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Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
Considered Teffi’s single greatest work, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is a deeply personal account of the author’s last months in Russia and Ukraine, suffused with her acute awareness of the political currents churning around her, many of which have now resurfaced.
In 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Teffi, whose stories and journalism had made her a celebrity in Moscow, was invited to read from her work in Ukraine. She accepted the invitation eagerly, though she had every intention of returning home. As it happened, her trip ended four years later in Paris, where she would spend the rest of her life in exile. None of this was foreseeable when she arrived in German-occupied Kiev to discover a hotbed of artistic energy and experimentation. When Kiev fell several months later to Ukrainian nationalists, Teffi fled south to Odessa, then on to the port of Novorossiysk, from which she embarked at last for Constantinople. Danger and death threaten throughout Memories, even as the book displays the brilliant style, keen eye, comic gift, and deep feeling that have made Teffi one of the most beloved of twentieth-century Russian writers.
In 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Teffi, whose stories and journalism had made her a celebrity in Moscow, was invited to read from her work in Ukraine. She accepted the invitation eagerly, though she had every intention of returning home. As it happened, her trip ended four years later in Paris, where she would spend the rest of her life in exile. None of this was foreseeable when she arrived in German-occupied Kiev to discover a hotbed of artistic energy and experimentation. When Kiev fell several months later to Ukrainian nationalists, Teffi fled south to Odessa, then on to the port of Novorossiysk, from which she embarked at last for Constantinople. Danger and death threaten throughout Memories, even as the book displays the brilliant style, keen eye, comic gift, and deep feeling that have made Teffi one of the most beloved of twentieth-century Russian writers.
267 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1931
About the author
Teffi
90 books59 followersTeffi (Russian author page: Тэффи) was a Russian humorist writer. Teffi is a pseudonym. Her real name was Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya (Наде́жда Алекса́ндровна Лoхви́цкая); after her marriage Nadezhda Alexandrovna Buchinskaya (Бучи́нская). Together with Arkady Averchenko she was one of the most prominent authors of the Satiricon magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
November 30, 2019
It is a peculiar thing to read the Memoires of a writer whose works one had never encountered before. But I suppose the NYRB collection carries enough prestige to make one pick up any of its volumes with one’s eyes closed.
And I was not in the least disappointed.
For us now to read about the circumstances of utter desperation that fugitives out of Bolshevik Russia (not yet the Soviet Union) experimented, requires a great effort of the imagination. And Teffi’s account, in which she concentrates more on the small things and on trivial anecdotes, rather than the main political events, is very effective.
And since I am writing this on Black Friday, or Consumer’s Day, the following quote sums up appropriately and quite forcefully that compressed world:
How strange life can be—someone walks down the street, feels like eating chocolate, goes into a shop and—‘Yes, Madame, here Madame, as you wish Madame’ And there are people everywhere. They can see and hear everything that’s going on, yet nobody seems in the least bothered—as if all this is completely normal. Who’d have believed it!
This chocolate example is also fitting for introducing Teffi, since due to her great popularity, not only a perfume but also a chocolate was named after her.
For those of us who have never tasted a Teffi chocolate or worn her perfume (she became so famous in her native land during her life that several items were named after her), maybe she needs to be introduced. Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya was born in St Petersburg in 1872 (so a contemporary of Proust), she managed to survive the Bolsheviks thanks to her fleeing away from her country and died in Paris in 1952. Her flight away during 1918 was not intended to be so. She was a revolutionary – she just hated Lenin and the Reds. She was just going to Kiev for a literary event but as the Bolsheviks were making that whole area more and more treacherous, she kept moving from one place to another. It is important to recall that the Ukraine was then occupied by the Germans. Anyway, she kept moving from one place to the next, so after Kiev it was Odessa, then Sevastopol, Novorossiysk and finally Yekaterinodar (now Krasnodar). This journey is the subject of these Memoirs.
The ability to buy chocolate freely is not the only striking incident. We also learn that the women wore their best clothes, such as silver slippers, while in the boat in the Black Sea because they knew that once they arrived at their final destination it was the ‘every-day shoes’ what they would need for their hopefully resumed ‘every-day life’. Teffi also tells us of the importance of the fur coats – A woman’s sealskin coat represents an entire epoch in her life as a refugee, and that these disappeared in 1925. For her they became an icon of hope and salvation in their refugee life, one stuck to them even during the Summer.
The account contains many other details that serve to give tangibility to this world. But what is very striking, and I guess, her trademark, is the irony—sometimes biting, sometimes laconic-- which creates a certain distance and detachment between her and her world (necessary for survival I suppose). And even if at times this irony gets too close to sarcasm, it is counterbalanced by some lyrical and insightful passages.
This distant ringing that has come to us over the waver of the sea is solemn, dense, and hushed to the point of mystery. As if it has been searching for us, lost as we are in the sea and the night, and has found us, and has united us with this church on the earth, now bathed in light, in singing, in praise of the resurrection.
We are lucky that she left us these Memories even if at times through the reading we may feel drawn into a completely nonsensical whirlwind of violence. But no, we have not shared in that fate.
My memories of those first days in Novorossiysk still lie behind a curtain of gray dust. They are still being whirled about by a stifling whirlwind—just as scraps of this and splinters of that, just as debris and rubbish of every kind, just as people themselves were whirled this way and that way, left and right, over the mountains into the sea. Soulless and mindless, with the cruelty of an elemental force, this whirlwind determined our fate.
April 9, 2017
Note to self for 2017....... you don't have to finish a book that you are not connecting with. You have purchased it, you have tried it, you don't have to finish it.
Occasionally I struggle though books I am not enjoying in the hope that it will turn around and this happens to be one of those that I should have left aside after 100 pages as I just wasn't enjoying the read.
Memories from Moscow to the black Sea is an account of the author Teffi's journey from Moscow to Ukraine 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Teffi (1872 -1952) wrote poems plays and stories and was renowned in Russia for her wit and powers of observation in her writings. Her real name was Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, and like many Russian intellectuals was initially in favour of social change. She was a very popular writer in Russia, and was a favourite of both tsar Nikolai II and Lenin. She supported the 1905 Revolution and she wrote for various Bolshevik newspapers, sometime later Teffi became a critic of the Bolshevik party.
I purchased a hardback copy of this book on a recent shopping trip and was so disappointed that I didn't connect with the author's account of her escape from Russia as the Bolsheviks were taking over that country. The account is told with humor which apparently is consistent with her works but for me I found it forced here and the book became tedious. The account contained little factual content and I am aware that this was on propose but I found connect the reader to the time and place. I felt the humor just didn't seem to fit with the panic and brutality of the time. The story didn't come across with any emotion for me and I struggled through to the end but could have left this one to one side after 100 pages.
However other readers may enjoy the sense of humor in this book and while it's an easy read I am afraid this was just an ok book for me.
Occasionally I struggle though books I am not enjoying in the hope that it will turn around and this happens to be one of those that I should have left aside after 100 pages as I just wasn't enjoying the read.
Memories from Moscow to the black Sea is an account of the author Teffi's journey from Moscow to Ukraine 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Teffi (1872 -1952) wrote poems plays and stories and was renowned in Russia for her wit and powers of observation in her writings. Her real name was Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, and like many Russian intellectuals was initially in favour of social change. She was a very popular writer in Russia, and was a favourite of both tsar Nikolai II and Lenin. She supported the 1905 Revolution and she wrote for various Bolshevik newspapers, sometime later Teffi became a critic of the Bolshevik party.
I purchased a hardback copy of this book on a recent shopping trip and was so disappointed that I didn't connect with the author's account of her escape from Russia as the Bolsheviks were taking over that country. The account is told with humor which apparently is consistent with her works but for me I found it forced here and the book became tedious. The account contained little factual content and I am aware that this was on propose but I found connect the reader to the time and place. I felt the humor just didn't seem to fit with the panic and brutality of the time. The story didn't come across with any emotion for me and I struggled through to the end but could have left this one to one side after 100 pages.
However other readers may enjoy the sense of humor in this book and while it's an easy read I am afraid this was just an ok book for me.
February 8, 2017
I bought this book in a weak moment because someone from my Misfit Readers group insisted I should read it, that everyone should read it. Once I finally got around to reading it, I devoured it. Teffi was a well-known journalist, playwright, and poet in early 20th century Russia, and continued to write as the Bolshevik Revolution displaced and disappeared many of her colleagues. She moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow, but then had to leave Moscow. She thought she would be gone for a month but never in fact returned. This is the account of that journey.
Teffi is able to connect what seem like small details to far greater meaning. One very memorable section has to do with sealskin coats, where she is able to trace how far from Moscow or Russian "civilization" a woman has traveled by the state of her sealskin coat. Another element I found fascinating is her description of some of the Orthodox holy sites that she visits to say goodbye on her way through Russia and Ukraine. They would be transformed not long after, into Gulag sites, into government headquarters, into prisons. Her descriptions keep them alive.
Another book I had in my pile started in Moscow in 1922, A Gentleman in Moscow. I did read it immediately after the Teffi but it lacked the realism and insight that this older text provides.
Stay tuned for the upcoming episode of the Reading Envy podcast, where I discuss Teffi with Ruth.
Teffi is able to connect what seem like small details to far greater meaning. One very memorable section has to do with sealskin coats, where she is able to trace how far from Moscow or Russian "civilization" a woman has traveled by the state of her sealskin coat. Another element I found fascinating is her description of some of the Orthodox holy sites that she visits to say goodbye on her way through Russia and Ukraine. They would be transformed not long after, into Gulag sites, into government headquarters, into prisons. Her descriptions keep them alive.
Another book I had in my pile started in Moscow in 1922, A Gentleman in Moscow. I did read it immediately after the Teffi but it lacked the realism and insight that this older text provides.
Stay tuned for the upcoming episode of the Reading Envy podcast, where I discuss Teffi with Ruth.
September 9, 2016
Teffi was the pen name of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, a famous Russian poet, song writer, playwright and satirist caught in the middle of the Bolshevik Revolution when people were executed by Reds and Whites for no other reason than they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is Teffi's account of her escape, tip toeing between executions, bribery, famine and disease, from Moscow, to Kiev and then on to Novorossiisk and Constantinople.
The quick witted Teffi has the unsinkable black humor of a plague survivor. Her accounts are crowded with a cast of famous poets, singers, artists and nobility trying to land on their feet while dodging bullets at the same time. Her sketches of the more common victims are funny, sublime and not always generous.
This is a must-read for anyone who enjoyed Doctor Zhivago. Only Teffi's memoir is packed with the real sort of people who put fiction to shame. For the reader who has not read either, my recommendation would be this short memoir. This is the real deal.
