‘To Kursk… I’ve come into an inheritance.’
‘Has your aunt died?’ I asked with a modest show of sympathy.
‘She’s died,’ he answered with a faint sigh. ‘Innkeeper!’ he added in a loud voice, ‘the samovar – and quick about it! Yes,’ he continued, turning to me again, ‘she’s died. I’m just now on my way to receive what she’s left me.’
Yevgeny Alexandrych’s servant came in, a young man with reddish-coloured hair and dressed in the manner of a chasseur.
‘Hans!’ my acquaintance declared. ‘Geben Sie mir eine Pfeife.’
Hans went out.
‘Is your valet a German?’ I asked.
‘No, he’s – er – a Finn,’ answered Yevgeny Alexandrych, leaving intervals between the words. ‘But he understands German.’
‘And he speaks Russian?’
Yevgeny Alexandrych paused briefly before saying: ‘Oh, yes, he speaks it!’
Hans returned, respectfully set the pipe directly between his master’s lips, placed a square-shaped scrap of white paper on the bowl and touched a match to it. His master began to smoke, taking the pipe with the side of his mouth, and contorting his lips over the amber stem like a dog seizing a hedgehog. The innkeeper brought in a hissing and bubbling samovar. I took a seat beside Yevgeny Alexandrych and struck up a conversation with him.
I had known Yevgeny Alexandrych Ladygin in St Petersburg. He was a tall, personable man with large bright eyes, an aquiline nose and a resolute expression of the face. All who knew him, and many who did not, spoke of him as a ‘practical’ man. He expressed himself without grandiloquence, but powerfully; while listening to others, he used to clench his jaws in impatience and let his cheek twitch; he was self-assured in his speeches and he would walk about the streets at a brisk pace without moving either his arms or his head, darting his eyes rapidly from side to side. Seeing him, more than one passerby no doubt exclaimed despite himself: ‘Phew, there’s a man for you, by God! Where’s that fellow off to?’ But Yevgeny Alexandrych was simply on his way to dinner.
Rising from the table, he used to button his coat right up to the neck with such chill and concentrated resoluteness that he might have been setting off at that very moment to fight a duel, having just put his signature to his will. And yet, despite this, there was not a trace of boastfulness to be discerned in him: he was a stubborn man, one-sided and insistent in his opinions, but no fool, not malicious, looking everyone straight in the eye and fond of justice… True, he would have found it much pleasanter to punish oppressors than alleviate the lot of the oppressed, but there can be no accounting for people’s tastes. He did four years or so of service in a guards regiment, and the remainder of his life was fearfully busy – with what? you may ask… With nothing save various futile matters, which he always set about in a fever of activity and with systematic stubbornness. He was a type of Russian pedant – Russian, take note, not Little Russian. There is an enormous difference between the two, to which attention should be paid more than ever now that, since Gogol’s time,1 these two related, but opposed, nationalities have often been confused.
‘Are you going to spend a long time in the country?’ I asked Ladygin.
‘I don’t know – perhaps it’ll be a long time,’ he answered me with concentrated energy and glanced away indifferently, like a man of strong character who has taken an irrevocable decision but is ready, notwithstanding, to take account of that fact.
‘You must have a host of plans in mind?’ I remarked.
‘Plans? It depends what you call plans. You don’t think, do you,’ he added with a grin, ‘that I belong to the school of young landowners who find difficulty in telling the difference between oats and buckwheat and dream of English winnowing machines, threshing machines, rotation of crops, sugar-beet factories and brick huts with little gardens facing on to the street? I can assure you that I have nothing in common with those gentlemen. I’m a practical man. But I do have a number of ideas in mind… I don’t know whether I’ll succeed in doing everything I intend doing,’ he added with modest arrogance, ‘but, in any case, I’ll try.’
