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Ivan Goncharov, An Ordinary Story and Viktor Rozov’s stage adaptation of the novel
Translated by Marjorie L. Hoover
Copyright © 1994 by Ardis Publishers
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich, 1812-1891.
[Obyknovennaia istoriia. English]
An Ordinary Story / Ivan Goncharov; translated by Marjorie L. Hoover
p. cm.
“Includes a translation of Viktor Rozov’s stage adaptation of the novel which premiered in Moscow in 1966”–CIP data sheet.
ISBN 0-87501-088-1 (alk. paper)
I. Rozo v,Viktor, 1913- Obyknovennaia istoriia. English.
1994. II. Hoover, Marjorie L. III. Title.
PG3337.G60213 1994
891.73’3–dc20 93-11284
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1076-4 US
ISBN: 978-0-7156-5002-8 UK
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
AN ORDINARY STORY
NOTES
“AN ORDINARY STORY,”
STAGE ADAPTATION BY VIKTOR ROZOV
INTRODUCTION
By date of birth, 1812, Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was thirteen years younger than Alexander Pushkin and two years older than Mikhail Lermontov. He met both writers while studying at Moscow University, read their work as it appeared and felt their literary concerns as a contemporary. Goncharov’s first important novel, An Ordinary Story (Obyknovennaia istoriia ), was also conceived in the first half of the nineteenth century and in 1847 began to appear in installments in The Contemporary (Sovremennik), the magazine founded by Pushkin. Yet despite these ties to an earlier era, the author and his novel anticipate the second half of the century, the period following the bourgeois revolution of 1848 which so incisively changed government and society in Western Europe and reverberated in Eastern Europe as well. Goncharov rightly belongs, then, alongside Ivan Turgenev, Lev Tolstoy and Alexander Ostrovsky in the group photograph of contributors to The Contemporary. At mid-century they were considered a promising new generation of writers.
These new writers have been called realists because they described the contemporary scene as they saw it in a critical light, in so far as the censorship allowed. The most quoted literary critic of the 1840s, Vissarion Belinsky, strongly concurred in the criticism implicit in An Ordinary Story, hailing Goncharov’s first novel as “a terrific blow struck at Romanticism, day-dreaming, sentimentality, provincialism” (in a letter to Vasily Botkin, 15-17 March 1847). Nikolai Dobrolyubov, the arbiter of the next decade, the 1850s, made the title hero of Goncharov’s next and best-known novel famous by entitling his article about it “What is Oblomovism? ” Though the novel’s hero, Oblomov, like Hamlet, sees what he must do to set the time right, he relapses ever more into inaction and ultimately fails to do anything. The same conflict between romantically idealistic plans and the practical action needed to realize them obtains in An Ordinary Story. Here this conflict, so relevant to the early industrialization of Russia, is embodied in the confrontation between a younger idealist, Alexander Aduyev, and an older pragmatist, his uncle Pyotr. Alexander’s experiences and discussions with his uncle form a significant part of his education and he develops to maturity under Pyotr’s tutelage. In essence, then, this is an ordinary story familiar since the Greek myths of Jason, the medieval epics of Parsifal and the Renaissance picaresque novels about heroes from Simplicissimus to Tom Jones and on.
Here, though, we have a specifically Russian hero set against a Russian background. The realist Goncharov confessed himself incapable of fantasizing either character or event, so both derive from his image of the reality he knew: “…there opened before my eyes, as if seen from an elevation, a whole region, with cities, villages and a crowd of people.…” 1 How much of this author’s experience of reality is used in An Ordinary Story? Certainly Alexander Aduyev’s history is partly autobiographical. Like him Goncharov came from the provinces, though he was not born on a farm, but was the son of a tradesman, a grain dealer in a river town, the provincial capital of Simbirsk on the Volga (now Ulyanovsk). Goncharov’s father died when he was seven, and his education and that of his sisters and his older brother Nikolai was left to his energetic mother and a godfather, an estate owner and much-traveled retired naval officer with wide experience and an interest in the humanities. At the private boarding school to which he was sent at age eight with his brother Goncharov gained a fluency in French, German and English and a background in literature. Both boys, however, were then made to spend eight years at the Moscow Commerce Institute, supposedly in preparation for earning a living. Their mother withdrew Ivan from the course two years early at the time that Nikolai finished, whereupon Ivan studied literature and philosophy at Moscow University. He read widely there and went often to the theater (1831-34). Alexander Aduyev’s university experience reflects that of his creator.
