Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Penguin ed.)

by Leo Tolstoy

  I have mentioned the vernacular or colloquial nature of many of Tolstoy’s usages. This is a very complex matter best illustrated by the translation itself, but suffice it to say that I have striven to replicate the trilogy’s movement not only among numerous terminological domains but also among highly diverse registers (from formal to informal, from bookish, scientific or technical to macaronic), while at the same time seeking to avoid disruptive lexical anachronism by using no words not active in English before 1850 (as documented by the Oxford English Dictionary). That last criterion might, in the colloquial usages at least, seem to entail the equal risk of archaism or quaintness, but, in fact, the colloquial stock of English is quite old, with many words we might suppose to be contemporary often dating from at least the eighteenth century. The historical complexity and richness of contemporary English have thus made it possible, at least theoretically, for the translation to be not only true to Tolstoy’s own time and place, but also fresh and vivid – have made it possible, that is, to respect the trilogy’s reflection of an apparently remote period, on the one hand, and its extraordinary vitality and remarkable modernity of conception, attitude and voice, on the other.

  Another feature of Tolstoy’s language and style is his syntax. In fact, there are several varieties of it in the trilogy. They range from the naturalistic ellipsis and disjunction of the dialogue and other reported speech (Tolstoy had a fine ear for such things); to elegant eighteenth-century discourse with formulaic antitheses and strict parallelism (the portraits of Papa and Prince Ivan Ivanych in Childhood, or of Katenka and Lyubochka in Boyhood); to lyrical or dramatic nature descriptions (the hunt in Childhood or the thunderstorm in Boyhood), with their strong rhythms, alliteration, onomatopoeia and other aural and syntactic combinations, including morphemic repetition and a fondness for triads; to the already mentioned romantic pastiche with its naïvely earnest or self-indulgent emotionalism; to the broken or pidgin language of the non-Russian Karl Ivanych (his list of reimbursable expenses in Childhood, or his unconsciously parodic autobiographical picaresque in Boyhood). There are also Tolstoy’s more or less neutral descriptions of character, scene and situation, with their famously intricate, compressed and sometimes even convoluted syntax. That ‘convolution’ is yet another dimension of Tolstoy’s stylistic innovation and not a matter of carelessness or a rejection of grammatical elegance on his part, but an expression of his sense of reality as a multiplicity of simultaneously interactive principles and conditions. It is, therefore, for him, an indispensable stylistic tool, and as such it has been preserved in the translation.

  Tolstoy famously remarked in one of his Sevastopol Sketches that his hero was truth. The remark may also stand as a guide for anyone undertaking to translate him: to tell the truth about his text in its own terms, and to do so by recognizing that the truth lies pre-eminently in the wonderful particularity of the text’s representation of the world. If the translator is alert to that particularity and at the same time responsive to the constantly shifting angles of its presentation, then the rest may, if he is lucky, follow of its own accord.

  Note on Names, Languages and Transliteration

  As in most works of nineteenth-century Russian prose, the trilogy’s system of personal naming is complex. It conveys not only identity but also gradations of intimacy, social position and even linguistic and cultural orientation (Western European versus Russian), thereby instantly establishing for the reader familiar with the system both the characters’ attitudes towards and their status in relation to each other. Thus, the narrator, usually called by his diminutive Nikolenka (with the stress on the second syllable), may also, depending on the context and speaker, be addressed more formally by his given name and patronymic, Nikolay Petrovich; officially by his last name only, Irtenyev; more intimately by his secondary diminutives, Koko or Nikolasha; or more or less neutrally by the French equivalent of his given name, Nicolas. His older brother, usually called by his own diminutive, Volodya, may also be addressed by his given name and patronymic, Vladimir Petrovich; by a second, more affectionate diminutive, Volodenka; or by a German equivalent of his given name, Woldemar; while their sister, formally Lyubov Petrovna Irtenyeva (with her last name in the obligatory feminine form), is usually referred to by one of two diminutives, Lyuba or, more affectionately, Lyubochka.

