[TDY]⇒ Download Tolstoy Rasputin Others and Me The Best of Teffi New York Review Books Classics Teffi Robert Chandler Anne Marie Jackson Rose France Elizabeth Chandler 9781590179963 Books

Tolstoy Rasputin Others and Me The Best of Teffi New York Review Books Classics Teffi Robert Chandler Anne Marie Jackson Rose France Elizabeth Chandler 9781590179963 Books

Download As PDF : Tolstoy Rasputin Others and Me The Best of Teffi New York Review Books Classics Teffi Robert Chandler Anne Marie Jackson Rose France Elizabeth Chandler 9781590179963 Books

Tolstoy Rasputin Others and Me The Best of Teffi New York Review Books Classics Teffi Robert Chandler Anne Marie Jackson Rose France Elizabeth Chandler 9781590179963 Books

Teffi is such a natural, readable writer that I am surprised she is no longer well known and widely read. Why do certain authors remain in the forefront and others do not? As Russia is so much in the news lately, my interest in its authors has grown; Teffi is a Russian writer whose works also provide a history of a period and its players. For me, this is a long list of names I've not heard before and whose works I want to explore in turn.


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Tolstoy Rasputin Others and Me The Best of Teffi New York Review Books Classics Teffi Robert Chandler Anne Marie Jackson Rose France Elizabeth Chandler 9781590179963 Books Reviews

In Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (2005), translator, teacher and editor Robert Chandler presented two stories by Teffi (Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, 1872-1952). In Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov, he added four more and a fascinating essay about the Russian cultural phenomenon that is Baba Yaga. Then in 2014 Chandler offered Subtly Worded and Other Stories, a whole volume of Teffi’s stories. Now we have simultaneous publication in May 2016 of this volume and Memories From Moscow to the Black Sea.

There was some overlap of the stories in ‘Russian Short Stories’, ‘Russian Magic Tales’ and ‘Subtly Worded’, which seemed a pity – although it did mean that some fine writing and translation reached the widest possible audience – and now we have more overlap with this latest volume. The flag carrier, ‘Rasputin’, was included in ‘Subtly Worded’, as was ‘My First Tolstoy’, and an earlier version of Robert and Elizabeth Chandler’s translation of ‘Love’ appeared in ‘Russian Short Stories’.

What does ‘Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others and Me’ bring that is new and special? One of the ‘Others’ is the painter Ilya Repin, who made a portrait of Teffi. Unfortunately, the portrait has been lost, presumably destroyed, but Teffi’s word portrait of Repin endures, and is helpful in telling us about the man and his home, which was in Finland, north of St Petersburg.

Then we have the poet and novelist Dmitry Merezhkovsky and his poet wife Zinaida Gippius, who – like Teffi – were post-revolution émigrés in France and with whom she had much contact. The impression of them she conveys is unattractive; they ran up debts, disdained the tradesmen and others to whom they owed money; neither of them had any sense of humor; and Merezhkovsky insisted that ‘No one loves. No one is loved.’ Teffi greatly surprises us by declaring to Merezhkovsky that she loves him (not in any erotic sense), and he finally accepts that.

Gorky and Lenin are among the many others we meet. Lenin is another unattractive character, and surprisingly unprepossessing. ‘Lenin didn’t seem … to look on himself as a human being – he was merely a servant of a political idea.’ This more than ten years before the 1917 Revolution.

Teffi has a reputation as a humorist. Her style was more common when mass circulation printed matter really was mass circulation, but is far from obsolete. I like this, spoken of the Bolsheviks, or their administrative camp-followers
‘“Apparently THEY take bribes too! Did you know? Have you heard?”
The happy news takes wing, travelling by word of mouth – a promise of life, like “Christ is Risen!”’

Here is some nice cattiness
‘“There is nothing this woman won’t stoop to if she thinks she’ll gain by it. You can take my word for it – I’m her best friend.”’

On Teffi’s decision to take her pen-name from a fool (because fools are believed to be lucky), and the question of which fool
‘Finding a fool, of course, was easy enough. I knew a great many of them.’

Teffi’s accounts of her experience as a writer are undoubtedly imbued with poetic license, but much rings absolutely true from her terror of the director of her first stage play; to her sojourn at the height of the 1905 Revolution on the first legal Bolshevik newspaper, the short-lived ‘Novaya Zhizn’ (New Life); thru her breakthrough with the Merezhkovskys, due to a book of her short stories falling into their hands.

An anecdote from ‘New Life’ goes like this
‘Yefim announced that he had an idea for a political article. “So far I’ve only got as far as the title…. I’d like to get it printed as soon as possible.” “So where is the article?” “Well I need a bit more time to think up the article itself.”

It is safe to dip into this collection at any point there are no duds.
Yummy
Beautifully written memories & observations about late Imperial Russia.
This is autobiographical, not a novel. The questions asked hardly pertain to the subject of the book. It was an interesting recollection of life within the early years of the Soviet Union.
Good writing and fascinating read
Excellent!
It came on time and was brand new. I love the book. It is fascinating.
Teffi is such a natural, readable writer that I am surprised she is no longer well known and widely read. Why do certain authors remain in the forefront and others do not? As Russia is so much in the news lately, my interest in its authors has grown; Teffi is a Russian writer whose works also provide a history of a period and its players. For me, this is a long list of names I've not heard before and whose works I want to explore in turn.