Memories

Teffi was the pen name of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya (1872-1952), a prolific Russian pre-revolutionary writer who went into exile in Paris, where she continued to write. She seemed to fade from view but is now receiving belated recognition, which this memoir will surely enhance. It’s an account of her last journey across Russia before escaping by boat to Istanbul. Until the Revolution she was a regular contributor to the liberal Russian daily newspaper The Russian Word, but when that was closed down by the Bolsheviks she accepted an invitation to give some readings in the Ukraine. She had no plans at that stage to leave Russia but the situation soon became untenable and she had to flee, eventually to France. With her trademark black humour and wit she chronicles her journey, describing the colourful and often comic characters she meets on the way, showing a penetrating eye for the absurd. But behind the humour she gives an unflinching portrait of the chaos and horror, the panic and brutality that was so typical of those tumultuous times of the Civil War. A collection of her short stories has recently been brought out by the wonderful Pushkin Press, and that together with this memoir will surely bring Teffi back to the position she should rightly hold as one of Russia’s pre-eminent writers.

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 heard of Teffi , she was one of the most widely read and beloved on 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.

Us non-Russian speakers can now enjoy the writing of Russian poet, playwright, and short story author Teffi (aka Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya, 1872-1952) as it is slowly translated for a western audience. Like Elena Ferrante, Teffi is a skilled observer of human relationships, her sharp ear for how we communicate and ability to interpret what she observes through a profound psychological lens gives rise to witty and bright dialogue. She brings to mind a Russian Jane Austen although Memories is her account of an extraordinary time in history and her own personal history of her flight from Moscow and subsequent perilous travels to Kiev and Odessa. 

Teffi was known for her wry poetry published in the Russian reviews of the first decade of the 20th century but her sympathy toward the Bolsheviks cooled when the magazine she wrote for, New Life, became biased, reporting what the Bolsheviks told them to. She moved to Moscow but failed to grasp that fate was favouring the Bolshevik cause and having thus fled an increasingly intolerable existence in Petrograd, she then had to move to the Ukraine and the Black Sea. The stages of her journey during this precarious time make up these astonishingly truthful and amusing  “memories,” first published in installments between 1928 and 1930 in a Russian-language newspaper in Paris, where she finally located permanently.

Despite the oppressive heaviness of the political and cultural background to her travels, Teffi retains a souffle-like lightness of touch, even when her trains are halted and the fear that the Bolsheviks will haul them all off underpins her prose. There's a black humour that so many Russian emigres describe as a classic national trait, and this informs her sharp prose portraits of the vivid -and sometimes larger than life- characters she encounters as she moves from place to place, always forward, often in peril, both real and imagined. This is a wonderful book that defies any attempts to pin it down to one particular genre.