‘It’s like this, you see,’ he continued, transferring his pipe with dignity from his right hand to his left and grandly emitting smoke through his whiskers, ‘it’s time for us landowners to start using our brains. It’s time to look into the way our peasants live and, having once understood what their needs are, to lead them firmly along a new road towards a chosen aim…’ He fell into a reverential silence in the presence of his own phrase. ‘That’s my basic idea for you,’ he started up again. ‘Russia in general must have – and consequently the way of life of the Russian peasant must have – its own indigenous, characteristic, so to speak, aim for the future. Isn’t that true? It must, mustn’t it? In that case you must strive to perceive it and then act in accordance with its spirit. It’s a difficult task, but nothing is given us for nothing. I will gladly devote myself to it… I’m free to do it and I sense in myself a certain firmness of character. I have no preconceived system: I’m not a Slavophil and I’m not a devotee of the West… I, though I say it again, I am a practical man – and I know… I know how to get things done!’
‘That’s all very fine,’ I protested. ‘You – if I may be so bold as to say so – you want to be a little Peter the Great of your own village.’
‘You’re laughing at me!’ Yevgeny Alexandrych said animatedly. ‘Though,’ he added after a short pause, ‘what you’ve said has an element of truth in it.’
‘I wish you every possible success,’ I remarked.
‘Thank you for wishing…’
Yevgeny Alexandrych’s servant entered the room.
‘Sind die Pferde angespannt, Hans?’ my acquaintance asked.
‘Ja… Sie sind. They’re ready, sir,’ Hans answered.
Yevgeny Alexandrych hastily finished his tea, rose and drew on his overcoat.
‘I don’t dare to invite you to stay with me,’ he declared. ‘It’s more than seventy miles to my village. However, if it should occur to you to…’
I thanked him. We said goodbye. He drove off.
For the space of a whole year I heard nothing of my St Petersburg friend. Once only, I recall, at a dinner given by the Marshal of Nobility a certain eloquent landowner, a retired chief of the fire brigade called Sheptunovich, referred in my presence (between swigs of madeira) to Yevgeny Alexandrych as a member of the nobility given to daydreaming and a man readily carried away by his own ideas. The majority of the guests at once expressed agreement with the fire-brigade chief, but one of them, a stout man with a purplish face and unusually wide teeth, who vaguely reminded one of some sort of healthy root vegetable, added for his own part that he, Ladygin, had something wrong with him up there (indicating his temples) – and gave regretful shakes of his own remarkable head. Apart from this instance, no one even so much as uttered Yevgeny Alexandrych’s name in my presence. But on one occasion, in the autumn, it happened to me, while travelling from marsh to marsh, to land up a long way from home. A fearful thunderstorm caught me out on the open road. Happily, a village could be seen not far off. With difficulty we reached the outskirts of the village. My driver turned towards the gates of the nearest hut and shouted for the hut’s owner. The man, an upstanding peasant of about forty, let us in. His hut was not remarkable for its neatness, but it was warm inside and not smoky. In the entrance-way a woman was frantically chopping up cabbage.
I seated myself on a bench and asked for a jug of milk and some bread. The woman set off to get the milk.
‘Who is your master?’ I asked the peasant.
‘Ladygin, Yevgeny Alexandrych.’
‘Ladygin? Are we already in Kursk Province here?’
‘Kursk, of course. From Khudyshkin it’s all Kursk.’
The woman entered with a jug, produced a wooden spoon that was new and had a strong smell of lamp-oil attaching to it, and pronounced:
‘Eat, my dear sir, to your heart’s content,’ and went
out, clattering in her bast shoes. The peasant was on the point of going out behind her, but I stopped him. Little by little we started talking. Peasants for the most part are not too willing to chat with their lords and masters, particularly when things are not right with them; but I have noticed that some peasants, when things are going really badly, speak out unusually calmly and coldly to every passing ‘master’ on the subject that is close to their heart, just as if they were talking about someone else’s problem – save that they may occasionally shrug a shoulder or suddenly drop their eyes. From the second word the peasant uttered I guessed that Yevgeny Alexandrych’s wretched peasants made a poor living.
‘So you’re not satisfied with your master?’ I asked.
‘We’re not satisfied,’ the peasant answered resolutely.
‘How so? Does he oppress you, is that it?’
‘Fagged us right out, worked us to the bone, that’s what he’s done.’
‘How’s he done it?’