  As a rule, for both nineteenth-century and modern Russian speakers, diminutives tend to be used by social equals on familiar terms, by superiors addressing inferiors, or by adults speaking to children; whereas the combination of given name and patronymic is used by social inferiors addressing superiors, by younger people as a sign of respect when speaking to or of older people, regardless of social rank, and by adult equals who are not on familiar terms. The use of a given first name without an accompanying patronymic – as in regard to the serf and servant Nikolay in the trilogy – may express a degree of respect for an older social inferior, but without the acknowledgement of standing and authority that the addition of his patronymic would imply – as it does, for example, with the German tutor Karl Ivanych (a colloquial contraction of Ivanovich), or the former serf and nurse Natalya Savishna (her patronymic deriving from the old Russian name Savva). Similarly, the use at different times of the Russianized first name and patronymic Marya Ivanovna (‘Marie, daughter of Jean’) and the French diminutive Mimi (instead of its Russian cognate Masha) in regard to the Irtenyev French governess reflects, in the first instance, her status as a respected (by virtue of her age and authority) retainer and, in the second, her place as a family intimate and confidante of the children’s mother.

  In sum, the naming system serves both to identify individuals per se and to limn the social arrangements and dynamics of the world they inhabit and help to sustain. It is thus not only a matter of received onomastic convention, but also, in the hands of a virtuoso like Tolstoy, a subtle instrument of narrative structure and theme. As such it has naturally been retained in the translation without adaptation or simplification, other than the provision, below, of a list of the main characters and the different names associated with them.

  The milieu from which Tolstoy himself derived and that he describes with such unremitting care was highly cosmopolitan and comfortably multilingual, and its members, especially the older ones, were often more proficient in their ‘foreign’ languages than they were in their ‘native’ Russian. As mentioned above, Tolstoy as a young man was fluent in French and German, and had a good knowledge of English, but he was also acquainted with Italian and Tatar; and later in life he would undertake the study of Greek and biblical Hebrew, as well as refine his English to a very impressive level of skill. He was, to be sure, exceptional in the extent and depth of his knowledge of other languages, but not at all exceptional in his command of German and French, which were both commonly used in his milieu as still vital legacies of the programmatic Europeanization of Russian culture undertaken first by Peter I, the Great (reigned 1682–1725), whose sympathies were Dutch and German, and then by Catherine II, the Great (reigned 1762–96), whose orientation was Francophone and Francophile, despite her Pomeranian birth. It follows that Tolstoy has therefore included German and French in the trilogy because those languages were living idioms of the world he wanted to describe and analyse in the full complexity of its historical, social and linguistic life. Indeed, he is as scrupulous in his representation of the diverse non-Russian usages as he is in conveying the distinctive Russian speech of different individuals and groups, even groups as small as an immediate family or a circle of acquaintances – for example, the ‘sociolinguistic’ discussion of family idioms in Chapter Twenty-nine of Youth and of the distinctive speech habits of Nikolenka’s fellow students in Chapter Forty-three of the same section, or the systematic representation of verbal tics, like Papa’s fondness for the word ‘splendid’ (slavny and its derivations) or the steward Yakov’s characteristic repetition of the nonce phrase ‘once again’ (opyattaki), or the already mentioned comic deform
ities of Karl Ivanych’s insecure, German-inflected Russian.

  It would be incorrect to say that Tolstoy would have agreed with his near-contemporary Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) that language may determine thought, but it is certainly true that he not only accepted but applied in a fairly elaborate way in the trilogy the idea that language embodies and instils a powerful, multilayered cultural orientation and impetus, and even, to some degree, an ideology; as in his milieu’s link through French to the Enlightenment, a connection that was no less strong than its other link through Russian to the ancient East Slavic culture of Orthodox Christianity and the peasantry or common people. Indeed, it was arguably the blending of – and productive tension between – those two historical, social and linguistic principles that ultimately produced the extraordinarily vital hybrid culture from which Tolstoy and his contemporaries emerged; the culture that gave the world the great achievements of nineteenth-century Russian literature, and that, as I have already indicated in various ways, is one of the subjects of the trilogy’s own intricate investigations and elaborations. In view of those facts and their vital importance, I have retained the German and French without alteration as integral components of the text, although, as mentioned above, English translations have been provided in the endnotes.

