokes and rims of the wheels were entwined with green branches. His heart stopped when he saw that the beauty who had so impressed him was sitting in the cart among the women. Her face was lit up by sparkling laughter.

The cart rushed quickly by, accompanied by shouts and songs.

The first thing he did was try to run after the cart, but his way was blocked by a huge train of musicians: On six wheels they were transporting a violin of terrifyingly large proportions. One person was sitting astride the bridge; another, walking alongside, was drawing an enormous bow across four cables that had been stretched onto it instead of strings. The violin had probably cost great effort, expense, and time. In front of it walked a gigantic drum. The crowd of people and urchins flocked closely after the musical train, and at the rear of the procession came a pizzicarolo who was famous in Rome for his fatness, carrying an enema pipe as tall as a bell tower.

When the street had been cleared of the train, the prince saw that it would be foolish and too late to run after the cart, and moreover he didn’t know which roads it was now rushing along.

Nevertheless, he could not give up the idea of seeking her out. That radiant laughter and the open lips with marvelous rows of teeth floated in his imagination. “It is the brilliance of lightning, not a woman,” he kept repeating to himself and at the same time added: “She is a Roman. Such a woman could be born only in Rome. I must see her without fail. I want to see her not in order to love her, no—I wish only to look at her, to look at all of her, to look at her eyes, to look at her arms, at her fingers, at her gleaming hair. I wish not to kiss her, but only to look at her. And what of that? After all, that’s how it must be, it’s in the law of nature; she has no right to hide and carry away her beauty. Complete beauty is given to the world in order for everyone to see it, in order that everyone would preserve the

© Columbia University Press

idea of it eternally in their hearts. If she were simply beautiful, and not such supreme perfection, she would have the right to belong to one person, she could be carried off to a desert and hidden from the world. But complete beauty must be seen by everyone. Does an architect build a magnificent temple in a cramped lane? No, he places it on an open square, so that people can look at it from all sides and be amazed at it. Is a lamp lit, said the Divine Teacher, so that one would hide it and put it under a table? No, the lamp is lit in order to stand on the table, so that everyone can see, so that everyone can move by its light. No, I must see her without fail.”41 These were the prince’s thoughts, and he then pondered and went over all the means by which he could achieve this—finally, he seemed to settle on one of them and immediately set off without delay to one of those remote streets, of which there are many in Rome, where there is not even a cardinal’s palace with coats of arms painted on oval wooden shields, where there is a number over every window and door of a cramped little house, where the pavement bulges in a hump, where no foreigners ever drop in, except perhaps a rascal of a German artist with a folding stool and paints and a goat that has fallen behind its herd and has stopped to look with amazement at this street it’s never seen before. Here the prattle of the Roman women rings out resonantly: From all sides, out of all the windows fly gossip and crosstalk. Here everything is open and frank, and the passerby can learn absolutely all the domestic secrets; even a mother and daughter conduct all their conversations by sticking their heads out the window onto the street; there are no men visible here at all. As soon as the morning begins to gleam, the window opens and Siora Susanna sticks her head out, then from a different window appears Siora Grazia, putting on her skirt.42 Then Siora Nanna opens her window. Then Siora Lucia leans out, combing out her plait; finally, Siora Cecilia sticks her arm out of her window in order to get the washing that’s hanging on a stretched-out rope, Rome

\ 267

© Columbia University Press

268 \

Rome

and the washing is immediately punished for taking a long time to let itself be gotten, punished by being wadded up and thrown on the floor with the words: “Che bestia!”* Everything here is lively, everything seethes: a shoe from someone’s foot flies out the window at a mischievous son or at a goat that has approached the basket in which a year-old child is placed and has started to sniff him, and with bent head has gotten ready to explain to him what it means to have horns. Nothing here is unknown—everything is known.

The signoras all know every last thing: what kind of kerchief Siora Giuditta bought, who was going to have fish for dinner, who was Barbaruccia’s lover, which Capuchin was the best at hearing confession. Only rarely does a husband interject a word, usually standing on the street, leaning with his elbows on the wall, with a short pipe in his teeth, and considering it necessary when he hears about the Capuchin to add the short phrase: “They’re all crooks,” after which he continues emitting smoke under his own nose. No coach ever drives in here, except perhaps a two-wheeled rattletrap harnessed with a mule, bringing flour to the baker, and a sleepy donkey that is hardly able to drag its saddle-basket full of broccoli, despite all the encouragement of the urchins who bless its insensitive sides with stones. There are no stores here except pitiful little shops that sell bread and rope, with large glass bottles, and a dark, narrow café on the very corner of the street, where one constantly sees the bottega coming out to bring the signori coffee or hot chocolate made with goat’s milk in the little tin coffeepots known by the name Auroras.

The houses here belong to two, three, and sometimes even four owners, of which one has only a life interest, another owns one floor and has the right to profit from it for only two years, after which, as a result of a last will and testament, the floor must pass from him to

* What a beast!

© Columbia University Press

Padre Vincenzo for ten years, but a relative from the padre’s former family who lives in Frascati wants to evict him and has already begun a lawsuit well ahead of time. There were also owners who owned one window in a house, and two other windows in another house, and who shared the income from the window with their brother, a window for which, however, the irresponsible tenant never paid—in short, the object of inexhaustible lawsuits and providing subsistence for the lawyers and curiales* that Rome is full of. The ladies we were just speaking of—all of them, the first-class ones who were honored with full names, as well as the second-class ones, called by nicknames, all the Tettas, Tuttas, Nannas—for the most part did not work; they were spouses: of a lawyer, a petty clerk, a petty tradesman, a facchino,† but most often of an unemployed citizen who knew only how to drape himself beautifully in a not very reliable cloak.

Many of the signoras worked as models for painters. There were all sorts of models. There were models who allowed only their face to be painted, there were models who allowed their chest and shoulders to be painted, but would repent every time to their father confessor, and finally there were models who would undress from head to foot, and would not even make a confession about it.43 When they had money, they would happily pass the time with their husbands and a whole company of friends in the osteria; when they didn’t have money, they wouldn’t be bored and would just look out the window. Now the street was quieter than usual, because some people had gone to join the crowd of folk on the Corso. The prince went up to the dilapidated door of one pitiful little house, which was all riddled with holes, so that the owner himself would have to spend a long time poking with his key until he found the right one. * court clerks † porter

Rome

\ 269

© Columbia University Press

270 \

Rome

He was about to take hold of the ring-shaped door handle when he suddenly heard the words: “Does Sior Principe wish to see Peppe?”

He raised his head: Siora Tutta was sticking her head out of the third floor.

“What a loudmouth,” Siora Susanna said out of the window opposite. “The Principe perhaps came here for an entirely different reason than to see Peppe.”

“Of course he came to see Peppe, didn’t you, Prince? Didn’t you come to see Peppe? To see Peppe?”

“What Peppe, what Peppe!” Siora Susanna continued, gesturing with both hands. “As if the prince would even think of Peppe! It’s the time of Carnival now, the prince is going to go with his cugina,* the Marchesa Montelli, he’ll go with his friends in a coach to throw flowers, he’ll go outside the city and far allegria. What Peppe!

What Peppe!”

The prince was amazed to hear such details about how he spent his time; but there was no reason to be amazed, because Siora Susanna knew everything.

“No, my dear signore,” the prince said, “I do in fact need to see Peppe.”

This was answered by Signora Grazia, who had long ago stuck her head out of a window on the second floor and was listening.

She answered him by lightly clicking her tongue and twirling her finger—the usual sign of negation given by Roman women—and then added: “He’s not at home.”

“But perhaps you know where he is, where he’s gone?”

“Eh! Where he’s gone!” Siora Grazia repeated, bending her head to her shoulder. “Perhaps he’s in the osteria, on the square,

* female cousin

© Columbia University Press

by the fountain; probably somebody invited him, he went somewhere, chi lo sa (who knows)!”

“If the Principe wants to say something to him,” Barbaruccia caught up from the window opposite, putting an earring into her ear at the same time, “he can tell me, and I’ll pass it on to him.”

“Well, no,” the prince thought and thanked her for her willingness.

At that moment, out of a cross-lane, a huge, grimy nose peeped out, hanging like a large axe above the lips and the whole face that appeared after it. This was Peppe himself.

“There’s Peppe!” Siora Susanna exclaimed.

“Here comes Peppe, Sior Principe!” Signora Grazia shouted energetically from her window.

“Peppe’s coming, he’s coming!” Siora Cecilia chimed in from the corner.

“Principe, Principe! There’s Peppe, there’s Peppe (ecco Peppe, ecco Peppe)!” the urchins on the street shouted.

“I see him, I see him,” the prince said, deafened by the lively shouting.

“Here I am, eccelenza,* here I am!” Peppe said, taking off his cap.

It was obvious that he had already had a chance to taste the delights of the Carnival. He had been hit pretty hard with flour on one side. His whole side and back were completely whitened, his hat was broken, and his whole face was pricked with white spikes.

Peppe was notable for having kept his nickname Peppe his whole life. He had never made it to becoming Giuseppe, although his hair had turned gray. He even came from a good family, from the rich home of a trader, but his last pitiful little house had been seized from him in a lawsuit. His father, a person of the same sort as Peppe himself, although he was called Sior Giovanni, had squandered the

* Your Excellency

Rome

\ 271

© Columbia University Press

272 \

Rome

last of the property, and Peppe now led his miserable life the way many others did—that is as best he could: He would suddenly get a job as the servant of some foreigner, then he would run errands for a lawyer, then he would appear as a cleaner of the studio of some artist, then he would be a watchman in a vineyard or a villa; and he kept changing his costume to suit each role. Sometimes you would see Peppe on the street in a round hat and a roomy frock coat, sometimes in a narrow caftan, its seams bursting in two or three places, with such narrow sleeves that his long arms stuck out like brooms; sometimes a priest’s stocking and shoe would appear on his leg, sometimes he appeared in a costume that was hard to figure out, all the more because it was put on quite incorrectly: At times you might think that he had put a jerkin on his legs instead of trousers, gathering it up and tying it up somehow from behind. He would carry out all possible kinds of commissions in the most genial way, often without any personal interest: he would drag off for sale all sorts of rags the ladies of his street had consigned to him, the parchment books of a financially ruined priest or antique dealer, the painting of an artist; he would go around to the priests in the morning to collect their trousers and shoes to be cleaned at his house, then forget to return them at the appointed time out of an excessive desire to do a service for some third party he happened to meet, and the priests would be left under house arrest, without shoes and trousers, for the whole day.

Considerable amounts of money would often come his way, but he would dispose of the money in the Roman fashion: that is, it would always be gone the next day; not because he had spent it on himself or squandered it, but because he used it all for the lottery, of which he was terribly fond. There probably didn’t exist any number that he hadn’t tried. Every insignificant daily incident had great significance for him. If he happened upon some piece of trash in the street, he would immediately consult a fortune-telling book to

© Columbia University Press

see what number was assigned to it, so that he could immediately play that number in the lottery. Once he dreamed that Satan, who in any case appeared in his dreams at the beginning of every spring for some unknown reason—he dreamed that Satan dragged him by the nose over all the roofs of all the buildings, beginning with the Church of St. Ignatius, then along the whole Via del Corso, then along Tre Ladroni Lane, then along the Via della Stamperia, and finally stopped on the stairway of the Trinità itself, saying: “Here you are, Peppe; because you prayed to Saint Pancras, your ticket isn’t going to win.”44 This dream gave rise to lots of talk among Siora Cecilia, Siora Susanna, and almost the whole street; but Peppe resolved it in his own way: He ran right away to the fortune-telling book and found out that the devil means the number 13, the nose is number 24, and Saint Pancras is number 30, and that very morning he bet on all three numbers. Then he added the three numbers and got 67, so he bet on 67 as well. All four numbers lost, as usual.

Another time he got into a squabble with a winegrower, a fat Roman, Sior Raffaele Tomacelli. God knows what their quarrel was about, but they shouted loudly, making powerful gestures with their arms, and finally they both grew pale—a terrible sign, at which all the women would stick their heads out the windows in fright, and a passerby would keep his distance—a sign that the matter was finally reaching the stage of knives. And indeed, fat Tomacelli had already stuck his hand into the belted boot top that hugged his fat calf, and said: “Just you wait, I’m going to get you, you calf ’s head!”—when Peppe suddenly hit himself on the forehead and ran away from the place of battle. He had remembered that he had never once bought a ticket on a calf ’s head; he looked up the number of a calf ’s head and ran full speed to the lottery office, so that all the people who had gotten ready to watch a bloody scene were amazed at such an unexpected act, and Raffaele Tomacelli himself, sticking his knife back into his boot top, didn’t know what to do for a long time, and Rome

\ 273

© Columbia University Press

274 \

Rome

finally said: “Che uomo curioso!” (What a strange man!) Peppe was not at all upset by the fact that the tickets lost and went for nothing.

He was firmly convinced that he would become a rich man, and for that reason, whenever he went by a shop, he would almost always ask what each thing cost. Once, when he learned that a large house was being sold, he purposely stopped in to discuss it with the seller, and when the people who knew him started laughing at him, he answered very simpleheartedly: “What is there to laugh about, why laugh? I don’t want to buy it now, but later, in time, when I have the money. There’s nothing wrong with it . . . Everyone needs to acquire a fortune they can leave later to their children, to the church, to the poor, for various other things . . . chi lo sa!”

The prince had known him for a long time. Peppe had even been taken into their home as a steward and then was dismissed because he wore out his livery in a month and threw the whole toilette of the old prince out the window when he accidentally bumped it with his elbow.

“Listen, Peppe!” the prince said.

“What orders does Eccelenza wish to give?” Peppe said, standing with his head bared. “All the Prince has to say is: ‘Peppe!’—and I will say: ‘Here I am.’ Then let the Prince only say: ‘Listen, Peppe,’ and I will say: ‘Ecco me, eccelenza!’ ” “Peppe, you must do me this favor . . .” With these words the prince looked around and saw that all the Siora Grazias, the Siora Susannas, the Barbaruccias, the Tettas, the Tuttas—all of them to the last one—were leaning out of their windows with curiosity, and poor Siora Cecilia had nearly fallen right out onto the street.

“Hmm, this isn’t good!” the prince thought.

“Let’s go, Peppe, follow me.”

After he said this, he set off ahead, and Peppe followed him, head lowered and talking to himself. “Eh! Women are curious because they are women, because they are curious.”

© Columbia University Press

They walked for a long time from street to street, each plunged in his own thoughts. This is what Peppe was thinking about: “The Prince will probably give me some commission, maybe an important one, because he doesn’t want to say it in front of everyone; that means he’ll give me a fine present or money. If the Prince gives me money, what should I do with it? Give it to Sior Servilio, the owner of the café, because I’ve been in debt to him for a long time?

Because Sior Servilio will certainly demand money from me the very first week of Lent, because Sior Servilio planted all his money in the monstrous violin, which he spent three months making with his own hands for the Carnival so as to ride through all the streets with it—now Sior Servilio will probably have to spend a long time eating broccoli boiled in water instead of kid goat roasted on a spit, until he again accumulates the money he gets from selling coffee. Or should I not pay Sior Servilio but instead invite him to have dinner in an osteria? Because Sior Servilio is il vero Romano,* and in exchange for the honor offered to him he’ll be prepared to be patient about the debt—and the lottery will certainly start the second week of Lent. Only how can I hold onto the money until then, how can I keep it so that neither Giacomo, nor Master Petruccio, the knife grinder, will find out; they will certainly ask me for a loan, because Giacomo pawned all his clothes to the Jews in the Ghetto, and Master Petruccio also pawned his clothes to the Jews in the Ghetto and tore his wife’s skirt and her last kerchief when he dressed up as a woman . . . How can I manage not to give them a loan?”45 That is what Peppe was thinking about.

This is what the prince was thinking about: “Peppe can search out and learn the beauty’s name, where she lives, and where she’s from, and who she is. In the first place, he knows everyone and

* a true Roman

Rome

\ 275

© Columbia University Press

276 \

Rome

thus more than anyone else he can find friends in the crowd, he can have them investigate, he can drop into all the cafés and osterias, he can even talk about it without arousing any suspicion based on the figure he cuts. And although he’s sometimes a blabbermouth and a scatterbrain, if I bind him with his word as a true Roman, he will keep it all a secret.”

That is what the prince was thinking as he walked from street to street, and finally stopped, seeing that he had long ago crossed the bridge, he had long been in the Trastevere region of Rome, had long ago climbed the hill, and that the church of San Pietro in Montorio was not far from him.46 So as not to stand on the road, he went up to the little square from which one could see all of Rome, and he said, turning to Peppe: “Listen, Peppe, I would like to ask you to perform a certain service.”

