by Teffi
Teffi is now widely read in Russia—new editions of her best-known stories come out almost yearly—but she still receives little scholarly attention. Probably because of her lack of pretense, she remains underestimated. In 1931, in a review of a new collection of Teffi’s short stories, the Russian émigré poet Georgy Adamovich wrote, “There are writers who muddy their own water, to make it seem deeper. Teffi could not be more different: the water is entirely transparent, yet the bottom is barely visible.” These words are still more apt with regard to Memories, an elegant and carefully composed work of art that appears, on first reading, to have been thrown together casually and spontaneously.
In essence, Memories is a series of goodbyes: to Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and Russia itself; to friends—some who died and some who stayed in Soviet Russia; to the Russian theater; and to Russia’s two most important religious centers. Each of these goodbyes is in its distinct emotional register. Teffi’s departure from Moscow is solemn; her departure from Odessa is farcical; her final departure on the boat to Constantinople is deeply sad. Teffi avoids repetition, but she makes skilful use of echoes and symmetries. Most poignant of all, perhaps, is the contrast between her account of her last public reading in Soviet Russia—in a “Club of Enlightenment” packed with Red Army soldiers and Cheka officers draped in bullet belts—and her account near the end of the memoir of an evening in a Yekaterinodar theater where the glittering audience includes the commander-in-chief of the White Army. The former ends with a few well-wishers in the audience—women who appear “infinitely weary” and “hopelessly sad”—calling out to Teffi “Sweetheart! We love you! God grant you get out of here soon!” The evening in Yekaterinodar ends with Teffi joining in excited calls for the author to go out onstage, momentarily forgetting that she is herself the author of the plays just performed. The nature of authorship—the extent to which anyone is in control of their own life and the extent to which an artist does, or does not, have authority over their own creations—is another of Teffi’s leitmotifs in Memories.
The final chapter is astonishing; shortly before leaving Russia, Teffi imagines saying goodbye to life itself. Standing at dawn beneath the hilltop gallows where an anarchist known as “Ksenya G” was hanged by the Whites, she imagines Ksenya’s last minutes. Ksenya was “bold, gay, young, and beautiful.” She was “always chic”; she was independent-minded. She has much in common with Teffi herself, and Teffi knows this. This scene may, amongst other things, serve as a source of bleak comfort, a reminder to Teffi that there are still worse fates than losing one’s country. Had Teffi chosen to stay, she too might well have been executed.
Like many of the greatest Russian prose writers of the last century—Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov, Andrey Platonov, and Varlam Shalamov, among others—Teffi began her literary career as a poet. Like these other writers—with the possible exception of Shalamov—she is more truly a poet in her prose than in her verse. She writes precisely, colloquially and with delicate modulations of tone. There are subtle echoes and symmetries not only in the book’s overall structure, but also at the level of individual chapters, paragraphs, and even sentences. Irony, tragedy, absurdity, and high spirits interweave, sometimes undercutting one another, sometimes reinforcing one another. Behind every sentence the reader can sense a living voice; the intonation of every phrase can be clearly heard.
All this makes Teffi’s prose difficult to translate. It also makes it ideal material for practicing the art of translation—my thanks to the several hundred students of all ages who have tried their hand at translating passages from Memories in courses and workshops during the last five years at the London Review Bookshop, Pushkin House (Bloomsbury), Queen Mary University of London, and the annual literary translation summer school founded by Ros Schwartz and Naomi Segal and now known as “Translate in the City.” Many of these students have contributed phrases to the present translation.
Thanks also to the following for their help and suggestions: Alexandra Babushkina, Lois Bentall, Marina Boroditskaya, Ismene Brown, Roger Clarke, Mahaut de Cordon-Prache, Richard Davies, Natalya Duzhina, Darra Goldstein, Colin and Lis Howlett, Alina Israeli, Nathan Jeffers, Sara Jolly, Yelena Karl, Clare Kitson, Sophie Lockey, Elena Malysheva, Irina Mashinski, Melanie Moore, Natasha Perova, Caroline Rees, Peter Scotto, Richard Shaw, Dmitry Shlyonsky, Stanislav Tsalik, and Christine Worobec.
I am especially grateful to Anne Marie Jackson and to Irina Steinberg, but for whose passionate enthusiasm for Teffi this project would not have got off the ground. And also to Edythe Haber, for generously sharing her encyclopedic knowledge of Teffi’s life and work; to Michele Berdy, Masha Bloshteyn, Boris Dralyuk, Rose France, and Elena Trubilova for help with translation problems; and to my wife, whose ear for language grows more sensitive with each year.
