The Same Old Story

by Ivan Goncharov

  “What do you mean? I must say I’m curious.”

  “Well, perhaps not!” said Pyotr Ivanych, after a pause. “I’m afraid it might make things worse. Just do what you think best; you may just happen to get it right. So let’s talk about your marriage instead. I hear that your bride comes with a dowry of 200,000 – is that right?”

  “Yes, the 200,000 is from her father, plus the 100,000 left by her mother.”

  “So that makes 300,000!” Pyotr Ivanych exclaimed, sounding almost alarmed.

  “Yes, and what’s more, just today her father said he will now be transferring ownership of all his 500 serfs to us in return for giving him an annual allowance of 8,000. He’ll be living with us.”

  Pyotr Ivanych jumped up from his armchair with unaccustomed agility.

  “Stop! Stop!” he said. “I can’t believe my ears; did I hear you right? Tell me again, how much?”

  “Five hundred serfs plus 300,000 roubles,” Alexander repeated.

  “This isn’t a joke, is it?”

  “Why would it be a joke, Uncle?”

  “And the estate – it’s not mortgaged, is it?” Pyotr Ivanych asked quietly, without moving.

  “No.”

  His uncle folded his arms and regarded his nephew for several moments with great respect.

  “So, a career and a fortune!” he said, almost to himself. “And what a fortune! And right out of the blue! You’ve achieved everything, everything! Alexander!” he added proudly and jubilantly. “It’s my blood that runs in your veins. You are a true Aduyev! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but give me a hug!”

  And they embraced.

  “This is the first time, Uncle!” said Alexander.

  “And the last!” replied Pyotr Ivanych. “This is a special occasion. And once again you don’t need any of that filthy lucre from me. But come to me if the need should ever arise.”

  “I’m sorry, but it so happens that I do need some – I have a lot of expenses. So if you can spare 10 or 15,000…”

  “After all this time, this is a first!” proclaimed Pyotr Ivanych.

  “And the last, Uncle. It’s a special occasion!” said Alexander.

  Note on the Text

  The text in the present edition is based on Обыкновенная История, published in Moscow in 1977 by Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo

  khudozhestvennoi literatury (first edition published in 1960).

  Notes

  p.31, bel homme: “Handsome man” (French).

  p.37, Mr Zagoskin and Mr Marlinsky: The Russian writers Mikhail Zagoskin (1789–1852) and Alexander Bestuzhev (1797–1837), who wrote under the pseudonym Marlinsky after being exiled to the Caucasus for his involvement in the Decembrist revolt of 1825.

  p.37, On Prejudice by Mr Puzin: A reference to a book by Polikarp Ivanovich Puzin (1781–1866), published in St Petersburg in 1834.

  p.42, un chez-soi: “A place of one’s own” (French).

  p.46, the Bronze Horseman… poor Yevgeny: The Bronze Horseman is a statue of Peter the Great (1672–1725), tsar of Russia 1682–1725 and founder of the city of St Petersburg, by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet (1716–91). It takes its name from an 1833 poem about the statue by Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), in which a young man, Yevgeny, survives a flood in the city only to find that the woman he loved was killed, and then curses the statue, which comes to life and pursues him.

  p.54, Pushkin’s demon: A reference to Pushkin’s short poem ‘The Demon’ (1823), whose narrator’s youthful idealism, elevated feelings and love of the beauty of nature turn to despair, doubt and cynicism under the influence of a mysterious malevolent being.

  p.69, Schiller: The German poet Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805).

  p.94, among fields and forests primeval: From the opera Pan Tvardovsky (1828) by Alexei Verstovsky (1799–1862), with libretto by Mikhail Zagoskin (see first note to p. 37).

  p.102, Soupe julienne and à la reine, sauce à la provençale, à la maître d’hôtel: The three French dishes listed here are a chopped-vegetable soup, “queen’s soup” (made with chicken and cream) and a provençale dressing (made with tomatoes, garlic and olive oil).

  p.109, Mémoires du Diable… Soulié’s books: The prolific French novelist and dramatist Frédéric Soulié (1800–47) wrote a large number of sensation novels, the most famous being Mémoires du Diable (Memoirs of the Devil, 1837–38).