“What does eccelenza want?” Peppe said again.

But here the prince glanced at Rome and stopped: Before him, in a marvelous, shining panorama, the eternal city appeared. The whole bright heap of houses, churches, domes, and sharp spires was powerfully illuminated by the brilliance of the sinking sun.

In groups and singly, the houses, roofs, statues, airy terraces, and galleries emerged out from behind one another; over there was the motley mass of bell towers and domes with their delicate tops, playing in the patterned caprice of the lamps; over there a dark palace emerged in its entirety; over there was the flat dome of the Pantheon; over there was the ornamented top of the Antonino column with its capital and the statue of the apostle Paul; over to the right rose the tops of the Capitoline buildings, with horses and statues; even farther to the right, over the brilliant crowd of houses and roofs, the dark breadth of the Colosseum’s bulk rose majestically and austerely; over there was again a playful crowd of walls, terraces, and domes, covered in the blinding brilliance of the sun.47 And over this whole sparkling mass, the tops of the holm

© Columbia University Press

oaks from the villas of the Ludovisi and the Medici showed darkly in the distance with their black foliage, and above them in the air the dome-shaped crowns of the Roman stone pines, raised on their slender trunks, stood in a whole flock. And along the whole length of the picture towered the light-blue, transparent hills, as light as air, embraced by a kind of phosphorescent light. Neither word nor brush would be able to convey the marvelous harmony and the combination of all the levels of this picture. The air was so pure and transparent that the tiniest little feature of the distant buildings was clear, and everything seemed so close that you could grab it with your hand. The last petty architectural ornament, the patterned decoration of the cornice—everything was marked out with an incomprehensible purity. At that moment the shot of a cannon and the distant merged shout of the mass of people resounded—the sign that the riderless horses had already run by, marking the end of the Carnival day.48 The sun was sinking lower toward the earth; its brilliance showed a brighter scarlet on the whole architectural mass; the city became more vivid and closer; the stone pines became a darker black; the hills became even bluer and more phosphorescent; the heavenly air, ready to be extinguished, became more solemn and beautiful . . . My God, what a view! The prince, in its embrace, forgot himself, and the beauty of Annunziata, and the mysterious fate of his people, and everything that exists in the world.

Rome

\ 277

© Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press

THE OVERCOAT

I

n the Department . . . but it would be better not to name the Department. Nothing is more irascible than all sorts of departments, regiments, chancelleries, and, in short, all sorts of official estates. These days every individual person considers that if he is insulted, all of society is insulted in his person. They say that very recently an appeal was received from a certain chief of district police, I don’t remember in what town, in which he clearly stated that government decrees were crumbling and that his sacred name was being taken absolutely in vain. As proof of this, he attached to his petition an enormously lengthy volume of a work of Romantic literature in which a chief of district police appears every ten pages, sometimes in a quite drunken state. So, in order to avoid all kinds of unpleasantness, it will be best if we call the Department in which the affair took place a certain Department. So, in a certain Department there worked a certain civil servant; a civil servant who could not be said to be very remarkable; of short stature, somewhat pockmarked, somewhat reddish-haired, somewhat even weak-sighted by the look of him, with a small bald spot on his forehead, with wrinkles on

© Columbia University Press

280 \

The Overcoat

both sides of his cheeks, and with a facial complexion of the sort that is called hemorrhoidal . . . What can you do! The St. Petersburg climate is to blame. As for his rank (because in Russia you have to announce the rank first of all), he was what they call an eternal titular councillor, about whom various writers have made jokes and witticisms to their heart’s content, those writers who have the commendable habit of oppressing people who can’t bite back.1 The civil servant’s last name was Bashmachkin. It is immediately apparent from this name that it was once derived from bashmak, meaning shoe; but when, at what time, and how it was derived from bashmak, nothing at all is known. His father, and his grandfather, and even his brother-in-law, and absolutely all the Bashmachkins wore boots, changing the soles only about three times a year.2 His name was Akaky Akakievich. Perhaps it seems somewhat strange and recherché, but we can assure the reader that no one searched for it at all, and that such circumstances happened all by themselves, that it was impossible to give him any other name, and this came about in the following way. Akaky Akakievich was born late on the night of March 23rd, if my memory does not deceive me. His deceased mother, the wife of a civil servant and a very good woman, was disposed to christen the child, as is appropriate. His mother was still lying on the bed opposite the door, and at her right side stood the godfather, a most excellent man, Ivan Ivanovich Yeroshkin, who served as a desk head in the Senate, and the godmother, the wife of a district police inspector, a woman of rare virtues, Arina Semyonovna Belobryushkova. The woman who had given birth was offered a choice of any of three names, whichever she wanted to choose: Mokkiya, Sossiya, or to call the child by the name of the martyr Khozdazat. “No,” the deceased woman thought, “these are all such names.” In order to oblige her, they opened up the Calendar of Saints to a different place; again, three names emerged: Trifily, Dula, and Varakhasy.3 “What did I do to deserve this,” the

© Columbia University Press

old woman said, “such names they all are; truly, I never heard such names before. If only it were Varadat or Varukh, but it’s Trifily and Varakhasy.” They turned another page—they got: Pavsikakhy and Vakhtisy. “Well, I see,” the old woman said, “that this must be his fate. If that’s the way it is, then let him be named the way his father was. His father was Akaky, so let the son be Akaky too.” And that is how Akaky Akakievich came about. The child was christened, and during the ceremony he started crying and made such a grimace that it seemed he had a premonition that he would be a titular councillor.

So, that is how all this came about. We cited this so that the reader could see for himself that this happened by absolute necessity and that it was quite impossible to give him any other name.

When and at what time he started work in the Department and who had appointed him, no one could recall. No matter how many directors and all kinds of supervisors had changed places, he was seen always in the very same place, in the very same position, with the very same post, as the very same civil servant for scribal matters, so that later everyone became convinced that he had apparently been born into the world completely finished, wearing a civil service uniform and with a bald spot on his head. In the Department, no one showed him any respect. The guards not only didn’t get up from their seats when he went by, they didn’t even look at him, as if an ordinary fly had flown through the anteroom. The supervisors treated him in a kind of coldly despotic manner. Some assistant desk head would just stick some documents under his nose without even saying, “Copy them,” or “Here’s a nice, interesting little job,” or something pleasant, as is the habit in genteel places of work. And he would take it, looking only at the document, not looking to see who had put it under his nose and whether that person had the right to do so. He would take it and immediately settle down to copy it.

The young civil servants would laugh and make jokes at his expense, telling all sorts of stories they had made up about him, The Overcoat

\ 281

© Columbia University Press

282 \

The Overcoat

right in front of him; they would say that his landlady—an old woman seventy years of age—beat him, they would ask when their wedding was going to be, they would sprinkle bits of paper on his head, calling it snow. But Akaky Akakievich would not respond with a single word to this, as if there were no one standing before him. It didn’t even have an effect on his work: Amid all these annoyances he never made a single mistake in his writing. Only if the joke was too unbearable, when they would shove him under his arm, hindering him from doing his task, would he say: “Leave me alone, why do you offend me?” And something strange was contained in the words and in the voice in which they were uttered. In it one could hear something that inspired such compassion that one young man who had been recently appointed and who, following the example of the others, had permitted himself to laugh at him, suddenly stopped as if he had been pierced, and from that time it was as if everything had changed for him and appeared in a different form.

A kind of unnatural force pushed him away from his comrades, who when he met them had appeared to be decent, urbane people. And for a long time afterward, in the middle of the happiest moments, a vision of the lowly civil servant with the bald spot on his forehead would rise before him, with his penetrating words: “Leave me alone, why do you offend me?”—and in those penetrating words other words rang out: “I am thy brother.” And the poor young man would cover his eyes with his hand, and many times in his life did he afterward shudder when he saw how much inhumanity there is in humanity, how much savage coarseness is hidden in refined, educated urbanity, and, my God! even in the person whom the world recognizes as noble and honorable . . .

It would hardly be possible to find a person who lived so thoroughly in his job. It’s not enough to say he served zealously— no, he served with love. In that copying he had a vision of his own multifarious and pleasant world. Delight was expressed on his face;

© Columbia University Press

some of the letters were his favorites, and when he got to them he was beside himself: He would laugh, and wink, and help out with his lips, so that it seemed you could read on his face every letter his pen was tracing. If they had given him recompense commensurate with his zeal, then to his own amazement he might even have ended up as a state councillor; but as his witty comrades put it, he had served long enough to earn a badge in his buttonhole and a hemorrhoid in his backside. One could not, however, say that no attention had been paid to him. One director, who was a kind man and wished to reward him for his long service, ordered them to give him something a little more important than ordinary copying; namely, he was ordered to take an already finished case and create a memorandum to another office. All he had to do was change the titular heading and change a few verbs from first person to third. This caused him so much effort that he was covered in sweat, he wiped his brow, and he finally said: “No, you’d better give me something to copy.” From that time, they left him to copy forevermore. Outside of this copying, it seemed that nothing existed for him. He didn’t think about his clothing at all: his uniform was not green but a kind of reddish-floury color. Its collar was narrow and low, so that his neck, despite the fact that it was not long, seemed to be unusually long as it extended out of his collar, like the necks on those plaster bobble-head kittens that whole dozens of Russian foreigners carry on their heads.4 And something was always getting stuck to his uniform, either a piece of straw or a little thread; furthermore, as he walked along the street, he had a particular knack of getting under a window at the precise time when someone was throwing all kinds of trash out of it, and so he was eternally bearing away on his hat watermelon rinds and melon rinds and that kind of rubbish. Not once in his life did he pay any attention to what was being done and what was happening every day on the street, the kind of thing that a person of his own profession, a young civil servant, always The Overcoat

\ 283

© Columbia University Press

284 \

The Overcoat

looks at, extending the perceptiveness of his bold gaze to the point that he will even notice that the foot strap has come loose on the trousers worn by someone on the other side of the pavement— which always brings a sly grin to his face.

But if Akaky Akakievich looked at anything, he saw on everything his own clean lines written out in his even handwriting, and only if a horse’s muzzle was placed on his shoulder and let a whole gust of wind blow from its nostrils onto his cheek, only then would he notice that he was not in the middle of a line but in the middle of the street. When he came home he would immediately sit down at the table, quickly slurp his cabbage soup and eat a piece of beef with onions without noticing any flavor at all, he would eat all this along with flies and anything else that God happened to send at that moment. When he noticed that his stomach was beginning to swell, he would get up from the table, take out a little bottle of ink, and copy documents that he had brought home. If he didn’t happen to have any, he would purposely make a copy for himself, for his own satisfaction, especially if the document was remarkable not for the beauty of the style but because of its being addressed to some new or important personage.

Even at those hours when the gray St. Petersburg sky is growing completely dim and the whole population of civil servants has eaten their fill and had dinner in whatever way they can manage, in conformity with the salary they receive and their own whims—when they have all taken a rest after the departmental scraping of quill pens, the running around, their own and other people’s necessary tasks, and all those things that fidgety people assign themselves voluntarily to do beyond what is necessary—when the civil servants hurry to devote their remaining time to enjoyment: an energetic one rushes off to the theater; another one goes out on the street, designating this time for inspecting little hats; another goes to a party, to waste the evening giving compliments to a comely young woman, the star

© Columbia University Press

of the little circle of civil servants; another, and this is what happens most often, simply goes to see another civil servant of his own sort who lives on a fourth or third floor, in two small rooms with an entryway or a kitchen and a few pretensions to fashion, a lamp or some other little object that cost many sacrifices, denials of dinners and outings—in short, even at that time when all the civil servants disperse among the little apartments of their friends to play a game of Sturmwhist, slurping tea out of glasses along with kopeck biscuits, inhaling smoke from their long pipes, recounting while the cards are being dealt some bit of gossip that has come flying in from high society, the kind of gossip that a Russian person can never resist, no matter what his station, or even, when there is nothing to talk about, retelling the eternal anecdote about the Fortress governor to whom it was reported that the tail of the horse on Falconet’s monument had been chopped off—in short, even at that time when everyone was striving to entertain themselves—Akaky Akakievich did not indulge in any entertainment.5 No one could say that they had ever seen him at an evening party. After he had written to his heart’s content, he would lie down to sleep, smiling in advance at the thought of the next day: What would God send him to copy tomorrow? Thus flowed by the peaceful life of a person who on a salary of four hundred knew how to be content with his lot, and it would have perhaps continued flowing to extreme old age, if there were not various calamities strewn about the life path not only of titular councillors, but even of privy, actual, court, and all other kinds of councillors, and even of those who neither give counsel nor receive it themselves.

There is in St. Petersburg a powerful enemy of all those who receive a salary of four hundred a year or thereabouts. That enemy is none other than our freezing northern weather—although they do say, however, that it is very healthy. Just after eight o’clock in the morning, that is, precisely at the time when the streets are covered The Overcoat

\ 285

© Columbia University Press

286 \

The Overcoat

by people going to the Department, it begins to give such powerful and stinging flicks to all noses indiscriminately, that the poor civil servants absolutely do not know where to put them. At that time when the foreheads of even those occupying high posts are hurting from the frost and tears are coming to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes defenseless. Their entire salvation consists in running as fast as they can in their pitifully thin overcoats across five or six streets and then stamping their feet for a good long while in the doorman’s room until all their capabilities and talents for the execution of their duties get thawed out. For some time Akaky Akakievich had begun to feel that he was getting a particularly strong burn in his back and shoulder, despite the fact that he tried to run as fast as he could across the lawful space.

Finally, he wondered whether there might not be some faults in his overcoat. When he inspected it thoroughly at home, he discovered that in two or three places, namely on the back and shoulders, it had become nothing but cheesecloth. The cloth had become so worn out that you could see through it, and the lining was shredded. The reader should know that Akaky Akakievich’s overcoat was another subject of the civil servants’ ridicule. They even deprived it of the noble name of overcoat and called it a housecoat. In fact, it was strangely constructed: its collar got smaller and smaller every year, because it served to sharpen up the other parts of the coat. This sharpening up did not display the skill of the tailor and turned out pouchy and shabby.

When he saw what the problem was, Akaky Akakievich decided that he had to take the overcoat to Petrovich, a tailor who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up a back stairway, who despite having only one eye and being pockmarked all over his face had a rather successful business mending the pants and tailcoats of civil servants and all other sorts of people—when he was in a sober condition,

© Columbia University Press

needless to say, and was not nourishing some other enterprise in his head. We of course wouldn’t need to say much about this tailor, but since it’s been established that every character in a story has to be fully defined, we have no choice, let’s deal with Petrovich as well.

At first, he was called simply Grigory and was a serf belonging to some nobleman. He started being called Petrovich from the time he received his manumission and began going on fairly serious drunken binges on every holiday, at first on the major ones, but later on all church holidays indiscriminately, whenever there was a little cross on the calendar. In this respect he was true to the customs of his grandfathers, and during arguments with his wife he would call her a worldly woman and a German. Since we’ve mentioned his wife, we also have to say a few words about her; but unfortunately not much was known about her, except perhaps that Petrovich had a wife, that she even wore a bonnet and not a kerchief, but it seems she could not boast of beauty. At least, only Guards soldiers would take a peep under her bonnet when they encountered her, then blink their mustaches and emit a peculiar vocal sound.

As he climbed the stairway to Petrovich’s place, which, to do it justice, was all anointed with water and slops and permeated through and through by that spirituous smell that stings the eyes and that as everyone knows is inevitably present on the back stairways of all St. Petersburg buildings—as he climbed the stairway, Akaky Akakievich was already thinking about how he would make his request to Petrovich and was mentally resolving not to offer more than two rubles. The door was open because the mistress of the house, while cooking some fish, had filled the kitchen with so much smoke that you couldn’t even see the cockroaches. Akaky Akakievich passed through the kitchen, unnoticed even by the mistress of the house, and finally entered a room where he saw Petrovich sitting on a broad, unpainted wooden table with his legs tucked up under him

The Overcoat

\ 287

© Columbia University Press

288 \

The Overcoat

like a Turkish pasha. His feet, as is the custom of tailors when they are sitting at their work, were naked. The first thing that struck the eye was his big toe, very well known to Akaky Akakievich, with its mutilated toenail, as thick and strong as a turtle’s shell. A hank of silk and threads was hanging around Petrovich’s neck, and he had some ragged garment in his lap. He had been trying for about three minutes to put a thread through the eye of a needle. He kept missing, and so he was very angry at the darkness and even at the thread itself, as he growled under his breath: “She won’t go in, the barbarian; you’ve worn me out, you rascal!”