After finishing his studies at the university, while awaiting his diploma, Goncharov spent the summer at home and at his godfather’s prompting he took the post of secretary-for-all-work to the provincial governor in Simbirsk. The governor strikingly showed off the virtues and vices of his aristocratic heritage. Trained for nothing but the military, he cut a dashing figure with his pretty wife and sixteen-year-old daughter, for whom Goncharov had to serve as dancing partner, in addition to taking practically sole responsibility for the government. The figurehead governor might have survived longer the crush between mortgage payments on his impoverished estates, gambling debts and his extravagant Parisian tastes, had he not carried on in full view his final profligacy, womanizing. Upon the governor’s inevitable reassignment Goncharov followed the family to St. Petersburg in a second coach. Thr
oughout that long journey in May 1835, with its numerous stops, he had to tend to an impossible coachmate, the governor’s gifted alcoholic ghost writer, who alternated between flat-out unconsciousness and violent attacks of delirium tremens. Like his fictional hero, then, Goncharov first arrived in the capital by coach, but one loaded with difficulties, not with the gifts of a solicitous mother.
Again like Alexander Aduyev, Goncharov at once entered government service. Until his retirement in 1867 he worked there full-time, first as translator for the Ministry of Finance; after 1856 he served as government censor and rose finally to the fourth highest rank of Actual Councillor of State with the appellation “Your Excellency.” Known for his writing, Goncharov obtained the assignment of secretary to an admiral who in 1852 went round the world to inspect Russian possessions, including those in North America. This resulted in Goncharov’s travel journal, The Frigate Pallada, which has at last been translated into English, whereupon it was praised as a near masterpiece. 2
At first Goncharov supplemented his government clerk’s pay by tutoring two sons of the painter Nikolai Maykov. He was soon also spending his free time in the merry Maykov circle with weekend picnics and parties where he met writers and contributed to an in-house literary magazine. He never founded a family of his own, for in 1855 he was rejected by the one love of his life, Elizaveta Tolstaya. However, his housekeeper, Alexandra Treygut, who was with him at his death from pneumonia in 1891, and to whom he left his estate, is sometimes assumed to have been his common-law wife. Society at the Maykovs freed him from a bachelor’s solitude. He discussed his literary plans there, as he did also with Turgenev, whom he first met at Belinsky’s. Goncharov talked to Turgenev and others several times about his ideas for his third and last major novel, The Precipice (Obryv, 1869). But in 1858, before his novel had been completed, he accused Turgenev of plagiarizing it in the latter’s A Nest of Gentlefolk. Twenty years later he wrote an account, not intended for publication, of the accusation against Turgenev, which included similar suspicions of widespread literary plagiarism. His account, entitled An Unusual Story (Neobyknovennaia istoriia ), was obtained for publication in 1924. However paranoid Goncharov’s charges seem at first glance, they point to the kind of parallels that do exist in literature.
Though Goncharov conceived all three of his major novels while still in his forties, the second and third were completed and published much later, party because of his several occupations. The changes which took place in Russia between the novels’ conception and completion were incorporated most notably in the final novel. The character Mark Volokhov, for example, a nihilist whom Goncharov undoubtedly owes to Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862), was added to the original cast of characters in The Precipice. In addition to his writing Goncharov held many jobs. He worked in the civil service, edited the magazine The Northern Mail (Severnaia pochta ), twice served as judge for the Uvarov Prize, awarding it both times to the writer Alexander Ostrovsky. Goncharov wrote a perceptive citation for the award given in 1860 to Ostrovsky’s play The Storm. Well aware of the social and political injustice of the time, Goncharov wrote essays about servants, as did his contemporaries Turgenev and Tolstoy. Goncharov’s collection Old-Time Servants (Slugi starogo veka, 1889), written towards the end of his life, combines fiction and nonfiction.
