Rasputin and Other Ironies

Teffi, Rose France, Robert Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781782272786
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

A new collection of Teffi's best autobiographical non-fiction writings

Ranging from portraits of Rasputin and Lenin to observations on the Russian Revolution, and from profiles of cultural figures to moving domestic scenes, this short collection includes writings by the inimitable Teffi never before published in English. Everything is here - politics, society, art and literature, love and family life - and all is told in Teffi's multifaceted style: amusing, sincerely moving, ironic and always honest, pervaded by an intensely felt understanding of humanity's simultaneous tragedy and absurdity.

Teffi (1872-1952) wrote poems, plays, stories, satires and feuilletons, and was renowned in Russia for her wit and powers of observation. Following her emigration in 1919 she settled in Paris, where she became a leading figure in the émigré literary scene. Now her genius has been rediscovered by a new generation of readers, and she once again enjoys huge acclaim in Russia and across the world. Her short-story collection Subtly Worded is also published by Pushkin Press, and>em>Memories - From Moscow to the Black Sea, her account of her final journey across Russia and into exile, will also be published in May 2016.

PART I

How I Live and Work

How I Live and Work

Many people find it surprising that I live somewhere so busy, right opposite Montparnasse station. But it’s what I like. I adore Paris. I like to hear it here beside me—knocking, honking, ringing and breathing. Sometimes, at dawn, a lorry rumbles past beneath my window so loud and so close that it seems to be coming straight through my room, and I draw up my legs in my sleep so they won’t be run over. And then what wakes me an hour or two later is Paris itself—dear, elegant, beautiful Paris. Far better than being woken by some bewhiskered old crone of a concierge, with the eyes of a cockroach.

Many people ask if it’s possible for a small pension to provide one with complete comfort. To which I modestly reply, “Well, I wouldn’t say quite complete.”

Is it this little table you’re looking at? Yes, I know it’s very small, but there’s nothing it doesn’t do. It’s a writing table, a dining table, a dressing table and a sewing table. It’s only three and a half feet across, but on it I have an inkwell, some writing paper, my face powder, some envelopes, my sewing box, a cup of milk, some flowers, a Bible, sweets, manuscripts and some bottles of scent. In layers, like geological strata. The Augean table. Remember how Hercules had to clean the Augean stables? Well, if Augeas’s stables were in such a state, what do you think his writing table would have been like? Probably just like mine. So, how do I write? I put the cup of milk, the Bible and the bottles of scent on the bed, while the sewing box falls of its own accord onto the floor. I need to keep everything essential close at hand—and anyway there’s nowhere else to put anything. Though I suppose the flowers could go into the cupboard.

The Bible takes up a quarter of the table, but I need it because Professor Vysheslavtsev, whose outstanding lectures I attend on Mondays (and I recommend everyone else to do the same), often refers to the Epistles of Paul.

So I need to consult the Bible.

Sometimes there are landslides on my table. Everything slips sideways and hangs over the edge. And then it takes only the slightest disturbance of the air (mountaineers will know what I mean); it takes only the opening of a window or the postman knocking at the door—and an entire avalanche roars and crashes to the floor. Sometimes I then discover long-lost items—things I’ve replaced long ago: gloves; a volume of Proust; a theatre ticket from last summer; an unsent letter (and there I was, impatiently waiting for an answer!); a flower from a ball gown… Sometimes this excites a kind of scientific interest in me, as if I were a palaeontologist who has happened upon the bone of a mammoth. To which era should I assign this glove or page of manuscript?

Worst of all are flowers; if there’s a landslide, they create a flood. If someone gives me flowers, they are always taken aback by my look of sudden anxiety.

As for domestic animals, I have only a bead snake and a small monster—a varnished cedar cone standing on little paws. It brings me luck.

While we’re on the theme of domesticity and creature comforts, I did also once have a venetian blind. But there wasn’t room for it in the room; it had to go. If I’d hung on to it, it could have created mayhem.

I’m not planning to write anything at all big. I think you’ll understand why.

