Author: Carol Apollonio, Ph.D. (Page 2 of 4)

It’s Dostoevsky time again. Given what has happened in the world since Dostoevsky’s 200th birthday (November 11, 2021), it has been nearly impossible for me to focus in on this footsteps pilgrimage. How can I just keep hopping merrily from one effete place to the next, jotting down petty little notes about distant, dead writers, when their country is brutalizing its neighbor, indiscriminately murdering its weakest individuals (yes, children, mothers, including pregnant ones,  the aged and sick) along with their homes, in plain sight? The evil of the invasion has paralyzed me, making the  COVID pandemic, in retrospect,  feel like a fun adventure. And some people are actually blaming Dostoevsky.

What is to be done? What is to be thought? What is to be said?

My journey through Russian literature began during the Cold War. In the 1970s, my fellow students would embark on study abroad in the USSR with the energy, openness and optimism of twenty-year-olds, and after a brief dip into the repellent realities of Soviet life would return eager to join the CIA and battle against the evil empire on behalf of free expression, free enterprise, and freedom of thought. I remember the darkness and fear of my first few trips (1976, 1982). There was no color–everything was black or gray, with occasional flashes of garish, bloody red. There were shortages (дефицит) and lines (очереди) everywhere. Officially, there was one way to think, and it always started out with, “As Lenin said….”. You could starve. People were crude, sad, and angry. Things broke.

Was I being followed? Was my room bugged? Was I happy to leave? YES, YES. YES. So why did I keep going back? It was the literature, and the writers and the readers with whom I have been in conversation about it ever since then, that roped me in.  Against a regime dominated by venality, corruption, hostility, brutality, and lies, against a primitive, mendacious language of officialdom and greed, each generation of writers spoke, and speaks, their truth–a truth that plunges below the ugliness of the surface into the places in our spirit and mind that are real and human, the place where our fragile conscience nestles. Their truth-telling brings real danger–the more powerful and compelling the words, the more likely the writer will be taken out and shot, or imprisoned, or deprived of a livelihood. And still they speak–with extraordinary courage and eloquence that we readers feel in every word.

So I kept on reading, and my reading shaped my life. When to everyone’s surprise the USSR collapsed at the end of the 1980s, suddenly there was a demand for people who could teach the language to throngs of new undergraduates who felt that they could make millions of dollars by doing business with Russians. To be completely honest, without those econ students, I would never have gotten a job doing what I do now, or in fact kept it.  I’m pleased to say, many of them got infected with the “big questions” bug along with me. In short,  I had the great good fortune of getting to spend my life having my mind blown by Russian writers, and serving as a conduit for that mind-blowing to others. Despite the realities of biology, physics, and the earth’s orbit, these writers, along with their descendants, are very much still alive.

The 40 years of my own trivial adventure in Russian literature has unfolded during an unexpected interval in the long violent history of Russia, an impossibly brief few decades in which creative, thinking people had the opportunity to write openly, to explore their country’s suppressed, gruesome history, to access the full range of literature and news–their own as well as from around the world, and to participate in a free conversation about things that matter. Now many of these people are being persecuted in their country, or have had to flee. And I’m back where I started, seeking some kind of hope, conscience, and perspective.  Where else to find it, but in literature, again?

Along the way, let this little tirade speak out loudly against Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Well, I can’t go back to Siberia now, can I? And  my planned Chekhov itinerary for the summer–Taganrog, Sumy, Yalta–lies crumpled in the trash. So…

Florence?  Uh-oh. Give me a couple of days.

It has been mentioned that the first (in the world) Chekhov monument, which was estabished in Badenweiler in 1908, was soon melted down, the Chekhov Salon brochure reports (http://www.literaturmuseum-tschechow-salon.de/de/schriftsteller.html?file=files/litmus/pages/schriftsteller/broschueren/museum-GB-200516-webs.pdf). With many delays (apparently related to various political crises), a stone was eventually put up to replace it in 1963. I did not find this stone so it would be unfair to post a picture of it here, but you can find everything in the brochure link. What compelled me more was the story of Georgi Miromanov, who was director of the Chekhov Sakhalin Book Museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island

(for details, scoot down a couple of posts). Having recently visited this museum I felt personally invested in the story. Some time after 1985, Miromanov promised Badenweiler that he would give the city a new monument by 1990 in time for the 130th anniversary of Chekhov’s birth. Considering that there are at least nine time zones difference between the two locations, not to mention 7374.557584 miles (11,868 .2 kilometers), plus, inevitably, such factors as world politics and money, this would seem to be a difficult promise to keep. And yet, as the brochure reports, in the fall of 1990 Mironamov, together with his son and the sculptor Vladimir Chebotaryov,

arrived in Badenweiler in an old army truck with the new memorial which they had declared scrap metal at the various borders they had crossed on their arduous way from the Pacific Ocean.

It was a journey worthy of Chekhov’s own trek in the reverse direction in the spring and summer of 1890 (take note, it took place on the centennial of that journey). And my comfortable, leisurely trip by train to Sakhalin in 2019 is a faint tribute, as I now learn, not just to Chekhov but to Mironamov. Who has chronicled the bureaucratic, financial, and logistical obstacles this new statue faced along its way? I am reminded of other journeys that cover some of this itinerary, such as the 2015 Rally Rodina trip undertaken by four guys on Ural motorcycles:            

(https://www.maximprivezentsev.com/rally-rodina)

also highlighting Chekhov’s trip and book (there’s a movie). And others people have taken, not always even leaving a trail. According to the Chekhov Salon brochure, this was the first Russian monument in Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which reminds us that that FIRST Badenweiler Chekhov monument was the first Chekhov monument in the world. (Let us hope that THIS one will not be melted down to make bullets. Politicians are always threatened by the voices of artists). In short, Chekhov fans, keep your eyes on Badenweiler. Having overcome all physical, economic, and political obstacles in his way, having achieved his goal of restoring a Chekhov monument to Badenweiler, Miromanov suffered a martyr’s fate: on his way back to Sakhalin, reports the brochure, while passing through SUMY, Ukraine (a Chekhov hot spot and place of great creative activity that was on my itinerary until February 24, 2022), Mironamov died of heart failure.

This monument stands just below Badenweiler Castle on a very high hill overlooking the German countryside, which you have walked up. The pilgrim follows a clear trail of signs along the footpath until the statue gently appears in view on the hill above you

.

Appropriately, for our hero, who was himself a passionate gardener, it stands above a nice little garden, teeming with flora and fauna (salamanders, two small white butterflies in love, a throng of invisible buzzing insects, and a placid, golf-ball-sized snail).

A generous Chekhov reader (one of the many quiet heroes in this story) has set up a bench here where you can sit and breathe the fresh air and look over the view that someone very thoughtful thought up for you and Chekhov to contemplate.

Sitting here on the bench, one continues to ponder matters of spirit–the word’s origin in breath–respiration, for which we are particularly grateful on this stop on our journey, and its place as the origin of art–inspiration, and, we hope, of healing. In addition to the monuments in stone and bronze, in photographs and street-and-square names, Badenweiler also offers up a monument in spirits, a Tschechow wine, a gentle red, with which you can nurture your own on the Katharina terrace, upon your descent from the hill to dry land .

Chekhov’s life journey ended on July 14/15, 1904 in Badenweiler, Germany. This turns out to be July 1/2 Old Style. Technically I should go for the “real” date but since today is JULY 1, 2022, I’m going to commit to July 1, 118 years ago today, sort of. One theme of this blog, anyway, is the fuzziness of numbers.