An Ordinary Story ought to be classified as more than a straightforward picaresque tale wherein a young man sets forth to seek his fortune. Goncharov shows how his initially naive hero learns from his successive encounters until he masters the ways of the world; hence An Ordinary Story is also an education novel ( Bildungsroman ).
Moreover, the author has an implied message and has therefore written a novel of ideas as well. Early in An Ordinary Story the magazine editor to whom Pyotr Aduyev has sent Alexander’s manuscript returns it with a comment which summarizes a message to be endlessly repeated in the confrontations between Alexander and his uncle. Goncharov elaborated on this message over thirty years later (1879) in an article “Better Late than Never”: “Here [in An Ordinary Story ] that idea is expressed–the weak flickering consciousness that work is essential, real work rather than routine work, an active undertaking in the fight against the eternal Russian stagnation ( zasto i).” 3 This message is preached by Alexander’s uncle, who realizes the work principle in his way of life, and it is most pertinent to Goncharov’s Russia which was facing the death of feudalism, the impending liberation of the serfs and the rise of capitalism and industrialization.
In the end, however, Pyotr must change his life. In the novel’s almost schematic action the uncle and nephew exchange positions. Pyotr loses the firm ground of his reality when his wife, Lizaveta Alexandrovna, loses interest in life and falls ill from her submission to the calculatedly luxurious routine he has made of their marriage. Out of the devotion he has felt but never been able to show her outwardly, in the end Pyotr will resign his government office at the height of his career, at the point of becoming Minister of State, and will sell his profitable factory–all so as to go abroad and devote himself completely to her. Alexander, on the other hand, comes down to earth at last and decides to follow his uncle’s footsteps by entering government service. He now rushes in to announce his engagement to a fabulously rich girl, not out of love, but for money. He has arranged the marriage with her father without asking her. Whether she will love him and whether Lizaveta Alexandrovna will live–in sum, whether the romantic or the realistic way of life is right–remain unanswered questions. As in reality, the answers lie in the course of life itself, and life goes on after the novel’s end. The reader may find the last about-face of the central characters not wholly credible, more a fresh start than an end. How different the omniscience with which a Dickens or a Thackeray finalizes his characters’ fate.
The unresolved ending of An Ordinary Story is not the only testament to the author’s realistic style. Though but few, his vignettes of nature tangibly evoke moments of vivid experience: the stillness before the wild wind and cloudburst of a thunderstorm in the village, or the twist of a big fish as it gets away with hook and line. In his descriptions of people Goncharov often singles out a physical trait or a gesture to reveal personality or state of mind. So Alexander’s loss of his silken blond hair marks the loss of his initial high hopes. When he drops out of society after being rejected by his young love, his carelessly Bohemian dress reflects his apathy, as his reluctance to don tailcoat, stock and white gloves shows his reluctance to re-enter the world of high society. Similarly, Nadenka, Alexander’s first serious love, dramatically demonstrates her willful nature by impulsively spilling the cup of milk Alexander reaches out to take from her. Decades before Chekhov, who is often noted for this technique, here is a single detail which can reveal a whole mood. Goncharov does not always use details only once however; sometimes he repeats them like a Dickensian leitmotif, as when Alexander’s mother keeps asking about her son’s lost silken curls.
