Title Page
Introduction
The Nose
The Queen of Spades
God Sees The Truth, But Waits
The Bet
The Christmas Tree And The Wedding
One Autumun Night
Lazarus
Authors
About the Publisher
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RUSSIAN LITERATURE refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to the Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Prose was flourishing as well. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky soon became internationally renowned. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" are Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak. This era produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Aleksey Remizov, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely.
After the Revolution of 1917, Russian literature split into Soviet and white émigré parts. While the Soviet Union assured universal literacy and a highly developed book printing industry, it also enforced ideological censorship. In the 1930s Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading figure was Maxim Gorky, who laid the foundations of this style. Nikolay Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most successful works of Russian literature. Alexander Fadeyev achieved success in Russia. Various émigré writers, such as poets Vladislav Khodasevich, Georgy Ivanov and Vyacheslav Ivanov; novelists such as Mark Aldanov, Gaito Gazdanov and Vladimir Nabokov; and short story Nobel Prize-winning writer Ivan Bunin, continued to write in exile. Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, like Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about life in the gulag camps. The Khrushchev Thaw brought some fresh wind to literature and poetry became a mass cultural phenomenon. This "thaw" did not last long; in the 1970s, some of the most prominent authors were banned from publishing and prosecuted for their anti-Soviet sentiments.
Russian authors have significantly contributed to numerous literary genres. Russia has five Nobel Prize in literature laureates. A popular folk saying claims Russians are "the world's most reading nation".
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BY NIKOLAI GOGOL
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ON 25 MARCH AN UNUSUALLY strange event occurred in St. Petersburg. For that morning Barber Ivan Yakovlevitch, a dweller on the Vozkresensky Prospekt (his name is lost now — it no longer figures on a signboard bearing a portrait of a gentleman with a soaped cheek, and the words: “Also, Blood Let Here”)— for that morning Barber Ivan Yakovlevitch awoke early, and caught the smell of newly baked bread. Raising himself a little, he perceived his wife (a most respectable dame, and one especially fond of coffee) to be just in the act of drawing newly baked rolls from the oven.
“Prascovia Osipovna,” he said, “I would rather not have any coffee for breakfast, but, instead, a hot roll and an onion,”— the truth being that he wanted both but knew it to be useless to ask for two things at once, as Prascovia Osipovna did not fancy such tricks.
“Oh, the fool shall have his bread,” the dame reflected. “So much the better for me then, as I shall be able to drink a second lot of coffee.”
And duly she threw on to the table a roll.
Ivan Yakovlevitch donned a jacket over his shirt for politeness’ sake, and, seating himself at the table, poured out salt, got a couple of onions ready, took a knife into his hand, assumed an air of importance, and cut the roll asunder. Then he glanced into the roll’s middle. To his intense surprise he saw something glimmering there. He probed it cautiously with the knife — then poked at it with a finger.
“Quite solid it is!” he muttered. “What in the world is it likely to be?”
He thrust in, this time, all his fingers, and pulled forth — a nose! His hands dropped to his sides for a moment. Then he rubbed his eyes hard. Then again he probed the thing. A nose! Sheerly a nose! Yes, and one familiar to him, somehow! Oh, horror spread upon his feature! Yet that horror was a trifle compared with his spouse’s overmastering wrath.
“You brute!” she shouted frantically. “Where have you cut off that nose? You villain, you! You drunkard! Why, I’ll go and report you to the police myself. The brigand, you! Three customers have told me already about your pulling at their noses as you shaved them till they could hardly stand it.”
But Ivan Yakovlevitch was neither alive nor dead. This was the more the case because, sure enough, he had recognised the nose. It was the nose of Collegiate Assessor Kovalev — no less: it was the nose of a gentleman whom he was accustomed to shave twice weekly, on each Wednesday and each Sunday!
“Stop, Prascovia Osipovna!” at length he said. “I’ll wrap the thing in a clout, and lay it aside awhile, and take it away altogether later.”
“But I won’t hear of such a thing being done! As if I’m going to have a cut-off nose kicking about my room! Oh, you old stick! Maybe you can just strop a razor still; but soon you’ll be no good at all for the rest of your work. You loafer, you wastrel, you bungler, you blockhead! Aye, I’ll tell the police of you. Take it away, then. Take it away. Take it anywhere you like. Oh, that I’d never caught the smell of it!”
Ivan Yakovlevitch was dumbfounded. He thought and thought, but did not know what to think.
“The devil knows how it’s happened,” he said, scratching one ear. “You see, I don’t know for certain whether I came home drunk last night or not. But certainly things look as though something out of the way happened then, for bread comes of baking, and a nose of something else altogether. Oh, I just can’t make it out.”
So he sat silent. At the thought that the police might find the nose at his place, and arrest him, he felt frantic. Yes, already he could see the red collar with the smart silver braiding — the sword! He shuddered from head to foot.