Chekhov came to Germany with his tuberculosis, which is what drove his trips to Western Europe in the last 7 or so years of his life. Nice, for example, for which I have been pent up with about 4 blog posts for a year now. But let’s start here, at the end.  Chekhov stayed in three different hotels in Badenweiler.  The first one is the Rommerbad (in a quiet revolt against the umlaut I will not go to the trouble of entering it here, or anywhere else, and will not take time for any diacritical marks, either, being American and efficient in that way). Rommerbad (“roamer bad”) is in the doghouse for all time for its treatment of the world’s greatest short-story writer and dramatist. Chekhov coughed too much and they kicked him out, as it “disturbed the other guests.” I marched to the hotel yesterday, indignant and eager to take revenge.

                                          These are screen shots because it’s too hellish to get real photos in here                         (try it for 4 hours and then come back and report to me).

Now let’s get down to work. The hotel is both fancy and scuzzy at the same time. Not knowing German is a blessing in cases like this, because the place has been renamed to something I’ll translate the “PANACEA,” which, if enter into google, gets defined as “a solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases.” Let us ponder this.  First of all, the hotel is abandoned, supposedly (again, what option do you have but to trust my German?) to be renovated:

The vacancy of the place, prevents me from any kind of contact with living human beings, but maybe the person who forced Chekhov to leave because his coughing was ANNOYING PEOPLE finds himself trapped in here, haunting the halls, tormented by remorse. Maybe something like widowed Olga in “The Grasshopper” (попрыгунья), who learned too late how famous her husband was.

Ольга Ивановна вспомнила всю свою жизнь с ним, от начала до конца, со всеми подробностями, и вдруг поняла, что это был в самом деле необыкновенный, редкий и, в сравнении с теми, кого она знала, великий человек. И вспомнив, как к нему относились ее покойный отец и все товарищи-врачи, она поняла, что все они видели в нем будущую знаменитость. Стены, потолок, лампа и ковер на полу замигали ей насмешливо, как бы желая сказать: «Прозевала! прозевала!

https://ilibrary.ru/text/706/p.8/index.html

Anyway, evicted from this monstrosity, Anton and Olga went down the hill, passing the old Roman baths on the way, and a nice little park (though in the latter case it might be is back-projected) and found themselves a room at the Friedericke, about which more in a moment.

But first let’s get artsy and do a mise-en-abyme (those who are triggered by this spelling remember, please, that I am not slowing down for diacritical marks) that will let me in past these locked doors, where I can join the souls (guilty, atoning, innocent but cast out as the case may be) haunting these halls.

Who the #$%@& would call a hotel the Panacea? (again, maybe this is not at all what the word means but hey, you don’t like it, write your own blog). Maybe someone trying to purge 118 years of guilt?  Notice–not only did they kick him out but they also had the nerve to put a plaque next to the door (look up and to the right for this one, not down), expressing pride that the great man stayed here. He DID stay there, that much is true. For an extremely short time. And they get credit for it.

Compare the beautiful etched stone sign on the balcony (to the left of the nice Chekhov wall cameo) outside Chekhov’s window on the side wall of the then Hotel Sommer, now, these days, the Klinik Park-Therme, which I deduce says “Here lived Anton Chekhov, in July 1904”

Just repeating here: “LIVED” (and then, for those concerned with precision, I actually checked this one  on line, and yes, that’s what it says).  Which is quite beautiful to ponder. And it was out this window that his soul flew, filling the square outside it and still living today. Which now bears his name, recognizable despite the weird German spelling:

Soon there was a monument (more on this later, too), and then an actual Chekhov museum, the Chekhov Salon, and then a bronze seagull just outside his window.

And then, the first monument, bronze, was melted down (it had to do with the war, WW I, actually, and killers needing bronze for ammunition or weapons, or whatever, or to sell; in any case this lovely little action-packed museum has an exhibit that I think is, or represents, the melted-down first Chekhov monument (deducing from the otherwise indecipherable explanation from the word Denkmal, which I had the opportunity to learn tromping around town means “monument” and already knowing the story about it being melted down).  To fill the empty place, someone made a crazy Chekhov bronze, complete with characters from his stories (look below for this one).  And there’s an amazing story about ANOTHER Chekhov monument brought from SAKHALIN ISLAND here by one of the truly devoted Chekhov fans like those I have encountered on this journey, which I will tell about in the next blog post, for it is a story of heroism and martyrdom. For now, more about the museum. Somehow I thought this Tschechow Salon would be just an ordinary Literary museum with lots of writers in it, all balanced evenly, but actually this is a CHEKHOV place–with ancillary writers strewn around–Stephen Crane, some guy named Heidigger, others, too. But no doubt about it, this is his place, just one room–like him, modest, not showy, but full of content and quality. Some people planted cherry trees out front (from Taganrog, I think, so there’s a circle of birth to death, but also life being lived by the trees and by all the people walking through, and even stopping here, like me). Everything here is in German, so my brain is jumbled with it all, but the story is familiar–you can follow it in the photos displayed here, and of course because you know a lot of the story already, and supplement it by bumbling through the German inscriptions for cognates, of which there are disappointingly few.  There is quite the political history here (German-Russian-Soviet-post-Soviet relations, with a conscious effort to focus on the cultural ties, which of course is also Chekhovian). It wasn’t so clear to me before in other places, but i can feel it now–that this place exists because of so many readers who appreciated Chekhov and honored him, and put in the effort to make this salon in his memory.  And I am one of them too. Here is where the tears well up, because, OK, it’s Germany, he was away from home, like me, and ill, dying as everyone knew, though he carried on as though not, and all of this we behold here, the museum with its contents. And he did die here, which is why there is so much Chekhov in this town now. Otherwise, Badenweiler would have carried on its history and gone for Stephen Crane or someone more local instead. And I would never have visited. This town was for healing, though, which is what brought him here, and maybe me too. And his spirit, which flew out the window just catty-cornered to the museum, lives here.

Now, just in case you’re disoriented, all the above is ONE Chekhov statue:

The face is gnarly because those are Chekhov characters in there. The statue stands just inside the doorway of the Tschechow Salon.

In my world these photos are familiar, but I have never seen them exhibited this way, from young Anton at the upper left, as at the beginning of a story, to the last Chekhov on the lower right. This fills one wall of the Chekhov Salon.

So now for a quick dip into the Hotel Sommer, aka Klinik Park-Therme. It’s an actual clinic, with a front door and a back door, both of which I try.

The back door (the one on the right) goes in from the little courtyard and must be the service entrance.  I go around to the front door, slip on my COVID mask, for this is a clinic, and walk boldly up to the front desk, which is quite indistinguishable from a hotel reception desk, which I guess at one time it was. My German (non-existent) is a handicap, but eventually I am kicked up to a higher-level administrator, a bespectacled man, who is extremely kind and conscientious with his own rudimentary Engish-German mix. I feel the tender presence of a health-care professional. We discuss in our primitive manner Chekhov’s stay here, and whether his room can be visited, which of course it can’t, because, I am delighted and moved to learn, there are patients staying there, for this is a working clinic, whose task is healing. Do these patients know they are in Chekhov’s room? Does it matter? I am happy not to go in there, as this is itself Chekhovian in spirit–of course people come here to get well! The man tells me people come to this place and stay three weeks for rest and care. The place does not look like a clinic to me, with harsh flourescient American lights, a stark medicinal feel, sharp divisions between the sick and the well. It feels like a hotel, a place where you might go for some quiet time and vacation (if you are an older person and do not have to take your kids to mini-golf). This is a place for people, and if I were to be sick, I would beg to be brought here where I could rest, in Chekhov’s invisible room.