Akaky Akakievich was unhappy that he had come right at the moment that Petrovich was getting angry. He liked to order things from Petrovich when the latter had taken a bit of Dutch courage, or as his wife would put it, “he’s full of rotgut, the one-eyed devil.”6 In such a condition, Petrovich would usually be willing to come down on the price and be agreeable and would even bow and thank him every time. It’s true, his wife would come see him later, crying and saying that her husband had been drunk and that was why he had settled on too low a price, but all you had to do was throw in a ten-kopeck coin, and it was in the bag. Now, however, it seemed that Petrovich was in a sober condition, and so he was tough, disputatious, and ready to ask God knows what price. Akaky Akakievich realized this and was ready to beat a hasty retreat, as they say, but the business was already begun. Petrovich squinted at him very attentively with his single eye, and Akaky Akakievich involuntarily uttered: “Hello there, Petrovich!”

“I wish you good health, sir,” Petrovich said and looked askance with his one eye at Akaky Akakievich’s hands, wishing to catch sight of the booty he was carrying.

“So I’ve come to you, Petrovich, because, like . . .”

You must know that Akaky Akakievich expressed himself for the most part in prepositions, adverbs, and, finally, in those particles

© Columbia University Press

that have absolutely no meaning whatsoever. If it was a very delicate matter, then he even had the habit of not ending his sentences at all, so that very often, he would begin a speech with the words: “This is, truly, quite something that, like . . .”—and then there would be nothing more, and he himself would forget, thinking that he had already said everything.

“What is it?” Petrovich said and at the same time inspected with his single eye Akaky Akakievich’s whole uniform, beginning with the collar and ending with the sleeves, back, coattails, and buttonholes—which were all very familiar to him, because they were his own workmanship. Such is the habit of tailors: That is the first thing they will do when they meet you.

“Well, here’s like, Petrovich . . . the overcoat, the cloth . . . here you see, everywhere in other places it’s quite strong, it’s just gotten a little dusty, and it seems as if it’s old, but it’s new, but see, just in that one place it’s a little, you know . . . on the back, and also here on one shoulder it’s worn through just a little bit, and here on the other shoulder just a little—you see, that’s all. And it’s not much work . . .”

Petrovich took the housecoat, and after first laying it out on the table, he looked it over for a long time, shook his head, and reached to the windowsill for a round snuffbox with the portrait of some general on it, but we do not know which general, because the place where the face was had been poked through by a finger and then had a rectangular scrap of paper pasted on it.7 After taking some snuff, Petrovich spread the housecoat out on his arms and looked at it against the light, and again shook his head. Then he turned it with its lining up and again shook his head, again opened the lid with the general pasted over with paper, and after taking some snuff into his nose, he closed it, put the snuffbox away, and finally said: “No, it’s impossible to fix it: That’s some worn-out wardrobe!”

At these words Akaky Akakievich’s heart skipped a beat.

The Overcoat

\ 289

© Columbia University Press

290 \

The Overcoat

“Why is it impossible, Petrovich?” he said, almost in the pleading voice of a child. “After all, it’s just a little worn spot on the shoulder, after all, you have some little scraps . . .”

“Yes, we can find some scraps, the scraps can be found,” Petrovich said, “but it’s impossible to sew them on. The whole thing is rotten; if you touch it with the needle, it will come unraveled.”

“So let it unravel, then you’ll put a patch on right away.”

“But there’s nothing to put the patch on, there’s nowhere for it to get a foothold, it’s just too worn-out. You can hardly call it cloth—if the wind blows on it, it will fall to pieces.”

“Well, then just fasten it. How can it be, truly, like . . .!”

“No,” Petrovich said decisively, “it’s impossible to do anything.

It’s a very bad business. You’d do better, when the cold wintertime comes, to make footwraps out of it, because stockings don’t keep you warm. The Germans thought that up so that they could grab more money for themselves” (Petrovich enjoyed getting in a jab at the Germans when he had the chance) “but as for the overcoat, it’s clear you’re going to have to get a new one made.”

At the word “new,” a fog came over Akaky Akakievich’s eyes, and everything in the room seemed to get all mixed up. The only thing he could see clearly was the general with his face pasted over with paper, who was located on the lid of Petrovich’s snuffbox.

“What do you mean, ‘new’?” he said, still feeling as if it were happening in a dream, “I don’t have any money for that.”

“Yes, a new one,” Petrovich said with barbaric serenity.

“Well, but if I had to get a new one, then how would it, like . . .”

“Do you mean what would it cost?”

“Yes.” “You’d have to put in a little more than three fifties,” Petrovich said, and pursed his lips significantly. He really loved forceful effects.

He loved to suddenly bewilder somebody and then take a sidelong

© Columbia University Press

glance at the face the bewildered person would make after hearing such words.

“One hundred and fifty rubles for an overcoat!” poor Akaky Akakievich shouted, shouted perhaps for the first time in his life, because he was always distinguished by the quietness of his voice.

“Yes, sir,” Petrovich said, “but it depends what kind of overcoat.

If you put marten fur on the collar and a silk lining on the cape, then it would run to two hundred.”

“Petrovich, please,” Akaky Akakievich said in a pleading voice, not hearing and trying not to hear the words Petrovich had said and all his effects, “fix it somehow, so that it could be of service for just a little while more.”

“No, that would result in just wasting the work and spending money for nothing,” Petrovich said, and after such words Akaky Akakievich left entirely destroyed.

And Petrovich stood for a long time after he left, pursing his lips significantly and not taking up his work, pleased that he had not demeaned himself and had not betrayed the art of the tailor.

As he came out onto the street, Akaky Akakievich felt he was in a dream. “It’s such a business of such a kind,” he said to himself, “truly, I didn’t think it would turn out like . . .”—and then, after being silent a while, he added: “So that’s how it is! Finally, that’s how it turned out, and truly, I could not at all have supposed that it would be like that.” Then there followed again a long silence, after which he said: “So that’s it! That’s the kind of, really, totally unexpected, like . . . I couldn’t have at all . . . such a circumstance!” After he said this, instead of going home, he went in the exact opposite direction without suspecting it himself. Along the way a chimney sweep brushed against him with his whole dirty side and turned his shoulder black; a whole capful of lime poured onto him from the top of a house under construction. He didn’t notice any of this, and

The Overcoat

\ 291

© Columbia University Press

292 \

The Overcoat

only later, when he bumped into a policeman on duty, who had set his halberd aside and was shaking some snuff out of a horn onto his callused fist, only then did he come to himself somewhat, and even then only because the policeman on duty said: “Why are you shoving up right in my snout, don’t you have enough sidewalk?”

This caused him to look around and turn toward home.

Only here did he begin to collect his thoughts; he saw his situation in a clear and true form, and he began talking to himself no longer in fragments, but reasonably and frankly, as if talking with a sensible friend, the kind with whom one can talk about the most heartfelt and intimate matters. “Well, no,” Akaky Akakievich said, “you can’t discuss anything with Petrovich right now. He’s like . . . his wife must have given him a beating somehow. I’d better go see him on Sunday morning. After the Saturday night before, he’ll be squinting his eye and he’ll have overslept, and he’ll need a hair of the dog, and his wife won’t give him any money, and right then I’ll give him like a ten-kopeck coin right into his hand, and he’ll be more accommodating and then the overcoat like . . .”

That is how Akaky Akakievich reasoned to himself. He cheered himself up and waited for the first Sunday, and when he saw from a distance that Petrovich’s wife had left the house to go somewhere, he went right to his place. Petrovich indeed was squinting a lot after his Saturday, he was bending his head to the floor and had really overslept; but despite all that, as soon as he heard what Akaky Akakievich had come about, it was exactly as if the devil had shoved him. “It’s impossible,” he said, “be so good as to order a new one.” Akaky Akakievich immediately slipped him a ten-kopeck coin. “Thank you kindly, sir, I’ll have a drop to drink to your health,” Petrovich said, “but be so good as not to worry about the overcoat: It isn’t fit for any fitness. I’ll make you a glorious new overcoat, on that I insist.”

© Columbia University Press

Akaky Akakievich again started to talk about mending it, but Petrovich didn’t let him finish and said: “I’m going to make you a new one no matter what, be so good as to count on it, I’ll do my very best. It can even be in the latest fashion: The collar will fasten with silver appliqué clasps.”8 At this point Akaky Akakievich saw that it was going to be impossible to do without a new overcoat, and his spirits utterly flagged. How, in fact, with what, where would the money come from to make it? Of course, he could partly rely on a future bonus for the holidays, but that money had long ago been allocated and apportioned in advance. He needed to get new trousers, to pay an old debt to the shoemaker for attaching new tops to his bootlegs, and he needed to order from the seamstress three shirts and about two sets of that article of linen which is unseemly to name in print—in short, all the money had to be divided up completely; and even if the director was so merciful that instead of a forty-ruble bonus he assigned forty-five or fifty, all the same only the most pitiful sum would remain, which would be like a drop in the sea of overcoat capital. Although, of course, he knew that sometimes a whimsy would lead Petrovich to ask God knows what exorbitant price, so that even his wife wouldn’t be able to restrain herself and would shout: “You’ve gone out of your mind, you idiot! Sometimes he’ll work for nothing, but now the evil spirit has gotten into him to ask such a price that he himself isn’t worth.” Although, of course, he knew that Petrovich would undertake to make the coat for eighty rubles; all the same, where was he going to get those eighty rubles?

He could find half of it: half of it could be found; maybe even a little more; but where would he get the other half?

But first of all, the reader must know where the first half was to come from. Akaky Akakievich had the habit of taking a half-kopeck coin out of every ruble he spent and putting it aside in a small little

The Overcoat

\ 293

© Columbia University Press

294 \

The Overcoat

box that locked with a key, with a little hole cut in the lid for the throwing-in of money. At the end of every six months he would audit the copper sum that had been amassed and would exchange it for silver change. He had been doing this for a long, long time, and so over the course of several years the amassed sum had turned out to be more than forty rubles. So, he had half of it on hand, but where was he to get the other half? Where could he get the other forty rubles?

Akaky Akakievich thought and thought, and decided that he would have to reduce his usual expenses for at least one year: to banish the drinking of tea in the evenings, not to light candles in the evenings, and if he needed to do something, to go to the landlady’s room and work by the light of her little candle; as he walked along the street, to step as lightly and carefully as he could along the cobblestones and flagstones, almost on tiptoe, so as not to wear out his soles too fast; to give his linen to the laundress as rarely as possible, and so as not to wear it out, to take it off as soon as he came home and remain in just a thick cotton robe that was very old and had been spared by time itself. One must speak the truth and say that at first it was rather difficult for him to get used to such limitations, but then it seemed to become a habit and things got better. He even got accustomed to going hungry in the evenings; but to make up for it he was nourished spiritually, bearing in his thoughts the eternal idea of the future overcoat. From that time it was as if his very existence became somehow fuller, as if he had gotten married, as if some other person was present with him, as if he was not alone, but a pleasant female life companion had agreed to follow life’s path along with him—and that companion was none other than the thickly padded overcoat with a strong lining showing no trace of wear.9 He became livelier, he even became firmer in character, like a person who has determined and set himself a goal. Doubt and

© Columbia University Press

indecisiveness—in short, all wavering and indefinite features— disappeared from his face and actions all by themselves. At times a fire shone in his eyes, and the most audacious and adventurous thoughts even flashed in his head: Should he not, in fact, put marten fur on the collar? Such meditations almost caused him to become absentminded. Once as he was copying a document, he nearly made a mistake, so that he shouted “Ooh!” almost out loud and crossed himself. Every month he went to see Petrovich at least once to talk about the overcoat, about where the best place would be to buy the cloth, and what color it should be, and what it would cost, and he would always return home, although a little concerned, still happy, thinking that finally the time would come when all of this would be bought and the overcoat would be made. The whole thing went faster than he had expected. Contrary to all expectations, the director assigned Akaky Akakievich a bonus of not forty or forty-five rubles, but a whole sixty rubles. Whether he had had a premonition that Akaky Akakievich needed an overcoat, or it just happened all by itself, because of this he ended up with an extra twenty rubles.

This circumstance hastened the course of the matter. Another two or three months of slight hunger—and Akaky Akakievich had indeed accumulated about eighty rubles. His heart, which in general was extremely calm, began to beat.10 On the very first day he set off to the shops with Petrovich. They bought some very good cloth—and no wonder, because they had already been thinking about it for six months in advance, and hardly a month had gone by that they hadn’t stopped into the shops to see what the prices were. Petrovich himself said that better cloth did not exist. For the lining they chose calico, but of such good quality and so densely woven that according to Petrovich it was better than silk and even more beautiful and lustrous to look at. They did not buy marten, because it was indeed expensive; but instead of it they chose cat fur, the best cat they could find in the shop, a cat fur that The Overcoat

\ 295

© Columbia University Press

296 \

The Overcoat

from a distance one might always mistake for marten.11 Petrovich spent a whole two weeks on the overcoat, because there was a lot of stitching, otherwise it would have been ready earlier. Petrovich took twelve rubles for his labor—it simply couldn’t be any less. The whole thing was absolutely sewn with silk, with a double closelystitched seam, and Petrovich then went over every seam with his own teeth, using them to press in various patterns.

It was . . . it’s difficult to say what day it was, but it was probably the most extremely solemn day in the life of Akaky Akakievich when Petrovich finally brought the overcoat. He brought it in the morning, right before the time when Akaky Akakievich had to go to the Department. The overcoat could not have come at a more opportune time, because the somewhat harsh cold weather had already begun, and it seemed to be threatening to get even worse.

Petrovich appeared with the overcoat in a manner befitting a good tailor. His face had the most significant expression that Akaky Akakievich had ever seen. It seemed that he felt in full measure that he had done a great deed and that he had suddenly shown in himself the abyss that divides tailors who only replace linings and fix things from those who make things from scratch. He took the overcoat out of the enormous handkerchief in which he had brought it; the handkerchief was fresh from the laundress, so he then rolled it up and put it in his pocket for later use. After he took out the overcoat, he gave a very proud look and, holding it in both hands, threw it very deftly onto Akaky Akakievich’s shoulders; then he pulled it and smoothed it down from behind with his hand; then he draped it over Akaky Akakievich in a rather unbuttoned way. Akaky Akakievich, as a man well along in years, wanted to try it with his arms in the sleeves. Petrovich helped him put it on with his arms in the sleeves as well—it turned out that with his arms in the sleeves it was also very fine. In short, it turned out that the overcoat was utterly and perfectly just right. Petrovich did not miss this opportunity to say

© Columbia University Press

that it was only because he lived on a side street without a signboard, and because he had known Akaky Akakievich for a long time, that he had done the job so cheaply; on Nevsky Avenue they would have asked seventy-five rubles for the labor alone. Akaky Akakievich did not want to discuss this with Petrovich; he was afraid of all the major sums with which Petrovich liked to throw dust in people’s eyes. He paid him, thanked him, and immediately went out to the Department wearing his new overcoat. Petrovich came out after him and stayed on the street, watching the overcoat from a distance for a long time, and then he purposely went off to the side in order to loop around via a crooked lane, to run ahead, and come out onto the street again and look at his overcoat once more from the other side, that is, right into its face.

Meanwhile Akaky Akakievich was walking along in the most festive disposition of all his feelings. Every instant of every minute he was feeling that there was a new overcoat on his shoulders, and several times he almost grinned with inner satisfaction. In fact, there were two advantages: One was that it was warm, and the other was that it was good. He didn’t notice the journey at all, and he suddenly found himself in the Department. In the anteroom he took off the overcoat, looked it all over, and entrusted it to the particular oversight of the guard. It is unknown how everyone in the Department suddenly found out that Akaky Akakievich had a new overcoat and that the housecoat no longer existed. At that very moment everyone came running out into the anteroom to look at Akaky Akakievich’s new overcoat. They started congratulating and hailing him, so that at first he just smiled, but then he started feeling ashamed. And when they all gathered around and started saying that they needed to drink to the new overcoat, and that he at least had to throw them all an evening party, Akaky Akakievich got completely flustered and didn’t know what to do, how to answer them, and how to make some excuse. After a few minutes, blushing all over, he started trying The Overcoat

\ 297

© Columbia University Press

298 \

The Overcoat

naively to convince them that it was not a new overcoat at all, that it was just, it was the old overcoat.

Finally, one of the civil servants, who was even an assistant desk head, probably in order to show that he was not at all proud and would associate even with his inferiors, said: “Very well, I’ll throw the evening party instead of Akaky Akakievich, and I ask you all to come to my place for tea today: As if on purpose, it’s my name day today.” Naturally, the civil servants immediately congratulated the assistant desk head and eagerly accepted the invitation. Akaky Akakievich was starting to make an excuse, but they all said that that was impolite, that it was simply a shame and a disgrace, and he simply could not refuse. Later, however, it was pleasant for him to recall that because of this he would have the opportunity to walk around in his new overcoat even in the evening.