Thanks also to The New Yorker for publishing extracts from Memories on their website: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/stepping-across-ice-teffi-1872-1952
—ROBERT CHANDLER
FURTHER READING
OTHER MEMOIRS OF THIS PERIOD
Ivan Bunin, Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution, tr. Thomas Gaitan Marullo (Ivan Dee, 1998)
Viktor Shklovsky, A Sentimental Journey, tr. Richard Sheldon (Dalkey Archive Press, 2004)
Edith Sollohub, The Russian Countess (Impress Books, 2011)
Marina Tsvetaeva, Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917-1922, tr. Jamey Gambrell (Yale University Press, 2011)
Edith Sollohub, unlike Bunin, Shklovsky, and Tsvetaeva, was never a professional writer. Hers, though, is the most interesting of these memoirs. Like Teffi, she writes vividly and with understanding about all the many people, from all classes, whom she encountered during her last years in Russia. At times her narrative attains a real spiritual depth.
OTHER WORKS BY TEFFI IN ENGLISH
Subtly Worded (Pushkin Press, 2014)
Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi (New York Review Books, 2016)
Stories by Teffi are included both in Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics, 2005) and in Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics, 2012)
Elizabeth Neatrour’s translation of Teffi’s play The Woman Question (first performed in 1907) is included in Catriona Kelly (ed.), Anthology of Russian Women’s Writing 1777–1992 (Oxford University Press, 1994).
RUSSIAN EDITIONS OF TEFFI
There is not yet any complete edition of Teffi’s work. The most useful collected editions are the five-volume Sobranie sochinenii published by Terra in 2008 and the seven-volume Sobranie sochinenii published by Lakom in 1997–2000; the latter also includes useful notes. There are numerous single-volume selections, mostly oddly similar in their choice of texts. Some of Teffi’s finest volumes have yet to be republished; as far as I know, none of the stories in her outstanding Vechernii Den’ (Prague, 1924) have been reprinted at all.
The volumes on which we have drawn for Memories are:
1. Moya letopis’ (Moscow: Vagrius, 2004)
This contains the complete text of Vospominaniya as well as the articles about writers and other important figures that Teffi hoped, toward the end of her life, to publish as a separate volume titled Moya letopis’ (My Chronicle).
2. Teffi v strane vospominanii (Kiev: LP Media, 2011)
An excellent compilation of articles and sketches written by Teffi between 1917 and 1919. Many were published in journals and newspapers in Kiev and Odessa during Teffi’s last months in Russia, the period Teffi describes in Memories. Most of these pieces are also included in a smaller but more easily obtainable volume: Kontrrevolyutsionnaya bukva (Azbuka, 2006).
NOTES
A longer version of “Before a Map of Russia” was published in Vozrozhdenie (Oct. 2, 1925). This shorter version was published in the almanac Na zapade (New York, 1953). The present translation first appeared in The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin, 2015), ed. Chandler, Dralyuk, and Mashinski.
INTRODUCTION
1. �
��Retrospektivnyi vzgliad i udivlenie,” Novyi Satirikon, no. 6, (Mar), 1918: 13. Rep. in Teffi, V strane vospominanii. Rasskazy i fel’etony 1917– 1919, ed. S. I. Kniazev & M. A. Rybakov (Kiev: LP Media, 2011), 164.
2. M[ark] A[ldanov], “Teffi. Passiflora,” Sovremennye zapiski, 1923, no. 17: 485.
3. “Nadezhda Teffi,” in F. F. Fidler, ed., Pervye literaturnye shagi: Avtobiografii sovremennykh russkikh pisatelei (Moscow: I. D. Sytin, 1911), 203.
4. Teffi, “Chuchelo,” Vozrozhdenie, Jan. 11, 1931 (no. 2049): 2.
5. “Mne snilsia son . . . ,” Sever, 1901 (no. 35): 1101; Fidler, 204–5.
6. Teffi, “Pokaiannyi den’,” Teatr i iskusstvo, 1901, no. 51 (Dec. 16): 955; “Novyi god u pisatelei,” Zvezda, 1901, no. 52 (Dec. 29): 14–16, 18.
7. The play, “Zhenskii vopros,” has been translated by Elizabeth Neatrour as “The Woman Question: A Fantastical Farce in One Act,” in An Anthology of Russian Women’s Writing, 1777–1992, ed. Catriona Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994): 174–92.
8. Aldanov.
9. “Znamia svobody,” Vpered, Mar. 2 (15), 1905. Pub. as “Pchelki” in Novaia zhizn’, no. 2 (1905) and in Teffi’s collection of poetry, Sem’ ognei (Spb.: Shipovnik, 1910), 57–58.