And now the middle place. When Chekhov and Olga left the odious Rommerbad, they alit in the Friedericke, which was later to be renamed the Park Hotel & Spa Katharina (https://www.parkhotelkatharina.de/en/hotel/history). This is the one Chekhov hotel in Badenweiler (of the three) where you can actually stay. So I did, as a required part of my pilgrimage, and not because the hotel has four stars (I have never stayed in a four-star hotel before, but duty called). The place is completely renovated so no living person can possibly know what room Olga and Anton stayed in. I’ll assume it was not too high up, so have chosen to sit for a whie in the main floor sitting room, blessedly empty today except for me and Chekhov, and looking out onto the astonishing sunsets of Badenweiler. The internet is better here too. This afternoon I made an inquiry at the front desk, something quite banal about a towel, but in the process I realized I could ask about Chekhov’s room. So I flashed the blog, which brought on an administrator (the inquiry, not the blog).  It turns out that she is Russian, and not only Russian, but a former MGU Philosophy professor, and we immediately tumble into Russian. After solving my banal towel problem we babble on about many Russian matters, from Chekhov to tragic world events, and she informs me that Chekhov left here because it was boring (as he wrote in a letter. If this blog were more scholarly I’d quote the letter here and maybe I will, later). In any case, this hotel was also renovated, but it has real people in it, mixed in with the ghosts. And here, as in all the Chekhov places, there are bits of him in the air–which is very very good for breathing, I have had some time to learn. There’s even an INHALATORIUM in town,

which I went in but still haven’t figured out what it actually is.  Indeed this week I have thought of breathing quite a bit, knowing how hard it was for Chekhov to do, so much so that he came here. In this air, the conversation with the hotel administrators had the feel of something that could go on and on, and it turns out, the other hotel administrator, who is at the front desk and checked me in a few days ago, ALSO is fluent in Russian (being from Bulgaria), and if I had known this before, we would certainly have bonded. Things could have gotten quite intense, but new guests came to register (it is Friday, after all, the weekend is about to begin), and all three of us went back to our day jobs.

p.s.  little touch of home: bikers in Badenweier

Welcome to “Chekhov’s Footprints”! This is actually the end of the story. To read in order (from West to East), scroll down and go back two pages. It will make more sense that way. ENJOY!

SAKHALIN ISLAND

You think you’re headed in a straight line; there’s a starting point (Moscow, say) and an end point (Sakhalin Island). You have decided to follow the itinerary Chekhov followed, as much as possible, on his 1890 trip to Sakhalin island. Fortunately, this route coincides with that of the Trans-Siberian Railway–well-worn by a host of questing travelers over the years. And just when you reach your goal, you realize that your straight line is a circle, and your quest has just begun.

Originally I thought I might discover some new Chekhov places along the way. It became clear almost immediately, that the geography of Chekhov’s life journey has been fully charted. In Moscow I found lots of good information about the places he had lived, worked, and visited.  My hotel on Sretenka was basically in the middle of what we could call an “early Chekhov” district–the area where he lived in a number of different rented lodgings while a student at Moscow State University. And it was about a block away from Bolshoi Golovin St. (formerly Sobolev Street), the brothel district which served as the setting for his famous story “An Attack of Nerves.” I tracked down several of these addresses, and looked around online, and it soon became clear that these paths were well trodden, and in fact there have been other, similar blog quests. When I popped into Dom Knigi one day and came upon a book that detailed every Chekhov address in Moscow, with a description of what he did while living there, I realized that my quest was evolving into something different. And the buildings all started to look alike anyway.

Dostoevsky demanded to be included on the journey. And we were joined by other Dostoevsky and Chekhov people. For example, in Moscow I met with Russian literature scholars Sergei Kibalnik and Vladimir Kataev, who gave me some great leads.   Soon it became clear that this would be a journey as much from person to person as from place to place. In every Siberian city I visited (except for Khabarovsk), I was hosted by generous colleagues–none of whom I had even met before–who showed me the very best their Chekhov or Dostoevsky place has to offer. And then helped me on my way. So the trip was not about places at all. It was about people.

I did make it to Sakhalin.  Chekhov visited many towns on the island (basically almost every town) as he gathered information for his book The Island of Sakhalin. I visited only one: Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (formerly Vladimirovka).

The town remembers Chekhov fondly; there’s a Chekhov Street, a Chekhov Theater, and, most importantly, a Chekhov Museum. It’s actually called “The Museum of Chekhov’s Book Sakhalin Island.

Like other museums I have visited on this journey, this one offers a multimedia, interactive experience. One can get a sense as to what life was like on Sakhalin when Chekhov visited there (during a time when most of the island was populated with exiled settlers, imprisoned convicts, and ex-cons, and the administrators, officials, and jailers who managed everything. There is a diorama showing what a prison looked like, and  display with mannequins showing what life was like in a prison cell–complete with actors providing video testimony in the voices of prisoners. Check out their cool virtual excursion: http://go.chekhov-book-museum.ru/. I took a lot of photos, but I realized that you will be much better off if you just go to the website and take the tour yourself.

The museum collects books relating to Chekhov from all over the world (keep this in mind when you visit, so you can bring some to donate to the collection).

The most important book, though, is the one that inspired my trip, and Sergei’s, and as I am learning, many others’. Its publication in 1891-93  inspired readers of the time (including public figures) to rethink the policies that had led to the creation of the prison system on the island. And it inspired the creation of this museum.

Solicitous and expert deputy museum director Anastasia Stepanenko showed me around the museum and hosted me in her office, where if you look in the middle of the table you’ll see a set of two large books. This is an extraordinary edition of Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island, with extensive commentaries by Mikhail S. Vysokov (2010). The commentaries are the thicker volume. Basically if you have a question about anything in Sakhalin Island, Vysokov will have anticipated your question, will have answered it. Just look in the commentaries. 

When I saw this edition, I was reminded, yet again, of what it is I love about my Russian colleagues’ respect for their literature: their meticulous attention to detail, to respecting what is there in the text, and what is there in the material, geographical, historical, cultural, literary, and biographical world that underlies the text. There is a kind of maximalistic impulse at work, a desire to go deep into the book and retrieve every nuance, meaning, and reference that connects the text with the world. And that world includes us readers.

There’s no need to make things up; the point is to see what’s there. This attention to textual details and to the ways they are anchored in “real things” in the world differs from what I see as dominant in my western scholarly world: a mandate to create new knowledge, or to come up with ever-new angles of interpretation. This mandate keeps us intellectually alert and adventurous. Sometimes, though, it can lead to carelessness with a text, or a tendency to distort what is in there in order to prove a theory or argument about something else. Sort of like what Cinderella’s sisters did in an effort to get the glass slipper to fit.

Anyway, it’s a great book.

Now about circles. Here at the Museum of One Book, I was able to see a special exhibit related to Chekhov’s letters–that very same exhibit that Zhenia of the Melikhovo Museom of Chekhov’s Letters had told me she was going to set up in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

It felt like coming home.

There’s much much more to say about Sakhalin, and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and Chekhov’s book, and I hope that I will be able to say some of it. That quest continues. But a bit more about circles: I did circle back to Moscow. I have to say, it was extremely disorienting to get on an airplane and cover in eight hours, forty minutes a distance that had taken me forty-two days on the journey out there.

Everyone asks why Chekhov made this trip. The more you think about it, the more complicated it gets. I sure can’t answer the question about Chekhov; I don’t understand why I made this trip myself, much less why someone else did. I didn’t understand when I started the trip, and I still don’t understand now that it’s over. Reaching Sakhalin didn’t make things any clearer. Maybe, like Sergei, I’ll just have to keep coming back.

