Other Worlds: peasants, pilgrims, spirits, saints – Teffi (2021)

Edited by Robert Chandler, Translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler & others.  

Despite not having reviewed many of the books I read in January, I am moving straight on to my first read for #ReadIndies month. I might go back to some of those January reads yet – but I doubt it. #ReadIndies is hosted by Karen and Lizzie and is a lovely flexible challenge – you can read anything at all as long as it comes from an independent publisher. Independent publishers are so important, giving us a range of different voices from writers all over the world, reissuing classics and producing quirky titles and interesting editions that differ to those produced by the big publishing houses. I particularly appreciate those publishers bringing out translations and backlisted titles by women.  

My first title for #ReadIndies was Other Worlds: peasants, pilgrims, spirits, saints by Teffi sent to me for Christmas by Jacquiwine, a NYRB classic. I don’t read much Russian literature these days (I had a short Russian phase in my early twenties) and I have never read Teffi – but I do enjoy short stories and so this felt like a great collection to start with. Apparently best known for her satirical sketches of pre-revolutionary Russia, this collection focus on more other worldly themes. The stories were written over a forty-year period, from the times she was writing in Moscow through to those days when she was living in Paris.  

It is difficult to review this kind of collection, though I hope I can offer a little flavour of it. These stories have themes of religion either Christian or Russian orthodox and folklore and spiritualism. The collection is organised into five parts, with each group of stories taken from one of Teffi’s collections. Here we have stories of the poor and the rich, of pilgrims travelling together sleeping in hostel type accommodation, of wolves, shapeshifters, of witches and spirits, fear and superstition.  

For example, In Confession, a young girl prepares for her first confession, she worries about a lie she told, the event looms large and fills her with anxiety. In a A Quiet Backwater a laundress discusses the name days of the flora and fauna around her. It’s a beautifully descriptive story, presenting us with a very visual scene of traditional rustic life.  

“Every sea, every great river and stormy lake has its quiet backwater. The water is clear and calm. The reeds don’t rustle, and there are no ripples on the smooth surface. Anything there is an event – the mere touch of a dragonfly’s wing, or that long-legged dancer, an evening mosquito. 

If you climb the steep bank and look down, you’ll see at once where this quiet backwater begins. A line has been drawn with a ruler.” 

(A Quiet Backwater)  

In Solovki – a group a pilgrims travel to a monastery. Two of the pilgrims are Semyon and his wife Varvara – and Semyon wastes no time in telling the story of his wife’s transgression to the other pilgrims – a story he has been repeating to everyone he can for months. It becomes clear to the reader that he doesn’t know the full story.  

Some stories concern matters that are little darker – lightly brushed with horror, they explore the deep superstitions of spirits, witches, shapeshifters and things unknown. In Witch a couple come to believe their servant is a witch, the final straw for the young wife is finding the dining chairs all turned around, facing outwards (not a superstition I have heard of before). Wild Evening is about the fear of the unknown, all the characters seem to be in a state of fear. Shapeshifters explores the various stories around shapeshifters, werewolves and shewolves. The Dog tells the story of a loyal lover, war and a legend from an old mill that a group of young people once joked about.  

“We liked Tolya’s old legend. Vanya Lebedev, however, said, ‘That’s splendid, Tolya. Only you could have told it better – it should be more scary. You should have added that the mill’s been under a spell ever since. Whoever spends one whole night there will be able, if ever he wishes, to turn himself into a dog.” 

(The Dog)

All these stories are wonderfully visual, Teffi is a very atmospheric, descriptive writer. I was at first a little perplexed by the translation of some of the dialogue in a few stories. Several stories – like that of Yavdokha, about a peasant woman who receives a letter she is unable to read – have a local dialect spoken between characters. The speech that is reproduced in some of these stories began to sound to me like the dialect of someone from Yorkshire. I was a bit discombobulated, but flipped to the explanation, written by Robert Chandler on this translation, in the back of the book. I was glad I did, his explanation is rather too long to reproduce here, but reminded me how difficult translation is and how important it was for the translator to provide differentiation between peasant characters and say middle-class people, monks or even wealthy landowners.  

This collection was a superb introduction to a legendary writer – thank you Jaqui! It really got my #ReadIndies reading off to a good start.