  p.121, why should only the opinions of others be sacrosanct?: A line from the satirical comedy in verse Woe from Wit, written in 1823 by the Russian diplomat and author Alexander Griboyedov (1795–1829), much of whose dialogue has become proverbial in Russian.

  p.132, Peau de chagrin: A novel by the French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), published in 1831, about an impoverished young man who is given a magical ass’s skin that has the power to grant his wishes. It is published in English as The Wild Ass’s Skin.

  p.135, opodeldoc: A balm invented by the Swiss physician Paracelsus (c.1493–1541) consisting of soap, camphor and herbal essences.

  p.136, I won’t allow a seducer… flowers: From Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin (1825–32) vi, 17, 6–12, with some alterations.

  p.145, Quelle idée!: “What an idea!” (French).

  p.155, what a pathetic species, worthy only of laughter and tears!: From Pushkin’s poem ‘The Commander’ (1835).

  p.172, à la finnoise: “In the Finnish style” (French).

  p.172, Ma tante: “My aunt” (French).

  p.177, With her, my lips… that of love itself: Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, i, 49, 13–14.

  p.180, I endured my sufferings, / I cast away my dreams: The opening of a lyric by Pushkin of 1821.

  p.183, thinking that when I said ‘people’, I meant ‘servants’: The word for “person” was also the word used for “servant” at this time in Russia.

  p.189, when Pylades lies mortally wounded… wipes away his tear and finds repose: In Greek mythology, Orestes is the son of Agamemnon, who kills his own mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, to avenge the death of his father. In some versions of the story Orestes is aided by Pylades, the son of King Strophius, with whom he was raised. The close friendship of Orestes and Pylades is proverbial.

  p.192, Krylov’s fables: Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (1769–1844) was the author of fables satirizing Russian society.

  p.193, Krylov’s donkey… Krylov’s ‘good fox’: In Krylov’s fable ‘The Ass and the Nightingale’, a donkey advises a nightingale to sing more like his friend the rooster, in response to which the nightingale flies away. In ‘The Good Fox’, a fox urges birds of various species to care for three orphaned redcap chicks, whose mother was killed by a hunter. When, as the fox is speaking, the three chicks fall down at his feet in their weakened state, he promptly eats them.

  p.193, just like the fox did to the wolf: In Krylov’s fable ‘The Wolf and the Fox’, a fox offers a starving wolf hay to eat without revealing that he has stored away a supply of meat for himself. The wolf, who is interested in meat, not hay, consequently goes to bed without any supper.

  p.197, one more last utterance: Words spoken by Father Pimen at the beginning of Scene 5 of Pushkin’s historical play Boris Godunov (‘Night: A Cell in the Chudov Monastery’), which was published in 1831 but not performed until 1866.

  p.198, Instead of finding fault… good look at yourself?: From Krylov’s fable ‘The Monkey and the Mirror’, about a monkey who, on seeing his own “hideous” reflection in a mirror without realizing that he is looking at himself, comments to his friend the bear on the ugliness of others. The words quoted here are the bear’s reply.

  p.203, the rank of state councillor: Under the system introduced by Peter the Great in 1722, Russian civil and military positions were organized according to a “Table of Ranks”. Th
ere were fourteen ranks, or grades, the first being the highest. Pyotr Ivanych’s rank, that of state councillor, is the fifth on this scale.

  p.209, the strains of prophetic music… will not swell with it: A free quotation from the Third Canto (ll. 190–91) of Pushkin’s narrative poem Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820). On his quest to rescue his bride Lyudmila, the knight Ruslan finds himself on a deserted battlefield, surrounded by corpses, and speculates that he himself might one day share the same fate, and that his heroic deeds will go unsung.

  p.209, privy councillor: Pyotr Ivanych is here anticipating his promotion to the third rank on the Russian Imperial scale.

  p.210, Spreading your rustling wings… to quote your favourite author: Pyotr Ivanych here quotes from another of Krylov’s fables, ‘The Eagle and the Bee’, in which an eagle watches a bee’s honey-making labours and pities him, as his work is lost among that of his thousands of fellows and consequently unrecognized and unsung by the world. The eagle, in contrast, inspires fear and awe as soon as he spreads his wings and takes to the air. The bee replies that he is happy to work for the common good, and that he is consoled by the thought that he has made a contribution, however small.