The night before I left Moscow, I traveled to the Chekhov metro station at Pushkin Square, where I saw a performance of (Dostoevsky’s, sort of) Crime and Punishment: The Rock Opera.  Ask me about it sometime. For now, the point is that everything on my trip came back around to its starting point. And continues to do so.

After a week on the Amur (which he admired, as he admired most of Siberia’s rivers [with Irtysh being a special case]), Chekhov arrived in “Khabarovka” (now Khabarovsk) on June 30, 1890.  He looked around town, stopped in the library at the military club (voennoe sobranie) to catch up on the newspapers, and was back on his way by July.

I actually spent more time in town than Chekhov–two nights–after a relaxing fifty-two hours on the Trans-Siberian from Ulan-Ude. I lucked into more of that wonderful Siberian babye leto–sunshine and T-shirt weather, which added to the charm of the place.

Khabarovsk, like Chekhov, respects and loves its river, which is lined with a broad pedestrian-and-bike-and-scooter promenade. While I promenaded, a shockingly fast speedboat rushed by. It went by too fast to be photographed. l was actually terrified for the dog and his two friends, who were the only other creatures on the river that evening.

I’ve been around the course a few times, but this was the fastest and loudest speedboat I’ve ever seen. It reminded me that Russians, as we know from Gogol’s Dead Souls, love to “drive fast” (bystraya ezda).

Selifan also roused himself, and apportioned to the skewbald a few cuts across the back of a kind which at least had the effect of inciting that animal to trot; and when, presently, the other two horses followed their companion’s example, the light britchka moved forwards like a piece of thistledown. Selifan flourished his whip and shouted, “Hi, hi!” as the inequalities of the road jerked him vertically on his seat; and meanwhile, reclining against the leather cushions of the vehicle’s interior, Chichikov smiled with gratification at the sensation of driving fast. For what Russian does not love to drive fast? Which of us does not at times yearn to give his horses their head, and to let them go, and to cry, “To the devil with the world!”? At such moments a great force seems to uplift one as on wings; and one flies, and everything else flies, but contrariwise — both the verst stones, and traders riding on the shafts of their waggons, and the forest with dark lines of spruce and fir amid which may be heard the axe of the woodcutter and the croaking of the raven. Yes, out of a dim, remote distance the road comes towards one, and while nothing save the sky and the light clouds through which the moon is cleaving her way seem halted, the brief glimpses wherein one can discern nothing clearly have in them a pervading touch of mystery. Ah, troika, troika, swift as a bird, who was it first invented you? Only among a hardy race of folk can you have come to birth — only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the road — a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav. Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man bearded and mittened. See him as he mounts, and flourishes his whip, and breaks into a long-drawn song! Away like the wind go the horses, and the wheels, with their spokes, become transparent circles, and the road seems to quiver beneath them, and a pedestrian, with a cry of astonishment, halts to watch the vehicle as it flies, flies, flies on its way until it becomes lost on the ultimate horizon — a speck amid a cloud of dust!

And you, Russia of mine — are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake?

• Though I will be reviled for this, I have taken this excerpt from C.J. Hogarth’s quaint version of Dead Souls, Part I, Chapter Xi.  (https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gogol/nikolai/g61d/chapter11.html.
• Repeating here: I love Hogarth’s vocabulary, and the website is very convenient.

The speedboat also reminded me of all the other instances of “driving fast” that I have witnessed, and like Gogol’s pedestrian, I halted, with an inner cry of astonishment, as the vehicle flew, flew, flew away until it was a speck of on the watery horizon:

• motorcycles: in nearly every city, I’ve found myself on a public street that doubles as a motorcycle speedway. In Petersburg, for example, it is Nevsky Prospect; in Moscow, the viewing platform over the city at Sparrow Hills (Vorobyovye Gory) near Moscow State University. The bikers (young, male) are not wearing helmets. It is not enough for them to race flat-out; they must do it on their rear wheel. As a motorcyclist in my own right (modest, age-appropriate, helmeted, sometimes wearing a reflective vest, and [nearly] always observing traffic laws), I found the spectacle terrifying, exhilarating, and quintessentially Russian.
• bicycles: in Khabarovsk, as I climbed up that long, long steep from the river to town (on a regular street, for automobile traffic), a young man flew by me, heading downhill in traffic, and dodging parked vehicles and pedestrians, at probably 50 mph: no helmet, and here’s the clincher: hunched horizontally over the handlebars. I halted with an inner cry of astonishment (and admiration).
• speedboats.
• horse-carriages in tourist areas, for example, Kizhi: in the USA, undoubtedly fearing lawsuits, horse carriages at tourist attractions proceed slowly and steadily. In Kizhi, the horses actually appear to be having fun: they trot briskly, sweeping their tails in the air. Passengers grip the sides of the carriage.
• automobiles: I believe I have adequately described the driving habits of certain Russian professionals.

All of this reminds me of the distinctly Russian view of mortality.  In the USA a great deal of effort is expended on making life safe, as if that would ultimately guarantee immortality. Along the way we sacrifice the joys of “going fast.”

Disclaimer: I am not advocating that you “drive fast.”

On two different rides with hosts in Russia, as we settled in, I began to buckle my seat belt (in the back), and my hosts said, “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

A vast, green, tree-filled park leads up the hill from river to town, where we will seek out Khabarovsk’s Chekhov.

Up the hill and to the left is Khabarovsk’s Far Eastern Art Museum:

An elegant staircase leads to galleries featuring paintings from different European countries.

This building is that very same Military Club (voennoe sobranie), where Chekhov stopped in to read newspapers during his brief visit to Khabarovka. The muzeishchiki are very hospitable; they turn on lights in showcases for you, and give you useful brochures. They could not identify which room used to be the library, though, so I just assumed (for no reason whatever) that it was the one with tables that you see through the arched doorways. This is probably wrong, and if you know the answer to this mystery, please add it in a comment to the blog.

On the building’s facade you will see a plaque (by Khabarovsk sculptor Yuri Kukuev) commemorating Chekhov’s visit here.

A couple of years ago, there was some discussion of setting up a square and monument dedicated to Chekhov in the city’s Dynamo Park (https://todaykhv.ru/news/culture/6058/ ), but I did not have a chance to see how things were going with it. The monument, by Khabarovsk artist Vladimir Baburov, might look something like this (look right). This particular Chekhov is carrying a top hat. The trousers here are narrower than in the plaque, which gives this monument the advantage. I hope that the next time I come to Khabarovsk, I will be able to see it in the future Chekhov Square.

One cannot, even in this day and age, get to Sakhalin Island by train. If you’re in a motor vehicle, you must take a ferry. From Khabarovsk, Chekhov proceeded sharply northward to the far-eastern port of Nikolaevsk, and from there to Alexandrovsky post halfway up Sakhalin’s west coast. If you’re a Trans-Siberian pedant, I mean purist, you must proceed to Vladivostok, the railway’s end point. Chekhov did go to Vladivostok, but on his way back from Sakhalin in mid-October, 1890.

Anyway, in short, I got on an airplane in Khabarovsk and flew, in a shockingly short period of time (one hour, twenty minutes), to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (formerly Vladimirovka) on the southeast coast of Sakhalin Island.