That whole day was like the greatest solemn feast day for Akaky Akakievich. He returned home in the happiest spirits, he took off the overcoat and hung it carefully on the wall, once again admiring the cloth and the lining, and then for the sake of comparison, he purposely pulled out his former housecoat, which had completely unraveled. He looked at it, and he began laughing: what a huge difference! And then for a long time as he ate dinner, he kept grinning when he recalled the condition the housecoat was in. He had a cheerful dinner, and after dinner he didn’t write anything, no documents, but just lay sybaritically on the bed until it got dark.

Then without dragging things out, he got dressed, put the overcoat over his shoulders, and went out onto the street.

Unfortunately, we cannot say where the civil servant lived who had made the invitation. Our memory is starting to really play tricks on us, and everything in St. Petersburg, all the streets and houses, have gotten so merged and mixed up in our head that it is extremely difficult to retrieve anything from it in any decent form.

Whatever the case may be, the one thing that is certain is that the

© Columbia University Press

civil servant lived in the better part of the city—which means, he lived very far from Akaky Akakievich. At first, Akaky Akakievich had to pass through some deserted streets with meager illumination, but the closer he got to the civil servant’s apartment the livelier, more populated, and more brightly illuminated the streets became. Pedestrians started to flash by more often, even some beautifully dressed ladies started to appear, some of the men he met had beaver-fur collars; he less frequently encountered poor cabbies with their wooden latticed sleighs studded with gilded nails—on the contrary, he kept meeting drivers of smart cabs wearing crimson velvet caps, with lacquered sleighs and bear-fur blankets, and coaches with beautifully trimmed coachboxes flew across the street, their wheels squealing on the snow.

Akaky Akakievich looked at all this as at something new. It had been several years since he had gone out onto the street in the evening. He stopped in front of an illuminated store window to look curiously at a picture that depicted a beautiful woman who had taken off her shoe, thus baring her entire, rather nice-looking foot; and behind her back, a man with whiskers and a beautiful imperial beard under his lip was sticking his head out of the door of another room. Akaky Akakievich shook his head and grinned and then went on his way. Why he grinned—whether it was because he had encountered a thing that he was quite unfamiliar with but for which, nevertheless, everyone retains a certain instinct, or whether he thought like many other civil servants, the following: “Well, I never, those Frenchmen! It can’t be denied, if they want something like, well indeed it’s just like . . .” But perhaps he didn’t even think that—after all, you can’t crawl into a person’s soul and find out everything he’s thinking.

Finally, he reached the building in which the assistant desk head had his apartment. The assistant desk head lived in the grand manner: A lamp was shining on the stairway, and the apartment was The Overcoat

\ 299

© Columbia University Press

300 \

The Overcoat

on the second floor. As he came into the anteroom, Akaky Akakievich saw whole rows of overshoes on the floor. Among them, in the middle of the room, stood a samovar, making noise and emitting puffs of steam. On the walls hung all sorts of overcoats and cloaks, some of which even had beaver collars or velvet lapels. On the other side of the wall one could hear noise and talk, which suddenly became clear and ringing when the door opened, and a footman came out carrying a tray covered with emptied glasses, a creamer, and a basket of biscuits. It was obvious that the civil servants had assembled a long time ago and had already drunk their first glass of tea.

Akaky Akakievich hung up his overcoat himself, went into the room, and all at once there flashed in his eyes candles, civil servants, pipes, and card tables, and his ear was struck by the indistinct sound of fluent conversation rising from all directions and the noise of chairs being moved. He stopped very awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking around and trying to figure out what he should do. But they had already noticed him and received him with a shout, and they all went to the anteroom right away to look at his overcoat again. Although he was partly embarrassed, Akaky Akakievich, being an open-hearted man, could not help but be glad when he saw how everyone praised his overcoat. Then, of course, they all abandoned both him and the overcoat and addressed themselves to the tables prepared for whist, as is usual. All of this—the noise, the talk, and the crowd of people—all this was somehow wondrous strange for Akaky Akakievich. He simply did not know what he should do, where to put his hands, feet, and his whole figure. Finally, he took a seat near the card players, looked at the cards, peeped into this one’s and that one’s faces, and after a while began to yawn, feeling bored, all the more since it had long since been the customary time for him to go to bed. He wanted to say goodbye to the host, but they didn’t let him go, saying that they absolutely had to each drink a glass of

© Columbia University Press

champagne in honor of the new garment. An hour later they served supper, consisting of vinaigrette salad, cold veal, pâté, pastries, and champagne. Akaky Akakievich was forced to drink two glasses, after which he felt that the room had become more cheerful, although he could not forget that it was already twelve o’clock and long past time for him to go home. To avoid letting the host think up some way of keeping him there, he quietly left the room and found his overcoat in the anteroom. Not without regret did he see it lying on the floor. He shook it out, removed every bit of fluff from it, put it on his shoulders, and went down the stairs to the street.

On the street it was still light. A few grocery stores, those permanent clubs for house servants and all other kinds of servants, were open, while others that were closed nevertheless emitted a long stream of light all along the crack of the door, signifying that they were not yet devoid of society, and that probably the servant women or men were still finishing up their discussions and conversations, plunging their masters into complete bewilderment about where they might be located. Akaky Akakievich walked along in cheerful spirits; he even started suddenly to run, for some unknown reason, after a lady who had passed by at the speed of lightning, every part of her body suffused with extraordinary motion. He immediately stopped, however, and started walking the way he had before, very quietly, himself amazed at his trotting gait that had come from no one knows where.

Soon there stretched before him those deserted streets that are not too cheerful even in daytime, not to mention in the evening.

Now they became even more remote and secluded. The streetlamps appeared less often—apparently, less lamp oil was being allocated; wooden houses and fences appeared; there was not a soul anywhere; the only thing that sparkled was the snow on the streets, and the low, sleeping little hovels with closed shutters appeared dismally black. He approached the place where the street was intersected The Overcoat

\ 301

© Columbia University Press

302 \

The Overcoat

by an endless square with buildings barely visible on its other side, which looked like a terrifying desert.

In the distance, God knows where, a little light flickered in a policeman’s booth that seemed to be standing on the edge of the world. Here Akaky Akakievich’s cheerfulness decreased significantly.

He entered the square not without an involuntary apprehension, exactly as if his heart had a premonition of something evil. He looked back and to either side: It was as if a sea surrounded him.

“No, it’s better not to look,” he thought, and walked along with his eyes closed, and when he opened them to see whether the end of the square was near, he suddenly saw that some people with mustaches were standing almost right in front of his nose, but what kind of people they were, he could not even make out. A fog came over his eyes and a beating started in his chest. “Hey, that overcoat is mine!” one of them said in a voice of thunder, grabbing him by the collar. Akaky Akakievich was about to try to shout “Help!” when the other one stuck a fist the size of a civil servant’s head up to his very mouth and said: “Now just try and shout!” Akaky Akakievich felt only that they took the overcoat off of him and gave him a kick with their knee, and he fell onto his back in the snow, and he didn’t feel anything more.

A few minutes later he came to himself and got up onto his feet, but no one was there. He felt that it was cold out in the field and he had no overcoat. He started to shout, but his voice, it seemed, had no intention of making it all the way to the far ends of the square.

In desperation, shouting constantly, he started running across the square right to the booth, next to which stood the policeman on duty, leaning on his halberd and watching, seemingly curious to know why the hell someone was running toward him from a distance and shouting. Akaky Akakievich ran up to him and began to shout in a panting voice that he was asleep and not looking at anything and didn’t see them robbing a person. The policeman answered

© Columbia University Press

that he hadn’t seen anything; he did see two people stop him in the middle of the square, but he thought they were his friends; and he said that instead of indulging in vain abuse, he should go tomorrow to see the district police inspector, and the district police inspector would find out who had taken the overcoat.

Akaky Akakievich came running home in utter disorder. His hair, of which he still had a small quantity on his temples and the back of his head, was completely messed up. His side and chest and trousers were all covered with snow. The old woman, the landlady of his apartment, hearing a terrible knocking at the door, hurriedly jumped out of bed and with only one shoe on went running to open the door, holding her nightgown closed over her breast, out of modesty; but when she opened it, she stepped back, seeing Akaky Akakievich in such a state. When he told her what had happened, she threw up her hands and said that he needed to go right to the sector inspector, that the district inspector would put one over on him, he would make promises and then would drag it out; but best of all would be to go right to the sector inspector, that she was even acquainted with him, because Anna, the Finnish woman who used to work for her as a cook, had now gotten a job as a nanny for the sector inspector, that she often saw him himself as he was riding by their building, and that he also came to church every Sunday, he’d pray and at the same time look at everyone cheerfully, and that it follows that he obviously must be a kind person.

After hearing this solution, Akaky Akakievich sadly plodded off to his room, and how he spent the night there I will leave to the judgment of anyone who can in the least bit imagine the situation of another person. Early in the morning, he set off to see the sector inspector, but they said he was sleeping; he came at ten o’clock— they said again, he’s sleeping; he came at eleven o’clock—they said, the sector inspector is not home; he came at dinnertime—but the clerks in the vestibule did not want to let him through and demanded The Overcoat

\ 303

© Columbia University Press

304 \

The Overcoat

to know what his business was and what had necessitated his visit and what had happened. So finally, for once in his life, Akaky Akakievich felt like showing some character, and he said pointblank that he needed to see the sector inspector himself personally, that they wouldn’t dare not to let him in, that he had come from the Department on official business, and that he would make such a complaint about them that then they would see. The clerks did not dare to say anything against this, and one of them went to summon the sector inspector. The sector inspector received the story of the theft of the overcoat in an extremely strange manner. Instead of paying attention to the main point of the matter, he started interrogating Akaky Akakievich: Why was he returning home so late, had he perhaps dropped into and spent time in some disorderly house; so that Akaky Akakievich got completely embarrassed and left without knowing whether the proper process for the case of the overcoat would be put in motion or not.

That whole day he was absent from the office (the only time in his life this had happened). The next day he presented himself, all pale and wearing his old housecoat, which had become even more deplorable. His narrative about the theft of the overcoat, despite the fact that there were some civil servants who didn’t miss even this opportunity to make fun of Akaky Akakievich, nevertheless moved the hearts of many of them. They immediately decided to take up a collection for him, but they collected only the most trivial sum, because the civil servants had already spent a lot subscribing to buy a portrait of the director and some book suggested by the section head, the author of which was a friend of his—and so it turned out to be a trivial sum. One of them, moved by compassion, decided to help Akaky Akakievich at least with good advice, and said that he should go not to the district police inspector, because although it might happen that the district police inspector, wishing to earn the approval of his supervisors, would find the overcoat by some means,

© Columbia University Press

nevertheless the overcoat would remain with the police, if he could not present legitimate proof that it belonged to him; so it would be best of all if he would apply to a certain significant personage, that the significant personage, after exchanging letters and communicating with the appropriate people, could make the case go more successfully. There was no escaping it; Akaky Akakievich decided to go to see the significant personage.12 What exactly the post of the significant personage was and in what it consisted is still unknown to this day. The reader must know that a certain significant personage had only recently been made a significant personage, and before that he had been an insignificant personage.

By the way, even now his position is not considered significant in comparison to other, even more significant positions. But there will always be a circle of people for whom something that other people consider insignificant is significant. Nevertheless, he tried to enhance its significance by many other means, namely: He made a rule that the lower-ranking civil servants had to meet him on the stairway when he came to the office; that no one could dare to present themselves to him directly, but that everything had to go in the strictest order: a collegiate registrar would report to a provincial secretary, the provincial secretary would report to a titular councillor or whoever else, and in this way the business would finally reach him. That’s how it is in holy Russia, everything is infected by imitation, everyone imitates and poses as his supervisor. They even say that a certain titular councillor, when they made him the administrator of some separate little chancellery, immediately partitioned off a special room for himself, calling it the “official room,” and stationed some footmen with red collars and gold braid at the door, who would take hold of the doorknobs and open them to all visitors, although there was hardly enough space in the “official room” to place an ordinary writing desk.

The manners and habits of the significant personage were sedate and majestic but not complicated. The main basis of his system The Overcoat

\ 305

© Columbia University Press

306 \

The Overcoat

was strictness. “Strictness, strictness, and—strictness,” he would usually say, and at the final word he would usually look very significantly into the face of the person he was talking to. Although there was really no reason for this, because the dozen civil servants who made up the entire governing mechanism of the chancellery were already as terrified as was appropriate. When they saw him coming from a distance, they would stop their work and wait, standing at attention, until the supervisor had passed through the room. His usual conversation with his inferiors had a flavor of strictness and consisted almost entirely of three phrases: “How dare you? Do you know who you’re talking to? Do you understand who is standing in front of you?” In his soul, however, he was a kind man, good and obliging with his colleagues, but the rank of general had completely thrown him off course. After he obtained the rank of general, he seemed to get confused, to lose his way, and he didn’t know at all what he should do. If he happened to be with his equals, he was a proper person, a very decent person, in many respects even an intelligent person; but as soon as he happened to be in company where there were people even one rank lower than him, he was simply wretched. He would be silent, and his situation would arouse pity, all the more since he himself felt that he could be spending his time in an incomparably better way. One could sometimes see in his eyes a powerful desire to join in some interesting conversation and circle, but he would be stopped by the thought: Would that not be too much on his part, would that not be too familiar, and would he not thereby lower his significance? And as a result of such meditations he would remain eternally in the very same silent state, only uttering a few monosyllabic sounds from time to time, and in this way he acquired the title of the most boring person.

This is the significant personage to whom our Akaky Akakievich presented himself, and he presented himself at the most inauspicious time, extremely inopportunely for himself, although most

© Columbia University Press

opportunely for the significant personage. The significant personage was in his private office and had gotten into a very, very cheerful conversation with a certain old acquaintance and childhood friend who had arrived recently, whom he hadn’t seen for several years.

At that moment they announced to him that someone named Bashmachkin had come to see him. He asked brusquely: “Who is that?” They answered: “Some civil servant.”—“Ah! He can wait, I don’t have time now,” the significant person said. Here we must say that the significant person had told a blatant lie. He had time; he and the acquaintance had already long managed to talk about everything and had long been interspersing their conversation with prolonged silences, patting each other lightly on the thigh and saying: “So, Ivan Abramovich!”—“That’s how it is, Stepan Varlamovich!” But for all that, nevertheless, he ordered the civil servant to wait, in order to show his acquaintance, a person who had left the service long ago and had been buried at home in the country, how long civil servants had to sit waiting in his anteroom.

Finally, having talked their fill and having been silent even more than their fill, and having smoked a cigarillo in extremely comfortable armchairs with reclining backs, he finally seemed to suddenly remember and said to the secretary who had stopped by the door with some documents to be submitted: “Yes, it seems there’s some civil servant standing out there; tell him that he can come in.”

Seeing Akaky Akakievich’s humble appearance and his old uniform, he turned to him suddenly and said: “What can I do for you?”— in a brusque and firm voice, which he had practiced on purpose in advance in his room, all alone in front of the mirror, a week before he obtained his present position and the rank of general. Akaky Akakievich, who had started feeling the proper timidity well in advance, was somewhat embarrassed and, as much as the freedom of his tongue would allow him, explained as best he could, adding the particle “like” even more frequently than usual, that it was a The Overcoat

\ 307

© Columbia University Press

308 \

The Overcoat

quite new overcoat, and now it had been stolen in the most inhumane fashion, and that he was applying to him so that by means of some kind of petition somehow like, he would exchange letters with Mr. Chief of Police or somebody like that and find his overcoat. For some unknown reason, this behavior seemed to the general to be too familiar.

“What’s wrong with you, my dear sir,” he continued brusquely, “don’t you know the correct procedure? Where do you think you’ve come? Don’t you know how things are done? You should have first submitted an appeal about this to the Chancellery; it would have gone to the desk head, to the section head, and then it would have been transmitted to the secretary, and the secretary would have delivered it to me. . . .”

“But, Your Excellency,” Akaky Akakievich said, trying to gather the entire little fistful of nerve that was in him, and feeling at the same time that he was sweating horribly, “I ventured to trouble Your Excellency because secretaries are like . . . an unreliable folk . . .”

“What, what, what?” the significant personage said. “Where did you get the nerve? Where did you get ideas like this? What sort of riotous conduct has spread among young people against their supervisors and superiors!”

It seems that the significant personage had not noticed that Akaky Akakievich was already past the age of fifty. It follows that if he could be called a young person, it was only in a relative sense, in other words, in relation to someone who was past seventy.

“Do you know who you’re talking to? Do you understand who is standing in front of you? Do you understand that, do you understand it? I’m asking you.”

At this point he stamped his foot, raising his voice to such a high note that even a non–Akaky Akakievich would have been terrified.

