Novels, Tales, Journeys

A Novel in Letters

1. LIZA TO SASHA

You were surprised, of course, dear Sashenka, by my unexpected departure for the country. I hasten to explain it all candidly. The dependency of my position has always been a burden to me. Of course, Avdotya Andreevna brought me up on an equal footing with her niece. But all the same I was a ward in her house, and you cannot imagine how many petty trials are bound up with that title. I had to bear with many things, to give way in many things, to overlook many things, while my amour-propre assiduously noticed the slightest tinge of negligence. My very equality with the princess was a burden to me. When we appeared at a ball, dressed identically, I was annoyed to see no pearls around her neck. I sensed that she did not wear them only so as not to differ from me, and that very attentiveness offended me. Can it be, I thought, that people suspect me of envy or any other such childish weakness? Men’s behavior with me, however courteous it might be, constantly wounded my amour-propre. Coolness or affability, it all seemed like disrespect to me. In short, I was a most unhappy creature, and my heart, naturally tender, was becoming more hardened by the hour. Have you noticed that all girls who live as wards, distant relations, demoiselles de compagnie,^*1 and the like, are usually either basely subservient or unbearably whimsical? The latter I respect and forgive from the bottom of my heart.

Exactly three weeks ago I received a letter from my poor grandmother. She complained of her solitude and invited me to her country estate. I decided to make use of this opportunity. I barely managed to get Avdotya Andreevna’s permission to go, and had to promise to come back to Petersburg in the winter, but I have no intention of keeping my word. Grandmother was extremely glad to see me; she never expected me. Her tears moved me beyond words. I’ve come to love her with all my heart. She once belonged to high society and has kept much of the amiability of that time.

Now I am living at home, I am the mistress, and you would not believe what a true delight it is for me. I got used to country life at once, and the absence of luxury is not strange to me in the least. Our estate is very nice. An old house on a hill, a garden, a lake, pine woods around—it’s all a bit dreary in autumn and winter, but in spring and summer it must seem an earthly paradise. We have few neighbors, and I have not yet seen any of them. Solitude actually pleases me, as in the elegies of your Lamartine.1

Write to me, my angel, your letters will be a great comfort to me. How are your balls, how are our mutual acquaintances? Though I have made myself a recluse, I have not renounced the vanity of the world altogether—news of it will interest me.

The Village of Pavlovskoe

2. SASHA’S REPLY

Dear Liza,

Imagine my amazement when I learned of your departure for the country. Seeing Princess Olga alone, I thought you were unwell, and did not want to believe her words. The next day I received your letter. I congratulate you, my angel, on your new way of life. I’m glad you like it. Your complaints about your former position moved me to tears, but seemed much too bitter to me. How can you compare yourself with wards and demoiselles de compagnie? Everybody knows that Olga’s father owed everything to yours and that their friendship was as sacred as the closest family ties. You seemed pleased with your lot. I never supposed there was so much touchiness in you. Confess: Is there not some other, secret reason for your hasty departure? I suspect…but you are playing modest with me, and I’m afraid to anger you in absentia with my guesses.

What can I tell you about Petersburg? We’re still at our dacha, but almost everyone has already gone. The balls will begin in some two weeks. The weather is fine. I walk a great deal. The other day we had guests for dinner—one of them asked whether I had any news of you. He said that your absence at the balls is noticeable, like a broken string in a piano—and I agree with him completely. I keep hoping that this fit of misanthropy will not last long. Come back, my angel; otherwise I will have no one to share my innocent observations with this winter, and no one to whom I can pass on the epigrams of my heart. Good-bye, my dear—think it over, and think better of it.

Krestovsky Island2

3. LIZA TO SASHA

Your letter has comforted me greatly. It reminded me so vividly of Petersburg, it was as if I could hear you! How ridiculous your eternal suppositions are! You suspect some deep, secret feelings in me, some unhappy love—is it not so? Rest assured, my dear, you’re mistaken: I resemble a heroine only in that I live in the deep countryside and pour tea like Clarissa Harlowe.3

You say you will have no one to whom you can pass on your satirical observations this winter—but what about our correspondence? Write to me everything you notice; I repeat to you that I have not renounced society altogether, that everything concerning it interests me. In proof of that I ask you to write about who it is that finds my absence so noticeable. Is it not our amiable babbler Alexei R.? I’m sure I’ve guessed right…My ears were ever at his service, and that was just what he needed.