It’s exciting when a quiet place you’ve just visited becomes a world news headline.  The other day, the New York Times reported on a shaman’s visit to Ulan-Ude. The shaman, Aleksandr Gabyshev, was walking westward across Russia; his ultimate goal – to reach Moscow and exorcise Putin’s demons. He says: “In him there is much evil, and he himself embodies the powers of evil, so an exorcism must be done.”  The shaman has been arrested by the “dark forces” of the State, and now finds himself  exiled in Yakutsk facing threat of forced treatment in a psychiatric institution (a time-honored tactic that lingers from the Soviet period). But his visit sparked anti-government protests in Ulan-Ude. Read the story here, then we will proceed:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/europe/shaman-putin-dissent.html

Chekhov brought me to Ulan-Ude. He occupies a quiet corner in what Ulan-Ude calls its Arbat – a pleasant pedestrian district down the street from the more formal, official city center with its Lenin statue, government buildings, and theatrical square.  After crossing Lake Baikal on June 14, 1890, Chekhov traveled southeast for about 100 kilometers, until he reached this city, which was then called Verkhne-Udinsk. Ulan-Ude is the capital of the Republic of Buryatia.

A companion on a walk through town, an anonymous philologist from   Buryat State University, shows me the hotel where Chekhov stayed.

and kindly helps orient me in Buryat cuisine.

Ulan-Ude’s physical center teems with reminders of its Soviet history: its imposing Memorial to the Great Fatherland War,  streets named after the same Soviet leaders we saw in our other Siberian towns, a town square featuring and a truly bizarre Lenin head (yes, just the head) dominating its central square.

The thing is huge, and for some reason in the evening was illuminated with an eerie green light.  In Ulan-Ude I found myself in a new world that yet is completely familiar. Here we recognize the layers of history – the  trappings of 21st-century political and economic system resting uneasily in the Soviet architecture, monuments testifying to the ravages of war, the brute power of dictators, the clashes between empire and periphery, and, moving backward to a time whose  buildings are lost, the quiet spirits of the place who continue to fill the air with their truth.

Speaking of tsars, just up the street, at the city’s historical and ethnographic museum, you can see original items belonging to another powerful individual, the blue submarine (or bathysphere) suit that Vladimir Putin wore when he came out here and dive-boated into Baikal in connection with a scientific exhibition. The cute nerpa banner conveys the message that this was a mission to save the environment. The museum is worth a visit even over and above this presidential sighting, as it gives a sense of the area’s diverse history; Old Russian believers built settlements here as they were chased out of European Russia; Buryat communities maintained their way of life, herding animals, living in yurts, and practicing their unique religion with its shamanistic rituals. Buddhism in its Tibetan form  coexisted with the native shamanistic religion. And of course there was Russian Orthodoxy, seasoned with official Soviet atheism in the 20th century.  Among the works on exhibit by Bato Dashitsyrenov in the city’s art museum are extraordinary depictions of shamans in action.

The artist also proposed a monument that in my opinion would be a fitting addition, or replacement to the public square, possibly near a Tomsk Chekhov clone. I would take a stab at explaining this monument; it might have something to do with the creation of the world, or a sort of scheme or hierarchy of life, but I will spare you that. It may be some comfort for you to know that I visited this exhibit with two different people, the museum’s director and an art scholar, and their explanations for most of the art on exhibit significantly differed among themselves. I loved this, and was convinced by both interpretations (in addition to my own secret ones, which I will spare you).

I can’t help it, I just love this artist. Check out “See no Evil” and a couple of other masterpieces, basically, I’d say, about the human condition:

My host throughout my visit to Ulan-Ude is Professor Svetlana Imikhelova of Buryat State University. Svetlana orients me geographically,  and takes me to the city library, where I learn about the area’s vibrant literary tradition and support for the arts. I am most curious to learn about a famous novel by Isai Kalashnikov, about the life of a Mongolian boy called Temujin, who grew up to be Genghis Khan.

Svetlana then entrusts me to the care of the director of Ulan-Ude’s art museum, where, indeed, I encountered, in addition to Dashitsyrenov’s amazing art, many other wonderful works as well, by nineteenth-century works by such famous Russian artists as Repin, Levitan,

Chekhov alert!

Repin, and Kuindji.

Now I just want to say that Ulan-Ude and its environs are an excellent locale for horse-spotting. You will certainly recall Dashitsyrenov’s frolicing horse from Tomsk, I mean, from Ulan-Ude.

I am told that Japanese prisoners of war worked on the equestrian topping for the city’s Theater of Opera and Ballet, which recalls the one above Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, though here there are fewer horses.

You (or rather, your inner fantasy child) can take a ride on this pony who stands near the Great Fatherland War monument.

I honestly don’t know who these two horsemen are, but they face the train station from behind, overlooking the most horrifying set of stairs I have ever seen–the innocently named “viaduct” that takes the weary traveler from the train station to her hotel, which google maps claims is an easy walk. You do not start at the top; rather, you had to climb four flights of steps to reach the top, from the train platform (carrying your luggage, which you will soon feel as an unnecessary burden, like all things of this world). The stairs seem to end right above that white car. But in fact, you cross that bridge to your left, and there

there are another twenty (or so, it seems) flights down to street level. Then you walk up a long slow hill, cursing your cell phone with what is left of your voice, until eventually you reach the hotel. Somehow I feel that the equestrian statues there were a kind of warning about this, but cryptic.

Focus.

Travel outside of town with Svetlana –with her son Alexander at the wheel – and you may be lucky enough to see some more horses, these just wandering around, unfenced. This is  my ultimate conception of freedom.  My excitement was such that Alexander turned off the road and we kind of chased them for a while. (Special thanks to Sasha for doing this, and for being such a careful, expert driver who prefers the right, the correct, lane). These horses led us to lunch.

Of the dishes on hand, I had only ever tried the buuza, but in its Mongolian variant, at that. There was a kind of Asian custard, like ice cream but not cold or sweet. My favorite was the sheep liver, but the entrail sausages tucked into sheep intestine were also a savory, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Horses and lunch were a mere coda to the centerpiece of my entire visit to Ulan-Ude: a trip to the famous Ivolginsk Datsan outside of town. If you are not lucky enough to have Sasha drive you, you can come on Bus # 108. If you know something about Tibetan Buddhism, this number will have special meaning for you.

You walk clockwise around the periphery of the datsan complex, circling the prayer drums and twirling them as you go.  The central temple enshrines the 12th Pandito Hambo Lama of the Ivolginsky Datsan, Dashi-Dorzho Itigelov, a revered spiritual leader whose body miraculously does not decay.

Learn details of the story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9ETr7_GtHw&fbclid=IwAR219J3a-R9WIbWkpjEN0dIu1txARjWitYIwnojKw_kiGFIsAylQrnfgT50

His spirit fills the air here, and even as you make your wish and prayer for the future, you know that it is already fulfilled here and now.

I have also left some of my spirit here, and in Ulan-Ude, and everywhere else I have visited on this journey.

Chekhov arrived in Irkutsk 4 June 1890, and stayed in room #10 at the Amur Podvore Hotel at #1 B, Furie Street.

The building stands, though it is no longer a hotel. At the time Chekhov could not have known that some 130 years later, just a bit down and across the street, a fine coffee shop, the White Crow (Belaya Vorona)  would overjoy and refresh a weary Chekhov acolyte from far away.

This future visitor’s hotel, located in one of those venerable Siberian wooden buildings that are gradually sinking into the earth, doubles as a kind of creepy doll museum with highly breakable knickknacks in showcases.

Your room looks out onto a picturesque courtyard filled with items that might come in handy someday, or possibly might become part of the museum.

Guests are greeted by an extraordinary fish named Vitalik, who enjoys gazing at you and comes over to his window sometimes to be patted.  Down the street you can enjoy some Mongol delicacies under the watchful gaze of a Siberian bear.

Though inevitably animals are eaten in Irkutsk, they are also loved and respected.

And you can drink water from the Baikal….

Where were we? Oh, Chekhov! Chekhov liked the city, where he spent a week.

