City Folk and Country Folk Read online

  4. Letter to Olga Novikova, 8 June 1862, N. D. Khvoshchinskaia, “Ia zhivu ot pochty do pochty”: Iz perepiski Nadezhda Dmitrievny Khvoshchinskoi, ed. Arja Rosenholm and Hilde Hoogenboom, FrauenLiteraturGeschichte 14 (Fichtenwalde: F. K. Göpfert, 2001), 124.

  5. On their relationship, see Gheith, Finding the Middle Ground, 63–68; K. K. Arsen’ev, “Sovremennyi russkii roman v ego glavnykh predstaviteliakh: Krestovskii (psevdonim),” Vestnik Evropy 1, no. 1 (1885): 331; Karen Rosneck, “Translator’s Introduction,” in The Boarding-School Girl (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2000), xiv–xv.

  6. V. R. Zotov, “Nekrolog,” Illiustrirovannaia gazeta, August 19, 1865; Greene, Inventing Romantic Poetry.

  7. Letter to Novikova, 30 September 1865, Khvoshchinskaia, Ia zhivu ot pochty do pochty, 160.

  8. Deborah A. Martinsen, ed., Literary Journals in Imperial Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  9. S. D. Khvoshchinskaia, “Kladbishche” 1843, f. 541, op. 1, d. 43, Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI).

  10. Letters to Alexandra Vasil’evna Pletneva, 27 November 1843, 30 June 1845, Khvoshchinskaia, Ia zhivu ot pochty do pochty, 239; S.D. Khvoshchinskaia, “Pis’ma k Pletnevoi, A.V.” l. 14, f. 234, op. 4, no. 191, Pushkin House (PD).

  11. Potapov, Neizrechennyi svet, 59.

  12. A. Karrik, “Iz vospominanii o N.D. Khvoshchinskoi-Zaionchkovskoi (V. Krestovskii-psevdonim),” Zhenskoe delo, no. 9, 11, 12 (1899): 5, 37–38.

  13. Rosalind P. Gray, Russian Genre Painting in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 37–38.

  14. Letter to Novikova, 10 August 1859, N. D. Khvoshchinskaia, “Pis’ma Khvoshchinskoi-Zaionchkovskoi k Novikovoi, O. A., (1858-1863)” l. 66, f. 345, op. 1, d. 850, Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI); S. D. Khvoshchinskaia, “Pis’ma Khvoshchinskoi, S. D. k Kraevskomu, A. A., (1855-1864)” ll. 10, 15, 23, 25, f. 391, n. 804, National Library of Russia (RNB). Letters are dated after her return from Europe: 22 August 1861, 5 October 1862, 6 November 1863, 2 April 1864.

  15. Letter to Novikova, 30 August 1860, Khvoshchinskaia, “Pis’ma,” l. 66v.

  16. Letter to Kraevsky, 22 August 1861, Khvoshchinskaia, Ia zhivu ot pochty do pochty, 61.

  17. Letter to Novikova, 29 November 1861, Khvoshchinskaia, “Pis’ma,” l. 124.

  18. A. I. Reitblat, Ot Bovy k Bal’montu i drugie raboty po istoricheskoi sotsiologii russkoi literatury (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2009), 254.

  19. T. G. Nikiforova, “Pis’ma A.G. Dostoevskoi k S.A. Tolstoi,” in Mir filologii (Moscow: Nasledie, 2000), 290–306.

  20. Gheith, Finding the Middle Ground, 74–76.

  21. Barbara Alpern Engel, Mothers & Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth-Century Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 127.

  22. With the exception of Kahn et al., the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Mirsky and Terras, who include the same dozen names, Russian literary histories in English ignore women’s prose. Dmitry S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature: From Its Beginnings to 1900, ed. Francis Whitfield (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999); Victor Terras, ed., Handbook of Russian Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Caryl Emerson, Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Andrew Baruch Wachtel and Ilya Vinitsky, Russian Literature (Cambridge: Polity, 2009); Andrew Kahn et al., History of Russian Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

  23. Prince N. N. Golitsyn, Bibliograficheskii slovar’ russkikh pisatel’nits, Repr. (Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der DDR, 1974).