  The problem of transliterating names and words from the Cyrillic alphabet of Russian to the Latin alphabet of English is a notoriously difficult one. There seems to be no satisfactory solution, other than a provisional compromise that tries, in the best instances, to render the rough phonetic shape (the pronunciation) of the Russian words and names without burdening the English-speaking reader with superfluous, distracting or meaningless orthographic detail, while yet providing, where necessary, reasonably reliable information for any readers with Russian who may want to consult the original sources. The compromise of this edition has been to use the popular Penguin system for the translation itself, but a simplified Library of Congress system in the Notes and other explanatory materials for the convenience of scholars and students.

  List of Characters

  Dubkov: an army officer and friend of the Irtenyev brothers

  Frost: the Ivin German tutor

  Grandmother: the narrator’s maternal grandmother

  Grap, Ilenka: an Irtenyev childhood friend

  Irtenyev, Nikolay Petrovich; Nikolenka, Nikolasha, Koko: the narrator

  Irtenyev, Pyotr Aleksandrovich (or Aleksandrych); Pierre: the narrator’s father

  Irtenyev, Vladimir Petrovich; Volodya, Volodenka, Woldemar: the narrator’s brother

  Irtenyeva, Lyubov Petrovna; Lyuba, Lyubochka: the narrator’s sister

  Irtenyeva, Natalya Nikolayevna; Natasha: the narrator’s mother

  Ivin brothers: distant Irtenyev relations and childhood friends

  Ivin, Sergey; Seryozha: the middle Ivin brother

  Katya, Katenka, Catherine: the French governess’s daughter

  Kornakov, Prince Stepan Mikhailovich; Étienne: Princess Kornakova’s son

  Kornakova, Princess Varvara Ilinishna: first cousin of the narrator’s mother

  Lyubov Sergeyevna: a Nekhlyudov family friend and member of their household

  Marya Ivanovna; Mimi: the Irtenyev French governess

  Mauer, Karl Ivanych: the Irtenyev German tutor

  Mikhailov, Yakov Kharlampych: the Petrovskoye estate steward and a serf

  Natalya Savishna; Natashka, Nasha: the Petrovskoye housekeeper and a freed serf

  Nekhlyudov, Prince Dmitry; Mitya: the narrator’s best friend

  Nekhlyudova, Princess Marya Ivanovna: Dmitry’s mother

  Nekhlyudova, Princess Varvara; Varenka: Dmitry’s sister

  Nikolay (or Nikolay Dmitrich): an Irtenyev servant and serf

  Prince Ivan Ivanych: Grandmother’s cousin

  St-Jérôme, Auguste: the Irtenyev French tutor

  Sofya Ivanovna: Dmitry’s aunt and a member of the Nekhlyudov household

  Valakhina (or Madame Valakhina): an Irtenyev relation

  Valakhina, Sofya; Sonyechka: Mme Valakhina’s daughter

  Yepifanov, Pyotr Vasilyevich; Petrushka: Avdotya Vasilyevna’s brother

  Yepifanova, Anna Dmitriyevna: Avdotya Vasilyevna’s mother

  Yepifanova, Avdotya Vasilyevna; Dunyechka, La belle Flamande: the narrator’s stepmother

  CHILDHOOD

  ONE

  Our Teacher, Karl Ivanych

  On the 12th of August 18**, exactly three days after my tenth birthday when I received such wonderful presents, Karl Ivanych woke me at seven in the morning by hitting a fly right over my head with a swatter made of sugar-bag paper on a stick. He did it so clumsily that he grazed the little icon of my patron saint hanging on the oak headboard of my bed, and the fly fell on my head. I poked my nose out from under the blanket, steadied the swaying icon with my hand, flicked the dead fly onto the floor and glanced over at Karl Ivanych with sleepy, angry eyes. But he, in a multicoloured quilted dressing gown wrapped with a belt of the same material, a knitted red skullcap with a tassel, and soft kidskin boots, continued to patrol the walls, aiming and swatting.

  ‘Perhaps I am little,’ I thought, ‘but why is he bothering me? Why isn’t he killing the flies by Volodya’s bed? There are so many over there! No, Volodya’s older than I am. I’m the youngest; that’s why he’s tormenting me. All he’s thought about his whole life is doing nasty things to me,’ I murmured. ‘He saw very well that he woke and startled me, but he acts as if he didn’t. What a horrible man he is! And his dressing gown and cap and tassel are horrible too!’