‘This is how. The Lord knows what sort of a master he is! Not even the old men in the village can remember such a master. It isn’t that he’s ruined the peasants; he’s even reduced the quit-rent of those who pay it. But things don’t go no better, God forbid. He came to us last autumn, at the Feast of the Saviour – arrived at night, he did. The next morning, just as soon as the sun’d started to show, he’d jumped out of bed and – dressed, he had, real lively – and he came running from house to house. He’s a one for dashing here and there; dreadful fluttery he is, like he’s got a fever shaking him. And so he went from house to house. “Fellow,” he says, “all your family is here!” An’ he stands there in the very middle of the hut, not shifting at all and holding a little book in his hands, and looks all round him, he does, like a hawk. Fine eyes he’s got, bright ones. An’ he asks the man o’ the house: “What’s your name? How old are you?” Well, the peasant answers, of course, and he notes it down in his book. “And what’s your wife’s name? Children’s names? How many horses have you? Sheep? Pigs? Sucking-pigs? Chickens? Geese? Carts? Ploughs and harrows? Are the oats in? The rye? How much flour? Give me some of your kvas to try! Show me your horse-collars! Have you got boots? How many jugs? Basins? Spoons? How many sheepskin coats? How many shirts?” By God, yes, he even asked about shirts! An’ he notes everything down, just like he was making an investigation. “What d’you trade in?” he asks. “D’you go into town? Often? Precisely how many times each month? Are you fond of drinking? D’you beat your wife? D’you also beat your children? What’s your heart set on?” Yes, twice, by God, he asked that,’ the peasant added, in response to my involuntary smile.
‘And he went round all the yards, all the huts, he did. He quite wore out Tit, the elder, and Tit even fell on to his knees in front of him and said: “Good master, have mercy on me! If I’ve done something wrong in your eyes, then I’d rather you ordered me to be flogged!” The next day, again before it was light, he got up and ordered all the peasants there are here to come to an assembly. So we all came. It was in the yard of his house. He came out on to the porch, greeted us and started talking. Talk, he did, talk and talk. The strange thing was we didn’t understand what he was saying though he seemed to be talking Russian. “Everything,” he said, “is wrong, you’re doing everything the wrong way. I’m going to lead,” he said, “in a different way, though I don’t want at all to have to force you. But,” he said, “you’re my peasants. You fulfil all your obligations,” he added. “If you fulfil them, fine; if you don’t, I shan’t leave a stone unturned.” But God knows what he wanted done!
‘ “Well,” he said, “now you’ve understood me. Go back to your homes. My way’s going to start from tomorrow.” So we went home. We walked back to the village. We looked at each other and looked at each other – and wandered back to our huts.’
NOTES
Apart from the two fragments in the Appendix, the source for these translations is I. S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem. izd. Akad. nauk (M.-L., 1963), Vol. IV. The ensuing notes are taken largely from this source. Also consulted for this translation has been the second edition of the Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (v tridtsati tomakh), izd. ‘Nauka’ (M., 1979). The fragments in the Appendix are taken from Literaturnoe nasledstvo: iz parizhskogo arkhiva I. S. Turgeneva, izd. ‘Nauka’ (M., 1964), Kn. I, pp. 26–33.
KHOR AND KALINYCH
1. Zhizdra: a region of Kaluga Province (in pre-Revolutionary Russia), in which Turgenev owned seven villages containing a peasant population of more than 450 ‘souls’.
2. corvée: unpaid labour which serfs were obligated to perform for their masters.
3. Akim Nakhimov: (1783–1815), a second-rate satirist, versifier and prose-writer.
4. Pinna: a sentimental romance by M. A. Markel (1810–76), first published in 1843.
5. kvas: a kind of cider made from rye-bread.
RASPBERRY WATER
1. Raspberry Water: The name of the spring remains the same to this day: Malinovaya voda, Raspberry Water. It flows into the river Ista in the Arsenyev region of Tula oblast.
2. Saints Cosmos and Damian: patron saints of medicine, martyred under Diocletian in AD 303.
MY NEIGHBOUR RADILOV
1. Victory, thy trumpets sound!: a polonaise for orchestra and choir by the composer I. A. Kozlovsky (1757–1831) to words by Derzhavin. It acquired the popularity of a national anthem in its time.