This is Teffi's account of her escape, tip toeing between executions, bribery, famine and disease, from Moscow, to Kiev and then on to Novorossiisk and Constantinople.
The quick witted Teffi has the unsinkable black humor of a plague survivor. Her accounts are crowded with a cast of famous poets, singers, artists and nobility trying to land on their feet while dodging bullets at the same time. Her sketches of the more common victims are funny, sublime and not always generous.
This is a must-read for anyone who enjoyed Doctor Zhivago. Only Teffi's memoir is packed with the real sort of people who put fiction to shame. For the reader who has not read either, my recommendation would be this short memoir. This is the real deal.
April 9, 2017
Before a Map of Russia, by Teffi
Introduction, by Edythe Haber
--Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
Map of Teffi's Journey
Appendix: The Last Breakfast
Translator's Note
Further Reading
Notes
Introduction, by Edythe Haber
--Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
Map of Teffi's Journey
Appendix: The Last Breakfast
Translator's Note
Further Reading
Notes
August 3, 2017
Subtitled , “From Moscow to the Black Sea,” this memoir was first serialised in 1928-1930, before being published as a single volume in 1931. Although I had not previously heard of Teffi , she was one of the most widely read and beloved of Russia’s writers; who was both a favourite of both Tsar Nikolai II and of Lenin. Teffi was a pseudonym of Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya (1872-1952), who was born into a distinguished St Petersburg family.
This is her story of a journey across Russia in the whirlwind of revolution. It begins in Moscow, where she accepts the suggestion of giving readings in Kiev and Odessa. At that time, she has no plans to leave Russia. However, as she progresses – on interminable train and steamship trips – it gradually becomes obvious that she will be unable to return home and eventually she made a life in France. Of course, Paris was full of Russian émigrés and this book is wistful, whimsical and nostalgic in turn; obviously aimed at a readership of those who, like her, had been forced to flee.
Although this is full of humour, there is also a real sense of fear as Teffi progresses across the country. There are rumours that her group of actors and writers will be handed over to the Bolsheviks, endless times when trains are halted and Teffi and the others are taken off, unsure of whether they will be asked to entertain those who have stopped them, or possibly dumped in a ditch somewhere and countless small privations and discomfort. There are also lots of larger than life characters, bizarre accusations when she refuses to loan her guitar or requires a spoon on board ship and times when she is danger because she is viewed as work shy or privileged. This is a country in a state of terror, but is an account by a writer who never lost either her humour or her humanity. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
This is her story of a journey across Russia in the whirlwind of revolution. It begins in Moscow, where she accepts the suggestion of giving readings in Kiev and Odessa. At that time, she has no plans to leave Russia. However, as she progresses – on interminable train and steamship trips – it gradually becomes obvious that she will be unable to return home and eventually she made a life in France. Of course, Paris was full of Russian émigrés and this book is wistful, whimsical and nostalgic in turn; obviously aimed at a readership of those who, like her, had been forced to flee.
Although this is full of humour, there is also a real sense of fear as Teffi progresses across the country. There are rumours that her group of actors and writers will be handed over to the Bolsheviks, endless times when trains are halted and Teffi and the others are taken off, unsure of whether they will be asked to entertain those who have stopped them, or possibly dumped in a ditch somewhere and countless small privations and discomfort. There are also lots of larger than life characters, bizarre accusations when she refuses to loan her guitar or requires a spoon on board ship and times when she is danger because she is viewed as work shy or privileged. This is a country in a state of terror, but is an account by a writer who never lost either her humour or her humanity. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
August 13, 2016
ARC review; also a post for Women in Translation month
[4.5] If you find this sort of thing horribly romantic...
A furnace stoker with whom she struck up a conversation on the deck one night revealed that he was in disguise—that he was actually a Petersburg youth who had visited her apartment, where they “talked about stones, about a yellow sapphire.” Since then his entire family had perished and now he planned to go to Odessa to fight the Bolsheviks. Teffi remembers the evenings in Petersburg: “Languid, high-strung ladies, sophisticated young men. A table adorned with white lilac. A conversation about a yellow sapphire . . .” Then she imagines the execution awaiting this boy, who will “rest his weary shoulders against the stone wall of a black cellar and close his eyes . . .”
...She notes that it was there that they hanged “Ksenya G, the famous anarchist,” whom she remembers: “Bold, gay, young, beautiful—always chic,” one of an anarchist group whom everyone considered to be “fakes and braggarts. Not one of us had taken them seriously.” But revolution played its tragic trick on Ksenya G and killed her in good earnest: She “had stood here, in this very spot, smoking her last cigarette and screwing her eyes up as she looked at her last sun. Then she had flicked away the cigarette butt— and calmly thrown the stiff noose around her neck.”
(from the introduction)
Timing has made a star's worth of difference here. I read about a third of Teffi's Memories in April and May, and though I hardly ever re-start books I've read that much of, for some reason I made an exception here.
Post Brexit vote, the sense of social and political division, unease and uncertainty made the atmosphere of Teffi's just-post-revolutionary Russia read more vividly than it had only a few months earlier. The magnitude may be very different, but there's common ground in the widespread fear of turbulent change ahead, and the suspicion that once presumably innocuous people may despise you. (Obviously it's not as bad as she says here when we were leaving Moscow... people had looked at us with real fury—the intelligentsia suspecting we might be from the Cheka while the workers and peasants had seen us as capitalist landlords still drinking their blood. - but anyone who's had to spend much time around those who voted for the other side - and perhaps the same goes for Americans feeling the division between Trump supporters and others on a daily basis - may see it as a question of scale.) I didn't mean to join in the mass of 5-star reviews, sheeplike, but this book felt right just now, over and above my own connection with its rhythm of upheaval and fleeing.
There's no denying that this is a well-connected upper-middle-class refugee (or rather émigré) experience; some doors open because Teffi was among the most famous authors in Russia at the time, but there was also genuine danger. She may have had rooms to stay in, not merely the street like thousands of others, but they are rooms like this: there were two windows on one side to catch the north wind, and two on the other side for the west wind. They were all double-paned, and the glass had been knocked out so skillfully that at first you didn’t even notice... At first glance, everything looked fine and you had no idea why letters were flying about the room and the dressing gown on the hanger kept flapping its sleeves... The armchairs were exhausted, worn out by life, and during the night they liked to stretch out their arms, legs, and backs, creaking and groaning...I looked around and said to myself, for no apparent reason, “I wonder which of the doctors round here specializes in Spanish influenza."
Her dry wit and stoicism, coexisting with little of-their-time snobberies, suggest a personality who would have fitted in well with Waugh, Wodehouse and Nancy Mitford.
Literary autobiographical accounts of dealing with bureaucracy in incipient dictatorships don't usually read like this, all arch cultural references, that very "U" distaste for boredom, and matter of fact restraint as if all this was as normal as the ropes on stands that shape queues in banks :
A languid lady with a Cléo de Mérode hairdo adorned with a shabby copper band and liberally sprinkled with dandruff grants me permission to go on a reading tour. Then long, long hours in an endless line in some place that’s like a cross between an army barrack and a large prison. Finally a soldier with a bayonet takes my document from me and goes off to show it to his superior.
I sometimes forgot I was reading an upper-class female writer of the early twentieth century, because she is often - though by no means invariably - so matter of fact and sardonic, certainly not having attacks of the vapours left right and centre: only occasionally, and reluctantly, helpless and "girly". I would be jolted back by the mention of the narrator having once been a small girl with pigtails, or an acquaintance trying to persuade her to take advantage of dress fabric available in times of scarcity. Re. the latter: whilst the introduction makes that common point about how women in the direst of times - WWII, Yugoslav civil war - still like to take care of their appearance, and draw strength from doing so, Teffi seems to think that some of those around her take this to excess, and does not always join in.)
There is something delightfully camp - camp of the most sincere type, as per Sontag - to her alternate detached wit and melodrama. Two separate intimidating officials:
The commissar is indeed terrible. Not a human being, but a nose in boots. There are creatures called cephalopods. Well, he is a rhinopod. A vast nose, to which are attached two legs. One leg, evidently, contains the heart, while the other contains the digestive tract. And these legs are encased in yellow lace-up boots that go right up to his thighs.
My aversion to this creature was so intense, so beyond my control that I couldn’t answer for myself. I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t scream or make a scene or do something irreparable, something that would cost me dear, something our whole group would have to pay for. I knew that physical contact with this reptile was more than I could bear.
The English version of Memories has had near-universal praise so far, but I wonder to what extent that is a matter of politics. Being acquainted with a couple of Marxists on GR, I wondered if Teffi might sound too ...counter-revolutionary, too merely liberal... were they to read her. Lines like this, if taken without a dash of irony, might. Your reason may affirm that you are completely safe, that your borsch is your own property and that your rights to it are protected by the iron might of the German state. You may think you understand this, but your subconscious doesn’t. “What if an unfamiliar, vile spoon reaches over my shoulder,” it says to itself, “and takes a scoop for the needs of the proletariat?” If there is genuinely not enough to go round, the fear would be that what will be taken is not just the excess you can manage without, but some of the essentials you need, so everyone is equally somewhat hungry.
Teffi had had ten years to come to terms with these events and her exile by the time of writing Memories - time spent among well-connected Russians in Paris whose politics may have made her less sympathetic to socialism - but even given all that time to think, the book is often remarkable for its stoicism: Blitz spirit twenty years before the Blitz, and in sight of more present danger. This is leavened and made the more believable by moments of fear and of faltering - and though Teffi herself tends towards emotional (and never overtly stated physical) toughness, the overall picture taking into account all characters is of coping via that Slavic blend of emotional drama and silent endurance. (Something which doesn't seem to make complete sense to Anglos, who want to pigeonhole people as being of one kind or t'other, rather than seeing that the expression is a necessary valve in the process of endurance and life generally.)
I mean, can you imagine this happening here?
“I can’t, the tears just keep coming. . . .”...
At this point her howls became so alarming that the elderly owner of the café came out from behind the counter, shook her head sympathetically and gently stroked Olyonushka’s hair.
Unless they were friends already, and perhaps even then, she'd be out on her ear for making a noise that disturbed the other customers.