Akaky Akakievich was utterly stunned; he staggered, he started shaking all over and could not stay standing. If the guards had not

© Columbia University Press

come running up to support him, he would have tumbled to the floor with a plop; they carried him out almost motionless. And the significant personage, satisfied that the effect had exceeded even his expectations, and quite intoxicated by the idea that his word could even deprive a person of their senses, gave a sidelong look at his friend to see how he was taking it, and not without satisfaction did he see that his friend was in a most indefinite condition and was even beginning to feel some terror on his own behalf.

Akaky Akakievich had no memory of how he came downstairs, how he came out onto the street, none of it. He could not feel either his arms or his legs. He had never in his whole life been so scorched by a general, and one from a different office at that. He walked through a snowstorm that was whistling along the streets, his mouth wide open, stumbling off the sidewalks. The wind, as is the St. Petersburg custom, was blowing on him from all four directions, out of all the lanes. In a twinkling it blew a quinsy into his throat, and he made it home without the strength to say a single word; he swelled all up and took to his bed. Such is the power sometimes of an appropriate scorching! The very next day he was found to have a serious fever. Thanks to the magnanimous assistance of the St. Petersburg climate, the illness progressed more quickly than might have been expected, and when the doctor made his appearance, after taking his pulse, he could find nothing better to do than to prescribe a poultice, solely in order that the patient would not be left without the beneficent aid of medicine; but nevertheless, he immediately pronounced that in a day and a half he would certainly be kaput. Then he turned to the landlady and said: “And you, madam, don’t waste any time, order him a pine coffin immediately, because an oaken one would be too expensive for him.”

Whether Akaky Akakievich heard these fatal words pronounced, and if he heard them, whether they had a devastating effect on him, whether he regretted his wretched life—none of this is known, The Overcoat

\ 309

© Columbia University Press

310 \

The Overcoat

because he was in delirium and fever the whole time. He was constantly having visions of phenomena, one stranger than the next: At one moment he saw Petrovich and was ordering him to make an overcoat with traps in it for the thieves he kept imagining under the bed, and he was continually calling the landlady to drag one thief out from under his very blanket; the next moment he would ask why his old housecoat was hanging in front of him when he had a new overcoat; then he imagined that he was standing in front of the general, listening to the appropriate scorching, and was saying: “I’m sorry, Your Excellency!”—then, finally, he even used foul language, uttering the most terrible words, so that his old landlady even crossed herself, having never heard anything like it from him before, especially since these words followed immediately after the words “Your Excellency.” Then he started talking complete nonsense, so that it was impossible to understand anything; all you could see was that his disorderly words and thoughts kept tossing and turning around the single subject of the overcoat.

Finally, poor Akaky Akakievich gave up the ghost. They did not place either his room or his belongings under seal, because in the first place, there were no heirs, and in the second place, only a very small inheritance remained, namely: a bundle of goose-quill pens, a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks, two or three buttons that had come off his trousers, and the housecoat that is already familiar to the reader. Who inherited all this, God knows.

I have to admit, not even the narrator of this story was interested enough to find out. They took Akaky Akakievich away and buried him. And St. Petersburg was left without Akaky Akakievich, as if he had never even been there. Thus disappeared and vanished a creature who was not defended by anyone, not dear to anyone, not interesting to anyone, who did not even attract the attention of the natural scientist who never misses the chance to stick an ordinary fly on a pin and inspect it through a microscope; a creature who

© Columbia University Press

submissively endured office mockery and descended to the grave without having performed any extreme feats, but who all the same, if only just before the end of his life, had seen the flash of a bright guest in the form of an overcoat, which had animated his poor life for an instant; a creature on whom misfortune had then crashed down intolerably, as it has crashed down onto the kings and overlords of the world . . . A few days after his death a guard was sent to his lodgings from the Department to give him the order to present himself immediately, by the demand of the supervisor; but the guard had to return empty-handed, with the answer that he could not come any more, and to the inquiry “Why?,” he expressed himself in the following words: “Well, it’s like this—he died, they buried him four days ago.” That is how the people in the Department learned of the death of Akaky Akakievich, and the next day a new civil servant was already sitting in his place, who was much taller and who made his letters not in such an upright handwriting, but much more inclined and slanting.

But who could have imagined that this is not all there is to say about Akaky Akakievich and that he was fated to live noisily for several days after his death, as if in reward for a life that no one had noticed? But that is how it happened, and our poor story has unexpectedly taken on a fantastic ending. Rumors suddenly started spreading through St. Petersburg that near the Kalinkin Bridge and much farther a corpse had started to appear in the form of a civil servant who was seeking an overcoat that had been filched, and that under the pretext of the stolen overcoat it was stripping all kinds of overcoats from everyone’s shoulders, without distinguishing rank and title: overcoats with cat fur, with beaver fur, with cotton padding, raccoon coats, fox coats, bear coats—in short, all the sorts of fur and leather that humans have devised for covering their own hides. One of the civil servants from the Department saw the corpse with his own eyes and immediately recognized him as Akaky The Overcoat

\ 311

© Columbia University Press

312 \

The Overcoat

Akakievich, but this inspired such terror in him that he ran off as fast as he could and so did not manage to get a good look but saw only how the corpse shook his finger at him threateningly from a distance. Complaints started coming in ceaselessly from all directions that the backs and shoulders, not just of titular, but even of the most privy councillors, had been subjected to thorough chilling as a result of the nocturnal stripping-off of overcoats. The police got a directive to catch the corpse at all costs, dead or alive, and to punish him in the cruelest fashion, as an example to others, and they very nearly succeeded in this. To wit, in Kiryushkin Lane the policeman of a certain district had almost grabbed the corpse quite by the collar at the very scene of the crime, in its attempt to strip a woolen overcoat off a retired musician who had tootled on a flute in his day.

After grabbing the corpse by the collar, he summoned two of his colleagues with a shout, and entrusted them with holding on to the corpse, while he took just one moment to reach into his boot in order to get his flat birchbark snuffbox, so as to temporarily refresh his nose, which had been frostbitten six times in his life; but apparently the snuff was of the sort that not even a corpse could stand.

The policeman had hardly had time, after closing his right nostril with his finger, to inhale half a fistful with his left nostril, when the corpse sneezed so powerfully that he splattered all three of them in the eyes. In the time it took them to raise their fists to wipe their eyes, the corpse vanished without a trace, so that they weren’t even sure whether or not he had really been in their hands. From that time, policemen conceived such a terror of corpses that they were even afraid to grab the living and would just shout from a distance: “Hey, you over there, move along!”—and the corpse–civil servant started appearing even beyond the Kalinkin Bridge, inducing serious terror in all timid people.

But we have quite abandoned a certain significant personage, who was really almost the cause of the fantastic turn that our nevertheless

© Columbia University Press

quite true story has taken. First of all, justice demands that we say that a certain significant personage, soon after the departure of poor, scorched-into-ashes Akaky Akakievich, felt something akin to regret. Compassion was not alien to him; his heart was accessible to many kind impulses, despite the fact that his rank very often kept them from being manifested. As soon as his visiting friend had left his private office, he even started meditating about poor Akaky Akakievich. And from that time, almost every day, he had a vision of the pale Akaky Akakievich, who had not been able to endure an official scorching. The thought of him disturbed him so that a week later he decided even to send a civil servant to him to find out how he was and whether in fact there was not some way to help him; and when they reported to him that Akaky Akakievich had died suddenly of a fever, he was even staggered, he heard the reproaches of his conscience, and the whole day he was in low spirits. Wishing to be somewhat diverted and to forget the unpleasant impression, he set off for an evening party at the home of one of his friends, where he found some decent society, and best of all—everyone there was of almost one and the same rank, so that he had absolutely no reason to feel constrained. This had an amazing effect on his emotional disposition. He became expansive, his conversation became pleasant and amiable—in short, he spent the evening in a very pleasant fashion. Over supper he drank about two glasses of champagne, a remedy that is well known to have a pretty positive effect on the matter of cheerfulness. The champagne imparted to him a disposition toward various emergency measures, namely: He decided not to go home yet, but to drop in to see a certain lady of his acquaintance, Karolina Ivanovna, a lady of German extraction, it seems, for whom he felt quite friendly relations. We must say that the significant personage was a man no longer young, a good husband, a respectable father of a family. Two sons, of whom one was already serving in a chancellery, and a comely sixteen-year-old The Overcoat

\ 313

© Columbia University Press

314 \

The Overcoat

daughter with a somewhat arched but pretty little nose, would come every day to kiss his hand, saying, “Bonjour, Papa.” His wife, a woman who was still fresh and even not at all bad-looking, would first give him her hand to kiss and then, turning it over to the other side, would kiss his hand. But the significant personage, although he was quite satisfied with his domestic family endearments, found it seemly to have, for friendly relations, a female friend in another part of the city. This female friend was not a bit prettier or younger than his wife, but such enigmas happen in the world, and it is not our business to make judgments about them.

And so, the significant personage went downstairs, got into his sleigh, and said to the coachman: “To Karolina Ivanovna’s”—while he himself, having wrapped himself up most luxuriously in his warm overcoat, remained in that pleasant situation, the best that can be devised for a Russian person, that is, when you yourself are not thinking about anything, but meanwhile the thoughts come into your head all by themselves, one more pleasant than the last, without giving you the trouble of chasing after them and seeking them. Suffused with satisfaction, he lightly recalled all the cheerful passages of the evening he had just spent, all the words that had made the little circle laugh out loud; he even repeated many of them under his breath and found that they were still just as funny as before, and so it is no wonder that he himself laughed heartily. From time to time, however, he was bothered by the gusty wind, which appeared from God knows where and for goodness knows what reason, and slashed at his face, throwing up lumps of snow into it, blowing up the collar of his overcoat like a sail or suddenly throwing it onto his head with unnatural force, and thus causing him endless efforts to extricate himself from it.

Suddenly the significant personage felt that someone had seized him very firmly by the collar. When he turned around, he saw a person of short stature, in an old worn-out uniform, and not without

© Columbia University Press

horror did he recognize Akaky Akakievich. The civil servant’s face was as pale as the snow, and he looked just like a corpse. But the horror of the significant personage exceeded all bounds when he saw that the corpse’s mouth twisted and, breathing on him the terrible breath of the grave, he uttered the following speeches: “Ah! So there you are, finally! Finally, I’ve got you like, I’ve caught you by the collar! It’s your overcoat I need! You didn’t make any efforts about mine, plus you scorched me—so give me yours now!” The poor significant personage almost died. No matter how full of character he was in the chancellery and in front of his inferiors in general, and although everyone said after one look at his manly appearance and figure: “Ooh, what character!”—here, like many other people of heroic appearance, he felt such terror that not without reason he began even to fear some kind of morbid attack. He even threw the overcoat quickly off his shoulders and shouted to the coachman in a voice not his own: “Home, as fast as you can!” The coachman, hearing the voice that was usually uttered at decisive moments and was even accompanied by something much more physical, tucked his head between his shoulders to be on the safe side, brandished his whip, and tore off as fast as an arrow. A little more than six minutes later the significant personage was already in front of the entrance to his home. Pale, frightened, and without an overcoat, instead of going to see Karolina Ivanovna, he went home, somehow dragged himself to his room, and spent the night in very great disorder, so that the next morning over tea, his daughter said straight out: “You are quite pale today, Papa.” But Papa was silent and said not a word to anyone about what had happened to him, and where he had been, and where he had wanted to go.

This incident made a powerful impression on him. He even started saying to his subordinates: “How dare you, do you understand who is standing in front of you?” much less often; if he did say it, then not before first hearing out what the matter was. But even The Overcoat

\ 315

© Columbia University Press

316 \

The Overcoat

more remarkable is the fact that from that time the appearances of the civil servant–corpse completely ceased: Apparently the General’s overcoat fit his shoulders just perfectly; at least, no more cases were heard of in which someone’s overcoat was stripped off.

Nevertheless, many active and solicitous people simply did not want to calm down, and they said that the civil servant-corpse was continuing to appear in distant parts of the city. Indeed, a certain policeman in Kolomna saw with his own eyes the ghost appearing out from behind a building; but being somewhat feeble by nature, so that once an ordinary full-grown piglet that had rushed out of a private house knocked him off his feet, to the enormous laughter of the cabbies who were standing around, from whom he demanded a half-kopeck each for snuff as a fine for such mockery—so, being feeble, he did not dare to stop the ghost, but just walked behind him in the darkness until finally the ghost suddenly looked around and stopped, asking, “What the hell do you want?”—and displayed a fist of a kind you won’t find among the living. The policeman said, “Nothing,” and turned back that very minute. The ghost, however, was now much taller, had an enormous mustache, and turning his steps, it seemed, toward the Obukhov Bridge, vanished completely in the nocturnal darkness.

© Columbia University Press

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. Letter to his relative Petr Petrovich Kosiarovskii, October 3, 1827 (OS), in N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 14 vols. (n.p.: AN SSSR, 1937–1952), 10: 111.

2. See the interpretation by Roman Koropeckyj and Robert Romanchuk, “Ukraine in Blackface: Performance and Representation in Gogol'’s Dikan’ka Tales, Book 1,” Slavic Review 62, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 525–47. See also Yuliya Ilchuk, “Performing Hybrid Identity: The Editing History of Gogol’s Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan’ki (1831–1832),” Studies in Slavic Culture, vol. 7, ed. Alyssa DeBlasio and Julie Draskoczy (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2008), 28–49.

3. A. S. Pushkin, Sovremennik, 1836, vol. 1, 311–312, in I. A. Vinogradov, Gogol’ v vospominaniiakh, dnevnikakh, perepiski sovremennikov, 3 vols. (Moscow: IMLI RAI, 2011–2013), 1: 711. Hereafter cited as Vinogradov.

4. I concur here with Simon Karlinsky, who writes that Khoma “might well be the most full-blooded, sensible, and psychologically healthy of Gogol’s protagonists” (The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976], 88).

5. This transition has been traced in detail by the greatest scholar of Gogol, Iurii V. Mann. See, for example, “Èvoliutsiia gogolevskoi fantastiki,” in K istorii russkogo romantizma, ed. Iu. V. Mann, I. G. Neupokoeva, and U. R. Fokht (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 219–58; and Mann, Poetika Gogolia (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1978). See also Priscilla Meyer, “False Pretenders

© Columbia University Press

318 \

Introduction and the Spiritual City: ‘A May Night’ and ‘The Overcoat,’ ” in Essays on Gogol: Logos and the Russian Word, ed. Susanne Fusso and Priscilla Meyer (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1992), 63–74.

6. On the structure of Arabesques, see Susanne Fusso, Designing Dead Souls: An Anatomy of Disorder in Gogol (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993); and Melissa Frazier, Frames of the Imagination: Gogol’s “Arabesques” and the Romantic Question of Genre (New York: Peter Lang, 2000).

7. Rita Giuliani [Rita Dzhuliani], Rim v zhizni i tvorchestve Gogolia, ili poteriannyi rai: Materialy i issledovaniia, trans. A. Iampol’skaia (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2009); and Michael R. Kelly, “Gogol’s ‘Rome’: On the Threshold of Two Worlds,” Slavic and East European Journal 47, no. 1 (2003): 24–44. Kelly writes, “For English-speaking readers of Gogol’s works, the time has come for ‘Rome’ to be translated and included in collections of his tales” (39). On the form of the story in relation to Gogol’s other works and on the nature of the city itself as a fragment, see Fusso, Designing Dead Souls, 110–14.

8. V. V. Stasov, “Uchilishche pravovedeniia sorok let tomu nazad, v 1836–1842 gg.,” in Vinogradov 3: 366.

THE LOST LETTER 1. The narrator, Foma Grigorievich, is a lector, belonging to a minor order of clergy charged with reading scripture in church services. The akathist is a song of praise to a saint, to Christ, or to the Mother of God. The akathist to Saint Barbara, a fourth-century martyr, was composed by the Kyiv Metropolitan Ioasaf Krokovskyi in the early eighteenth century. Prayers were made to Saint Barbara for salvation from sudden death, which makes Foma Grigorievich’s vow particularly humorous.

2. The exhortation by the young women is given in Ukrainian in the original text.

Ukrainian words are scattered throughout the story. Gogol provided a glossary to the original edition of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka of “words in this book that are not comprehensible to everyone.”

3. “Fools” is a popular card game (similar to the Russian game durak) based on getting rid of all the cards in one’s hand; the player left with cards is the “fool.”

In a letter to his mother of May 22, 1829 (OS), Gogol asked her to send him descriptions of various Ukrainian card games, as well as stories told by the peasants about adventures in which “spirits and demons [nechistye, lit. the unclean ones]” take part (Academy PSS 10: 144).