  24. Robin Alston, A Checklist of Women Writers, 1801-1900: Fiction, Verse, Drama (London: British Library, 1990).

  25. P. A. Nikolaev, ed., Russkie pisateli 1800–1917: Biograficheskii slovar’, 5 vols. (Moscow: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia Entsiklopediia, 1989).

  26. Maurice Friedberg, Russian Classics in Soviet Jackets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 186; V.A. Soloukhin, Pri svete dnia (Moscow: no publisher, 1992), 94–97.

  27. Greene, Inventing Romantic Poetry.

  28. The 1857 census showed 22 million serfs held by 100,000 nobles, 23 million state serfs, and 3.3 million appanage (udelnye) serfs, totaling 49.3 million serfs in a population of 68.7 million. M. G. Mulhall, The Dictionary of Statistics, 4th ed. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1899), 541.

  29. David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 17, 20.

  30. Nikolaev, Russkie pisateli; Irina Reyfman, How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016).

  31. Gregory L. Freeze, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” American Historical Review 91, no. 1 (1986): 11–36.

  32. Seymour Becker, Nobility and Privilege in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985).

  33. Michelle Lamarche Marrese, A Woman’s Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia, 1700-1861 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

  34. David Moon, Abolition of Serfdom in Russia: 1762-1907 (New York: Longman, 2002), 17.

  35. S. D. Khvoshchinskaia, “Sel’tso Lyskovo,” Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 5 (1859): 1–74.

  36. Moon, Abolition of Serfdom, 105–9.

  37. S. D. Khvoshchinskaia, “Aleksandr Nikolaevich Radishchev,” Illiustratsiia 7, no. 159 (March 2, 1861): 129–30.

  38. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1986), 17.

  39. Barbara Heldt, Terrible Perfection: Woman and Russian Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

  40. Karrik, “Iz vospominanii.”

  41. Rosneck, “Translator’s Introduction,” xx.

  42. Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860–1930 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 38–49.

  43. Letter to Novikova, 13 April 1863, Khvoshchinskaia, “Pis’ma,” l. 192.

  44. Letter to Novikova, 6 September 1863, Khvoshchinskaia, Ia zhivu ot pochty do pochty, 128.

  45. Letter to Novikova, 3 January 1864, Ibid., 136.

  NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION

  This translation is based on the 1863 version of Gorodskie i derevenskie (City Folk and Country Folk) that appeared in the March and April 1863 editions of Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland).

  Believing that this novel has the potential to appeal to lovers of nineteenth-century literature beyond the confines of Russian studies, I have opted for what I believe to be the most “user-friendly” approach to transliterating Russian names, modifying the Library of Congress system by adding the letter y before iotified vowels (the Russian letter e, for example, is, in most circumstances, pronounced ye, as in yes) and omitting all hard and soft signs.

  Russians address their elders and respected adults generally by their first name and patronymic (the “Ivanovna” in Nastasya Chulkova’s name signifies that she is Ivan’s daughter, just as Erast Sergeyevich is the son of Sergei). In speech, patronymics tend to drop a syllable, which is why Erast Ovcharov is Erast Sergeyevich to the narrator and Erast Sergeyich in direct speech.

  The French in the original has been preserved and translations are provided in footnotes. Footnotes have also been used to provide historical context and explanations of Russian culture.

  The Russian language is prodigious in its ability to change the forms of names to reflect familiarity and shades of emotion. Nicknames appearing in the original Russian have been reproduced in the English (as when Anna Ilinishna uses the sugary “Aksinyushka” for Aksinya Mikhailovna, the household cook, as part of a campaign to win Nastasya Ivanovna’s servants over to her side). Because of the confusion this may cause readers unfamiliar with the niceties of the Russian language, we offer the following list of names and their variants that come up over the course of the novel.

  Nam
es with Multiple Mentions in City Folk and Country Folk

  Aksinya Mikhailovna, Aksinyushka: Nastasya Ivanovna’s cook, a former serf.

  Anna Ilinishna Bobova, Cousin: Nastasya Ivanovna’s second cousin.

  Annette: daughter of Katerina Petrovna.

  Erast Sergeyevich Ovcharov, Erast Sergeyich: a nobleman whose estate, Beryozovka, is near Nastasya Ivanovna’s. He spends most of his time in Moscow or Western Europe.

  Father Porphyry, Porphyry Ivanich: Snetki’s village priest.