The events here take place, of course, very nearly 100 years ago. (What sort of commemorations are planned for the Russian Revolution? Ambivalent ones? Curious.) Over and over again in this text I saw people who were born exactly 100 years earlier than me, than friends and acquaintances, or contemporary famous people just a bit older: most of those mentioned in Memories were born in the mid 1860s to 1880s, and especially in the 1870s, with a handful older or younger. This made me hyper-aware of their lifespans, and how much longer they had to go at the time of the book - which was often only about ten years: a lot of them died in the 1920s, cut short by post WWII standards, but a decent innings for the rest of human history. It felt weirdly supernatural to be able to see their dates of decease, as if like a character in Discworld I'd accidentally stumbled into Death's records of when the living would die. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was really not a good time to be born, in Russia especially, and/but the 1910s were so early in the century; makes you wonder, with lump in throat, where things are going now. Now just feels like now, whenever it is, but looked at as history in units of centuries, there is/was all that time stretching out in front. And our hundred-years-ago twins missed the coolest bits of the late twentieth century in the West. (Though given climate change, I would be amazed if similar cultural flowerings happened in 50-odd years time.)
Among the 'characters' who stood out were these who moved me to tears:
Maximilian Voloshin (1877–1932) - a poet who Teffi introduces as he traipses between the offices of dignitaries making petitions for the release of various prisoners, his charisma and the Russian respect for poetry opening many doors. From the notes: Voloshin was steadfast in his refusal to accept any ideology as absolute truth. ...Voloshin’s belief in the power of his words—what Marianna Landa refers to as ‘his Dostoevskian faith in the divine spark in the soul of the abominable criminal, and his Symbolist belief in the magic of the poetic word—seems to have been unshakeable; his personal appeals to Red and White officials and commanders, on behalf of individuals in trouble, and his verse-prayers addressed to God, on behalf of his country, have much in common. Voloshin believed he could affect the course of events—and sometimes he did. That he escaped arrest and execution is astonishing. (Probably more than most of you on this site, I sometimes have reservations about the worth to wider society of writers, but this guy, no question - and what a coup to combine practical humanitarianism with that most art-for-arts sake tendency of Symbolism.) In one instance, he asked Teffi to intervene, via a local commander she was on good terms with, to have Yelizaveta Kuzmina-Karavayeva released, and this was successful. In 1932, in Paris, [Kuzmina] took monastic vows, assuming the name of Mother Maria. During the Second World War she helped many Jews to escape the Nazis, often by providing them with baptismal certificates, but she was eventually sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. In March 1945, a week before the camp was liberated by the Red Army, she was sent to the gas chamber; according to one testimony, she voluntarily took the place of a Jewish woman. In 2004 she was canonized as a saint, by the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Memories is a book only about part of a journey, yet in the final analysis Teffi manages to sum up the final, lasting condition of exile in only a couple of lines, no extended meditation needed: like Lot’s wife, I am frozen. I have turned into a pillar of salt forever, and I shall forever go on looking, seeing my own land slip softly, slowly away from me.
This was an advance review copy from Netgalley and the UK publisher Pushkin Press. The US edition is published by NYRB Classics.
[4.5] If you find this sort of thing horribly romantic...
A furnace stoker with whom she struck up a conversation on the deck one night revealed that he was in disguise—that he was actually a Petersburg youth who had visited her apartment, where they “talked about stones, about a yellow sapphire.” Since then his entire family had perished and now he planned to go to Odessa to fight the Bolsheviks. Teffi remembers the evenings in Petersburg: “Languid, high-strung ladies, sophisticated young men. A table adorned with white lilac. A conversation about a yellow sapphire . . .” Then she imagines the execution awaiting this boy, who will “rest his weary shoulders against the stone wall of a black cellar and close his eyes . . .”
...She notes that it was there that they hanged “Ksenya G, the famous anarchist,” whom she remembers: “Bold, gay, young, beautiful—always chic,” one of an anarchist group whom everyone considered to be “fakes and braggarts. Not one of us had taken them seriously.” But revolution played its tragic trick on Ksenya G and killed her in good earnest: She “had stood here, in this very spot, smoking her last cigarette and screwing her eyes up as she looked at her last sun. Then she had flicked away the cigarette butt— and calmly thrown the stiff noose around her neck.”
(from the introduction)
Timing has made a star's worth of difference here. I read about a third of Teffi's Memories in April and May, and though I hardly ever re-start books I've read that much of, for some reason I made an exception here.
Post Brexit vote, the sense of social and political division, unease and uncertainty made the atmosphere of Teffi's just-post-revolutionary Russia read more vividly than it had only a few months earlier. The magnitude may be very different, but there's common ground in the widespread fear of turbulent change ahead, and the suspicion that once presumably innocuous people may despise you. (Obviously it's not as bad as she says here when we were leaving Moscow... people had looked at us with real fury—the intelligentsia suspecting we might be from the Cheka while the workers and peasants had seen us as capitalist landlords still drinking their blood. - but anyone who's had to spend much time around those who voted for the other side - and perhaps the same goes for Americans feeling the division between Trump supporters and others on a daily basis - may see it as a question of scale.) I didn't mean to join in the mass of 5-star reviews, sheeplike, but this book felt right just now, over and above my own connection with its rhythm of upheaval and fleeing.
There's no denying that this is a well-connected upper-middle-class refugee (or rather émigré) experience; some doors open because Teffi was among the most famous authors in Russia at the time, but there was also genuine danger. She may have had rooms to stay in, not merely the street like thousands of others, but they are rooms like this: there were two windows on one side to catch the north wind, and two on the other side for the west wind. They were all double-paned, and the glass had been knocked out so skillfully that at first you didn’t even notice... At first glance, everything looked fine and you had no idea why letters were flying about the room and the dressing gown on the hanger kept flapping its sleeves... The armchairs were exhausted, worn out by life, and during the night they liked to stretch out their arms, legs, and backs, creaking and groaning...I looked around and said to myself, for no apparent reason, “I wonder which of the doctors round here specializes in Spanish influenza."
Her dry wit and stoicism, coexisting with little of-their-time snobberies, suggest a personality who would have fitted in well with Waugh, Wodehouse and Nancy Mitford.
Literary autobiographical accounts of dealing with bureaucracy in incipient dictatorships don't usually read like this, all arch cultural references, that very "U" distaste for boredom, and matter of fact restraint as if all this was as normal as the ropes on stands that shape queues in banks :
A languid lady with a Cléo de Mérode hairdo adorned with a shabby copper band and liberally sprinkled with dandruff grants me permission to go on a reading tour. Then long, long hours in an endless line in some place that’s like a cross between an army barrack and a large prison. Finally a soldier with a bayonet takes my document from me and goes off to show it to his superior.
I sometimes forgot I was reading an upper-class female writer of the early twentieth century, because she is often - though by no means invariably - so matter of fact and sardonic, certainly not having attacks of the vapours left right and centre: only occasionally, and reluctantly, helpless and "girly". I would be jolted back by the mention of the narrator having once been a small girl with pigtails, or an acquaintance trying to persuade her to take advantage of dress fabric available in times of scarcity. Re. the latter: whilst the introduction makes that common point about how women in the direst of times - WWII, Yugoslav civil war - still like to take care of their appearance, and draw strength from doing so, Teffi seems to think that some of those around her take this to excess, and does not always join in.)
There is something delightfully camp - camp of the most sincere type, as per Sontag - to her alternate detached wit and melodrama. Two separate intimidating officials:
The commissar is indeed terrible. Not a human being, but a nose in boots. There are creatures called cephalopods. Well, he is a rhinopod. A vast nose, to which are attached two legs. One leg, evidently, contains the heart, while the other contains the digestive tract. And these legs are encased in yellow lace-up boots that go right up to his thighs.
My aversion to this creature was so intense, so beyond my control that I couldn’t answer for myself. I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t scream or make a scene or do something irreparable, something that would cost me dear, something our whole group would have to pay for. I knew that physical contact with this reptile was more than I could bear.
The English version of Memories has had near-universal praise so far, but I wonder to what extent that is a matter of politics. Being acquainted with a couple of Marxists on GR, I wondered if Teffi might sound too ...counter-revolutionary, too merely liberal... were they to read her. Lines like this, if taken without a dash of irony, might. Your reason may affirm that you are completely safe, that your borsch is your own property and that your rights to it are protected by the iron might of the German state. You may think you understand this, but your subconscious doesn’t. “What if an unfamiliar, vile spoon reaches over my shoulder,” it says to itself, “and takes a scoop for the needs of the proletariat?” If there is genuinely not enough to go round, the fear would be that what will be taken is not just the excess you can manage without, but some of the essentials you need, so everyone is equally somewhat hungry.
Teffi had had ten years to come to terms with these events and her exile by the time of writing Memories - time spent among well-connected Russians in Paris whose politics may have made her less sympathetic to socialism - but even given all that time to think, the book is often remarkable for its stoicism: Blitz spirit twenty years before the Blitz, and in sight of more present danger. This is leavened and made the more believable by moments of fear and of faltering - and though Teffi herself tends towards emotional (and never overtly stated physical) toughness, the overall picture taking into account all characters is of coping via that Slavic blend of emotional drama and silent endurance. (Something which doesn't seem to make complete sense to Anglos, who want to pigeonhole people as being of one kind or t'other, rather than seeing that the expression is a necessary valve in the process of endurance and life generally.)
I mean, can you imagine this happening here?
“I can’t, the tears just keep coming. . . .”...
At this point her howls became so alarming that the elderly owner of the café came out from behind the counter, shook her head sympathetically and gently stroked Olyonushka’s hair.
Unless they were friends already, and perhaps even then, she'd be out on her ear for making a noise that disturbed the other customers.
The events here take place, of course, very nearly 100 years ago. (What sort of commemorations are planned for the Russian Revolution? Ambivalent ones? Curious.) Over and over again in this text I saw people who were born exactly 100 years earlier than me, than friends and acquaintances, or contemporary famous people just a bit older: most of those mentioned in Memories were born in the mid 1860s to 1880s, and especially in the 1870s, with a handful older or younger. This made me hyper-aware of their lifespans, and how much longer they had to go at the time of the book - which was often only about ten years: a lot of them died in the 1920s, cut short by post WWII standards, but a decent innings for the rest of human history. It felt weirdly supernatural to be able to see their dates of decease, as if like a character in Discworld I'd accidentally stumbled into Death's records of when the living would die. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was really not a good time to be born, in Russia especially, and/but the 1910s were so early in the century; makes you wonder, with lump in throat, where things are going now. Now just feels like now, whenever it is, but looked at as history in units of centuries, there is/was all that time stretching out in front. And our hundred-years-ago twins missed the coolest bits of the late twentieth century in the West. (Though given climate change, I would be amazed if similar cultural flowerings happened in 50-odd years time.)