But at last he got out, and donned waistcoat and shoes, wrapped the nose in a clout, and departed amid Prascovia Osipovna’s forcible objurgations.
His one idea was to rid himself of the nose, and return quietly home — to do so either by throwing the nose into the gutter in front of the gates or by just letting it drop anywhere. Yet, unfortunately, he kept meeting friends, and they kept saying to him: “Where are you off to?” or “Whom have you arranged to shave at this early hour?” until seizure of a fitting moment became impossible. Once, true, he did succeed in dropping the thing, but no sooner had he done so than a constable pointed at him with his truncheon, and shouted: “Pick it up again! You’ve lost something,” and he perforce had to take the nose into his possession once more, and stuff it into a pocket. Meanwhile his desperation grew in proportion as more and more booths and shops opened for business, and more and more people appeared in the street.
At last he decided that he would go to the Isaakievsky Bridge, and throw the thing, if he could, into the Neva. But here let me confess my fault in not having said more about Ivan Yakovlevitch himself, a man estimable in more respects than one.
Like every decent Russian tradesman, Ivan Yakovlevitch was a terrible tippler. Daily he shaved the chins of others, but always his own was unshorn, and his jacket (he never wore a top-coat) piebald — black, thickly studded with greyish, brownish-yellowish stains — and shiny of collar, and adorned with three pendent tufts of thread instead of buttons. But, with that, Ivan Yakovlevitch was a great cynic. Whenever Collegiate Assessor Kovalev was being shaved, and said to him, according to custom: “Ivan Yakovlevitch, your hands do smell!” he would retort: “But why should they smell?” and, when the Collegiate Assessor had replied: “Really I do not know, brother, but at all events they do,” take a pinch of snuff, and soap the Collegiate Assessor upon cheek, and under nose, and behind ears, and around chin at his good will and pleasure.
So the worthy citizen stood on the Isaakievsky Bridge, and looked about him. Then, leaning over the parapet, he feigned to be trying to see if any fish were passing underneath. Then gently he cast forth the nose.
At once ten puds-weight seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders. Actually he smiled! But, instead of departing, next, to shave the chins of chinovniki, he bethought him of making for a certain establishment inscribed “Meals and Tea,” that he might get there a glassful of punch.
Suddenly he sighted a constable standing at the end of the bridge, a constable of smart appearance, with long whiskers, a three-cornered hat, and a sword complete. Oh, Ivan Yakovlevitch could have fainted! Then the constable, beckoning with a finger, cried:
“Nay, my good man. Come here.”
Ivan Yaklovlevitch, knowing the proprieties, pulled off his cap at quite a distance away, advanced quickly, and said:
“I wish your Excellency the best of health.”
“No, no! None of that ‘your Excellency,’ brother. Come and tell me what you have been doing on the bridge.”
“Before God, sir, I was crossing it on my way to some customers when I peeped to see if there were any fish jumping.”
“You lie, brother! You lie! You won’t get out of it like that. Be so good as to answer me truthfully.”
“Oh, twice a week in future I’ll shave you for nothing. Aye, or even three times a week.”
“No, no, friend. That is rubbish. Already I’ve got three barbers for the purpose, and all of them account it an honour. Now, tell me, I ask again, what you have just been doing?”
This made Ivan Yakovlevitch blanch, and ——
Further events here become enshrouded in mist. What happened after that is unknown to all men.
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COLLEGIATE ASSESSOR KOVALEV also awoke early that morning. And when he had done so he made the “B-r-rh!” with his lips which he always did when he had been asleep — he himself could not have said why. Then he stretched himself, had handed to him a small mirror from the table near by, and set himself to inspect a pimple which had broken out on his nose the night before. But, to his unbounded astonishment, there was only a flat patch on his face where the nose should have been! Greatly alarmed, he called for water, washed, and rubbed his eyes hard with the towel. Yes, the nose indeed was gone! He prodded the spot with a hand-pinched himself to make sure that he was not still asleep. But no; he was not still sleeping. Then he leapt from the bed, and shook himself. No nose had he on him still! Finally, he bade his clothes be handed him, and set forth for the office of the Police Commissioner at his utmost speed.
Here let me add something which may enable the reader to perceive just what the Collegiate Assessor was like. Of course, it goes without saying that Collegiate Assessors who acquire the title with the help of academic diplomas cannot be compared with Collegiate Assessors who become Collegiate Assessors through service in the Caucasus, for the two species are wholly distinct, they are —— Stay, though. Russia is so strange a country that, let one but say anything about any one Collegiate Assessor, and the rest, from Riga to Kamchatka, at once apply the remark to themselves — for all titles and all ranks it means the same thing. Now, Kovalev was a “Caucasian” Collegiate Assessor, and had, as yet, borne the title for two years only. Hence, unable ever to forget it, he sought the more to give himself dignity and weight by calling himself, in addition to “Collegiate Assessor,” “Major.”