  As I was thus mentally expressing my vexation with Karl Ivanych, he went over to his bed, looked at the watch suspended above it in a beaded slipper, hung the swatter on a nail and then turned to us, clearly in the best of moods.

  ‘Auf, Kinder, auf! ’S ist Zeit. Die Mutter ist schon im Saal!’1 he boomed in his kind German voice, and then he came over to me, sat down at the foot of my bed and removed his snuffbox from his pocket. I pretended to be asleep. Karl Ivanych took some snuff, wiped his nose, flicked his fingers and only then got after me. With a chuckle, he started to tickle my heels. ‘Nu, nun, Faulenzer!’ he said.2

  Ticklish as I was, I didn’t jump out of bed or answer, but only stuck my head deeper under the pillows and kicked with all my might, trying as hard as I could not to laugh.

  ‘What a kind person he is and how fond of us, and yet I could think such bad things about him!’

  I was vexed both with myself and with Karl Ivanych, and felt like laughing and crying – my nerves were all in a jumble.

  ‘Ach, lassen Sie,3 Karl Ivanych!’ I yelled with tears in my eyes as I pulled my head out from under the pillows.

  Karl Ivanych was taken aback, and leaving my soles alone he anxiously started to ask what the matter was. Had I had a bad dream? His kind German face and the concern with which he tried to guess the reason for my tears made them flow even faster. I was ashamed and didn’t understand how only a moment before I could have disliked Karl Ivanych and found his gown and cap and tassel so horrible, for now on the contrary they all seemed extraordinarily nice to me, and even the tassel struck me as clear proof of his goodness. I told him that it was a bad dream that had made me cry, that maman had died and was being taken for burial. I made it all up, since I had absolutely no idea what I had dreamed that night, but when Karl Ivanych, touched by my story, began to comfort and console me, it seemed to me that I really had dreamed that frightening dream, and I started to cry again for a different reason.

  After Karl Ivanych left me and I sat up in bed and began to pull my stockings on my little feet, my tears started to recede, although dark thoughts about the made-up dream remained. Then our servant Nikolay came in, a tidy little man, always serious, correct and respectful, and a great friend of Karl Ivanych’s. He had our clothes and footwear with him – boots for Volodya and insufferable pumps with bows for me. I wo
uld have been ashamed to cry in front of Nikolay, and anyway the morning sun was gaily shining through the windows and Volodya, mimicking Marya Ivanovna (our sister’s French governess), was laughing so loudly and merrily at the washstand that even the serious Nikolay, a towel over his shoulder and soap in one hand and a ewer in the other, said with a grin, ‘That will do, Vladimir Petrovich, now please get on with your washing.’

  I was completely cheered up.

  ‘Sind Sie bald fertig?’4 Karl Ivanych’s voice came from the classroom.

  The voice was stern without the gentle expression that had earlier brought me to tears. Karl Ivanych was an entirely different person in the classroom: he was a schoolmaster. I quickly got dressed, washed and still brushing my wet hair responded to his call.

  Karl Ivanych, with spectacles on his nose and a book in his hand, was sitting in his usual place between the door and the window. To the left of the door were two small shelves, one ours – the children’s – and the other Karl Ivanych’s own. Ours contained books of every kind, school and non-school, some upright and others lying flat. Only two large volumes in red bindings of the Histoire des voyages5 stood primly against the wall, and then came tall books, thick books, big books and small books, books without covers and covers without books, all crammed in the same space, as happened whenever you were ordered before breaks to straighten up the library, as Karl Ivanych grandly called our little shelf. The collection of books on his own shelf, although not so numerous as ours, was even more varied. I remember three: a German pamphlet, without a cover, on manuring cabbage gardens; a volume of a history of the Seven Years War6 in parchment with a burnt corner; and a complete course on hydrostatics. Karl Ivanych spent the better part of his spare time reading and had even hurt his eyesight doing so, although he read nothing but the books on his shelf and the Northern Bee.7