Though women are central to the action of An Ordinary Story, the most important woman enters the novel almost in flashback; that is, Pyotr tells Alexander of his marriage to Lizaveta Alexandrovna only after it is an accomplished fact. The couple’s mutual love, the psychological basis of their relationship, is never described. Lizaveta Alexandrovna longs for Pyotr to make the telling gesture of love and midway in the novel draws him to her, but he frees his hand from hers. In the end he desperately needs to show his devotion, but late in life he cannot fall on his knees before her, as he would like, because so melodramatic and passionate a gesture would be incredible at his age. Lizaveta Alexandrovna’s need for a gesture is explicitly stated in her interior monologue, as well as in the author’s narration : “… could he [Pyotr] have married only to have a hostess, to give his bachelor apartment the fullness and weight of a family home…? With all his intellect could he possibly not comprehend that love is inevitably one of a woman’s positive goals?… Oh, let me pay for feeling with tortures, endure all the sufferings inseparable from passion, if o
nly I live a full life…. ” The luxury with which Pyotr surrounds her “seemed to her a cold mockery of true happiness. She bore witness to two terrible extremes in her nephew and her husband, the one exalted to the point of folly, the other icy to the point of cruelty.” In the mind of this crucially important woman the two men are reduced to abstract antitheses. But then every woman’s sensibility, including hers, is likewise reduced to an abstract principle early in the novel, when the narrator states : “It was proven long ago that a woman’s heart cannot live without love.”
Society and education turned many women of Goncharov’s time into romantics. While he does not explicitly criticize the role of upper-class women in society, who have nothing to do but live for their feelings, he does mock their genteel education, or lack thereof. Nadenka suffers a total lack of discipline, while Alexander’s second love, Yuliya Tafayeva, receives a “good education.” Goncharov describes in detail not only her three language tutors, but also specifies, with ironic comment, the telling differences in their reading lists and assignments. Yuliya’s later typically loveless marriage of convenience to a man old enough to be her father makes a mockery of her “good” education, which was all for the sake of love. The husband’s complacent self-satisfaction is ridiculed in the interior monologue in which he proves himself suited to be her husband. Has he not been subjected to a similar education (though he hardly remembers a thing)? Although they have no cultural interests in common, she is pretty, and most importantly, their marriage will create a considerable sum of money. Alexander decries such a loveless marriage between an older man and an adolescent girl he doesn’t even know, but at the end of the novel he joyfully announces that he too will make a similar late marriage–also for money.
To discuss the action, ideas and characters of An Ordinary Story so abstractly can make Goncharov’s novel seem schematic, “ideological,” and psychologically superficial. An Ordinary Story does revolve mainly around a triangle of principal characters and two locales, city and country, with only brief mention of the larger panorama of reality which Goncharov had visualized. The two central characters, Alexander and his uncle, stand out against a less distinct background of secondary figures, such as the Count and Kostyakov, for example, who are largely accessory to the action. The county emissary, the extraordinary Anton Ivanych, who can never refuse to give advice or sit down to a meal, seems a mere target of Goncharov’s criticism of provincial inefficiency and indolence. The action of An Ordinary Story comes neatly full-circle, unlike the picaresque meanderings of plot in earlier novels. Alexander renounces love for his uncle’s role of success, while Pyotr abandons success for love; the uncle also accepts his nephew’s embrace for the first time, while the younger man yields at last to the older man’s offer of a small loan, largely, it seems, to please his uncle. Without the vast panoramas of a Tolstoy, the action moves unilinearly to a neat conclusion, avoiding, as well, the violent about-faces and crises of passion frequent in Goncharov’s other contemporary, Dostoevsky. Rather than examine the psychology of his characters, Goncharov invites the reader to observe them ironically at times. One character, Lizaveta Alexandrovna, escapes irony; she remains uncriticized and unexplored in her function as the unfulfilled wife. Yet it is she who lends the novel its essential claim to realism by questioning whether the older Aduyev will restore his wife to life by renouncing his own lifelong pursuit of success. Certainly the practical Pyotr’s insistence that his romantic nephew not just dream his ideals but actually “do something” to make them real was intended for Goncharov’s contemporaries at a crucial point in their history. This advice still holds for our own time.
An Ordinary Story Page 1