Among the 'characters' who stood out were these who moved me to tears:
Maximilian Voloshin (1877–1932) - a poet who Teffi introduces as he traipses between the offices of dignitaries making petitions for the release of various prisoners, his charisma and the Russian respect for poetry opening many doors. From the notes: Voloshin was steadfast in his refusal to accept any ideology as absolute truth. ...Voloshin’s belief in the power of his words—what Marianna Landa refers to as ‘his Dostoevskian faith in the divine spark in the soul of the abominable criminal, and his Symbolist belief in the magic of the poetic word—seems to have been unshakeable; his personal appeals to Red and White officials and commanders, on behalf of individuals in trouble, and his verse-prayers addressed to God, on behalf of his country, have much in common. Voloshin believed he could affect the course of events—and sometimes he did. That he escaped arrest and execution is astonishing. (Probably more than most of you on this site, I sometimes have reservations about the worth to wider society of writers, but this guy, no question - and what a coup to combine practical humanitarianism with that most art-for-arts sake tendency of Symbolism.) In one instance, he asked Teffi to intervene, via a local commander she was on good terms with, to have Yelizaveta Kuzmina-Karavayeva released, and this was successful. In 1932, in Paris, [Kuzmina] took monastic vows, assuming the name of Mother Maria. During the Second World War she helped many Jews to escape the Nazis, often by providing them with baptismal certificates, but she was eventually sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. In March 1945, a week before the camp was liberated by the Red Army, she was sent to the gas chamber; according to one testimony, she voluntarily took the place of a Jewish woman. In 2004 she was canonized as a saint, by the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Memories is a book only about part of a journey, yet in the final analysis Teffi manages to sum up the final, lasting condition of exile in only a couple of lines, no extended meditation needed: like Lot’s wife, I am frozen. I have turned into a pillar of salt forever, and I shall forever go on looking, seeing my own land slip softly, slowly away from me.
This was an advance review copy from Netgalley and the UK publisher Pushkin Press. The US edition is published by NYRB Classics.
May 20, 2016
BOTW
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bb89zDescription: Teffi was a famous Russian writer in the early 1900's, forced to flee her country. And this is the story of her eventful flight, which is newly translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg.
Unrest and anxiety in Moscow as the Bolsheviks gather, but a 'reading tour' of Ukraine offers Teffi and other artists a way out. Time to take the train.. Reader Tracy-Ann ObermanOn the train to Kiev, away from the Bolsheviks. And Gooskin the indefatigable organiser gets the author and others out of various scrapes.Arrival in Kiev, with its sunny days and familiar faces, but a scourge of White Russians is approaching. When will Petlyura get here?On to Odessa, where the author encounters General Grishin-Almazov, sniffer-outer of local bandits, who 'loved literature and theatre'. And wasn't he once an actor?Sliding down the map, far from Moscow.. the author ends up in Novorossiisk.. where's that? Then she thinks about places even further afield, as the homeland 'slips away from us'.
The wonderful thing about Radio 4 is the gift of tasting new books and occasionally one comes across a delight that must be owned in the paper; Memories is such a one. The language, terror of fleeing war, and the relevance to contemporary times cannot be overlooked. Heartily recommended.3* Subtly Worded
5* Memories
July 20, 2017
These are the memories of a very talented woman who happened to live in the wrong place (Russia) at the wrong time (the Bolshevik Revolution). Going by the pen name "Teffi," Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya sympathizes with the revolutionists in the waning days of Czarist Russia, but we all know how principled movements can quickly degenerate into mayhem thanks to the vacuum created when power topples. See Revolution comma French just for starters. Before long, our girl Teffi is not so much sympathetic with the Bolsheviks as fleeing them.
To its credit, the book is a cleanly written memoir. Nothing fancy. Just a collection of brief vignettes. Episodic. At times similar to the picaresque, we bump along from Moscow to Kiev to Odessa to Sebastapol to Novorossusk. If it's Tuesday, this must be Russian Belgium. Teffi meets people famous and not-so. She chronicles. She is, after all, a page in history, one with a sense of humor and style.
Sometimes she can wax a bit metaphorical, too. On a ship, she writes, "I close my eyes and gaze into the transparent green water far beneath me...A merry shoal of tiny fish is swimming by. A school of tiny fish. Evidently they are being led by some wise fish, some fish sage and prophet. With what touching obedience the entire shoal responds to his slightest movement. If he moves to the right, they all move to the right too. If he turns back, so do they all. And there are a large number of these fish. Probably about sixty of them. Circling, darting this way and that way, wheeling about...Oh little fish, little fish, can you trust this leader of yours? Are you sure your foremost philosopher-fish is not simply a fool?"
Interesting how the hazards of following a leader-fool in 1918 can hold true today and forever. Need we think hard to identify present day leaders who smell fishy? And would their schools learn from reading Teffi's quote? One can only hope!
As is true with any memoir, slow points here and there, and you never fully become engaged in people so much as the tide of history. Overall, glad I read, even though it was not a barn-burner by any means.
To its credit, the book is a cleanly written memoir. Nothing fancy. Just a collection of brief vignettes. Episodic. At times similar to the picaresque, we bump along from Moscow to Kiev to Odessa to Sebastapol to Novorossusk. If it's Tuesday, this must be Russian Belgium. Teffi meets people famous and not-so. She chronicles. She is, after all, a page in history, one with a sense of humor and style.
Sometimes she can wax a bit metaphorical, too. On a ship, she writes, "I close my eyes and gaze into the transparent green water far beneath me...A merry shoal of tiny fish is swimming by. A school of tiny fish. Evidently they are being led by some wise fish, some fish sage and prophet. With what touching obedience the entire shoal responds to his slightest movement. If he moves to the right, they all move to the right too. If he turns back, so do they all. And there are a large number of these fish. Probably about sixty of them. Circling, darting this way and that way, wheeling about...Oh little fish, little fish, can you trust this leader of yours? Are you sure your foremost philosopher-fish is not simply a fool?"
Interesting how the hazards of following a leader-fool in 1918 can hold true today and forever. Need we think hard to identify present day leaders who smell fishy? And would their schools learn from reading Teffi's quote? One can only hope!
As is true with any memoir, slow points here and there, and you never fully become engaged in people so much as the tide of history. Overall, glad I read, even though it was not a barn-burner by any means.
May 16, 2016
This is just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful in places. This is Teffi's account of her journey out of Revolutionary Russia. It has beauty, humor, and sorrow.
Thank NYRB Book Club, thank you.
(May 2016 selection)
Thank NYRB Book Club, thank you.
(May 2016 selection)
August 6, 2016
For years I looked through Russian emigre journals from Paris and Harbin and San Francisco, able to read about 30% of it, enough to know that everyone loved Teffi. But who's Teffi, what kind of a name is that. Finally this year, after some 90 years, Robert and Elizabeth Chandler together with Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg have published the first English translation of Teffi's memoir of her long journey from Moscow to the Black Sea in the wake of the Russian collapse in World War I. (You don't want to rush things.)
When the Bolsheviks withdrew from the war, they lost big chunks of the empire including Ukraine, and lost the whole infrastructure of the vast millennium-old empire. There was no food. Looting was rampant. Dead horses were carved up for food. People were shot in the streets for looking bourgeois. And their watches, rings, and gold teeth were stolen. It was what we would call a failed state. Reasonable people thought that somehow reason would eventually prevail and order would be restored. It wasn't. Teffi was in sympathy with democracy, and supported the 1905 revolution, but was horrified by what came after.
Publishing sketches and poems since 1901, she was a beloved writer, so loved there was a perfume named after her, and a type of chocolate. Tsar Nicolas II loved her writing, Lenin read everything she wrote, her plays attracted full houses, hipsters went to cabarets to hear her sing her songs. But after 1917, she didn't have anything to eat in frozen St. Petersburg so she went to Moscow. Not much better. But she kept on writing and singing and performing. Even hungry people want to be entertained.
But it was getting dicey. A wily impresario named Gooskin promised her part of the take if she'd give readings in Ukraine, nominally independent, and full of people in need of entertainment. He promised her the best room at the London Hotel in Odessa, or maybe the International. Gooskin, not his real name, saved her life. There was food in Kiev. But then she had to extract herself from Gooskin who wanted her as a trophy to bring home to his mother in Odessa, so she bought out her contract and then got swept on to Odessa anyway where people wanted to be entertained. Of course, the London Hotel was requisitioned for troops, the International was a target for looting the rich.
No one really knows how many refugees fled during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, maybe one million, maybe three. Some went through Europe, some through Turkey, some through China. They all loved Teffi. All along the route, she wrote about their experience. "Here I am dancing around in the rain with no idea whom to bribe." -- "No one was getting searched or shot. It all felt very cosy." She lurched on trains through Ukrainian war zones with Petliura and Skorapadski competing with Germans, Whites, and Bolsheviks. She didn't know where she would sleep at night. She didn't know whether she'd have anything to eat.
Through all of this, she was enchanted by her fellow refugees. Especially the ladies she calls Edelweiss, after the flower that blooms on icy glaciers where nothing else can live. These ladies shared information on where to get velvet curtains for making ballgowns during the emigration, just like Scarlet O'Hara. (I knew a Russian emigre lady who said they would never ever appear in an off the rack dress at a party, just because people were getting shot was no excuse to be badly dressed.) These ladies rushed to the hairdresser before getting aboard the train to safety. "No doubt during Pompeii's last minutes, there had been edelweisses hurrying to fit in a quick pedicure." The men had their preoccupations. On the rickety ship leaving just as Bolsheviks arrive, two men are planning a new political party while a third is planning to edit a new Russian newspaper.
She is more pragmatic, willing to do what it takes. The lady who provides the travel pass from Moscow needs to be flattered. She is a Bolshevik with an elaborate coiffure. (Probably Olga Kameneva, Trotsky's sister who was shot in 1941.) And Teffi flatters that guy in the stolen boots, ooh such beautiful boots, only a great man has such boots...and gets her travel pass.
When Odesssa is over-run by Bolsheviks, she tries to go to Vladivostok, that is her Russia where people could read what she wrote. But the ship is not seaworthy and she gets stuck in a port city called Novorossisk. Here she sees a tent city of Armenia refugees, worse off than the Russians. She is still in demand in a nearby city where the White General Denikin wants to be entertained. She is a trooper. She entertains, bows, and then leaves. Back to the port. The Armenians are gone. She boards a ship to Constantinople never to see her beloved Russia ever again. (And what of the Armenians....???)
Although there is namedropping on nearly every page, she wrote this memoir as a tribute to ordinary people. There is the hopeless idealist Olyonushka a vegetarian who cannot bear to eat meat, but steals bits off the plates of others. Olyonushka somehow is in love with Vladimir but thinks she should marry Dmitri because he is so helpless. But she does marry Vladimir and somehow finds happiness.