  Ivan Terentyevich Chulkov, Ivan Terentych: Nastasya Ivanovna’s deceased father.

  Katerina Petrovna Repekhova-Dolgovskaya: a Moscow noblewoman who owns an estate near Nastasya Ivanovna’s.

  Malanya Kuzminishna Chulkova: Nastasya Ivanovna’s deceased mother.

  Nastasya Ivanovna Chulkova: the owner of an estate in the village of Snetki and mother of Olenka.

  Nikolai Demyanovich Chulkov, Nikolai Demyanych: Nastasya Ivanovna’s deceased husband.

  Olenka, Olga Nikolayevna Chulkova, Olya: Nastasya Ivanovna’s seventeen-year-old daughter.

  Palashka: a maid in Nastasya Ivanovna’s household serving Anna Ilinishna.

  Pavel Yefimovich, Pavel Yefimich: Nastasya Ivanovna’s cousin.

  Princess Paltseva, Princess Maria Sergeyevna: Anna Ilinishna Bobova’s benefactor.

  Semyon Ivanovich, Semyon Ivanich, Simon, Syomka: Katerina Petrovna’s “protégé.”

  Yegor Petrovich, George: son of Katerina Petrovna.

  Yermolai Stepanovich, Yermolai Stepanych: Nastasya Ivanovna’s “elderly coachman.”

  PART I

  Nastasya Ivanovna Chulkova, a fifty-five-year-old widow and the mistress of fifty souls, who were by then working on her Snetki estate under temporary obligation, might have called last summer the most remarkable summer of her life and described it as such in her memoirs, if only she had kept memoirs.1 First, above her, through the very air of her home, new currents of education had blown through in a gust, that same education that is wafting from every corner of our native land; second, her home had been the site of a struggle between old and new ideas, and Nastasya Ivanovna had taken part in this struggle and, without realizing it, had even achieved a victory; and third, to her own amazement and the envy of the ladies of the neighboring small estates, she had come within a hair’s breadth of developing into an enlightened woman herself. And can you imagine? Not only did the ingrate fail to rejoice, she called the whole affair a calamity.

  Nastasya Ivanovna did not appreciate the value of the enlightenment that had been generously placed into her hands, just as she did not appreciate the value of Saxon porcelain, naively preferring teacups produced in Gzhel,2 and was unable to understand the taste for truffles, which she had eaten only once in her life, privately concluding that the mushrooms of Snetki’s grove were far superior. She did not admit her unsophisticated tastes to just anyone, but, humble and frank, in the presence of people with whom she felt at ease, she repented these sins. Nobody forced her—she confessed them freely. Surely this suggests that she was capable of self-improvement. It is therefore a shame that fate did not earlier, before the events of last summer, send Nastasya Ivanovna someone who could have prepared her for these events, who could have warned her, for instance, that proclaiming a fight for one’s convictions to be a calamity and a punishment from God is far more shameful than blurting out a preference for local mushrooms over truffles. Then Nastasya Ivanovna would not have suffered such a total loss of esteem in the eyes of those lamenting her native district’s poor moral development. They are truly weary of leading a movement the rear of which is standing stock-still.

  Indeed both her native district and Nastasya Ivanovna herself were making little headway down the road of progress, despite being quite close to the provincial capital, a mere twenty versts3 down the highway from Snetki. This was no backwoods. Nastasya Ivanovna made frequent trips to town, where she had relatives among the low-ranking civil servants. They knew better than their high-ranking superiors what was happening in government offices: all the new directives, all the administrative changes. As the ones who carried out orders, strict or otherwise, it was they, the hound dogs of the operation, who first and most often peered into the dark corners inevitably touched by investigations, trials, verdicts, or changes in the way of life. They were better able than their superiors to observe how new joys and misfortunes, new gains and losses, echoed through the firmly set life of town and country. Neither domestic rejoicing nor cursing were held in check in the presence of these obscure and impecunious men. It is little wonder, therefore, that they knew and told many anecdotes—pages torn from real life, pages hidden from the observer of exalted rank, pages that at times got to the crux of the matter better than thousands of ink-laden documents and other papers.