  p.224, Zagoretsky’s reply from Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit: In Act iii, Sc. 9 of Griboyedov’s play, the socialite Zagoretsky arrives at Famusov’s ball and presents the daughter of his host with tickets for a sold-out theatre performance, bragging about the difficulties he had in laying his hands on them.

  p.225, Oui, madame m’a fait cet honneur: “Yes, madam has done me this honour” (French).

  p.235, Fata Morgana: A kind of mirage in which distant objects are distorted, often beyond recognition, and sometimes appear to be floating in mid-air above the horizon. Such mirages were originally seen in the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily and named after Morgan le Fey, a sorceress from Arthurian legend, who was believed to be luring sailors to their deaths with these “castles in the air”.

  p.235, workings and causes of all things: A quotation from the sixth ‘Satire’ by the Moldavian-born Russian diplomat and poet Antiochus Kantemir (1708–44).

  p.236, She knew who Voltaire was… misattributed the Dictionnaire philosophique: The point here is that Yulia gets the authorship the wrong way round: the prose epic Les Martyrs (1809) is by the French Romantic writer François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) and the encyclopaedic Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) is by the French Enlightenment historian and philosopher Voltaire (1694–1778).

  p.236, She called Montaigne… des portes de Trézène: Yulia has learnt about the French writers Michel de Montaigne (1533–92), considered the inventor of the essay, Victor Hugo (1802–85), known for novels such as Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables (1862), Molière (1622–73), author of comic plays such as Le Misanthrope (1666) and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), and Jean Racine (1639–99), author of tragedies such as Phèdre (1677), in which the speech referred to here occurs.

  p.236, the comedy played out between Vulcan, Mars and Venus: As related in Homer’s Odyssey, the goddess Venus, who was married to Vulcan, god of fire, had a passionate affair with Mars, god of war. On learning of his wife’s infidelity, Vulcan forged in his smithy a net made of chains in which to ensnare the lovers.

  p.236, Des bêtises! Mais cette bête de Vulcan… à la place de Venus?: “Such nonsense! But this beast of a Vulcan must have had a strange appearance… listen… What would you have done in Venus’s place?” (French).

  p.236, Le Manuscrit vert, Les Sept Péchés capitaux, L’ne mort: Le Manuscrit vert (The Green Manuscript, 1832) is by Gustave Drouineau (1798–1878), Les Sept Péchés capitaux (The Seven Deadly Sins, 1847–49) by Eugène Sue (1804–57) and L’ne mort et la femme guillotinée (The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman, 1829) by Jules Janin (1804–74).

  p.237, The Idylls of Gessner: The Swiss painter and poet Solomon Gessner (1730–88) was the author of pastoral prose poems, published as Idyllen (1756–72).

  p.237, the Night Thoughts of Young: The English poet Edward Young (1683–1765) was the author of Night Thoughts (1742–45), a long poem about death.

  p.237, Weisse: The German Enlightenment writer Christian Felix Weisse (1726–1804), best known for his writing for children.

  p.237, Da habe ich’s: “Now I have it” (German).

  p.238, Kaydanov: Ivan Kuzmich Kaydanov (1782–1843), who taught Pushkin at the Imperial Alexander Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo, near St Petersburg, and was the author of several secondary-school textbooks on world history.

  p.238, Kantemir, Sumarokov, as well as Lomonosov, Derzhavin and Ozerov: All writers associated with Russian literary classicism: Antiochus Kantemir (see second note to p. 235); the playwright Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov (1717–77); the scientist and author Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711–65); the poet Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743–1816); and the dramatist Vladislav Alexandrovich Ozerov (1769–1816).

  p.238, Karamzin… Poor Liza and a few pages of Travels: Nikolai Mikhaylovich Karamzin (1766–1826) the leader of the Romantic movement in Russia, is best known for his twelve-volume History of the Russian State (1816–29). He was the author of the novel Poor Liza (1792) and the non-fiction work Letters of a Russian Traveller (1791–92).

  p.238, The Captive in the Caucasus: A narrative poem by Pushkin of 1822.