Some people manage. Even in a failed state. There is a recurring theme of gemstones. Teffi likes rocks. One man has a black opal ring. He does not survive so well. But a sooty grimy stoker on the refugee ship starts to talk with Teffi. He reminds her of a yellow sapphire. What? The yellow sapphire? This proletarian had been at one of her soirees in St. Petersburg before the apocalypse, and enjoyed an evening discussing the fire in rare stones. Now he doesn't want her to reveal his aristocratic roots. But he remembers the real Russia. And he will survive.
Now I know why everyone loves Teffi. I do too.
When the Bolsheviks withdrew from the war, they lost big chunks of the empire including Ukraine, and lost the whole infrastructure of the vast millennium-old empire. There was no food. Looting was rampant. Dead horses were carved up for food. People were shot in the streets for looking bourgeois. And their watches, rings, and gold teeth were stolen. It was what we would call a failed state. Reasonable people thought that somehow reason would eventually prevail and order would be restored. It wasn't. Teffi was in sympathy with democracy, and supported the 1905 revolution, but was horrified by what came after.
Publishing sketches and poems since 1901, she was a beloved writer, so loved there was a perfume named after her, and a type of chocolate. Tsar Nicolas II loved her writing, Lenin read everything she wrote, her plays attracted full houses, hipsters went to cabarets to hear her sing her songs. But after 1917, she didn't have anything to eat in frozen St. Petersburg so she went to Moscow. Not much better. But she kept on writing and singing and performing. Even hungry people want to be entertained.
But it was getting dicey. A wily impresario named Gooskin promised her part of the take if she'd give readings in Ukraine, nominally independent, and full of people in need of entertainment. He promised her the best room at the London Hotel in Odessa, or maybe the International. Gooskin, not his real name, saved her life. There was food in Kiev. But then she had to extract herself from Gooskin who wanted her as a trophy to bring home to his mother in Odessa, so she bought out her contract and then got swept on to Odessa anyway where people wanted to be entertained. Of course, the London Hotel was requisitioned for troops, the International was a target for looting the rich.
No one really knows how many refugees fled during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, maybe one million, maybe three. Some went through Europe, some through Turkey, some through China. They all loved Teffi. All along the route, she wrote about their experience. "Here I am dancing around in the rain with no idea whom to bribe." -- "No one was getting searched or shot. It all felt very cosy." She lurched on trains through Ukrainian war zones with Petliura and Skorapadski competing with Germans, Whites, and Bolsheviks. She didn't know where she would sleep at night. She didn't know whether she'd have anything to eat.
Through all of this, she was enchanted by her fellow refugees. Especially the ladies she calls Edelweiss, after the flower that blooms on icy glaciers where nothing else can live. These ladies shared information on where to get velvet curtains for making ballgowns during the emigration, just like Scarlet O'Hara. (I knew a Russian emigre lady who said they would never ever appear in an off the rack dress at a party, just because people were getting shot was no excuse to be badly dressed.) These ladies rushed to the hairdresser before getting aboard the train to safety. "No doubt during Pompeii's last minutes, there had been edelweisses hurrying to fit in a quick pedicure." The men had their preoccupations. On the rickety ship leaving just as Bolsheviks arrive, two men are planning a new political party while a third is planning to edit a new Russian newspaper.
She is more pragmatic, willing to do what it takes. The lady who provides the travel pass from Moscow needs to be flattered. She is a Bolshevik with an elaborate coiffure. (Probably Olga Kameneva, Trotsky's sister who was shot in 1941.) And Teffi flatters that guy in the stolen boots, ooh such beautiful boots, only a great man has such boots...and gets her travel pass.
When Odesssa is over-run by Bolsheviks, she tries to go to Vladivostok, that is her Russia where people could read what she wrote. But the ship is not seaworthy and she gets stuck in a port city called Novorossisk. Here she sees a tent city of Armenia refugees, worse off than the Russians. She is still in demand in a nearby city where the White General Denikin wants to be entertained. She is a trooper. She entertains, bows, and then leaves. Back to the port. The Armenians are gone. She boards a ship to Constantinople never to see her beloved Russia ever again. (And what of the Armenians....???)
Although there is namedropping on nearly every page, she wrote this memoir as a tribute to ordinary people. There is the hopeless idealist Olyonushka a vegetarian who cannot bear to eat meat, but steals bits off the plates of others. Olyonushka somehow is in love with Vladimir but thinks she should marry Dmitri because he is so helpless. But she does marry Vladimir and somehow finds happiness.
Some people manage. Even in a failed state. There is a recurring theme of gemstones. Teffi likes rocks. One man has a black opal ring. He does not survive so well. But a sooty grimy stoker on the refugee ship starts to talk with Teffi. He reminds her of a yellow sapphire. What? The yellow sapphire? This proletarian had been at one of her soirees in St. Petersburg before the apocalypse, and enjoyed an evening discussing the fire in rare stones. Now he doesn't want her to reveal his aristocratic roots. But he remembers the real Russia. And he will survive.
Now I know why everyone loves Teffi. I do too.
Read
November 20, 2020Teffi, pen name of the noted Russian humorist and satirist, brings her signature charm to a heavy subject - migration and exile on the heels of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918. In Memories, Teffi traces her exodus from her home in St. Petersburg - at the time she believed it to be short term absence - through the Ukraine and Crimea, finally to Constantinople, eventually to a life of exile in France and Germany.
Teffi's absolute skill lie in her astute observations and situational humor, and the way she juxtaposes these with the serious nature of the same situations. She is a gifted storyteller and the translators did such a masterful work or bringing this humor to us here - and it truly transcends the 100+ years since Teffi's time.
The first laughs here started when she describes the levels that the bourgeoisie will go to hide their wealth from confiscation by the Red Army - putting diamonds into hard-boiled eggs, which are then chomped by soldiers...
Right alongside these funny stories are ones of sadness and fear of the unknown. Her "escape" from Odessa is the most action-packed sequence in the book, and had me completely riveted.
“There are moments when threads snap – all the threads that tie what is earthly in the soul to the earth itself. Your nearest and dearest become infinitely distant, barely even a memory. Even the events in your past that once mattered most to you grow dim. All of the huge and important thing we call life fades away and you become that primordial nothing out of which the universe was created.”
Teffi's absolute skill lie in her astute observations and situational humor, and the way she juxtaposes these with the serious nature of the same situations. She is a gifted storyteller and the translators did such a masterful work or bringing this humor to us here - and it truly transcends the 100+ years since Teffi's time.
The first laughs here started when she describes the levels that the bourgeoisie will go to hide their wealth from confiscation by the Red Army - putting diamonds into hard-boiled eggs, which are then chomped by soldiers...
Right alongside these funny stories are ones of sadness and fear of the unknown. Her "escape" from Odessa is the most action-packed sequence in the book, and had me completely riveted.
“There are moments when threads snap – all the threads that tie what is earthly in the soul to the earth itself. Your nearest and dearest become infinitely distant, barely even a memory. Even the events in your past that once mattered most to you grow dim. All of the huge and important thing we call life fades away and you become that primordial nothing out of which the universe was created.”
April 3, 2022
This is a vivid often hilarious account of when people took to the road during the Russian Civil War. The author’s experience can hardly be considered universal as she was a celebrity, connected and well-known in theatrical and literary circles—that said she spent days in a steamship bathroom during a turbulent passage.
The account is rife with citations and allusion. I appreciated that. Her observations appear rather honest and stripped of stereotype or ideological preconceptions. Hunger and hygiene don’t appear as prevalent as one might imagine, but I suspect this is due to the author remaining itinerant, just ahead of those grim realities.
The account is rife with citations and allusion. I appreciated that. Her observations appear rather honest and stripped of stereotype or ideological preconceptions. Hunger and hygiene don’t appear as prevalent as one might imagine, but I suspect this is due to the author remaining itinerant, just ahead of those grim realities.
October 21, 2016
Russian authors often produce works of darkness and depression. Teffi's book of her journey escaping the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War is depressing at times but it is also unusual in her way of seeing humour in the events around her. The book is a kind of journal with some reminisces of her life, her phobias and her dreams of returning to Moscow. It is an unusual book from Russia in that it presents a very personal story from an intelligent, witty woman with a love of life, who recognises her world and country has gone and her fears have been realised.
I think she must have been a cheeky character - she would have made a great dinner party guest.
I think she must have been a cheeky character - she would have made a great dinner party guest.
December 25, 2016
A dear friend whom I've never met sent me this book, knowing it addressed one of my obsessions (the first world war) and one of my lifelong passions (Russia). This was well chosen, J.
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is an autobiographical work by Teffi (pseudonym for Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya ), a Russian writer during the early 20th century. The book covers a very short and precise period of her life, and of world history, 1918-1919, when she fled Moscow in during the Russian Civil War. Teffi left Moscow, headed into Ukraine (small towns, then Kiev, then Odessa), then traveled across the Black Sea to Novorossiisk and Yekaterinodar, before leaving the former Russian empire for Constantinople.
Along the way Teffi experiences rapid changes of fortune. She stays in fine hotels and hovels, eats well or goes without, helps friends or learns of their deaths. Having some fame as a popular writer she can exert influence, or court danger for that same reason. She interacts with a range of people, starting from "Gooskin", the shambling manager who somehow gets her across Ukraine, stringing together gigs and lodgings with seeming randomness, dodging multiple sides' military and police. There's Olyonushka, an epically fraught actress, obsessed with food and love. There are authority figures galore:
Throughout the journey Teffi turned her keen satirist's eye to events. Memories offers anyone interested in the period a rich vision of people and countries in the midst of epochal chaos. Teffi shows us cities, towns, trains, soldiers, actresses, hotels good and bad, people's homes, a hilariously dangerous ship, hunger, happiness, love, and heartbreak.
There are many pleasures here, starting with Teffi as a character and narrator. She's proud yet self-abnegating, capable of goofy joy and deep melancholy. I've never read her before, so enjoyed listening to her voice. Very much in the western autobiographical tradition, she's not afraid to share embarrassing stories, like the weird deck-scrubbing fantasy (166ff).
She writes strongly about being a women in turbulent times, offering vignettes like one towns' women warning her away, and expecting their own doom (42-3), or the fashion analysis of sealskin coats as an index of political fortunes (54-5). She celebrates (or mock-celebrates?) women insisting on feminine style in the midst of chaos (195).
I was especially fond of the book's short-short stories, micro-accounts of lives and events. The doomed officer on the train (90), M's sudden love of flowers in the midst of battle (115), the stoker's tale (180-2), Olyonushka's short-lived marriage (208-210), the one-paragraph story of Ksenya G. and Mamont Dalsky (228) are some of my favorites, but there are many more.