Of all Siberian cities, the finest is Irkutsk. […] Irkutsk is a splendid city. Extremely cultured. Theater, museum, a city garden with music, good hotels…There are no ugly fences, absurd signs and vacant lots with notices that one is not to loiter. There is a bar called the Taganrog. Sugar is 24 kopecks; cedar nuts are 6 kopecks a pound. …Irkutsk has carriages with springs. It’s better than Ekaterinburg and Tomsk. A regular Europe…

Из всех сибирских городов самый лучший Иркутск [….]Иркутск превосходный город. Совсем интеллигентный. Театр, музей, городской сад с музыкой, хорошие гостиницы…Нет уродливых заборов, нелепых вывесок и пустырей с надписями о том, что нельзя останавливаться. Есть трактир “Таганрог”. Сахар 24 коп., кедровые орехи 6 коп. за фунт…В Иркутске рессорные пролетки. Он лучше Екатеринбурга и Томска. Совсем Европа…

And there is a Chekhov street, where life in Irkutsk goes on.

Like our other Siberian cities, Irkutsk grew on a riverbank. The Angara brings water here from Lake Baikal, just an hour’s drive away; after passing Irkutsk, it bears this Baikal water north to the cold Arctic. I believe I have emphasized the Siberian clouds sufficiently, and that you do not need to be reminded to notice them.

My consultants had told me to  be sure to see some of Baikal’s famous nerpas (seals). So I took my tourist map, on which the word “nerpinarium” had caught my eye, and hopped on a bus heading up the hill from the train station. The trip entailed some major hiking up the hill from the bus stop. I am pleased to say that I was able to find the Nerpinarium. This was the good news.

It turns out, the nerpinarium was not only closed, but closed “na remont.”

(I taught you this important Russian expression a few days ago).

The na remont state of affairs might have been the bad news; but it might also have been just more good news. I’ll go for the latter, for the nerpinarium closure freed some time for some Irkutsk exploration. I hopped on a random bus, to see where it would take me.

As the bus rolled off yet further up the hill from the train station and gave the impression of heading someplace quite far away, I felt the need to get to know my fellow passengers. A lady who was sitting next to me, who turned out to have had a career in the Academy of Sciences here in

Irkutsk, suggested that since I was on this bus already, I might as well take a look around the area, which is where a number of academic institutions are based: Akademgorodok. So instead of watching a performance by Baikal seals, I spent some quiet time strolling and breathing pure autumn air in a hilltop park. This is what I would have made back home, if given a choice between a seal show and a walk in the woods.

I could stay here among these birch trees forever, I think.

I could also stay in the town of Irkutsk, which has a lot of character, and might have looked like this when Chekhov visited.

My guide in Irkutsk is a fellow Chekhov enthusiast, Elena Shishparyonok, who teaches in the Journalism department of Irkutsk State University. Elena and I visit two homes commemorating famous Decembrists  who were exiled here.

The Decembrist Revolt

After an attempted coup in 1825, a number of elite officers, members of the nobility were convicted and sentenced to exile in various locations around Siberia. These were the lucky ones; five of their comrades were hanged.

Feel free to google “Decembrist Uprising” for more of this extraordinary episode in Russian history.

The Decembrists left traces all over Siberia. We first encountered them on their journey in Tobolsk, where the Decembrist wifes gave Dostoevsky the famous Gospel text that played such an important role in his live in and after prison and exile, and in his great novels.

Here in Irkutsk, there are two Decembrist “house museums.” One belonged to the daughter of Sergei Trubetskoy (the original house burned down). Ekaterina Trubetskaya, originally from France, married him followed him into exile for love.

The other museum is in the original house where Sergei Volkonsky, one of the most famous Decembrists, lived with his wife, Maria Volkonsky, who was a princess, and their children.

When I visited, the Volkonsky Museum was featuring an exhibit of nineteenth-century fashion.  Some Decembrists were quite wealthy  and were able to receive money from their families back in Western Russia. I was struck by the sense that these homes were centers of culture in Irkutsk–and still are. It takes some effort, walking through these rooms, to recall the suffering hidden behind the walls of these islands of civilization: the families’ separation from their loved ones back home, and their knowledge that their cause of political reform had failed. Not to mention that their punishment included laboring in Siberian mines and other unpleasant activities…

The city itself has lots to offer, in addition to its museums, monuments, and the Chekhov aura that lingers in the air.

One convenient feature of Irkutsk is its many Beeline shops. Here one can receive free psychotherapy in exchange for letting the specialists admire, I mean play with, I mean use, your passport to solve your cell- phone problems.

Ultimately the therapy session led to the purchase of a second SIM card, which my three therapists assured me was truly mine. There was no mention of an Uzbek double, but his shadowy presence lurks in my phone–for his is the one of my two phone numbers that I have spent considerable effort memorizing. As has become customary in my Beeline sessions, we test the phone’s two numbers and they work just fine, IN THE STORE AT LEAST.

Not least among Irkutsk’s many charms is its proximity to the great Lake Baikal. Elena and her husband Roma drove me out for a day on and near the lake, first at the lakeside town (posyolok) of  Listvyanka, and then at a remarkable museum of wooden architecture on the banks of the Angara.

Chekhov left Irkutsk on the evening of June 11, traveling along the river and reaching Listvyanka (then called Listvenichnaya) on the evening of June 12. Chekhov and his companions (including an Irkutsk Technical School student Innokentii Nikitin) rented a small lakeside apartment. There they waited for a boat that they could ride across the lake.

«Байкал удивителен, и недаром сибиряки величают его не озером, а морем. Вода прозрачна необыкновенно, так что видно сквозь неё, как сквозь воздух; цвет у неё нежно-бирюзовый, приятный для глаза. Берега гористые, покрытые лесами; кругом дичь непроглядная, беспросветная. Прожил я на берегу Байкала двое суток. Забайкалье великолепно. Это смесь Швейцарии, Дона и Финляндии». (Из письма Н.А. Лейкину 20 июня 1890 года, пароход «Ермак»)

Baikal, the deepest freshwater body of water in the world, is a mile deep, and Chekhov reports that its stunning beauty sent chills down his spine, and made him curse Levitan—his friend and Russia’s greatest landscape painter—for not being there. We take a few moments here to fantasize about what the trip would have been like if Levitan had come along.

I was able to dip my hand into the cold Baikal at Listvyanka, and indeed to see down through the beautiful, transparent water. To the hungry, a key feature of Listvyanka is its market, where you pick up some of the lake’s famous omul’ for lunch.

The food selection is much better than it was in Chekhov’s time; he commented firmly on the abundance of vodka at the expense of pretty much else.

We have taken a little barn of a lodging […]. Just outside the window, two or three yards from the wall, is Lake Baikal. We pay a rouble a day. The mountains, the forests, the mirror-like Baikal are all poisoned for me by the thought that we shal have to stay here till the fifteenth. What are we to do here? What is more, we don’t know what there is for us to eat. The inhabitants feed upon nothing but garlic. There is neither meat nor fish. They have given us no milk, but have promised it. For a little white loaf they demanded sixteen kopecks. I bought some buckwheat and a piece of smoked pork, and asked them to make a thin porridge of it: it was not nice but there was nothing to be done, I had to eat it. All the evening we hunted about the village to find someone who would sell us a hen, and found no one… But there is vodka. The Russian is a great pig. If you ask him why he doesn’t eat meat and fish he justifies himself by the absence of transport, ways and communications, and so on, and yet vodka is to be found in the remotest villages, and as much of it as you please.

–June 13, tr. Constance Garnett Letters of Anton Chekhov, 1st World, 2004, p. 223

Faring much better than Chekhov, Elena, Roma and I stock up on omul’, caviar, lavash, and berries, and head for the Taltsky wooden architecture and ethnography museum. The museum is an astonishing collection of log buildings from all around Siberia, brought here to the banks of the Angara and rebuilt in a beautiful natural setting.