  p.240, Beatus ille: The beginning of the second of the Epodes by the Roman poet Horace (65–8 bc): “Beatus ille qui procul negotiis” (“Happy is he who is far from the business of the world”).

  p.240, Puer, pueri, puero: Tafayev here starts declining the Latin word for “boy”.

  p.267, Pour, pour a glass of sizzling wine… Upon the soft radiance of the heavens: From the poem ‘Desire for Peace’ (1825) by the poet, theologian and founder of the nineteenth-century Slavophile movement Alexei Stepanovich Khomyakov (1804–60).

  p.269, throw down a bone and watch your dogs fight over it: A reference to Krylov’s fable ‘Doggy Friendship’, in which two dogs swear eternal friendship, but then immediately forget their promise to each other when a single bone is thrown their way.

  p.276, Oedipus and Antigone: In Greek mythology, Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus.

  p.278, Cela passe toute permission!: “This goes beyond all that is permitted!” (French).

  p.282, Childe Harold: That is, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a narrative poem by Lord Byron (1788–1824).

  p.284, Walter Scott, Cooper: The Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), who virtually invented the historical novel in Britain in works such as Waverley (1814) and Ivanhoe (1819), and the US novelist James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), famous for tales set on the American frontier such as The Last of the Mohicans (1826).

  p.289, the imp from Krylov’s fable… appeared from behind the stove: In Krylov’s fable ‘A False Accusation’, a Brahmin secretly cooks an egg on a candle flame on a fast day. When he is caught by his superior and tries to claim that the Devil tempted him to do it, an imp appears and accuses him of slander.

  p.297, Paganini: The Italian violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840).

  p.298, Anyone who has lived and thought cannot but despise people in his heart: Pushkin, Eugene Onegin i, 46, 1–2.

  p.305, that same comedy… the other one came back to see him: A reference to the Greek legend of Damon and Pythias, an exemplar of true friendship and loyalty. According to the story, when Pythias was sentenced to death by the Syracusan king Dionysius I, his friend Damon agreed to take his place in prison so that Pythias could return home one final time. This act of loyalty so pleased Dionysius that he decided to spare Pythias.

  p.312, Where I suffered, where I loved… Where I buried my heart: Pushkin, Eugene Onegin i, 50, 13–14.

  p.312, “The barbarian artist with his sleepy brush” etc.: The first line of Pushkin’s poem ‘Rebirth’ (1819): “The barba
rian artist with his sleepy brush / Blackens the master’s painting.”

  p.318, the Kazan Holy Mother of God: A reference to Our Lady of Kazan, or the Theotokos of Kazan, a Russian Orthodox icon representing the Virgin Mary that, according to tradition, was discovered in the city of Kazan in 1579.

  p.338, In droves behind the fence… fragrance of the meadow: From Pushkin’s narrative poem The Gypsies (1827).

  p.338, like a painting by Teniers, full of bustling family life: The Flemish painter David Teniers the Younger (1610–90) was famous for his representations of peasant life.

  p.339, “the leaden sky… the trepak folk dance”: From an abandoned chapter of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, known as ‘Onegin’s Journey’ (stanza 18), originally intended to go between the seventh and final chapters.

  p.344, actual civil councillor: Pyotr Ivanych has been promoted from the fifth to the fourth rank on the Russian Imperial scale. See note for p. 203.

  p.348, Kissingen: Bad Kissingen, a spa town in Bavaria.

  p.350, Phidias nor Praxiteles: The ancient Greek sculptors Phidias (fifth century bc), who created the Elgin marbles and the statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and Praxiteles (fourth century bc), who was best known for a statue of Aphrodite (or Venus), of which only copies survive.

  p.353, Rubini: Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794–1854), a renowned Italian tenor.

  p.364, collegiate councillor: The sixth rank on the Russian Imperial scale. See note for p. 203.

  Translator’s Ruminations

  A Brief Guided Tour

  around the Translator’s Workshop

  Some hidden reefs and shoals not apparent on the surface of the water to the passengers on deck – or the readers of a translation – but which have to be navigated carefully by the helmsman – or translator – to ensure the passengers’ smooth sailing.

  Unanswered – and Unanswerable – Questions