Some of the stories are very strange, literally weird, like Melville's asides inMoby-Dick For example, meditating on the sea while stuck on a ship, Teffi imagines sea fauna. Then:
There's another glimpse of the weird in Vova's tale, when he imagines "some kind of strange, transparent, gelatinous figures [that] would be standing by the wall. Then it would bend down and vanish." (209) I don't know if this weird theme is something Teffi drew on elsewhere.
As a student of WWI and Russia I learned a great deal. It was fascinating to be reminded, for example, how many people thought the October Revolution was a flash in the pan, and the Bolsheviks (soon to become Soviet) would disintegrate. "Anyway it will only be a few weeks, if not days, before the Bolshevik regime collapses." (95) We see the Whites' brief hope of French intervention(123). Memories offers a nice glimpse into Ukraine as it rapidly transitions from being part of the Russian empire to German occupation, then French occupation, then impending Soviet rule. Teffi draws attention to the role of gangsters and thugs as crucial players in the revolution and civil war. And she excels in painting portraits of civilians caught up in it all.
Not being a fan of the Whites (the anti-Bolshevik coalition) I did not sympathize completely with her assessment of the situation. Teffi usually locates herself firmly in the anti-revolutionary camp, and wants to place us there as well. For example, she uses the second person to describe you and her together as people afraid that the proletariat will take our food (79). Similarly, "Yekaterinodar was at this time our center, our White capital." (221; emphases added) She is enthusiastic about seeing Russian empire officers and officials (80). The Bolsheviks appear usually as monsters, villains without rational cause or sympathy.
At times it's unclearly where her political sympathies actually lie. Stories of rich Russian imperials stooping to work (33, 166ff): should they appear comic, tragic, or just? What do we make of her attempts to seem nonpolitical:
As the book concludes our narrator seems disengaged from the big picture of political transformation, buffeted by it, but either not understanding or resisting knowing what was occurring. This frustrated me at first, as a student of history. Yet the conclusion is actually well structured for a different purpose, to build up to Teffi's heartbreak as leaving her Russia forever, which the final page accomplishes. It's a powerful description of the involuntary emigrant experience.
As an edition, this New York Review Books book is impressive. I haven't read Teffi in Russian, so I can't comment on the translation, except to say it's very effective in English. The introduction does a good job of introducing Teffi and situating her in the Russian artistic scene (art and culture are clearly far more important for her than politics). The end notes are excellent, concisely explaining people, linguistic references, religion, etc.
I was especially fond of this wild explanation of an untranslatable word, хлопотать, which I have to share in full for its mix of Kafka and modern Russia:
I strongly recommend Memories to any reader. Yes, it's great for those, like me, interested in Russia and WWI. But the trove of stories, the keen insights into human life during a period of extraordinary transformation, should work for anybody.
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is an autobiographical work by Teffi (pseudonym for Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya ), a Russian writer during the early 20th century. The book covers a very short and precise period of her life, and of world history, 1918-1919, when she fled Moscow in during the Russian Civil War. Teffi left Moscow, headed into Ukraine (small towns, then Kiev, then Odessa), then traveled across the Black Sea to Novorossiisk and Yekaterinodar, before leaving the former Russian empire for Constantinople.
Along the way Teffi experiences rapid changes of fortune. She stays in fine hotels and hovels, eats well or goes without, helps friends or learns of their deaths. Having some fame as a popular writer she can exert influence, or court danger for that same reason. She interacts with a range of people, starting from "Gooskin", the shambling manager who somehow gets her across Ukraine, stringing together gigs and lodgings with seeming randomness, dodging multiple sides' military and police. There's Olyonushka, an epically fraught actress, obsessed with food and love. There are authority figures galore:
The commissar is indeed terrible. Not a human being, but a nose in boots... a rhinopod. A vast nose, to which there are attached two legs. One leg, evidently, contains the heart, while the other contains the digestive tract. And these legs are encased in yellow lace-up boots... (7)The poet Maximilian Voloshin appears, reciting his famous poetry at authority figures in order to win their influence to save lives, and the colorful yet doomed Kievan politician who bends to his poetic power (112-3).
Throughout the journey Teffi turned her keen satirist's eye to events. Memories offers anyone interested in the period a rich vision of people and countries in the midst of epochal chaos. Teffi shows us cities, towns, trains, soldiers, actresses, hotels good and bad, people's homes, a hilariously dangerous ship, hunger, happiness, love, and heartbreak.
There are many pleasures here, starting with Teffi as a character and narrator. She's proud yet self-abnegating, capable of goofy joy and deep melancholy. I've never read her before, so enjoyed listening to her voice. Very much in the western autobiographical tradition, she's not afraid to share embarrassing stories, like the weird deck-scrubbing fantasy (166ff).
She writes strongly about being a women in turbulent times, offering vignettes like one towns' women warning her away, and expecting their own doom (42-3), or the fashion analysis of sealskin coats as an index of political fortunes (54-5). She celebrates (or mock-celebrates?) women insisting on feminine style in the midst of chaos (195).
I was especially fond of the book's short-short stories, micro-accounts of lives and events. The doomed officer on the train (90), M's sudden love of flowers in the midst of battle (115), the stoker's tale (180-2), Olyonushka's short-lived marriage (208-210), the one-paragraph story of Ksenya G. and Mamont Dalsky (228) are some of my favorites, but there are many more.
Some of the stories are very strange, literally weird, like Melville's asides inMoby-Dick For example, meditating on the sea while stuck on a ship, Teffi imagines sea fauna. Then:
They say the ocean carries the bodies of the drowned to the shores of South America. Not far from these shores lies the deepest spot in the world - and there, some two miles down, can be found crowds of the dead: fishermen, friends and foes, soldiers and sailors, grandfathers and grandchildren- a whole standing army of the dead. The strong salt water preserves them well, and they sway there gently year upon year. An alien element neither accepts not changes these children of earth.
I close my eyes and gaze into the transparent green water far beneath me...
There's another glimpse of the weird in Vova's tale, when he imagines "some kind of strange, transparent, gelatinous figures [that] would be standing by the wall. Then it would bend down and vanish." (209) I don't know if this weird theme is something Teffi drew on elsewhere.
As a student of WWI and Russia I learned a great deal. It was fascinating to be reminded, for example, how many people thought the October Revolution was a flash in the pan, and the Bolsheviks (soon to become Soviet) would disintegrate. "Anyway it will only be a few weeks, if not days, before the Bolshevik regime collapses." (95) We see the Whites' brief hope of French intervention(123). Memories offers a nice glimpse into Ukraine as it rapidly transitions from being part of the Russian empire to German occupation, then French occupation, then impending Soviet rule. Teffi draws attention to the role of gangsters and thugs as crucial players in the revolution and civil war. And she excels in painting portraits of civilians caught up in it all.
Not being a fan of the Whites (the anti-Bolshevik coalition) I did not sympathize completely with her assessment of the situation. Teffi usually locates herself firmly in the anti-revolutionary camp, and wants to place us there as well. For example, she uses the second person to describe you and her together as people afraid that the proletariat will take our food (79). Similarly, "Yekaterinodar was at this time our center, our White capital." (221; emphases added) She is enthusiastic about seeing Russian empire officers and officials (80). The Bolsheviks appear usually as monsters, villains without rational cause or sympathy.
At times it's unclearly where her political sympathies actually lie. Stories of rich Russian imperials stooping to work (33, 166ff): should they appear comic, tragic, or just? What do we make of her attempts to seem nonpolitical:
when we were leaving Moscow: then people had looked at us with real fury - the intelligentsia suspecting we might be from the Cheka while the workers and peasants had seen us as capitalist landlords still drinking their blood.(73)The story of brutal Colonel K and his sadism towards Bolsheviks (218): is this supposed to cheer us as vengeance against the enemy, or an ethnographic look into how war's cruelty spawns further horrors?
As the book concludes our narrator seems disengaged from the big picture of political transformation, buffeted by it, but either not understanding or resisting knowing what was occurring. This frustrated me at first, as a student of history. Yet the conclusion is actually well structured for a different purpose, to build up to Teffi's heartbreak as leaving her Russia forever, which the final page accomplishes. It's a powerful description of the involuntary emigrant experience.
As an edition, this New York Review Books book is impressive. I haven't read Teffi in Russian, so I can't comment on the translation, except to say it's very effective in English. The introduction does a good job of introducing Teffi and situating her in the Russian artistic scene (art and culture are clearly far more important for her than politics). The end notes are excellent, concisely explaining people, linguistic references, religion, etc.
I was especially fond of this wild explanation of an untranslatable word, хлопотать, which I have to share in full for its mix of Kafka and modern Russia:
Here we are translating khlopotat’, a common Russian word for which there is no English equivalent. Elsewhere, in passages where Teffi draws less attention to this verb, we have translated it in different ways: ‘apply for,’ ‘try to obtain,’ ‘procure,’ etc. In ‘Moscow: the Last Days,’ an article she published in Kiev in October 1918, Teffi explains the word: ‘Incidentally, there is no equivalent to this idiotic term khlopotat’ in any other language in the world. A foreigner will say, ‘I’ll go and get the documents.’ A Russian, ‘I must hurry and start to khlopotat’ with regard to the documents.’ The foreigner will go to the appropriate institution and obtain what he needs. The Russian will go to three people he knows for advice, to two more who can ‘pull strings’, then to the institution—but it’ll be the wrong one—then to the right institution—but he’ll keep on knocking at the wrong doors until it’s too late. Then he’ll start everything all over again and, when he’s finally brought everything to a conclusion, he’ll leave the documents in a cab. This whole process is what is described by the word khlopotat’. Such work, if carried out on behalf of a third party, is highly valued and well paid’
I strongly recommend Memories to any reader. Yes, it's great for those, like me, interested in Russia and WWI. But the trove of stories, the keen insights into human life during a period of extraordinary transformation, should work for anybody.
September 5, 2019
What a strange and endearing book! Teffi was a popular Russian writer and journalist. But when the Bolsheviks took control and the "Red Terror" started taking hold, she fled Russia, always one step ahead of the Bolsheviks. She went to Kiev, and then Odessa, and then Novorossisk, finally ending up in Constantinople and Western Europe.
It is strange to see Teffi's sense of humor throughout Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea. She always keeps her observations on the light side, except at the very end, when she is leaving Russia with a short, somber reflection that she is leaving the land of her birth. All through the book, the rumor is that the Bolsheviks cannot last, and everyone will be able to return to Moscow and Petersburg soon.
Of the Russian literary exodus from the homeland, the name of Teffi (Real Name: Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya) will always remain among the most talented.