When you enter the wooden tepee hut, your head starts to spin. It happened to all three of us…

The experience did help build up an appetite.

Ultimately, the high point may have been our picnic, which in addition to the fishy bounties of the Baikal, featured tea and actual, excellent espresso from a little booth nearby.

Just about as good as life can get.

Look, we’re halfway!!

After two thousand versts (kilometers, sort of) of “cold, flat plain, crooked birch trees, puddles, an occasional lake, snow in May, and the desolate, depressing shores of the Ob tributaries” east of the Urals,

…or: after a series of waiting rooms, railroad kupes, bus rides, towns, sidewalks, alleyways, parks, promenades, bridges, museums, monuments, historical sites, cafes, libraries, classrooms, galleries, kitchen tables …

Chekhov

and I

was struck with the “original, majestic, and beautiful” natural landscape that begins with the Yenisei River, near Krasnoyarsk. He even gives way to lyrical flights–something we don’t usually associate with his style (but I’m right here by his side).

Not to offend Volga enthusiasts, but over my lifetime I have never seen a river more majestic than the Yenisei. Yes, the Volga is a modest, mournful beauty, decked out in her finery. But the Yenisei is a mighty, furious bogatyr, a larger-than-life elemental hero who has more strength and youth than he knows what to do with.  On the Volga, man started out with reckless ambition, but ended in a groan, that is a song; bright, golden hopes turned into a kind of impotence that has come to be known as Russian pessimism; On the Yenisei life began with a groan, but will end with a reckless ambition the likes of which we haven’t seen even in our dreams. This is at least what I thought when standing on the bank of the great broad Yenisei, gazing greedily at its water, which with terrible speed and force rushes onward to the severe Arctic Ocean.

from Chapter IX of From Siberia

When admiring the Yenisei, Chekhov speaks my language, though I hit Krasnoyarsk on a fine, warm  “Indian summer” (бабье лето) day, and the water was calm.

Even the smokestacks of the factory over there on the right add to the beauty, and to that story that the Siberian clouds have been telling us throughout our journey.

For citizens of Krasnoyarsk the most important part in Chekhov’s travel notes comes when Chekhov calls their town “the best and most beautiful of all Siberian cities.”  Krasnoyarsk respects and loves the Yenisei, and has

lined its bank with a great long promenade complete with trees, walking paths, park benches, and various attractions. I came here with Natalya Kovtun, Professor and Doctor of Philology at Astafiev Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University, and author of books and articles about Russian literature, socio-cultural mythology, utopia, and village prose. These topics, not to mention Dostoevsky and Chekhov (of course) kept us in animated conversation until we reached this high viewing platform.

At which point the mighty river commanded us to be still.

The Yenisei’s spell is so strong that we neglected to turn around (except for this photo). If we had, we might have spotted my quarry: a monument to Chekhov! He occupies a place of honor on the square in front of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theater. I attest that I did breathe the air near the  monument, but ultimately had to steal this photo from the internet:

Now I might be just making this up, but it seems to me that this Chekhov is presented in the Siberian monument mode of Explorer and Conqueror. Anton Pavlovich leans into the wind, which blows his tie picturesquely to the side; it is the same wind that churned those Yenesei waves just a few moments ago. We have seen this heroic style, for example, with Ermak of Tobolsk, or, dare I say, with this very Lenin, whom we saw a couple of posts ago

(or a couple of hours ago here in Krasnoyarsk, a few blocks back into town from the river, on the other side of Gorky Park, or, in fact, in many other cities across the land),

or even the triumphant Dostoevsky, whom Sergei, Nastya and I saw at the moment of his release from the Omsk fortress. (There’s even a tinge of Sir Walter Raleigh, from my neck of the woods.) This particular Chekhov offers quite a contrast to his barefooted Tomsk version.  Which is OK; there are many Chekhovs, and many ways of viewing (and reading) him. Let Krasnoyarsk have this Chekhov. And since Chekhov is my role model, let me, too, stand up straighter, flip my scarf to one side and make a half-turn into the wind.

However you read the Krasnoyarsk Chekhov, it’s pretty impressive he left such a strong mark, given that he spent just one day here (just slightly less than I did). He did not conquer the river, or occupy the territory for Russia, or defend the city against attackers; basically he just passed through–and wrote some things down.

But that was enough. It brought me here, after all.

A stroll around the Krasnoyarsk leads you to treasures such as these majestic wooden buildings, which are nestled into the modern cityscape:

Remembering Tomsk, you indulge in a momentary fantasy, dismantling the modern concrete buildings that surround these beauties, and reconstructing in your mind whole rows of them. Many are, rather, were, part of households, which include outbuildings–sheds, barns, a bathhouse–gathered in cozy, fenced-in courtyards. The estate of  the artist Surikov, whose museum you can visit here (as I mentioned in Tobolsk…), gives a good impression of what that way of life was like.

On my second day in Krasnoyarsk, at the invitation of senior instructor Oksana Tolstonozhenko I participated in a public discussion with literature and journalism students (“Russian Classics today: a Meeting and Conversation”)  at Siberian Federal University (Here is their website: http://ifiyak.sfu-kras.ru.  Energetic young instructors, Yulia Ulyankina and Yana Bazhenova had prepared an interactive lesson about the ways pop-culture co-opts

literature for its own purposes (for example, using literary characters as models for certain pathologies). Our short but action-packed discussion reminded me of why we always come back to Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov (and the others) when we realize that our “big questions” about justice and injustice, love and duty cannot be answered.  Yana and Yulia quoted from self-help websites that cite literary characters’ experience (Anna Karenina, Raskolnikov) as cautionary examples.

Until you go deeper, you might find yourself using literary plots as sources of advice as to how you should behave when facing impossible choices. But of course we know that the purpose of great literature is deeper than that. I too am Anna, and I don’t need some social scientist to prove to me what is the right thing to do when I reach the crossroads. Door Number One will plunge me into the depths of hell. Door Number Two will leave me frustrated and self-righteous for the rest of my life. Like I don’t know it’s wrong??

It’s called life. Close your eyes and jump in! Join the rest of humanity! Both choices are right, and both are wrong. Anyway, in here, in the book, you get to spend time with someone whose experience you recognize, and whose suffering you share. That’s tragedy, and sorry, it does not provide easy answers.

Or, hey, take a break and read some comedy. Funny stuff also makes life worth living.

Here in Krasnoyarsk, yet again, I was impressed with the seriousness, professionalism, and passion that our Russian colleagues bring to the classroom.  I learned a lot from Yana and Yulia’s ability to make literature relevant to their students’ daily lives, while stimulating them to think critically and deeply.  This alert crop, I learned, contains some budding authors–possibly a new Dostoevsky, or maybe a new Chekhov.  I look forward to seeing their works on the shelves in a few years. And maybe my students back in the US will translate them. Bring it on.

The front row is flanked by, on the right, foreign literature specialist Tatyana Nipa, and on the left,  Russian literature specialist Vladimir Vasiliev, both of them candidates and dotsents.

To my excitement, Vladimir Kirillovich is an expert on one of our blog heroes, the archpriest Avvakum. Duke students take note. This journey of mine is turning out to be, along with everything else, a justification of my own obsession with this crazy Russian genius and his autobiography–itself, like this, a Siberian travelogue. It is always good, when you’re fanatical about something, to find fellow travelers on your journey–or at your stopping points.