4. This story is based on a pun: The word for “letter” in the title, gramota, also means “literacy.” Thus, the discussion of how many literate people could be found in Baturyn is directly related to the “letter” that drives the plot. Baturyn was in the province of Little Russia, on the Seym River (present-day northern Ukraine). Orthodox clergy could marry and have children.

© Columbia University Press

5. There is no simple definition for the term “Cossack.” It encompasses groups of people that differ based on geography and history. Although Cossacks began mainly as serfs who ran away and sought their freedom in the steppes, the Cossacks of eighteenth-century Ukraine were a fairly well defined and hierarchical social group, organized as a Hetman state that existed from 1648 to 1782 and combined elements of republicanism and monarchism. The empress is probably Catherine II (ruled 1762–1796).

6. Konotop is about thirty kilometers southeast of Baturyn.

7. Gogol’s glossary defines chumaks as “cart drivers who travel to Crimea for salt and fish.” I have translated the word moskal’ as “Rooskie,” as it has a pejorative sense for Ukrainians, implying laziness and cunning.

8. The Zaporozhian Sich was a semiautonomous group of Cossacks living beyond the rapids of the Dnieper River. Fears of their growing independence led Catherine II to disband the Zaporozhian Sich by a decree of 1775. The appearance and clothing of the Zaporozhian conform to the costume of this character in the Ukrainian itinerant puppet theater or “nativity play,” which combined religious and secular motifs. Gogol’s indebtedness to the Ukrainian puppet theater is elucidated by V. V. Gippius, Gogol, ed. and trans. Robert A. Maguire (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989). The bandura is a string instrument closely associated with Ukrainian folk music. At this period it was similar to the lute.

9. The Zaporozhian’s request that his companions stay awake with him, as well as their failure to do so, evoke Christ’s request to his disciples at Gethsemane on the night of his arrest and their failure to stay awake as he prays.

10. The traditional Ukrainian Cossack hairstyle was a long lock of hair growing out of an otherwise closely shaved head.

11. The “dove dance” and gopak are Ukrainian folk dances.

12. According to superstition, if you sneeze repeatedly, it means that someone is speaking disparagingly about you.

13. The trepak (or tropak) is a Ukrainian and Russian folk dance.

14. The Orthodox calendar includes many fasts, during which foods such as meat, fish, eggs, and dairy (in various combinations) have to be avoided.

15. Granddad’s hostility to Catholicism is conditioned not only by his Orthodox faith but also by the Cossack’s attitude to his former Roman Catholic PolishLithuanian overlords.

VI Y 1. Gogol’s footnote to the title: “Viy is the colossal creation of the common folk’s imagination. The Little Russians use this name for the chief of the gnomes, whose eyelids on his eyes reach all the way to the ground. This whole story is a folk legend. I did not want to change anything about it, so I am narrating it Viy

\ 319

© Columbia University Press

320 \

Viy in almost the same simple form in which I heard it.” Most scholars believe that there is no Slavic folklore source for the monster Viy, although the editors of PSS 2009 consider this an open question.

2. The Brotherhood Monastery in Kyiv was founded in 1588; the attached school was founded in 1615. The names of the class years are based on the main disciplines studied in those years (first year, Greek and Latin grammar; second year, rhetoric; third year, philosophy; and fourth year, theology).

Gogol makes a distinction between the bursaks, the charity-supported students of the bursa, who live in the dormitory, and the seminarists, who rent private apartments.

3. Gogol’s early work is deeply indebted to the Ukrainian itinerant puppet theater or “nativity play,” a folk tradition that combined religious and secular motifs. The influence on Gogol of the Ukrainian puppet theater is elucidated

by V. V. Gippius, Gogol, ed. and trans. Robert A. Maguire (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1989). The Kyiv bell tower is that of the Kyivo-Pechers’ka Lavra or the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves, erected 1731–1745 (96.5 meters in height).

4. Khalyava means “boot top” and is also a nickname for a freeloader. The name “Khoma” is a version of Thomas. “Brut” alludes to Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42 BCE), one of the assassins of Julius Caesar. “Tiberius” alludes to the Roman emperor who succeeded Augustus. “Gorobets” means “sparrow.”

5. The trepak (or tropak) is a Ukrainian and Russian folk dance.

6. The traditional Ukrainian Cossack hairstyle was a long lock of hair growing out of an otherwise closely shaved head.

7. A glossary by Gogol in his earlier collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, defines chumaks as “cart drivers who travel to Crimea for salt and fish.”

8. This appears to be St. Peter’s Fast (or the Apostles’ Fast), which would begin at the end of May or beginning of June and end in late June (OS). An observant Orthodox person would abstain from sex during fast time.

9. There is no simple definition for the term “Cossack.” It encompasses groups of people that differ based on geography and history. Although Cossacks began mainly as serfs who ran away and sought their freedom in the steppes, the Cossacks of eighteenth-century Ukraine were a fairly well-defined and hierarchical social group, organized as a Hetman state that existed from 1648 to 1782 and combined elements of republicanism and monarchism.

10. The Slavic bathhouse ritual involves whipping with young birch branches to stimulate the circulation.

11. I have chosen to keep the term pannochka, because it has a kind of incantatory power in the story. As a Polish-Ukrainian term for the unmarried daughter of a lord, it would have an exotic sound for a Russian reader.

12. The bare hill evokes both Golgotha/Calvary, translated in the Gospels as “the place of the skull,” where according to legend Jesus was crucified, and the “bald hill” that is the location of witches’ sabbaths in East Slavic folklore.

© Columbia University Press

13. Again, sex would be forbidden during Holy Week, the greatest fast of the Christian year.

14. In the story as published in Gogol’s lifetime in Mirgorod and his 1842 Collected Works, this phrase reads, “a funeral song,” not “a song about an oppressed people.” This change to the manuscript version of the story was apparently dictated by the censor. Although the phrase might refer to the Ukrainian people, it might also refer to the November Uprising of 1830–1831 in Poland.

(Taras Koznarsky, personal communication reported in Robert Romanchuk, “Mother Tongue: Gogol’ ’s Pannochka, Pogorel’skii’s Monastyrka, and the Economy of Russian in the Little Russian Gothic,” Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 62, no. 2 [2018]: 272–92, 276n10.)

15. The nickname kovtun (hair-mat) refers to “Polish plait,” which is either a disorder of the hair leading to matting or a hairstyle in which the mats are intentionally created by liquid or wax, a practice thought to alleviate illness.

16. The term translated here as “best friend” is kum, which strictly refers to the godfather of one’s child, or the father of one’s godchild, but can also be used more loosely to mean a close friend.

17. Sheptun was a term for a folk healer, derived from the word for “to whisper.”

18. In this paragraph, Gogol switches from using the masculine pronoun, as is appropriate for the word trup (corpse), and the feminine pronoun, even though the noun pannochka does not appear. I have tried to preserve the strangeness of this shift. (In 1842, when preparing to publish a four-volume collection of his works, Gogol reworked the original 1835 version of this story. The 1835 version of this passage includes the word mertvaia [dead woman], which has been omitted in the 1842 version, thus apparently leading to the discrepancy in pronouns.)

19. In the 1835 version of the story, a multitude of gnomes breaks into the church on the second night, including “a strange creature in the form of a regular pyramid covered with slime,” topped by a “long tongue that kept sticking out ceaselessly and bending in all directions,” a cockroach the size of an elephant, and other delicious horrors (Academy PSS 2: 574–76).

20. Khoma uses a verb that refers to bringing animals together for copulation.

21. The 1835 version of the story includes some more colorful monsters, including a yellow body with a black skeleton on the outside and “something as long and thin as a stick, consisting entirely of eyes and eyelashes” (Academy PSS 2: 583).

22. The 1835 version of the story ends here.

THE PORTR AIT 1. The Shchukin Market stalls in St. Petersburg were a center for the sale of used books and secondhand paintings.

The Portrait

\ 321

© Columbia University Press

322 \

The Portrait 2. Khosrow Mirza (1813–1875) was a Persian prince, the grandson of the shah, who was sent as the head of a diplomatic mission to the court of Nicholas I to apologize for the murder of Russia’s ambassador to Persia, the poet Alexander Griboedov, in January 1829. Khosrow Mirza made a grand entrance to St. Petersburg in August 1829 and stayed for more than two months, becoming a media sensation. His portrait was widely circulated. The “pictures that attest to the native talent of the Russian” are lubki, cheap woodcuts and engravings, often brightly colored and combining images with texts, depicting fairy tales, biblical stories, and popular tales. Miliktrisa Kirbitievna is a character in the fairy tale Bova Korolevich, which dates to the sixteenth century and was widely illustrated in lubki.

3. Yeruslan Lazarevich is the hero of a fairytale that was immensely popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and served as a source for Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820). The Glutton-Drunkard was another popular woodcut, which depicted a gigantic glutton being served by tiny attendants, and was probably based on French depictions of Louis XVI as Rabelais’s Gargantua.

Foma and Yeryoma were the comic heroes of tales about two brothers distin­ guished by their foolishness and absurdity.

4. Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) was a Flemish painter, a student of Peter Paul Rubens. In Gogol’s time his name would be associated with the summit of the portraitist’s art.

5. The Fifteenth Line of Vasilievsky Island was close to the Academy of Fine Arts and was thus a favorite place for artists to live.

6. A droshky is a light, open, four-wheeled cart.

7. The Petersburg Side (now Petrograd Side) is a neighborhood in St. Petersburg consisting of four islands. It was originally a central part of the city but had become peripheral by the end of the eighteenth century. Kolomna was another neighborhood inhabited by petty civil servants as well as artists and actors.

8. Gostiny Dvor in St. Petersburg was one of the first shopping arcades in the world, built in the eighteenth century.

9. Madame Sichler owned dress shops in St. Petersburg. Pushkin’s wife Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkina ordered dresses from her.

10. It is fairly clear from the original text that “yet another place” is a brothel.

11. Psyche, whose name means “soul” in Greek, is the heroine of the tale of Cupid and Psyche told in The Golden Ass by Apuleius.

12. The basilisk is a legendary serpent with a lethal gaze, most famously described in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History.

13. Titular councillor is rank 9 in the Table of Ranks (see frontmatter). Because promotion to rank 8 conferred hereditary nobility, many civil servants remained “stuck” at rank 9.

14. Russia was at war with Turkey in 1787–1791, 1806–1812, and 1828–1829. The dating of the action of the story is not clear.

15. The name Grigory comes from the Greek meaning “watchful, alert.”

© Columbia University Press

NEVSKY AVENUE 1. The frock coat came into fashion in Russia in the early nineteenth century and was originally an outer garment. It differed from the tailcoat in having a skirt all around the base and a higher closure. Over time it became shorter and developed into the modern suit jacket. The editors of PSS Mann note that Gogol himself was twenty-five years old at the time he wrote “Nevsky Avenue.” Gogol had a personal interest in stylish clothing. While still in school in Nizhyn, he wrote to his friend G. I. Vysotsky in St. Petersburg, asking him to have a tailcoat made for him by the best tailor: “Please write me what kind of fashionable fabrics you have for waistcoats, for trousers. . . . I would really like to have a dark-blue one with metallic buttons made for myself ” (letter of June 26, 1827, OS, Academy PSS 10: 102).

2. The streets listed here are in central St. Petersburg. Gogol lived on Morskaya and Meshchanskaya Streets at various times. A droshky is a light two-seat open carriage on springs.

3. The Petersburg Side and Vyborg District were on the northern outskirts of St. Petersburg, while the Peski area was in central St. Petersburg and the Moscow Turnpike was to the south.

4. Gogol wrote to his mother that there were many outdoor amusements in St. Petersburg, but that they were “unbearable” (April 30, 1829, OS, Academy PSS 10: 140).

5. In Greek mythology, Ganymede was a beautiful Trojan youth who was borne away by the gods to become the cupbearer on Olympus.

6. The Catherine Canal (now Griboedov Canal) was a receptacle for sewage, so Gogol’s reference to its purity is ironic. Gogol lived on the Catherine Canal when he arrived in St. Petersburg.

7. Gogol wrote to his mother about people on the streets of St. Petersburg who are “so occupied with their thoughts that as you come even with them you hear them cursing and talking to themselves, sometimes seasoning it with bodily movements and waving of their arms” (April 30, 1829, OS, Academy PSS 10: 139).

8. The gilded, seventy-two-meter spire on the Admiralty Building at the western end of Nevsky Avenue is one of the major landmarks in St. Petersburg.

9. See the Table of Ranks in the frontmatter. See also the interesting discussion by Irina Reyfman in her How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016), 104–7.

10. The “prints that don’t dare to show themselves in broad daylight” also make an appearance in “The Nose” and “The Overcoat.”

11. Perugino is Pietro Vannucci (ca. 1446 to 1452–1523), Italian Renaissance painter and teacher of Raphael. There are various hypotheses as to the specific painting referred to here, as there is no painting by Perugino called “Bianca.”

12. The word translated here as “setting,” oklad, refers to the metal frame of an icon. This harmonizes with Piskaryov’s vision of the woman as a divinity Nevsky Avenue

\ 323

© Columbia University Press

324 \

Nevsky Avenue “who seemed to have flown down from heaven right onto Nevsky Avenue.”

Gogol wrote in similar terms to his mother about a (perhaps fictional) woman he had met in St. Petersburg ( July 24, 1829, OS, Academy PSS 10: 147–48).

13. In a letter to his mother from St. Petersburg, Gogol described the building he was living in: “The building in which I abide contains two tailors, one marchande de modes, a shoemaker, a stocking manufacturer, someone who glues broken crockery back together, a decatizer and dyer, a pastry shop, a hardware store, a warehouse for storing winter clothes, a tobacco shop, and finally a licensed midwife. Naturally, this building is entirely plastered with golden signboards” (letter of April 30, 1829, OS, Academy PSS 10: 139–40). A “decatizer” treats outerwear to make it water-resistant.

14. In the court Table of Ranks, gentleman of the bedchamber was rank 5, a step below chamberlain (rank 4). This position was usually held by young aristocrats in the civil service. See the civil service Table of Ranks in the frontmatter.

15. The Persian refers to himself with feminine grammatical forms. This is a common mistake made by nonnative speakers of Russian and other Slavic languages, but it may also be an echo of the androgynous nature of the brothel as the narrator describes it earlier in the story, “where woman, that beauty of the world, the crown of creation, has been turned into a strange, ambiguous being, where together with the purity of her soul she has been deprived of everything feminine, has revoltingly adopted the manners and insolence of a man, and has ceased to be that weak, splendid being who is so different from us.”

16. In the nineteenth century there was a fashion for jewelry made from human hair, often combined with precious metals and stones.

17. The Orthodox Church forbade all funeral rites to people who had committed suicide. Okhta was on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.

18. Hired mourners were often disabled veterans.

19. The imperfect taste of the officer class is demonstrated by their lumping Alexander Pushkin, probably Russia’s greatest writer, together with the mediocre journalists Faddei Bulgarin (1789–1859) and N. I. Grech (1787–1867) and the writer of potboilers A. A. Orlov (1791–1840).

20. The popular farces on themes from peasant life, Filatka and the Children by P. I. Grigoriev Sr., and Filatka and Miroshka the Rivals; or, Four Suitors for One Girl by P. G. Grigoriev Jr., were staged in the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1831.

21. Members of the merchant class often wore beards, which were forbidden for men in the civil service. In his play Marriage (written 1833–1835, published 1842), Gogol describes the efforts of a merchant’s daughter to marry outside her class.

22. Dmitry Donskoy (1807) was a tragedy in verse by V. A. Ozerov (1769–1816).

Alexander Griboedov’s verse comedy Woe from Wit is one of the greatest masterpieces of the Russian stage. It was written in 1824 but first staged in 1831.

23. A unicorn gun was an artillery piece with a conical breech, with a unicorn depicted on it. The joke involves a general explaining the difference between a

© Columbia University Press

cannon and a unicorn gun to Catherine II. The joke ends with the anticlimactic punch line: “A cannon is one thing, and a unicorn gun is quite another.”

24. The gates of the Kazan Cathedral opened onto Great Meshchanskaya Street (now Kazanskaya Street), named for the social class of meshchanstvo, made up of small householders, city dwellers, and craftsmen. Many craftspeople were of non-Russian, especially German, origin.

25. William Tell (1804) was the last drama written by Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), one of the two giants of German classical literature along with Goethe; his History of the Thirty Years’ War was published in 1791–1793. E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) was a writer of fantastic tales that were hugely popular in Russia.

His influence can be seen in Gogol’s stories, including the story of Piskaryov in “Nevsky Avenue” itself. The editors of PSS Mann have found several craftsmen named Schiller and Hoffmann listed in the address books of the time. Gogol lived on Ofitserskaya Street (now Decembrists’ Street) in 1831–1832.