I’ve made the acquaintance of the * * * family. The father is a banterer and the soul of hospitality; the mother is a fat, merry woman, a great lover of whist; the daughter—a slender, melancholy girl of about seventeen, brought up on novels and fresh air. She spends all day in the garden or in the fields with a book in her hands, surrounded by yard dogs, talks in singsong about the weather, and with great feeling treats you to preserves. I have discovered that she has a whole bookcase full of old novels. I intend to read them all, and have started with Richardson. One must live in the country to have the possibility of reading the much-praised Clarissa. I began, God help me, with the translator’s preface and, finding assurance in it that, while the first six parts were a bit boring, the last six would fully reward the reader’s patience, I bravely set about it. I read one volume, a second, a third—finally got as far as the sixth—boring, much too much. Well, I thought, now I’ll be rewarded for my pains. What then? I read about the death of Clarissa, the death of Lovelace, and that was it. Each volume consisted of two parts, and I had not noticed the transition from the six boring ones to the six interesting ones.

Reading Richardson gave me an occasion to reflect. What a terrible difference between the ideals of grandmothers and of granddaughters! What do Lovelace and Adolphe have in common?4 Yet the role of women does not change. Except for a few ceremonious curtsies, Clarissa is exactly like the heroine of the latest novels. Perhaps it is because the ways of pleasing, in a man, depend on fashion, on momentary opinion…while in women they are based on feeling and nature, which are eternal.

You see: I chatter away with you as usual. Don’t you be skimpy in these postal conversations. Write to me as often as you can and as much as you can: you cannot imagine what it means to wait for mail day in the country. Waiting for a ball cannot compare with it.

4. SASHA’S REPLY

You are mistaken, dear Liza. To humble your amour-propre, I announce that R. does not notice your absence at all. He has attached himself to Lady Pelham, a newly arrived Englishwoman, and never leaves her side. To his conversation she responds with a look of innocent amazement and a little “Oho!”…and he is in raptures. Know, then, that it is your constant admirateur Vladimir * * * who has asked me about you and who regrets your absence with all his heart. Are you pleased? I think you are very pleased, and, as is my wont, I venture to assume that you guessed it even without me. Joking aside, * * * is very taken with you. If I were you, I would lead him a long way. After all, he’s an excellent suitor…Why not marry him? You would live on the English Embankment,5 have soirées on Saturdays, and stop by my place every morning. Enough foolishness, my angel; come back to us and marry * * *.

Two days ago there was a ball at the K.’s. No end of people. We danced until five in the morning. K. V. was dressed very simply; a white little crêpe dress, not even any trimmings, and on her head and neck half a million’s worth of diamonds: that’s all! Z., as is her wont, was dressed killingly. Where does she get her outfits? Her dress had, not flowers, but some sort of dried mushrooms sewn on it. Was it you, my angel, who sent them to her from the country? Vladimir * * * did not dance. He is going on leave. The S.s came (probably the first), sat all night without dancing, and left last. The older one seemed to be wearing rouge—about time…The ball was very successful. The men were displeased with the supper, but then they always have to be displeased with something. I had a merry time, even though I danced the cotillon with the insufferable diplomat St., who added to his natural stupidity an absentmindedness he imported from Madrid.

I thank you, dear heart, for your report on Richardson. Now I have some idea of him. With my impatience, there is no hope of my ever reading him; I even find superfluous pages in Walter Scott.

By the way, I think the romance between Elena N. and Count L. is ending—at any rate he’s so downcast and she’s so puffed up that the wedding has probably been decided on. Farewell, my lovely; are you pleased with my babble for today?

5. LIZA TO SASHA

No, my dear matchmaker, I have no thought of leaving the country and coming to you for my wedding. I frankly confess that I liked Vladimir * * *, but I never contemplated marrying him. He is an aristocrat, and I am a humble democrat. I hasten to explain and point out proudly, like a true heroine of a novel, that by birth I belong to the oldest Russian nobility, and that my knight is the grandson of a bearded merchant millionaire. But you know what our aristocracy means. Be that as it may, * * * is a man of the world; he might like me, but he would never sacrifice a rich bride and a profitable alliance for my sake. If I am ever to marry, I will choose some local forty-year-old landowner. He will busy himself with his sugar works, I with the household—and I will be happy without dancing at Count K.’s ball and having Saturdays at my place on the English Embankment.

It’s winter here: in the country c’est un événement.^*2 It changes your way of life completely. Solitary walks cease, little bells jingle, hunters go out with their dogs—everything becomes brighter, more cheerful with the first snow. I never expected it. Winter in the country frightened me. But everything in the world has its good side.