“Look here, good woman,” once he said to a shirts’ vendor whom he met in the street, “come and see me at my home. I have my flat in Sadovaia Street. Ask merely, ‘Is this where Major Kovalev lives?’ Anyone will show you.” Or, on meeting fashionable ladies, he would say: “My dear madam, ask for Major Kovalev’s flat.” So we too will call the Collegiate Assessor “Major.”
Major Kovalev had a habit of daily promenading the Nevsky Prospekt in an extremely clean and well-starched shirt and collar, and in whiskers of the sort still observable on provincial surveyors, architects, regimental doctors, other officials, and all men who have round, red cheeks, and play a good hand at “Boston.” Such whiskers run across the exact centre of the cheek — then head straight for the nose. Again, Major Kovalev always had on him a quantity of seals, both of seals engraved with coats of arms, and of seals inscribed “Wednesday,” “Thursday,” “Monday,” and the rest. And, finally, Major Kovalev had come to live in St. Petersburg because of necessity. That is to say, he had come to live in St. Petersburg because he wished to obtain a post befitting his new title — whether a Vice–Governorship or, failing that, an Administratorship in a leading department. Nor was Major Kovalev altogether set against marriage. Merely he required that his bride should possess not less than two hundred thousand rubles in capital. The reader, therefore, can now judge how the Major was situated when he perceived that instead of a not unpresentable nose there was figuring on his face an extremely uncouth, and perfectly smooth and uniform patch.
Ill luck prescribed, that morning, that not a cab was visible throughout the street’s whole length; so, huddling himself up in his cloak, and covering his face with a handkerchief (to make things look as though his nose were bleeding), he had to start upon his way on foot only.
“Perhaps this is only imagination?” he reflected. Presently he turned aside towards a restaurant (for he wished yet again to get a sight of himself in a mirror). “The nose can’t have removed itself of sheer idiocy.”
Luckily no customers were present in the restaurant — merely some waiters were sweeping out the rooms, and rearranging the chairs, and others, sleepy-eyed fellows, were setting forth trayfuls of hot pastries. On chairs and tables last night’s newspapers, coffee-stained, were strewn.
“Thank God that no one is here!” the Major reflected. “Now I can look at myself again.”
He approached a mirror in some trepidation, and peeped therein. Then he spat.
“The devil only knows what this vileness means!” he muttered. “If even there had been something to take the nose’s place! But, as it is, there’s nothing there at all.”
He bit his lips with vexation, and hurried out of the restaurant. No; as he went along he must look at no one, and smile at no one. Then he halted as though riveted to earth. For in front of the doors of a mansion he saw occur a phenomenon of which, simply, no explanation was possible. Before that mansion there stopped a carriage. And then a door of the carriage opened, and there leapt thence, huddling himself up, a uniformed gentleman, and that uniformed gentleman ran headlong up the mansion’s entrance-steps, and disappeared within. And oh, Kovalev’s horror and astonishment to perceive that the gentleman was none other than — his own nose! The unlooked-for spectacle made everything swim before his eyes. Scarcely, for a moment, could he even stand. Then, deciding that at all costs he must await the gentleman’s return to the carriage, he remained where he was, shaking as though with fever. Sure enough, the Nose did return, two minutes later. It was clad in a gold-braided, high-collared uniform, buckskin breeches, and cockaded hat. And slung beside it there was a sword, and from the cockade on the hat it could be inferred that the Nose was purporting to pass for a State Councillor. It seemed now to be going to pay another visit somewhere. At all events it glanced about it, and then, shouting to the coachman, “Drive up here,” re-entered the vehicle, and set forth.
Poor Kovalev felt almost demented. The astounding event left him utterly at a loss. For how could the nose which had been on his face but yesterday, and able then neither to drive nor to walk independently, now be going about in uniform? — He started in pursuit of the carriage, which, luckily, did not go far, and soon halted before the Gostiny Dvor.1
1 Formerly the “Whiteley’s” of St. Petersburg.
Kovalev too hastened to the building, pushed through the line of old beggar-women with bandaged faces and apertures for eyes whom he had so often scorned, and entered. Only a few customers were present, but Kovalev felt so upset that for a while he could decide upon no course of action save to scan every corner in the gentleman’s pursuit. At last he sighted him again, standing before a counter, and, with face hidden altogether behind the uniform’s stand-up collar, inspecting with absorbed attention some wares.
“How, even so, am I to approach it?” Kovalev reflected. “Everything about it, uniform, hat, and all, seems to show that it is a State Councillor now. Only the devil knows what is to be done!”
He started to cough in the Nose’s vicinity, but the Nose did not change its position for a single moment.
“My good sir,” at length Kovalev said, compelling himself to boldness, “my good sir, I——”