2. as Voltaire… hurriedly: The words are those of Dr Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide (1759).
3. once in Turkey… half dead: Radilov is presumably referring to the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–9 in which the Russian army suffered considerable losses from epidemics.
FARMER OVSYANIKOV
1. Krylov: I. A. Krylov (1769–1844), Russia’s only renowned writer of fables.
2. pre-Petrine times: a reference to Muscovite Russia, before Peter I created St Petersburg at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
3. homesteading farmers like him: odnodvorets, the description given to Ovsyanikov, was a designation given to a special group of state peasants who owned a single dwelling on a smallholding. Their social position was midway between the landowning, serf-owning nobility and the enserfed peasantry.
4. Orlov-Chesmensky: Count A. G. Orlov (1737–1807), military leader and statesman, responsible for the defeat of the Turkish fleet in Chesmen Bay (1770), for which he received the honorary title of Chesmensky (of Chesmen).
5. coachman’s caftan: a reference to the fondness of those who were ‘Slavophile’ or ultra-patriotic for wearing supposedly national costume. Turgenev always parodied such affectation, even though he was on friendly terms with some of the leading Slavophiles.
LGOV
1. gris de lin or bleu d’amour: a colour combination presumably involving shades of pale red and pale blue-grey.
KASYAN FROM THE BEAUTIFUL LANDS
1. Beautiful Lands: Krasivaya mech, a tributary of the river Don and regarded as one of the most beautiful regions in European Russia.
2. Gamayun: a legendary bird associated with falconry.
BAILIFF
1. The Wandering Jew: Le Juif errant, a novel by Eugène Sue, popular in the mid 1840s.
2. Lucia: a reference to the opera of 1835 by Donizetti, in which Pauline Viardot sang the leading role during her first visit to St Petersburg in the 1843–4 season.
3. Les Somnambules: an opera (1831) by Bellini, in which Pauline Viardot also sang.
4. Carême: Marie-Antoine Carême (1784–1833), famous French cook, who worked for Talleyrand and later at the Russian and Austrian imperial courts.
THE OFFICE
1. The Temple of Contentment: There was a picture of two old men eating a melon at Spasskoye, Turgenev’s home.
2. Oy be offter… (and so on): The opening lines of a folksong first published in 1798.
3. two little grey ’uns… self: a reference to grey banknotes of fifty-rouble value and white banknotes of twenty-five-rouble value.
L
ONER
1. like a boat on the waves: a quotation from the poem ‘The Three Palms’ (1839) by M. Yu. Lermontov (1814–41).
TWO LANDOWNERS
1. Saadi: (?1215–91) the Persian poet, referred to by Pushkin in the last stanza of Chapter VIII of Eugene Onegin.
LEBEDYAN
1. Pechora: major river in the north-east of European Russia which flows over 1,000 miles from the Urals to the Barents Sea.
2. Pan Tvardovsky: an opera by A. N. Verstovsky (1828), libretto by M. N. Zagoskin (1789–1852). The reference is probably to separate gypsy episodes from the opera, which enjoyed widespread popularity.
3. Aeneas… past misfortune: a reference to the opening lines of Virgil’s Aeneid, Book II.
TATYANA BORISOVNA AND HER NEPHEW
1. Viotti: J.-B. Viotti (1753–1824), Italian violinist and composer.
2. Bettina von Arnim: (1785–1859), a German authoress, whom Turgenev knew during his student days in Berlin, 1838–40.
3. in the bosom of rural tranquillity: a quotation from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Chapter VIII, Stanza 2.
4. Giacobo Sannazaros: (1834) a dramatic fantasy by N. V. Kukolnik (1809–68) which for Turgenev epitomized the worst excesses of Romanticism.
5. And races fast… troika: a popular song, with words by F. N. Glinka (1786–1880), a cousin of the famous composer. The composer of this song, however, is unknown.
6. Varlamov… more: A. E. Varlamov (1801–51) was the composer of the second of the songs, to words by F. N. Glinka. The first was composed by N. A. Titov (1800–75) to words by M. A. Ofrosimov (1797–1868).