I’ve become more closely acquainted with Mashenka * * * and have come to love her; there is much in her that is good, much that is original. I learned by chance that * * * is their close relative. Mashenka hasn’t seen him for seven years, but she admires him. He spent one summer with them, and Mashenka constantly recounts all the details of his life then. Reading her novels, I find his observations in the margins, written faintly in pencil; one can see he was a child then. He was struck by thoughts and feelings that he would certainly laugh at now; at any rate one can see a fresh, sensitive soul. I do a great deal of reading. You cannot imagine how strange it is to read in 1829 a novel written in 1775. It’s as if we suddenly step out of our drawing room into an old-fashioned hall, the walls covered in damask, sit down on fluffy satin-upholstered armchairs, see strange dresses around us, yet the faces are familiar, and we recognize in them our uncles, our grandmothers, but grown young. For the most part these novels have no other virtue. The action is entertaining, the plot well entangled—but Bellecourt speaks askew, and Charlotte replies awry.6 An intelligent person could take the ready plot, the ready characters, straighten out the style and the absurdities, fill in what is left unsaid, and come up with an excellent, original novel. Tell that to my ungrateful R. from me. Enough of his wasting his intelligence in conversations with Englishwomen! Let him take an old canvas and embroider a new pattern on it, and present to us, in a small frame, a picture of the society and people he knows so well.

Masha knows Russian literature well—in general, people are more interested in it here than in Petersburg. Here they receive magazines, take a lively part in their squabbles, believe alternately in both sides, get angry if their favorite writer is criticized. Now I understand why Vyazemsky and Pushkin are so fond of provincial young ladies.7 They are their true public. I was glancing at some magazines and started with the critiques in the Herald of Europe,8 but I found their platitudes and servility repulsive—it’s funny to see how a seminarian pompously denounces works as immoral and improper, when we have all read them, we—the St. Petersburg touch-me-nots!…

6. LIZA TO SASHA

My dear! it is impossible for me to pretend any longer, I need the help and advice of a friend. The one I ran away from, whom I fear like misfortune, * * *, is here. What am I to do? My head is spinning, I’m at a loss, for God’s sake decide what I’m to do. I’ll tell you all…

You noticed last winter that he never left my side. He didn’t call on us, but we saw each other everywhere. In vain I armed myself with coldness, even with an air of disdain—in no way could I get rid of him. At balls he eternally found himself a place beside me, at promenades he eternally ran into us, in the theater his lorgnette was aimed at our box.

At first this flattered my amour-propre. Maybe I allowed him to notice it all too well. At any rate, appropriating new rights for himself, he spoke to me all the time about his feelings, now being jealous, now complaining…With horror I thought: where is all this leading? And with despair I recognized his power over my soul. I left Petersburg, thinking to cut off the evil at the very beginning. My resoluteness, my assurance that I had fulfilled my duty, was easing my heart, I was beginning to think about him with more indifference, with less sadness. Suddenly I see him.

I see him: yesterday was * * *’s name day. I came for dinner, I go into the drawing room, I find a crowd of guests, uhlan uniforms, ladies surround me, I exchange kisses with them all. Noticing no one, I sit down next to the hostess, I look: * * * is there in front of me. I was dumbfounded…He said a few words to me with a look of such tender, sincere joy that I had no strength to conceal either my perplexity or my pleasure.

We went to the table. He sat across from me; I did not dare to look up at him, but I noticed that all eyes were fixed on him. He was silent and distracted. At another time I would have been very interested in the general wish to attract the attention of the visiting officer of the guards, the nervousness of the young ladies, the awkwardness of the men, their laughter at their own jokes, and with it all the polite coldness and total inattention of the guest. After dinner he came up to me. Feeling that I had to say something, I asked rather inappropriately whether he had come to our parts on business. “I’ve come on a business upon which the happiness of my life depends,” he replied in a low voice and stepped away at once. He sat down to play Boston with three old women (including my grandmother), and I went upstairs to Mashenka’s room, where I lay till evening on the pretext of a headache. In fact, I was worse than unwell. Mashenka never left my side. She is in raptures over * * *. He will spend a month or more with them. She will be with him all day long. I guess she’s in love with him—God grant that he, too, falls in love. She’s slender and strange—just what men ask for.

What am I to do, my dear? Here it won’t be possible for me to escape his pursuit. He has already managed to charm my grandmother. He’ll call on us—again there will be declarations, complaints, vows—and to what end? He’ll obtain my love, my declaration—then reflect on the disadvantages of the marriage, leave under some pretext, abandon me—and I…What a terrible future! For God’s sake, give me your hand: I’m drowning.