26. Rappee (râpé) was a high-quality French snuff. Schiller’s arithmetic is a little off (two pounds of rappee at two rubles a pound is four rubles, not six), perhaps because of his intoxication.

27. Caraway-seed vodka is probably the liqueur known as kümmel.

28. The expression “horns” refers to becoming a cuckold, a man whose wife is unfaithful.

29. The General Staff was one of the highest organs of military administration, and the State Council was the supreme advisory legislative body, created by Tsar Alexander I in 1810. It was chaired by the tsar and had its meetings in the Winter Palace. The mention of Pirogov taking his complaint to the sovereign himself was censored from the original publications of the story.

30. The Northern Bee was the first major private newspaper in Russia, published by F. V. Bulgarin and N. I. Grech (see note 20 and the notes to “Diary of a Madman”).

31. The triumphal arch of the General Staff Building, designed by Carlo (Karl Ivanovich) Rossi (1775–1849) and built in 1819–1829, is one of the most striking features of the architecture of Palace Square.

32. The Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) was a major military and political figure who played a role in the American Revolution as well as the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830. His funeral in Paris was a notable event in spring 1834, as Gogol was writing “Nevsky Avenue.”

DIARY OF A MADMAN 1. The original title of this story translates literally as “Notes of a Madman,” but I have retained the traditional English title. Before the invention of steel pens, writing was done with feathers (typically from geese), which had to be periodically sharpened. According to the editors of PSS 2009, the low-level clerks who performed this task sometimes made a specialty of sharpening quills to the particular taste of their supervisors.

Diary of a Madman

\ 325

© Columbia University Press

326 \

Diary of a Madman 2. That is, using the vy form. Russian has two second-person pronouns, the familiar form ty and the polite (or plural) form vy. Just before this and later in the story (entry for November 6), the madman’s supervisor addresses him as ty.

A droshky is a light, open, four-wheeled cart.

3. Decatizing is a means of processing cloth for surface smoothness and for moisture and shrinkage resistance.

4. Later in the story, the madman reads the Northern Bee, a semi-official newspaper aimed at the middle classes. I. P. Zolotussky has discussed the fact that this newspaper would publish, next to news of foreign affairs (coups, revolutions), sensational stories of strange phenomena such as a boy born with three heads, a Dutch maiden who hadn’t eaten since 1818, a black rabbit with feathers instead of fur, a girl with two noses, and a half-woman, half-fish. Igor’ Petrovich Zolotusskii, “ ‘Zapiski sumasshedshego’ i ‘Severnaia pchela,’ ” in his Poeziia prozy: Stat’i o Gogole (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1987), accessed June 14, 2019, http://ogrik2.ru/b/igor-petrovich-zolotusskij/poeziya-prozy/4071/zapiski -sumasshedshego-i-severnaya-pchela/7.

5. A similar passage appears in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1819–1821), referring to the writing capabilities of a cat.

6. Zverkov’s House was the first five-story building in St. Petersburg. Gogol lived there from October 1829 to the summer of 1831. In a letter of September 1829, he had to reassure his mother that living on the fifth floor did not fatigue him at all: “The sovereign himself occupies rooms that are no lower than mine; on the contrary, up high the air is much cleaner and healthier” (Academy PSS 10: 184). Later in the story (entry for November 12), the madman goes to the “sixth floor” to get the dogs’ letters, but Zverkov’s House had no sixth floor. Whether this is a simple oversight on Gogol’s part or an indication of the increasing unreality of the madman’s world is unclear. The friend “who plays the trumpet very well” is probably a remnant of the original conception of the story as the “diary of a mad musician.”

7. The madman uses a Russified version of the French word canaillerie, “knavery.”

The word derives from a term for a pack of dogs, so it resonates with the “doggie” theme in the story.

8. The Bee is the Northern Bee; see note 4. The “Kursk landowner” is probably a reference to a pseudonym, “Finnish Landowner,” used by the newspaper’s editor Faddei Bulgarin.

9. The poem is not by Pushkin but by N. P. Nikolev (1758–1815).

10. Johann Conrad Rutsch was a fashionable St. Petersburg tailor who provided clothing for Tsar Nicholas I. 11. The popular farces on themes from peasant life, Filatka and the Children by P. I. Grigoriev Sr., and Filatka and Miroshka the Rivals; or, Four Suitors for One Girl by P. G. Grigoriev Jr., were staged in the Aleksandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1831. Vaudeville was a genre of comic theater borrowed from France, which incorporated satirical songs and dances.

© Columbia University Press

12. The French word équivoque means “ambiguity,” but the madman seems to be using it to mean “deceit” or “ruse.”

13. In Gogol’s time, the letter yat was identical in pronunciation to the letter ye, so only educated writers would know the correct placement of the two letters. The yat was removed from the Russian alphabet, along with several other letters, in the 1918 post-Revolutionary reform of orthography.

14. In the court Table of Ranks, gentleman of the bedchamber was rank 5, a step below chamberlain (rank 4). This position was usually held by young aristocrats in the civil service. The madman is a titular councillor, rank 9 in the civil service Table of Ranks (see frontmatter). Since promotion to rank 8 conferred hereditary nobility, many civil servants remained “stuck” at rank 9.

The madman claims, however, to be of “noble descent” (entry for October 4).

Irina Reyfman has written cogently about the ambiguity of the madman’s position: “On the one hand, he is portrayed as a lowly feeble-minded clerk whose service obligations seem to consist exclusively of sharpening quills for the head of his department; apparently, he is incapable of doing anything more complicated. On the other hand, not only does he have a relatively high rank but his position in the department is quite considerable; he is a desk chief, which means that several clerks are working under him. Desk chiefs were normally supposed to have the rank of court councilor [Rank 7], not titular councilor” (How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016], 110–11).

15. The mention of the sovereign was censored in the original publications of “Diary” (replaced with “baron”). The word “sovereign” was also censored from the entries for December 8 and “No date of any sort.” The pale-blue ribbon is the symbol of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, the highest order in the Russian Empire.

16. Freemasonry is a fraternal society that apparently arose in the Middle Ages out of artisans’ guilds. It often comes into conflict with organized religion, and in 1822 Tsar Alexander I banned Masonic lodges in Russia. When beginning a civil service post, Gogol himself had to take an oath that he did not belong to a Masonic lodge (PSS Mann). Masonic organizations maintain an air of secrecy, bolstered by symbolism known only to members, such as special hand signals and handshakes.

17. Zolotussky notes that in 1833 the Northern Bee included a special rubric called “Spanish Affairs,” devoted to controversies over the succession to the Spanish throne. King Ferdinand VII of Spain (1784–1833) rescinded the Salic Law that prevented women from succeeding to the throne, so that his three-year-old daughter Isabella could inherit the throne rather than his brother Don Carlos.

This led to a series of civil wars.

18. Ice hills were set up for sledding on Winter Palace Square and Elagin Island, surrounded by other popular entertainments like fair booths and performances.

Diary of a Madman

\ 327

© Columbia University Press

328 \

Diary of a Madman 19. Philip II (1527–1598) was the builder of the Spanish Empire. The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin is an offshoot of the Franciscans. It is not clear what specific historical event, if any, the madman is referring to here.

20. “Cast-iron roads” refers to the railroad, which did not yet exist in Russia. The first railroad line, between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo, was opened in 1837.

The word translated here as “steamship” could in this period also apply to any vehicle powered by steam, including a locomotive.

21. The madman seems to be thinking not of a chemist but of Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

22. Hydrotherapy was commonly used to treat mental illness in the nineteenth century. Some patients died as a result of the more extreme treatments.

23. Given his Spanish orientation, the madman is probably referring to the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (the Spanish Inquisition), established in 1478 in Spain for the purpose of combating heresy, using the methods of torture and execution.

24. Jules de Polignac, Count of Polignac (1780–1847), was prime minister of France under Charles X. His policies helped lead to the July Revolution of 1830.

25. The last Ottoman ruler of Algeria, Hussein Dey, was deposed by the French in 1830.

THE CARRIAGE 1. The word in the title of the story, koliaska, is a general term for carriage, usually a two-horse, four-wheeled carriage on springs with a convertible top. Other types of carriage mentioned in the story are: brichka (usually transliterated as britzka in English), a light cart, usually not on springs, sometimes open; droshky, a light, open, four-wheeled cart; cabriolet, a light, two-wheeled, onehorse cart with one seat; and tarantass, a four-wheeled, covered, horse-drawn cart on long shafts to reduce jolting on long trips. The bon voyage is glossed in Russian sources as a four-seat carriage, although I have an unprovable suspicion that Gogol made it up.

2. A pood is equivalent to 36.12 pounds or 16.38 kilograms.

3. In Gogol’s text, the phrase translated here as “main square” is lobnoe mesto, literally “the place of the forehead.” Although the etymology is disputed, it is possibly related to Calvary or Golgotha, the “place of the skull” on which the crucifixion of Jesus Christ took place. The most famous lobnoe mesto is in Moscow, on Red Square in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral, but the phrase refers generally to a raised platform on a central square from which decrees could be read to the public and on which executions could be performed. Although executions were not performed on the lobnoe mesto in Moscow, the general sense of the phrase in the Russian cultural imagination is “place of execution,”

© Columbia University Press

so Gogol’s use of the phrase here for the place on which the country clodhopper is being “executed” by the soldiers is humorously bathetic. This passage was censored from the original publication of the story.

4. Faro was an immensely popular card game, immortalized in Alexander Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades” (1834).

5. Pifagor is the Russian version of Pythagoras, a highly unusual if not non­ existent Russian first name. The Russian nobility held elections for district representatives and police supervisors and for the marshal of the nobility, who held a responsible position in local self-government.

6. The references to the unbuttoned uniforms and visible suspenders of the officers were censored from the original publication of the story.

7. Part of the humor in this passage is that the horse, Agrafena Ivanovna, is given a full formal name including patronymic, something that is usually reserved for humans. In his 1842 play The Gamblers, Gogol gives a name and patronymic to a deck of cards.

8. The word “tapeworm” was censored from the original publication of the story.

9. In 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia and was repelled after a prolonged and costly struggle.

10. The apron was “a piece of leather . . . attached to the dash or front of a carriage, used as a lap cover to protect the occupants from rain or snow” (Don H. Berkebile, Carriage Terminology: An Historical Dictionary [Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978], 309).

THE NOSE 1. March 25 is the Feast of the Annunciation (the announcement to Mary by the Archangel Gabriel that she was to give birth to the Son of God). Mikhail Weiskopf (Vaiskopf) has demonstrated that this story is imbued with Christian symbolism and is in a sense the story of Jesus’s life on earth; it is “a travesty of the Eucharist, or more precisely, of the entire Gospel narrative of the Incarnation” (Siuzhet Gogolia: morfologiia, ideologiia, kontekst [Moscow: Radiks, 1993], 229).

Given this framework, I have translated the names of the streets into English, because several of the streets named in the story refer to events in the Christian calendar, in this case the Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven on the fortieth day after the Resurrection. In the nineteenth century, barbers also engaged in medical practices such as pulling teeth and letting blood.

2. A pood is equivalent to 36.12 pounds or 16.38 kilograms.

3. According to a decree of 1809, a titular councillor (rank 9) could be promoted to collegiate assessor (rank 8, which conferred hereditary nobility) only upon graduating from a university or passing a standardized test. Irina Reyfman points out that Kovalyov “was promoted to this rank speedily and without the required examination, in order to entice him and others like him to serve in the The Nose

\ 329

© Columbia University Press

330 \

The Nose

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Caucasus during Russia’s conquest of the region” (How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016], 108). During his teaching career, Gogol himself attained the rank of collegiate assessor after passing an examination (Vinogradov 1: 29). See the Table of Ranks in the frontmatter.

The rank of collegiate assessor in the civil service was equivalent to the rank of major in the army. It was not appropriate for a civil servant to use a military title.

Despite the equivalence between collegiate assessor and major in the Table of Ranks, military ranks bore greater prestige than civil ones.

Boston is a trick-taking card game that originated in the eighteenth century.

It was considered a prudent, low-risk game and was popular among civil servants.

Small seals that were used to seal letters with wax were often personalized with coats of arms, initials, or days of the week, and could be worn as ornaments on one’s watch chain.

The word for nose in Russian, “nos,” is of masculine gender, so the pronouns used for it can be translated as either “he” or “it,” which poses a problem for the translator. Given the vivid personification of the nose at this point in the story, I have chosen to translate the pronoun as “he.” When it returns to being regarded as just a nose, it becomes “it” again.

Gogol’s original version of the story had Kazan Cathedral as the location of the meeting between Kovalyov and his nose. When Gogol sent the story to his editor M. P. Pogodin in 1835, he wrote, “If by chance our stupid censorship insists that the Nose can’t be in the Kazan Church, then perhaps he can be moved to a Catholic church. But I don’t think that they have gotten as senile as that” (Academy PSS 10: 355). In fact, the censor did object to this location, and in versions of the story published in Gogol’s lifetime, this scene took place in the Gostiny Dvor shopping arcade rather than in any sort of church. The Kazan Cathedral was built in 1801–1811 and is located on the corner of Nevsky Avenue and the embankment of the Catherine Canal (now the Griboedov Canal).

While praying, Orthodox believers frequently cross themselves and bow to the icons.

In the original text, the bridge is called Anichkin Bridge, which is a colloquial name for Anichkov Bridge.

As with his misuse of the title major for himself, here Kovalyov is flattering his friend by using the army title lieutenant colonel instead of the correct civil service equivalent, court councillor.

The Senate was the highest government organ in the Russian Empire, super­ vising the activity of the civil service.

A droshky is a light, open, four-wheeled cart.

It was forbidden to advertise the sale of serfs in newspapers, so “being offered for service” is a euphemism. The strange business hours “eight to three in the morning” are in Gogol’s original.

© Columbia University Press

15. Rappee (râpé) was a high-quality French snuff.

16. Subaltern officers were of the ranks from ensign to captain; staff officers were of the ranks from major to colonel.

17. The bel étage was the main, second floor of a building, where the most expensive and prestigious apartments were located.

18. Aqua regia is a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, called “royal water” because it can dissolve platinum, silver, and gold.

19. This character was called Palageya Grigoryevna earlier in the story.

20. Russian is rich in expressions using the word “nose,” such as the phrase I have translated as “to lead you around by the nose.” The phrase can be literally translated as “to remain with your nose,” meaning “to be left holding the bag.”

21. The phrase “experiments in the operation of magnetism” probably refers to activities inspired by the theories of Franz Mesmer (1734–1815), who developed a method for treating illness based on internal magnetic forces that he called “animal magnetism.” The phrase “dancing chairs” refers to rumors about spontaneously moving furniture in the home of an official of the Imperial Stables (from which Stables Street took its name), noted by Alexander Pushkin in his diary (and by other sources) in 1833.

22. Khosrow Mirza (1813–1875) was a Persian prince, the grandson of the shah, who was sent as the head of a diplomatic mission to the court of Nicholas I to apologize for the murder of Russia’s ambassador to Persia, the poet Alexander Griboedov, in January 1829. Khosrow Mirza made a grand entrance to St. Petersburg in August 1829 and stayed for more than two months, becoming a media sensation. During his stay in St. Petersburg he lived in the Tauride Palace, with its extensive adjacent gardens.

23. It should be noted that the title of the story in Russian, “Nos,” when read backward becomes “Son,” which means “dream.”

24. The trepak (or tropak) is a Ukrainian and Russian folk dance.

ROME 1. Albano (now Albano Laziale) is an ancient town on Lake Albano, about 14 miles from Rome.

2. Like Albano, Castel Gandolfo is in the Alban Hills, on Lake Albano. The word minente (derived from eminente) refers to commoners who are sufficiently well off to dress in a showy and colorful manner. Although Gogol’s minenti are apparently men, the word more often refers to women. Frascati is another town in the Alban Hills near Albano.

3. Gogol’s references in this story reflect his keen interest in the artistic treasures that can be viewed in Rome. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591–1666), called Il Guercino (“the Squinter”), was born in Cento but was active in Rome in 1621–1623, where he painted the important fresco Aurora in the Villa Ludovisi.

Rome

\ 331

© Columbia University Press

332 \

Rome

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Annibale Caracci (1560–1609) and his brother Agostino (1557–1602) were Bolognese artists who painted magnificent frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Their cousin Ludovico (1555–1619) was a major influence on Guercino.

Gogol brought home to Russia a copy of a depiction of the Savior by Annibale Caracci, which is now in a museum in Gogol’s birthplace.

Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) was a scholar and cardinal who helped to codify Italian as a literary language based on the Tuscan dialect. His letters are considered masterpieces of Latin style. Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) was a Florentine poet and prose writer, known for his posthumously published treatise on polite behavior, Il Galateo overo de’ costumi (1558). Olio di ricino is castor oil, used since ancient times as a laxative.

The Via del Corso is the major access into Rome from the northern city gate, the Porta del Popolo. It was used as a racetrack during the Roman Carnival (the backdrop for the last part of the story). The Villa Borghese Pinciana is a seventeenth-century villa near the Porta del Popolo, famous for its gardens and art collection.

The “unbridled French muse” refers to the works of Victor Hugo and other French Romantic writers of the 1830s.

The July Revolution of 1830 in France deposed the Bourbon king Charles X and brought Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orléans, to the throne in a constitutional monarchy. After the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815, Italy was largely under the control of the Austrian Empire. There was a series of insurrections in 1830 in various parts of what is now Italy.

The omnibus was a large horse-drawn carriage on springs that could carry about fifteen to twenty passengers. Paris had regular omnibus service beginning in 1828. Paris was known for its glass-ceilinged, artificially illuminated arcades for pedestrian shopping. Perhaps the most famous of these was the Galerie d’Orléans at the Palais Royal, built 1828–1830. The landmarks of Paris that are foregrounded here are key signs of the city as the vanguard of progress and modernity.

Gogol uses the word bottega to refer to a servant in an osteria. Modern Italian dictionaries define bottega as “shop.” But in Karl Baedeker, Italy. Handbook for Travelers, we find, “The waiter of a restaurant is called cameriere, that of an osteria bottega” (Vol. 2: Central Italy and Rome [Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1875], 82). The Diario di Roma was founded in 1714; beginning in 1814 it was the official gazette of the Papal States but also provided news on literature and culture.

Il Pirata (not Pirato, as Gogol has it) was a twice-weekly journal published in Milan from 1835 to 1891. It covered literature, art, and theater. Thermopylae was a battle between Persians and Greeks in 480 BCE. Darius I the Great (550–486 BCE) was one of the most powerful Persian kings.

“The Chambers” refers to the French bicameral legislature. In 1830–1848 these were the Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies.

I have not been able to determine what “crocodiles” refers to.

© Columbia University Press

12. French vaudeville was a comic genre that incorporated song, dance, and satirical verses. Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) was a Venetian dramatist, the author of classic comedies.

13. Gogol’s quotation of this verse attributed to Count Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803) is inaccurate. The verse actually reads: “Tutto fanno, e nulla sanno, / Tutto sanno, e nulla fanno; / Gira, volta, è son Francesi, / Più li pesi, men ti danno” (They do everything, they know nothing, they know everything, they do nothing; the French are scatterbrains, the more you weigh out to them, the less they give you for it).

14. The editors of PSS 2009 point out that Gogol had a similar idea about the relationship between the French and the Slavs. In an untitled and unpublished introduction from the 1840s to a Russian translation of Prosper Mérimée, Gogol wrote, “To feel and divine the Slavic spirit is too much and almost impossible for a Frenchman. By their nature these two nations are unable to harmonize in character.”

15. Gogol’s friend A. O. Smirnova recalled that he arranged so that all of their walks ended at St. Peter’s Basilica and that he told her he had spent many hours lying on the dome’s interior cornice at the base of its drum, marveling at the genius of Michelangelo. In a way, Gogol had moved from one “city of St. Peter” to another in his move from St. Petersburg to Rome, and his engagement with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica has a deeper significance than mere touristic interest.

16. The Ponte Molle is a bridge over the Tiber north of Rome. The Piazza del Popolo is a major square adjacent to the northern gate into Rome, the Porta del Popolo. It marks the beginning of the Via del Corso, mentioned earlier in the story and also toward the end. Monte Pincio or the Pincian Hill is in the northeast part of Rome and is the site of the Villa Borghese, mentioned earlier in the story.

17. The Palazzo Ruspoli is a sixteenth-century palace on the Via del Corso. The oldest part of the Palazzo Colonna in central Rome dates to the thirteenth century. The Palazzo Sciarra is a sixteenth-century palace on the Via del Corso.

The Palazzo Doria Pamphilj is a seventeenth-century palace on the Via del Corso.

18. Donato Bramante (1444–1514) was the original architect for the new St. Peter’s Basilica commissioned by Pope Julius II. 19. The phrase “how he could maintain con onore i doveri di marito” means “how he could maintain with honor the duties of a husband,” in other words, his conjugal duties.

20. “Fools” is a popular card game (similar to the Russian game durak) based on getting rid of all the cards in one’s hand; the player left with cards is the “fool.”

21. The term “Middle Ages” as Gogol uses it here seems to refer to the period now called the Renaissance, a term which was coined in its present sense by the French historian Jules Michelet in 1855, after Gogol’s death.

Rome

\ 333

© Columbia University Press

334 \

Rome 22. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was an architect and sculptor known for the dramatic inventiveness of his Baroque style.

23. Like Bernini, Francesco Borromini (1599–1667) was an exponent of the Roman Baroque style of architecture. Several of the other artists mentioned here are associated with St. Peter’s Basilica. “Sangallo” may refer to the architects Giuliano da Sangallo (1445–1516), Antonio da Sangallo the Elder (1453–1534), or Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1484–1546), the last of whom helped to design and construct St. Peter’s Basilica. Giacomo della Porta (1532–1602) completed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, in collaboration with Domenico Fontana (1543–1607). Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (1507–1573) also worked on St. Peter’s Basilica.

24. Gogol had spoken about the pettiness of the nineteenth century in his essay “Sculpture, Painting, and Music” (1834), in the collection Arabesques, referring to “all the fragmentation of whims and amusements that our nineteenth century racks its brains over.”

25. The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin is an offshoot of the Franciscans.

Franciscans wear brown robes.

26. The term “cinquecento” refers to the sixteenth century, and by extension the Italian art of that century. I have not found any sources attesting to a garment by this name.

27. Gogol is describing the Roman Campagna, the low-lying area surrounding Rome. The area was associated both with the spread of disease (malaria) and with the highly influential landscape painting of Claude Lorrain (Gellée, 1604/5–1682) and Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). Gogol’s descriptions here seem to be attempting to accomplish in words what these painters created in visual art.

28. The eastern facade of St. John Lateran is topped by fifteen large statues, including Jesus, John the Baptist, and John the Evangelist.

29. The editors of PSS 2009 note that P. V. Annenkov and F. I. Iordan both recount in their memoirs that they spent an evening with Gogol at a villa in Albano and admired a marvelous sunset in the Roman Campagna. This evening followed soon after the death of their acquaintance, the young architect M. A. Tomarinsky, from a rapidly progressing fever in the spring of 1841.

30. The phrase “a whole city of kingly merchants” refers to Venice, which became a center of world trade in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In an 1833 essay on the teaching of history, Gogol called it “this queen of the seas, this marvelous republic, with such an intricate and unusually organized government.”

31. This refers to Christopher Columbus. In the essay on history, Gogol wrote that Columbus killed the trade of Venice by discovering the New World.

32. Quirites was an ancient name for the citizens of Rome.

33. Genzano is another town in the Alban Hills. Since 1778 it has had a June festival called Infiorata, in which one of its streets is carpeted with flowers woven into intricate designs. Gogol described the festival in a letter to his sisters in 1838.

© Columbia University Press

34. Memoirists of the nineteenth century offer similar descriptions of the elaborate decorations in the shops of the pizzicaroli in Rome on Easter Saturday, as the Lenten fast is about to end. For example: “In one shop we saw St. Paul irradiated by a glory of sausages; and in another the ill-boding bird of St. Peter, hung up with the apostle it had warned in vain; Madonnas curiously carved in butter, and Bambinos in lard, warmed the devotion of the inward man; and every eatable of plastic consistence, or of malleable form, was pressed into the service of architectural decoration and symbolic piety.” “Italy,” in Atheneum, or Spirit of the English Magazines, vol. 10, 1821, p. 21.

35. The Greek Anthology was a collection of mostly brief poems from the classical and Byzantine periods, often of a sensual nature.

36. The Signoria was the governing body of the city.

37. Throwing flour to mark the end of Carnival and beginning of Lent is an ancient tradition. Harlequin and Columbine are characters in the Commedia dell’arte, a form of semi-improvisatory theater that began in Italy in the sixteenth century. In a letter from Rome of February 2, 1838, to A. S. Danilevsky, Gogol describes the Roman Carnival: “Now is the time of Carnival: Rome is going on an all-out spree. The Carnival is an amazing phenomenon in Italy, and especially in Rome—absolutely everyone is out on the street, everyone is in masks. The person who has no possibility of getting dressed up in costume turns his sheepskin coat inside out or smears his mug with soot. Whole trees and flower gardens ride along the streets, often a cart will drag by all covered in leaves and garlands, its wheels decorated with leaves and branches [. . . .]

The Corso is covered with snow from the flour that has been thrown. I heard about the confetti, I never realized it could be so good. Just imagine, you can pour out a whole bag of flour into the face of the prettiest woman, even if she is a Borghese, and she won’t get angry but will pay you back in kind. The fops and gentlemen spend several hundred scudi apiece on flour alone. [. . . .] It’s an amazing freedom, which would probably send you into raptures. You can speak and give flowers to decidedly any woman you wish. You can even get into the carriage and sit down among them. [. . . .] All the beautiful women of Rome have now floated to the surface, there is such a multitude of them now, and God only knows where they came from. I had never encountered them before; they are all strangers” (Academy PSS 11: 122).

38. Gogol’s footnote: “In Italian poetry there is a type of poem known as a sonnet with a tail (con la coda)—when there isn’t enough room in the poem for the idea, and it carries after it an addition that is often longer than the sonnet itself.”

39. Gogol’s footnote: “The Romans call everyone who does not live in Rome foreigners (forestieri), even if they live only ten miles from the city.”

40. The Ave Maria (Hail Mary) is part of the Angelus devotion, which would be recited in the morning, at noon, and in the evening.

Rome

\ 335

© Columbia University Press

336 \

Rome 41. Luke 11:33 (King James Version): “No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.”

42. “Siora” and “Sior” are colloquial versions of Signora and Signor, probably more characteristic of northern Italy than of Rome.

43. I have taken the liberty of restoring a censored passage here. The passage beginning “There were models” and ending with “make a confession about it” was censored from the original 1842 publication in the journal Moskvitianin and was not restored in subsequent publications (A. S. Bodrova, “. . . Popravki byli vazhnye . . .”: K istorii teksta povesti N. V. Gogolia ‘Rim,’ ” in Gogol’: Materialy i issledovaniia [Moscow, 2009], no. 2, p. 10).

44. The Church of St. Ignatius Loyola is a seventeenth-century church in the center of Rome. Tre Ladroni means “three bandits.” Via della Stamperia is the Street of the Printers, near the Trevi Fountain. The Trinità dei Monti church is situated at the top of the Spanish Steps, leading down to the Piazza di Spagna.

For most of his time in Rome, Gogol lived nearby, on the present-day Via Sistina.

45. As a result of a papal bull of 1555, Jews were required to live in the walled section of the city known as the Ghetto. This restriction was maintained, with brief interruptions, until the mid-nineteenth century.

46. The Trastevere (“across the Tiber”) neighborhood is on the west side of the Tiber. The church of San Pietro in Montorio is on the southwest outskirts of Rome.

47. The “Antonino column” refers to the Column of Marcus Aurelius, which is crowned by a bronze statue of St. Paul.

48. The Carnival in Rome culminated in races by riderless horses along the Via del Corso.

THE OVERCOAT 1. Titular councillor is rank 9 in the Table of Ranks (see frontmatter). Since promotion to rank 8 conferred hereditary nobility, many civil servants remained “stuck” at rank 9. Irina Reyfman argues that “Akaky’s service abilities are so obviously deficient that his having this rank is simply not plausible,” and that for a “lowly scribe” the rank of collegiate registrar (rank 14) would be more appropriate (How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016], 113).

2. The word for “brother-in-law” used here means “wife’s brother,” so the fact that lumping him together with the other Bashmachkins makes no sense is particularly obvious.

3. Russian Orthodox believers choose their children’s names from the Calendar of Saints. The person would celebrate his or her “name day” on the day

© Columbia University Press

dedicated to the saint for which he or she was named. Most of the names listed here are the names of actual saints. But none of them is a commonly used Russian name, and they all (including Akaky) sound outlandish and funny to a Russian ear. The name Akaky is from the Greek name Akakios (Latin Acacius) and is the name of several saints. Many scholars, beginning with F. C. Driessen, have drawn parallels between Akaky’s story and the hagiographical tradition. (Driessen, Gogol as a Short-Story Writer [The Hague: Mouton, 1965], 182–214.) Simon Karlinsky has pointed out that the name Akaky derives from a Greek word meaning “immaculate” or “without blemish,” but also sounds like the Russian word okakat’, “to cover with excrement.” (The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976], 137.)

4. The phrase “Russian foreigners” is in the original. Street peddlers would carry trays with their goods on their heads.

5. Sturmwhist is a German variant of the English trick-taking card game whist.

“Fortress governor” refers to the governor of the Fortress of Sts. Peter and Paul.

“Falconet’s monument” refers to the “Bronze Horseman,” the equestrian statue erected in 1782 in the Senate Square in St. Petersburg, dedicated to Peter I by Catherine II and created by Étienne Maurice Falconet (1716–1791).

6. The word “devil” is mentioned numerous times in association with the tailor Petrovich. Moreover, his having one eye, and his toenail, “as thick and strong as a turtle’s shell,” evoke the Slavic tradition of the one-eyed devil and the devil as lame or hoofed.

7. The critic Dmitry Chizhevsky writes, “The only thing that Akaky Akakievich sees at the moment when the matter of a new overcoat is being decided, is precisely this faceless general, and the Devil is faceless.

As someone who was well read in religious literature, as a connoisseur and collector of folklore materials—popular songs and legends—Gogol of course knew about the Christian and folk tradition that the Devil is faceless.” (“About Gogol’s ‘Overcoat,’ ” in Gogol from the Twentieth Century: Eleven Essays, ed. and trans. Robert A. Maguire [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974], 320.)

8. “Silver appliqué” refers to plated silver.

9. The comparison of the overcoat to a “pleasant female life companion” is strengthened in the original text by the fact that the word used for overcoat, shinel’, is of feminine gender and has feminine pronouns and adjectives used with it.

10. The word for “calm,” pokoinyi, can also be translated as “deceased,” thus adding to the strange image of Akaky’s heart only now beginning to beat.

11. The editors of PSS 2009 point out that in his notebooks for September 1841, Gogol described markets in St. Petersburg at which cats were sold for fur, with gray cats being the most desirable, presumably because they could be “mistaken for marten.”

The Overcoat

\ 337

© Columbia University Press

338 \

The Overcoat 12. The expression translated here as “significant personage” is znachitel’noe litso in Russian. The word litso can mean “personage,” which is clearly the primary meaning here, but it also means “face.” The significance of the human face as a representation of the whole personality is an important theme in Gogol’s works (most notably “The Nose”), but there is no English word that can convey this secondary meaning in the context of “The Overcoat.”

© Columbia University Press

RUSSIAN LIBRARY Between Dog and Wolf by Sasha Sokolov, translated by Alexander Boguslawski Strolls with Pushkin by Andrei Sinyavsky, translated by Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy and Slava I. Yastremski Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays by Andrei Platonov, translated by Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin, and Susan Larsen Rapture: A Novel by Iliazd, translated by Thomas J. Kitson City Folk and Country Folk by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya, translated by Nora Seligman Favorov Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry by Konstantin Batyushkov, presented and translated by Peter France Found Life: Poems, Stories, Comics, a Play, and an Interview by Linor Goralik, edited by Ainsley Morse, Maria Vassileva, and Maya Vinokur Sisters of the Cross by Alexei Remizov, translated by Roger John Keys and Brian Murphy Sentimental Tales by Mikhail Zoshchenko, translated by Boris Dralyuk Redemption by Friedrich Gorenstein, translated by Andrew Bromfield The Man Who Couldn’t Die: The Tale of an Authentic Human Being by Olga Slavnikova, translated by Marian Schwartz Necropolis by Vladislav Khodasevich, translated by Sarah Vitali Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage: Two Novellas by Yuz Aleshkovsky, translated by Duffield White, edited by Susanne Fusso New Russian Drama: An Anthology, edited by Maksim Hanukai and Susanna Weygandt A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova, translated and with an introduction by Barbara Heldt Klotsvog by Margarita Khemlin, translated by Lisa Hayden Fandango and Other Stories by Alexander Grin, translated by Bryan Karetnyk Woe from Wit: A Verse Comedy in Four Acts by Alexander Griboedov, translated by Betsy Hulick

Š Columbia University Press

Š Columbia University Press