10. I. Gukovskii, “Iz vospominanii I. E. Gukovskogo,” Novaia zhizn’: Pervaia legal’naia S.-D. bol’shevistskaia gazeta, 27 oktiabria—3 dekabria 1905 goda, ed. M. Ol’minskii, vyp 1, no. 1–7 (Leningrad: Rabochee izd. “Priboi”, 1925), x.
11. “18 oktiabria,” Novaia zhizn’, Oct. 27, 1905 (no. 1): 7.
12. For Teffi’s retrospective view of Novaia zhizn’ and the Bolsheviks, see “45 let,” Novoe russkoe slovo, June 25, 1950 (no. 13939): 2; “ ’Novaia zhizn’’,” NRS, July 9, 1950 (no. 13953): 2. For an English translation, see Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me (NYRB, 2016).
13. “Smekh,” Russkoe slovo, Nov. 18 (Dec. 1), 1910: 2.
14. Iumoristicheskie rasskazy (SPb: Shipovnik, 1910).
15. M. Kuzmin, “Zametki o russkoi belletristiki, Apollon, no. 9 (Jul.–Aug., 1910): 34.
16. N. Lerner, “N. Teffi. ‘Dym bez ognia’,” Literat. i popul.-nauchn. prilozhenie ‘Nivy’, no. 2 (July, 1914): 459.
17. Anastas’ia Chebotarevskaia, “Teffi. ‘I stalo tak . . .’,” Novaia zhizn’, July, 1912 (no. 7): 255.
18. I. V[asilev]ski, “ ’Nichego podobnogo’. Novaia kniga Teffi,” Zhurnal zhurnalov, 1915, no. 10: 20; Ark[adii] Bukhov, “Teffi,” Zhurnal zhurnalov, 1915, no. 14: 17.
19. “Srednii,” Novyi Satirikon, Apr. 2, 1917 (no. 13): 6.
20. “Dezertiry!” Russkoe slovo, June 15 (28), 1917 (no. 135?): 2; V strane, 22.
21. V strane, 24–25.
22. “Nemnozhko o Lenine,” Russkoe slovo, June 23, 1917 (no. 141): 1; V strane, 47, 48. For an English translation, see Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me (NYRB, 2016).
23. “Iz mertvogo goroda,” V strane, 149. Orig. pub. in Novoe slovo, Mar. 8 (21), 1918, no. 34.
24. Ibid., 151.
25. “Peterburg,” V strane, 171. Orig. pub. in Kievskaia mysl’, Oct. 4 (17), 1918, no. 188.
26. “Letuchaia mysh’,” Rampa i zhizn’, May 6 (19), 1918 (no. 20): 11.
27. “Khronika,” Teatr i iskusstvo, Jan. 7, 1918 (no. 1): 5.
28. “Peterburg,” 170.
29. “Gorodok (Khronika),” in Gorodok (Paris: Izd. N.P. Karbasnikova, 1927), 5.
30. Ibid., 6.
31. “Ot avtora,” Vospominaniia (Paris: Vozrozhdenie, 1931, 5. Memories was first serialized in the newspaper, Vozrozhdenie between 1928 and 1930.
32. M. Tsetlin, “N. A. Teffi. Vospominaniia,” Sovremennye zapiski, 1932, no. 48: 482.
33. “Baba–Yaga,” Novosel’e, June 1947 (no. 33–34): 29–37. Repr. in Teffi’s last book, Zemnaya raduga (NY: Chekhov Press, 1952), 264–68. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler in Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov, ed. Robert Chandler (Penguin, 2012), 213–17.
34. “Tot svet,” “N. A. Teffi v gazete ‘Russkie novosti’ (1945–1947),” ed. E. G. Domogatskaia, in Tvorchestvo N. A. Teffi i russkii literaturnyi protsess pervoi poloviny XX veka, ed. O. N. Mikhailov, D. D. Nikolaev, E. M. Trubilova (Moscow: Nasledie, 1999): 214. Orig. pub. in Russkie novosti, Aug. 3, 1945 (no. 12): 4.
MEMORIES
1. The Russian Word was a liberal Moscow daily newspaper, eventually closed down by the Bolsheviks. See Introduction, p. x.
2. Arkady Averchenko (1881–1925), a comic writer and playwright, founded two journals, Satirikon (1908–1913) and New Satirikon (1913–1918), to which Teffi contributed regularly.