7. SASHA’S REPLY

How much better it is to relieve your heart with a full confession! None too soon, my angel! What was the point of not admitting to me what I had long known: * * * and you are in love—what’s wrong with that? All the best to you. You have a gift for looking at things from God knows what side. You’re asking for trouble—beware of bringing it upon yourself. Why shouldn’t you marry * * *? Where are the insuperable obstacles? He’s rich and you’re poor—a trifle! He’s rich enough for two—what more do you want? He’s an aristocrat; but aren’t you also an aristocrat by name, by upbringing?

Not long ago there was an argument about ladies of high society. I learned that R. once declared himself on the side of the aristocracy because they are better shod. So, then, isn’t it obvious that you are an aristocrat from head to foot?

Forgive me, my angel, but your heartfelt letter made me laugh. * * * came to the country to see you. How terrible! You’re perishing; you ask my advice. Can it be you’ve turned into a provincial heroine? My advice is: Get married as quickly as possible in your wooden church and come back to us, so that you can appear as Fornarina in the tableaux vivants that are being organized at the S.’s.9 Joking aside, your knight’s deed has moved me. Of course, in the old days, for the sake of a favorable glance, a lover would go to fight for three years in Palestine; but in our day, for a man to go three hundred miles from Petersburg to see the mistress of his heart truly means a lot. * * * deserves a reward.

8. VLADIMIR * * * TO HIS FRIEND

Do me a favor, spread the rumor that I’m on my deathbed, I intend to overstay and want to observe all possible proprieties. It’s already two weeks that I’ve been living in the country, and I don’t notice how the time flies. I’m resting from Petersburg life, which I’m terribly sick of. Not to love the country is forgivable in a young girl just released from her convent cage, or to an eighteen-year-old kammerjunker. Petersburg is the front hall, Moscow is the maids’ quarters, but the country is our study. A decent man passes of necessity through the front hall and rarely glances into the maids’ quarters, but sits down in his study. That’s how I’ll end up. I’ll retire, get married, and go off to my Saratov estate. Being a landowner is the same as being in the service. Managing three thousand souls, whose well-being depends entirely on us, is more important than commanding a platoon or copying diplomatic dispatches…

The neglect in which we leave our peasants is unforgivable. The more rights we have over them, the more responsibilities we have towards them. We leave them to the mercy of a swindling steward, who oppresses them and robs us. We run through our future earnings in debts, ruin ourselves; old age finds us in need and worry.

There lies the cause of the rapid decline of our nobility: the grandfather was rich, the son is in need, the grandson goes begging. Ancient families fall into insignificance; new ones arise and by the third generation vanish again. Fortunes merge, and no family knows its ancestors. What does such political materialism lead to? I don’t know. But it is time to block its path.

I never could behold without sorrow the humiliation of our historic families; no one among us values them, starting with those who belong to them. But then what pride of memory can you expect from people who inscribe on a monument: To Citizen Minin and Prince Pozharsky? Which Prince Pozharsky? What is this Citizen Minin? There was a high-ranking boyar, Prince Dmitri Mikhailovich Pozharsky, and there was a tradesman Kozma Minich Sukhoruky, elected representative by the whole state.10 But the fatherland forgot even the actual names of its deliverers. The past does not exist for us. A pathetic people!

An aristocracy of functionaries will not replace the hereditary aristocracy. The family memories of the nobility should be the historical memories of the people. But what family memories do the children of a collegiate assessor have?11

In speaking in favor of the aristocracy, I am not posing as an English lord; my origin, though I am not ashamed of it, does not give me any right to that. But I agree with La Bruyère: Affecter le mépris de la naissance est un ridicule dans le parvenu et une lâcheté dans le gentilhomme.^*3 12

I have thought all this over, living on someone else’s estate, looking at the way petty landowners run things. These gentlemen are not in the service and run their little estates themselves, but I must say, God grant that they go to ruin, like our kind. What savagery! For them the times of Fonvizin have not yet passed! The Prostakovs and Skotinins still flourish among them!13

That, however, does not apply to my relative, whose guest I am. He is a very kind man, his wife is a very kind woman, his daughter is a very kind girl. You see, I’ve become very kind. In fact, since I’ve been in the country, I’ve become utterly benevolent and tolerant—the effect of my patriarchal life and of Liza * * *’s presence. I was downright bored without her. I came to persuade her to go back to Petersburg. Our first meeting was splendid. It was my aunt’s name day. All the neighbors gathered. Liza turned up, too—and could hardly believe her eyes when she saw me. She couldn’t help thinking I had come there only for her sake. At any rate I tried to make her feel that. Here my success went beyond my expectations (which means a lot). The old ladies are enraptured with me, the younger ladies simply swarm around me—“And that’s because they’re patriots.”14 The men are utterly displeased with my fatuité indolente,^*4 which is still a novelty here. They are all the more furious because I am extremely courteous and decorous, and they cannot understand precisely what my insolence consists in, though they do feel that I am insolent. Good-bye. What are our friends up to? Servitor di tutti quanti.^*5 Write to me at the village of * * *.