We must wait for a big table. And if we wait in vain—tant pis.1

1926
Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler

Notes

1 A common French idiom. Here, the sense is “Well, that’s just too bad.”

My Pseudonym

I’m often asked about the origin of my pseudonym: “Teffi”. Why Teffi? It sounds like something you’d call a dog. And a great many readers of the Russian Word have indeed given this name to their fox terriers and Italian greyhounds.

And why would a Russian woman sign her work with a name that sounds English?

If I felt I needed a pen name, I could have gone for something with more of a ring to it, or at least a hint of some political ideal, like bitter Maxim Gorky, poor Demyan Bedny or Skitalets the Wanderer. Their names all hint at suffering in the name of some cause and help to win the reader’s sympathy.

Besides, women writers tend to go for male pseudonyms. A wise and circumspect move. It is common practice to regard ladies with a somewhat ironic smile, and even with incredulity:

“How on earth did she come up with something like this?”

“Her husband must be doing the writing for her.”

Among those women who have used male pseudonyms are the writer known as “Marko Vovchok”, the talented novelist and public figure who signed her work as “Vergezhsky” and the talented poetess who writes her critical essays under the name of “Anton the Extreme”. All this, I repeat, has its raison d’être. It makes sense and it looks good. But “Teffi”? What sort of nonsense is that?

So I’d like to give an honest account of how this literary name came into being. It was as I was taking my first steps in literature. At the time I had published only two or three poems, to which I’d put my own name, and I had also written a little one-act play. I had no idea at all how I was going to get this play on stage. Everyone around me was saying that it was absolutely impossible—I needed to have theatrical connections and a literary name with clout. Otherwise the play would never be staged—and no one would ever even bother to read it.

“What theatre director wants to read just any old nonsense when he could be reading Hamlet or The Government Inspector? Let alone something concocted by some female!”

At this point I began to do some serious thinking. I didn’t want to hide behind a male pseudonym. That would be weak and cowardly. I’d rather use a name that was incomprehensible, neither one thing nor the other.

But what? It had to be a name that would bring good luck. Best of all would be the name of some fool—fools are always lucky.

Finding a fool, of course, was easy enough. I knew a great many of them. But which one should I choose? Obviously it had to be someone very special. Then I remembered a fool who was not only special, but also unfailingly lucky—someone clearly recognized even by fate as the perfect fool.

His name was Stepan, but at home everyone called him Steffi. After tactfully discarding the first letter (so that the fool would not get too big for his boots), I decided to sign my play “Teffi”. Then I took a deep breath and sent it straight to the Suvorin Theatre. I didn’t say a word to anyone because I was sure my enterprise would fail.

A month or two went by. I had nearly forgotten about my little play. It had taught me just one thing: that not even fools always bring you good luck.

But then one day in New Times I read: “The Woman Question, a one-act play by Teffi, has been accepted for production at the Maly Theatre.”

I felt terror. Then utter despair.

I could see immediately that my little play was rank nonsense, that it was silly, dull, that you couldn’t hide for long behind a pseudonym, and that the play was bound to be a spectacular flop—one that would shame me for the rest of my life. I didn’t know what to do, and there was no one I could turn to for advice.

And then I recalled with horror that when I sent the manuscript I had included my name and return address. That wouldn’t be a problem if they thought I had sent the package on behalf of somebody else, but what if they guessed the truth? What then?

I didn’t have long to think it over. The next day an official letter came in the post, giving me the date of the first night and informing me when rehearsals would start. I was invited to attend.

Everything was out in the open. My lines of retreat had been cut off. This was rock bottom. Since nothing could be more terrifying, I could now give serious thought to my situation.

Why exactly had I decided the play was so very bad? If it was bad, they wouldn’t have accepted it. That they had accepted it could only be thanks to the good luck of the fool whose name I had taken. If I had signed the play “Kant” or “Spinoza”, they would surely have rejected it.

I needed to pull myself together and go to the rehearsal. Otherwise they might try to track me down through the police.

Along I went. The play was being directed by Yevtikhy Karpov, someone suspicious of any kind of innovation, a man of the old school.

“Box set, three doors, and your lines from memory—rattle them off facing the audience.”

He greeted me with condes...