It is strange to see Teffi's sense of humor throughout Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea. She always keeps her observations on the light side, except at the very end, when she is leaving Russia with a short, somber reflection that she is leaving the land of her birth. All through the book, the rumor is that the Bolsheviks cannot last, and everyone will be able to return to Moscow and Petersburg soon.
Of the Russian literary exodus from the homeland, the name of Teffi (Real Name: Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya) will always remain among the most talented.
September 16, 2016
This was a beautiful & captivating book! It was amazing to see how she could convey the desperation of the situation in Russia but at the same time touch my heart and also make me laugh. Amazing!
I can't resist including a quote from the book which seems very relevant during this U.S. Election year "Oh little fish, little fish, can you trust this leader of yours? Are you sure your foremost philosopher-fish is not simply a fool?"
I can't resist including a quote from the book which seems very relevant during this U.S. Election year "Oh little fish, little fish, can you trust this leader of yours? Are you sure your foremost philosopher-fish is not simply a fool?"
December 1, 2023
uuel lugemisel, eesti keeles:
jah, ma ju ütlesin, et tuleb lugeda Martsoni tõlkes. naljakad kohad olid nüüd veel naljakamad, kurvad kohad veel kurvemad, ja lõpus oli järelsõna, mis andis nii Teffi enda kui tolle aja Vene ja Ukraina olukorra kohta rohkem selgust kui kõik, mis ma lugemise ajal kokku googeldasin
lisaks lugesin Teffit seekord paralleelselt Arthur Ransome'i reportaažidega sama aja Venemaalt ja eks seegi lisas mõtlemisainet.
esimesel lugemisel, inglise keeles:
minust vene keeles lugejat poleks nagunii, aga veidi kahju on, et ei õnnestunud seda raamatut hankida Ilona Martsoni tõlkes eesti keelde, sest see ingliskeelne on... noh, ka kindlasti hästi tõlgitud, aga mul on tunne, et mingid nüansid võisid ikka kaduma minna. (järelsõnagi räägib sellest, et raske tõlkida ja et lõike on korduvalt tõlketudengitele harjutamiseks antud ja mõned sõnastused ongi parematest tudengitöödest pärit. mis selgitab teatavat ebaühtlushõngu selle kõige kohal.)
lugu ja kirjutaja ise muidugi väga võimsad - haritlaste ja kunstiinimeste põgenemine revolutsioonijärgsest Peterburist läbi (ka muidugi revolutsioonijärgse) Venemaa ja Ukraina aastal 1918, kirja pandud päriskirjaniku sule ja stiiliga. ma ei olnud selle teemaga enne kokku puutunud, aga üldse olen ma sellest kodusõja-kaosest alles viimasel ajal kuulma hakanud kuidagi (lugesin just hiljuti nt "Doktor Živagot", ja Solomon Volkovi Peterburi-raamat oli ka silmiavav). Teffist polnud ka enne midagi kuulnud, aga selgub, et oligi humoristlik kirjanik ja sel saja aasta tagusel Venemaal väga tuntud.
eks see lugu pidi naerma ajama ja vahepeal ajas ka, aga rohkem pani mõtlema põgenikuelu kui sellise üle. kõik need tähelepanekud selle üle, kuidas veel viimasel põgenemiseelsel õhtul käiakse juuksuris lokke tegemas ja ostetakse kleidiriiet, kuidas igas uues kohas üritatakse oma normaalsust uuesti üles ehitada. tänase maailmaga paralleele tõmmata andis küll ja veel.
jah, ma ju ütlesin, et tuleb lugeda Martsoni tõlkes. naljakad kohad olid nüüd veel naljakamad, kurvad kohad veel kurvemad, ja lõpus oli järelsõna, mis andis nii Teffi enda kui tolle aja Vene ja Ukraina olukorra kohta rohkem selgust kui kõik, mis ma lugemise ajal kokku googeldasin
lisaks lugesin Teffit seekord paralleelselt Arthur Ransome'i reportaažidega sama aja Venemaalt ja eks seegi lisas mõtlemisainet.
esimesel lugemisel, inglise keeles:
minust vene keeles lugejat poleks nagunii, aga veidi kahju on, et ei õnnestunud seda raamatut hankida Ilona Martsoni tõlkes eesti keelde, sest see ingliskeelne on... noh, ka kindlasti hästi tõlgitud, aga mul on tunne, et mingid nüansid võisid ikka kaduma minna. (järelsõnagi räägib sellest, et raske tõlkida ja et lõike on korduvalt tõlketudengitele harjutamiseks antud ja mõned sõnastused ongi parematest tudengitöödest pärit. mis selgitab teatavat ebaühtlushõngu selle kõige kohal.)
lugu ja kirjutaja ise muidugi väga võimsad - haritlaste ja kunstiinimeste põgenemine revolutsioonijärgsest Peterburist läbi (ka muidugi revolutsioonijärgse) Venemaa ja Ukraina aastal 1918, kirja pandud päriskirjaniku sule ja stiiliga. ma ei olnud selle teemaga enne kokku puutunud, aga üldse olen ma sellest kodusõja-kaosest alles viimasel ajal kuulma hakanud kuidagi (lugesin just hiljuti nt "Doktor Živagot", ja Solomon Volkovi Peterburi-raamat oli ka silmiavav). Teffist polnud ka enne midagi kuulnud, aga selgub, et oligi humoristlik kirjanik ja sel saja aasta tagusel Venemaal väga tuntud.
eks see lugu pidi naerma ajama ja vahepeal ajas ka, aga rohkem pani mõtlema põgenikuelu kui sellise üle. kõik need tähelepanekud selle üle, kuidas veel viimasel põgenemiseelsel õhtul käiakse juuksuris lokke tegemas ja ostetakse kleidiriiet, kuidas igas uues kohas üritatakse oma normaalsust uuesti üles ehitada. tänase maailmaga paralleele tõmmata andis küll ja veel.
March 2, 2021
I didn't like this. The author describes the journey of how she left Russia at the wake of the Bolsheviks taking over the country. She leaves Moscow together with her artist friends and during their various stops in Kiev, Odessa and other places, they perform shows. She describes funny details that happen during the trip, but it all felt so pointless. She probably just wants to chronicle this part of her life story, but I couldn't connect at all as a reader. Maybe it's because I'm not familiar with this part of history that I felt lost. But then again, I never was able to connect well with anything Russian. The only good thing is that the book is fairly short and consists mostly of spoken conversations which are easy to read.
March 2, 2018
What a wonderful book! Beautiful writing and in particular wonderful humor and lightness -poetry really- to describe the incredible hardships of refugees running from Soviet bolcheviks. Great spirit!
May 27, 2020
"I was afraid of maddened faces, of lanterns being shone in my eyes, of blind mindless rage. I was afraid of cold, of hunger, of darkness, of rifle butts banging on parquet floors. I was afraid of screams, of weeping, of gunshots, of the deaths of others. I was tired of it all. I wanted no more of it. I had had enough."
As the Bolshevik Revolution enfolded and the subsequent years afterwards, many journalists disappeared due to their opinions (or truths). Luckily, due to the people she knew and how popular she was, Teffi had the means to escape and survive. In my opinion, this is her swan song of beloved Russia.
This held my interest throughout and seemed to be a good translation. It had a bit of a modern kick to an older style of writing which I believe helped with the humor with an otherwise dark subject.
If you decide to read this, take the time to read the numbered notes in the back of the book as you read. It was informative and gives you more of an understanding of not only the people being mentioned but also the history involved.
As the Bolshevik Revolution enfolded and the subsequent years afterwards, many journalists disappeared due to their opinions (or truths). Luckily, due to the people she knew and how popular she was, Teffi had the means to escape and survive. In my opinion, this is her swan song of beloved Russia.
This held my interest throughout and seemed to be a good translation. It had a bit of a modern kick to an older style of writing which I believe helped with the humor with an otherwise dark subject.
If you decide to read this, take the time to read the numbered notes in the back of the book as you read. It was informative and gives you more of an understanding of not only the people being mentioned but also the history involved.
June 16, 2016
teffi's literary journal of her leaving (escaping with her life?) st petersburg and moscow in 1918 to the "safety" of kiev, then leaving kiev for the "safety" of odessa, then to novorassicks sp? then finally, catching the "last boat out, to Constantinople in april 1919 or so. wonderful writing of the funny things in this long drawn out tragedy, author knows most all the literary and journalistic lights of the day, and the actors and singers of the stage and quite a few princes and other higher-ups, but all were running for their lives, more or less. she eventually ended up in paris, and wrote this in 1920's for the emigres there, but is an informative (especially with the translators and introducer's copious endnotes) and truthful and harrowing adventure tale of 'how-it-was' during the transition of the Bolsheviks, the white side still fighting, the germans in control of the ukraine, and pandemonium and exhaustion after decades of fighting and upheaval. great pick by nyrb!
March 8, 2024
When the Bolshevik revolution swept Russia in 1918, Teffi was perhaps one of the most popular writers in the country. Her dry humor, her optimism in the face of hardships, and her willingness to speak frankly endeared her to Russians of all classes.
Of course, speaking frankly wasn’t exactly a hallmark of Bolshevism, so Teffi like so many other artists and intellectuals was forced to make a choice whether to stay and face potential imprisonment or death, or flee the only country she had ever known. While she firmly believed that the fervor of the revolution would eventually fade and she would be able to return, she chose in that moment to flee.
This book is a memoir of her travels out of Russia, through the Ukraine, and finally Istanbul with the Bolshevik advance never far behind her.
Teffi, being one of the prominent writers of her day had a certain degree of wealth and status, but reading her adapt to her new surroundings as well as those around her, I couldn’t help but be struck by how optimistic (in fairness occasionally fatalistic) she was about her circumstances.
When she is for example deceived by a couple who promised to help her escape on a ship to safety, only to find that they departed without her, she isn’t angry or bitter. She then has this exchange with one of the few people left at her hotel:
‘I was stunned into silence. And then for some reason, I don’tt know why, the whole story suddenly struck me as terribly funny.’
‘Why are you laughing?’ he asked, clearly alarmed. ‘They lied to you. They changed their plans and didn’t even bother to let you know.’
‘That’s what’s so funny.’
I’m not sure what I would do in that situation but slowly I could understand what her companion could not. She wasn’t laughing at potentially being put in a fatal situation, she was laughing at the absurdity of all. People looking out for their own interests, clinging to what could barely be called lives of constant terror and running, buying satin dresses on clearance before they go to preserve some semblance of their former lives, and so much more. When one really thinks about it, as Teffi did, one truly does have to laugh.