9. THE FRIEND’S REPLY

I have carried out your commission. Yesterday in the theater I announced that you have come down with a nervous fever and probably are no longer of this world—so enjoy your life while you have not yet resurrected.

Your moral reflections on the management of estates make me glad for you. So much the better is

Un homme sans peur et sans reproche,

Qui n’est ni roi, ni duc, ni comte aussi.^*6 15

The position of Russian landowner is, in my opinion, most enviable.

Ranks are a necessity in Russia, if only at posting stations, where you cannot obtain horses without them.

—

Having set out upon a serious discussion, I quite forgot that you cannot be bothered with that now—you are busy with your Liza. Why on earth do you pose as M. Faublas and eternally mess about with women?16 It’s not worthy of you. In this respect you are behind the times and are straying towards the ci-devant^*7 hoarse-voiced guardsman of 1807.17 For the moment it’s only a shortcoming, but soon you will be more ridiculous than General G. Wouldn’t it be better to accustom yourself ahead of time to the strictness of maturity and voluntarily renounce your fading youth? I know that I am preaching in vain, but such is my role.

Your friends all send their greetings and greatly regret your untimely end—among others your former lady friend, who has come back from Rome in love with the pope. How like her that is and how it should delight you! Won’t you come back and be a rival cum servus servorum dei?^*8 That would be just like you. I’ll expect you any day now.

10. VLADIMIR TO HIS FRIEND

Your reprimands are totally unjust. It is not I but you who are behind the times—by a whole decade. Your speculative and serious reasoning belongs to 1818. At that time strict rules and political economy were fashionable. We attended balls without taking our swords off, it was improper for us to dance, and we had no time to be interested in the ladies. I have the honor of informing you that all that has now changed. The French quadrille has replaced Adam Smith;18 everyone chases skirts and amuses himself as he can. I follow the spirit of the times; but you are fixed, you are ci-devant, un homme stéréotype.^*9 What makes you sit alone, glued to the little bench of the opposition? I hope that Z. will set you on the right path: I entrust you to her Vatican coquetry. As for me, I’ve given myself completely to the patriarchal life: I go to bed at ten o’clock in the evening, ride out hunting over fresh snow with the local landowners, play Boston for kopecks with the old ladies and get angry when I lose. I see Liza every day—and fall more in love with her by the hour. There is much that is captivating in her. This quiet, noble harmony of behavior, the charm of Petersburg high society, and at the same time something alive, indulgent, of good old stock (as her grandmother says), nothing sharp or rigid in her judgments, she does not shrink from new impressions like a child from rhubarb. She listens and understands—a rare quality in our women. I have often been surprised at the dullness of wit or impurity of imagination in ladies who are otherwise quite amiable. They often take the most refined joke, the most poetic greeting, either as an insolent epigram or as an indecent platitude. In such cases, the cold air they assume is so devastatingly repulsive that the most ardent love cannot stand up to it.

I experienced that with Elena * * *, whom I loved to distraction. I said something tender to her; she took it as rudeness and complained of me to one of her lady friends. That totally disenchanted me. Besides Liza, I have Mashenka * * * for entertainment. She’s nice. These girls who grow up under the apple trees and amidst haystacks, educated by their nannies and nature, are far nicer than our monotonous beauties, who hold their mothers’ opinions before marriage, and their husbands’ after.

Good-bye, my friend. What’s new in society? Announce to everybody that I, too, have finally broken into poetry. The other day I composed an inscription for Princess Olga’s portrait (for which Liza chided me very sweetly):

Stupid as truth, boring as perfection.

Or maybe better:

Boring as truth, stupid as perfection.

They both have a resemblance to thought. Ask V. to come up with the first line and henceforth consider me a poet.

*1 ladies’ companions

*2 that is an event

*3 To affect a scorn of birth is ridiculous in a parvenu and baseness in a gentleman.

*4 idle foppishness

*5 Humble servant of them all.

*6 A man without fear or reproach, / Who is neither king, nor duke, nor count.

*7 former

*8 with the servant of the servants of God [i.e., the pope]

*9 a stereotypical man