  Nastasya Ivanovna was constantly hearing such anecdotes and occasioned anecdotes herself, both during her married life and as a widow, being someone, as the mistress of an estate, who had been through good times and bad, lawsuits, disputes with neighbors, land surveys, serf conscription and the raising of wartime militias, fires, investigations involving the district police and dead bodies, years of good harvest and bad, and, finally, emancipation.4 Nastasya Ivanovna herself knew and told many anecdotes, but she related them as simple fact, no more. She did not delve deeply into them, did not derive their moral significance. In other words, she did not engage in the work that, they say, leads to enlightenment. It can be stated with certainty that not the slightest penetration and desire to analyze had yet been awakened in this woman, the representative of an ancient line of the nobility.

  Her mother and father were not given to analysis either. Ivan Terentyevich and Malanya Kuzminishna were masters of their land, farmers of their land, and, in the truest sense, lovers of their land. They lived and died without setting foot in the provincial capital. Only once were they uprooted from Snetki’s soil: their flight at the first sight of a Frenchman took them to a neighboring province for a month.5 Nastasya Ivanovna was born and raised in Snetki. Here, she married and was widowed by her Nikolai Demyanovich, her parents’ choice and the heir to ten souls. He ran the estate extraordinarily well and possessed one of the gentlest souls in all the world. Here, after the untimely deaths of eight infants, after much anticipation, Nastasya Ivanovna’s daughter, Olenka, was born, survived, and grew up.

  But Olenka had turned seventeen this past year; in other words, she had come of age in our time, that is, a time both euphoric and restless, and not one to be spent sitting around a place like Snetki. Nastasya Ivanovna saw that such a time had come, although she did not try to think through what was special about it. Instinctively, to the best of her abilities, she kept an eye on what was happening. She expanded their circle of acquaintances among the neighbors and began to make frequent trips to town. She even made a point of traveling the twenty versts to town with Olenka on Sundays, when there was music on the boulevard. She dressed her daughter up like a doll, taught her what she could, prayed to God for her, loved her relatives and friends, sympathized with the suffering of her fellow man, and thought that was enough.

  But last summer certain people showed her that that was not nearly enough.

  Last summer a visitor came to stay with Nastasya Ivanovna.

  Erast Sergeyevich Ovcharov did not travel abroad last year to take the waters, as was his annual custom. He remained in Russia despite the fact that Moscow physicians found his rheumatism had intensified and despite the orders of the foreign physicians with whom he corresponded that he return to take the waters. Erast Sergeyevich insisted that in view of the agricultural reforms, however precious one’s health might be, this was no time to be away from home. Furthermore, he was short of funds after a winter in Moscow, and credit…credit, as everyone knows, had started to dry up all over Russia. Ovcharov decided that he would spend the summer on his estate. In order not to waste a season of great potential benefit to his health and to make what little use he could of our abominable climate
, Ovcharov intended to drink whey while living in the country.

  His estate, Beryozovka, was only two versts from Nastasya Ivanovna’s. He had not looked in on his property for many years, and upon arriving he discovered that he could not possibly live there. The manor house had long since been sold and carted off to town. There would have been room in the steward’s house, but not peace from his half-dozen children. He could have rented one of the huts, but the peasants, despite having lived contentedly since days of yore, were not very well housed. Ovcharov had thought that having calves, cows, and other farm animals nearby would perhaps benefit his weak lungs, but his sense of cleanliness rebelled against this idea. In the end, he was at a loss. He spent the first night in his Viennese carriage, but the light rain and cold that by dawn had chilled him to the bone (it was early May) plunged him into a state of dread: he recalled his rheumatism. Upon rising in the morning, despite the magnificent spring sunshine, he dressed himself in flannels and a shaggy coat. He had made up his mind to leave for the provincial capital and complain to anyone who would listen that it was fate and not his own fault if he was unable to fulfill his decided desire to take part in the reforms that were getting underway.

  Suddenly, all this changed. While his man was busy readying the horses and the steward’s wife made chicken broth for his breakfast, Ovcharov went for a walk. After a night of shivering it was essential that he warm up with some exercise in the sun. Within half an hour he had traversed the Beryozovka pasture and continued down a small road into a hollow beyond it. Three versts farther this rural road joined the old main road near where it intersected the provincial highway. After crossing the hollow, the wayfarer was no longer on his own land. Here was the border with Snetki. Its rye extended up the near side of a small hill, beyond which, after about a verst, the road entered the Snetki woods and curled behind the estates’ threshing barns.