And this is why I loved this memoir so much. It is harrowing to be sure and there are scenes of the darkness man is capable of inflicting on each other.
But there is more about the human will to not only survive, but live, laugh, and even love in the worst circumstances one can imagine. Teffi made me laugh. I can only imagine what comfort her words gave to those in her era who were suffering but through Teffi’s writing were able to live for another day, even with a smile.
February 15, 2020
I thought this was going to be a dreary, pain of a read when I picked it up. The memoirs of an author fleeing turmoil during the Russian revolution? Its not something I'd expect to be downright amusing, but the author, a famous satirist, manages to infuse humor into every page.
On its face, this book is exactly what the title says: The author's memories of interesting events as she flees the revolution in Moscow and travels south along the black sea. The whole journey is an odd mix of the mundane and the absurd, like women making dresses out of medical gauze, or the casual discussion of dead and injured on a train ride between two cities. The effect is almost like a dream, which I'm sure was the intention: "While you're sleeping, while you're there inside the story, it's a nightmare. Afterward, when you're back outside it again, it's funny."
On its face, this book is exactly what the title says: The author's memories of interesting events as she flees the revolution in Moscow and travels south along the black sea. The whole journey is an odd mix of the mundane and the absurd, like women making dresses out of medical gauze, or the casual discussion of dead and injured on a train ride between two cities. The effect is almost like a dream, which I'm sure was the intention: "While you're sleeping, while you're there inside the story, it's a nightmare. Afterward, when you're back outside it again, it's funny."
September 4, 2020
Enam kui 100 aastat tagasi oli Teffi (õige nimega Nadežda Aleksandrovna Lohvitskaja) Venemaal tõeline täht - andekas, vaimukas, teravmeelne ja alati oluliste sündmuste ja inimeste keskel. Siinsed mälestused kajastavad peaasjalikult Teffi teekonda 1918. a. Moskvast Pariisi, kuhu ta jõuab 1920.a., varasemat elu puudutab Teffi siin vähe (kuigi ma saan aru, et ainest sealgi oleks kõvasti).
Selle pika, ja õigupoolest päris dramaatilise, teekonna kirjeldused on pöörased ja tempokad ja igatahes lõbusad.
Ja milline tekst (tlk. Ilona Martson; ma mõtlen kogu aeg, et kui tema kord ise kirjutama hakkaks, ta teeks vist oma kaasteelisele pika puuga ära!)! Tekst on dialoogirikas, aga ei kaota hetkekski täpsust ja teravust. Loed ja oigad! Ja naerad muidugi ka, valjusti ja ebanaiselikult. Sõnapruuk on nii hõrk ja mahlane, ja tõetruu - loed ja kuuled neid inimesi päriselt kõnelemas.
Ainult viimane peatükk vajus ära, ei tea, mis autori kapriis see selline oli, et sedasi lõpetas (kuigi jah, ta küll üritas ka põhjendada seesugust lõppu).
Huvitav, kas Teffi elust Pariisis on midagi sarnast ilmunud...
Selle pika, ja õigupoolest päris dramaatilise, teekonna kirjeldused on pöörased ja tempokad ja igatahes lõbusad.
Ja milline tekst (tlk. Ilona Martson; ma mõtlen kogu aeg, et kui tema kord ise kirjutama hakkaks, ta teeks vist oma kaasteelisele pika puuga ära!)! Tekst on dialoogirikas, aga ei kaota hetkekski täpsust ja teravust. Loed ja oigad! Ja naerad muidugi ka, valjusti ja ebanaiselikult. Sõnapruuk on nii hõrk ja mahlane, ja tõetruu - loed ja kuuled neid inimesi päriselt kõnelemas.
Ainult viimane peatükk vajus ära, ei tea, mis autori kapriis see selline oli, et sedasi lõpetas (kuigi jah, ta küll üritas ka põhjendada seesugust lõppu).
Huvitav, kas Teffi elust Pariisis on midagi sarnast ilmunud...
April 25, 2019
This book knocked me on my ass. The tone shifts from lighthearted to heartbroken in the time it takes a cloud to pass over the sun...and then the sun comes out again. The only other writer I can think to compare her to is Karel Capek; he too could capture the absurdity in the most inhumane situation.
I think I was also moved by this book because it brought to life, in scenes of cinematic clarity, a period of history I know very little about. It is a very personal history lesson that reveals the psychology of those who are displaced by war and are desperately trying to cling to a semblance their old lives. There is denial but there is also remarkable resilience too - and it is this human side of history that Teffi relates with such immediacy.
Highly recommended.
I think I was also moved by this book because it brought to life, in scenes of cinematic clarity, a period of history I know very little about. It is a very personal history lesson that reveals the psychology of those who are displaced by war and are desperately trying to cling to a semblance their old lives. There is denial but there is also remarkable resilience too - and it is this human side of history that Teffi relates with such immediacy.
Highly recommended.
October 6, 2020
On tunne, et lugesin kahte erinevat raamatut. Alustasin ühte - lõbus, terav, sarkastiline. Lõpetasin aga hoopis teise raamatu - kurb, melanhoolne, möödunud aega ja inimesi tagaigatsev. Huumorit jagus küll mõlemas osas, aga lõpus oli pigem selline "naer läbi pisarate" tunne.
July 4, 2022
Memories is the tragi-comic account of Teffi's flight from the Bolsheviks in 1919. She would eventually end up in Paris, where she would spend the rest of her life.
Recommended, along with her other writings.
Recommended, along with her other writings.
People often complain that a writer has botched the last pages of a novel, that the ending is somehow crumpled, too abrupt.
I understand now that a writer involuntarily creates in the image and likeness of fate itself. All endings are hurried, compressed, broken off.
When a man has died, we all like to think that there was a great deal he could still have done.
When a chapter of life has died, we all think that it could have somehow developed and unfolded further, that its conclusion is unnaturally compressed and broken off. The events that conclude such chapters of life seem tangled and skewed, senseless and without definition.
In its own writings, life keeps to the formulae of old-fashioned novels....
All too quick and hurried, all somehow beside the point....
With my eyes now open so wide that the cold penetrates deep into them, I keep on looking. And I shall not move away. I've broken my vow. I've looked back. And, like Lot's wife, I am frozen. I have turned into a pillar of salt forever, and I shall forever go on looking, seeing my own land slip softly, slowly away from me. (pp. 229-30)
November 13, 2020
I liked it Teffi writes in such an upbeat manner even about terrible times in her life, she sees the humour in other people too.
July 9, 2018
A friend recommended Teffi’s ‘Memories’ to me after seeing a play based on it, or something theatrically inflected. I hadn’t heard of her before, but found this memoir quite delightful. Although the tone is generally that of an ironically toned raconteuse, the events she recounts were chaotic and frightening in the extreme. Teffi was a journalist known for her ‘feuilletons’ who fled Moscow during the Civil War, fearing the Bolsheviks. She came across a constantly changing group of fellow Russian writers, artists, and bohemians during her stops in various cities. While she finds humour in the farcical elements of this headlong flight, her story also throws light on how the Civil War ripped Russia apart. Teffi’s penetrating wit is tempered by episodes of melancholy and meditations on human resilience. Thus the book can be appreciated for its humour, emotional insight, and historical testimony.
An example of the first:
And of the second:
And of the third:
In a manner that reminded me of Bulgakov’s The White Guard, Teffi describes the danger and mayhem of the Civil War via a narrow account of its personal impact. 'Memories' is entertainingly readable, yet there are hidden depths beneath the witty quips.
An example of the first:
They lived in a wing of a large house. The yard was so densely packed with firewood that you needed a perfect knowledge of the approach channel in order to manoeuvre your way to their door. Newcomers would run aground and, their strength failing, start to shout for help. This was the equivalent of a doorbell and the girls would calmly say to one another, “Lily, someone’s coming. Can’t you hear? They’re in the firewood.”
After I had been there about three days, someone quite large got caught in the trap and began letting out goat-like cries.
And of the second:
I can’t say that the opal brought me any specific misfortune. It’s the pale, milky opals that bring death, sickness, sorrow, and separation. This one simply snatched up my life and embraced it in its black flame - until my soul began to dance like a witch on a bonfire. Howls, screeches, sparks, a fiery whirlwind. My whole way of life consumed, burned to ashes. I felt strange, savage, elated.
I kept the stone for two years and then gave it back to Yakovlev, asking him, if he could, to return it to whoever had brought it to him from Ceylon. I thought that, like Mephistopheles, it needed to trace its steps, to go back the same way it had come - and the sooner the better. If it tried to go any other way, it would get lost and end up in my hands again. Which was the last thing I wanted.
And of the third:
Around the beginning of spring, the poet Maximilian Voloshin appeared in the city. He was in the grip of a poetic frenzy. Wherever I went, I would glimpse his picturesque silhouette: dense, square beard, tight curls crowned with a round beret, a light cloak, knickerbockers, and gaiters. He was doing the rounds of government institutions and people with the right connections, constantly reciting poems. There was more to this than was first apparent. The poems served as keys. To help those who were in trouble Voloshin needed to pass through certain doors - and his poems opened these doors.
[...]
On one occasion I too received a visit of this nature.
Voloshin recited two long poems and then said that we must do something on behalf of the poetess Kuzmina-Karavayeva, who had been arrested (in Feodosya I think), because of some denunciation and was in danger of being shot.
“You’re friends with Grishin-Almazov, you must speak to him straightaway.”
I knew Kuzmina-Karavayeva well enough to understand that any such denunciation must be a lie.
“And in the meantime,” said Voloshin, “I’ll go and speak to the Metropolitan. Karavayeva’s a graduate of the theological academy. The Metropolitan will do all he can for her.”
I called Grishin-Almazov.
“Are you sure?” he responded. “Word of honour?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll give the order tomorrow. All right?”
“No, not tomorrow,” I said. “Today. And it’s got to be a telegram. I’m very concerned - we might be too late already!”
“Very well. I will send a telegram. I emphasise the words: I will.”
Kuzmina-Karavayeva was released.
In Novorossiisk, in Yekaterinodar, in Rostov-on-Don - at all the remaining staging posts of our journey - I would again encounter the light cloak, the gaiters, and the round beret crowning the tight curls. On each occasion I heard sonorous verse being declaimed to the accompaniment of little squeals from women with flushed, excited faces. Wherever he went, Voloshin was using the hum - or boom - of his verse to rescue someone whose life was endangered.
In a manner that reminded me of Bulgakov’s The White Guard, Teffi describes the danger and mayhem of the Civil War via a narrow account of its personal impact. 'Memories' is entertainingly readable, yet there are hidden depths beneath the witty quips.
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