3. Fatback (salo)—the layer of hard fat under the skin of a pig’s back—is considered a delicacy in many parts of eastern Europe. Fatback, onion, and horilka (the Ukrainian equivalent of vodka) is a classic Ukrainian dish.
4. Some of these names sound Russian, some Jewish, some German, but none sound Ukrainian. All sound funny. “Koka” is a vulgar form of “krestnaya” (godmother); “Pupin” evokes the Russian word for the belly button; “Fik” and “Shpruk,” especially in the plural, sound equally odd.
5. The Bat was a theater-cabaret in Moscow, founded in 1908 by actors from the Moscow Arts Theatre. It closed in 1920 but later reopened in Paris.
6. Cléo de Mérode (1875–1966) was a French dancer of the Belle Époque. Born to a Belgian family of nobility, she made her professional debut at the age of eleven. Postcards and playing cards bore pictures of her, and one of her hairstyles became hugely popular.
7. Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) was an Italian poet.
8. Lolo was the nickname of Leonid Munstein (1866–1947), a poet, satirist, critic, and editor. A friend of Teffi, he too emigrated to France via Kiev, Odessa, and Constantinople. The operetta, with music borrowed from Offenbach, was produced in Moscow in August 1918.
9. The Ancient Theatre, co-founded by Nikolay Yevreinov (1879–1953) and Baron Drizen (1868–1935), with the philosophy of “artistic historic reconstruction,” played just two seasons, 1907–1908 and 1911–1912. The singer Bella Kaza-Roza (1885–1929) was a friend of Teffi; her repertoire included settings of poems by Teffi.
10. Silva (known in English as The Riviera Girl or The Gipsy Princess), an operetta by the Hungarian composer Emmerich Kalman (1882–1953), was premiered in Vienna in November 1915. It remains popular in Hungary, Austria, and Germany and was made into a successful film in the Soviet Union.
11. Valery Bryusov was one of the founders of Russian Symbolism. Always an influential figure, he joined the Communist Party in 1920. There are several accounts of his abusing his position in the Soviet cultural apparatus to attack more gifted colleagues.
12. This three-headed dragon appears in one of the most famous Russian byliny or heroic songs.
13. The Soviet security services were originally called the “Extraordinary Committee” or Cherezvychainy komitet, usually shortened to Cherezvychaika or Cheka. Later acronyms were the OGPU, the NKVD, and the KGB.
14. “Vova” is an affectionate form of the name “Vladimir.” The intentionally ludicrous implication is that Fedosya received this shawl and portrait as a gift from Lenin himself.
15. Savely Schleifer (1881–1943). Born in Odessa, Schleifer studied there and in Petersburg. After living in Paris from 1905 to 1907, he returned to Petersburg. He taught there after the revolution but emigrated to Paris in 1927. Arrested by the Nazis soon after the outbreak of World War II, he died in Auschwitz.
16. Lydia Yavorskaya (1871–1921) was a well-known actress.
17. From “The Tryst” (1841) by Mikhail Lermontov.
18. After the October Revolution, Moisey Uritsky (1873–1918) was appointed head of the Petrograd Cheka (i.e. security police). On 17 August 1918 he was assassinated by Leonid Kannegisser, a poet and former military cadet. Soon after this, and after an attempt on Lenin’s life, the Bolsheviks initiated the wave of arrests and executions known as the Red Ter
ror. Kannegisser was executed in October 1918. Ironically, Uritsky had been one of the few important Bolsheviks to disagree with Lenin about the need to resort to terror. See Ivan Bunin, Cursed Days, ed. Thomas Gaiton Marullo (Phoenix Press, 2000), p. 216, note 9.
19. This conversation is condensed from “Repentant Fate,” first published in 1913 and included in the collection Smoke without Fire (1914). In the story the actress assures Teffi that she would gladly help Teffi’s unfortunate protagonist by giving him money of her own, if only she could. Teffi returns to this theme—the artist as an “imitator of God”—in the last pages of Memories.
20. The Russian word mestechko (literally “little place”) was used for settlements too large to be classed as villages but too small to be classed as cities. From 1791, Jews were generally only permitted to live within “the Pale of Settlement” (a region roughly corresponding to present-day Belarus, western Ukraine, eastern Poland, and the Baltic republics). Even within the Pale, Jews were generally prohibited from living in either large cities or small villages. Most Jews, therefore, lived in shtetls. In April 1917, the Pale of Settlement was abolished.
21. Maximilien de Robespierre (1758–1794) was one of the most important figures of the French Revolution. Accused of being the “soul” of the Reign of Terror, he was arrested and executed in July 1794.