I would have enjoyed spending some more time in this very interesting place, but like Chekhov, I had to press on. Yana, Oksana, and a very strong young man and expert Russia driver, Yevgenii,  kindly delivered me to the train station. Like most other Russian drivers I’ve met, Yevgenii prefers to carry your suitcase, rather than rolling it on its wheels. By whatever means, it is a beautiful thing when you don’t have to carry it up all those stairs yourself.

By mid-afternoon, I was speeding eastward through birch forests, flooded meadows, and, when night fell, a black sky teeming with stars, the same ones we never get to see back home in any city.

The thing about exile is that it is far away.

Dostoevsky was sent to Semipalatinsk as a common soldier after his release from the Omsk fortress  on March 2, 1854. The city is now called “Semey,” and it is now in Kazakhstan.  Find Omsk in the map (under the “A” in “Russian Federation”) and slide down to the southeast until you see the second little red airplane. Like Omsk and other key locations on our journey, Semipalatinsk is on the Irtysh River.

Outside Dostoevsky circles, Semipalatinsk is best-known as a nuclear weapons testing facility, and the location of the first Soviet nuclear bomb test in 1949. For us Dostoevsky fanatics, though, its key attraction is its Dostoevsky Museum (https://www.fedordostoevsky.ru/museums/semipalatinsk/. In normal circumstances (whatever that means), this would put the town squarely on my itinerary.  But not only do you need to veer wildly off the main route (whatever that is); you also have to get a visa to enter Kazakhstan. I am not proud of this, but I chickened out.

Instead, I decide to follow a love story.

This means a significant detour from the Trans-Siberian, also, I might say, not for the chicken-hearted, to the city of Novokuznetsk (formerly Stalinsk, and before that, Kuznetsk).  A nice straight line would take me from Novosibirsk to Krasnoyarsk. But down to Novokuznetsk it is quite the zig-zag: a night train from Novosibirsk, a few hours in Novokuznetsk, and then  back on the next night train to Novosibirsk. Seems arduous, but compared with Dostoevsky’s travel from Semipalatinsk to Kuznetsk by dusty horse carriage, it’s nothing.

Your train arrives at 6:00 am.  Too early for breakfast. You’ve figured, OK, let’s get oriented and find the museum, then we can sit and have some coffee nearby for a couple of hours before our date with the muzeishchiki after the museum opens at 11:00.

There’s plenty of time, so why not walk? A half-hour on the hoof down a long, chilly, gray avenue makes it clear that Novokuznetsk is larger in reality than it seemed to be on the map.  So you subject your cell phone to a vicious beating, and then set to learning about public transit. It’s not that hard, really.

Personally, I love transit systems that include conductors who take coins and can answer questions.

Eventually, after a very long spell of gazing out the window at the broad gray avenues of Novokuznetsk (a landscape ominously devoid of eating establishments), I am deposited near this church.  Turn your back to it and look across the street:

Progress! Now for that coffee, a muffin, a dose of wi-fi, the New York Times on my iPad, a nice little dip into the WC….

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

There are some industrial facilities, a couple of storage lots, a bit of what could be called traffic at 7:30 a.m. (trucks, and and a couple of guys walking on the side of the road in weathered work clothes, carrying what appear to be lunch bags). A car or two. The barking of invisible dogs.

It dawns on me that there will not be coffee, or food. Nor will there be even a place to sit down, for it is muddy on Dostoevsky Street. I try not to think about what I must look like to the natives, train-disheveled, bespectacled, bewildered, scowling at my cell phone.

One good thing; my (OK, all right, our) navigation is good:

Looks pretty closed up–after all, it is 8:00 on a Saturday morning.  Three hours to opening. I could kind of lean on the wall for a couple of those hours, I guess. Or do a Dmitry Karamazov.

I choose the latter. Right about where you see my big-city gray bag hanging on the palings, I make my move. A person of my age and dignity level really shouldn’t be clambering, but after some huffing and puffing and a couple of snags, it works. I’m in!

I dust myself off, neaten things up on my person, prowl the yard, and reconnoiter.

Footsteps…

A man walks through the gate. It was not locked.

It is Alexander Evgenievich. Alexander Evgenievich is the night guard.  He does not shoot me. Instead he gently walks me into the (unlocked) door of the museum and introduces me to Olga, who is sitting quietly there behind the reception desk. He says to Olga, “feed her.”

Olga doesn’t seem to notice my bedraggled state, nor the fact that I have just broken into the Dostoevsky Museum. She takes me by the hand and walks me to her cozy house down the street. Oladi, fresh ham, vegetables, and hot tea magically appear. I have fallen down the rabbit hole. Time, which 15 minutes ago was a terrible burden, opens up infinite possibilities at the place Russia does best: the kitchen table.

Once calm has been restored, and we have shared life experiences, and I have savored this sublime breakfast, Olga walks me back to the Museum.

There she hands me over tenderly to the museum’s Deputy Director for Research Elena Dmitrievna Trukhan, who takes me through a couple of special exhibits in the main building. One of these displays artifacts and photographs of theatrical productions of Dostoevsky’s work done here by visiting directors. I am lucky to catch the exhibit, which is to be taken down TODAY. Even better, I meet the photographer, Vladimir Semyonovich Pilipenko, a kind and very alert observer who has traveled all over Russia taking pictures. He’s not about to stop today. Indeed, Vladimir Semyonovich’s photos will soon appear in a report about our day together with Elena Dmitrievna at the museum. http://dom-dostoevskogo.ru/novosti/vizit-prezidenta-mezhdunarodnogo-obshhestva-dostoevskogo.html

The other exhibit is a charming collection of children’s art inspired by the great children’s writer and poet Kornei Chukovsky.

The children have done collages and paper sculptures of Chukovsky characters. Here, as elsewhere on my travels, I’m deeply impressed with the Russian emphasis on arts education, and with the ways museums are reaching out to children, not just as places where they can learn about famous people, places and events, but where they can interact with history and literature, and, importantly, create art themselves.

Yes, science is important. Art is equally important, and you need it for your soul.

Dostoevsky made three trips to (pre Novo-) Kuznetsk, spending a total of 22 days here, all in pursuit, and finally conquest, of Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, whom he married in Kuznetsk in February of 1857. He had met her previously in Semipalatinsk, before her husband was transferred here. Then her husband died here….

1st visit: 2 days in June 1856: during this first visit to Kuznetsk, Dostoevsky learned that he had a rival for her hand (Nikolai Vergunov);

2nd visit: 5 days in November 1856: having received his promotion to the rank of ensign (praporshchik)– he came to make an official proposal of marriage to Maria Dmitrevna;

3d visit: 15 days in January-February 1857: during this visit he married Maria Dmitrievna in the Odigitrievskaya Church, and spent the first days of his married life before returning with her and her son to Semipalatinsk.

Just down Dostoevsky Street from the museum’s main building, you can visit the house of the tailor Dmitriev, where Maria and her first husband Alexander Isaev rented a room.  Wonder what she would have thought if she could have known her house was going to be on Dostoevsky Street? Wonder if anyone thought of naming it Maria Dmitrievna Street?

After posing this question, I received a fascinating answer from Elena Dmitrievna. Turns out, since the house technically did not belong to Dostoevsky, for years officials refused to allow a museum to be opened here. Only with the devoted efforts of local enthusiasts, with the support of the Dostoevsky Museum in Moscow, not to mention the sheer force of historical memory, did the museum finally open in 1980. The curious can read the full story here:

«Додумались» (в плохом смысле) чиновники, работающие в культуре. Очень долгое время они не давали открыть музей Достоевского в Новокузнецке, всячески препятствовали этому, называя дом не «Домиком Достоевского», как зовут сейчас его жители Новокузнецка, а Домом Исаевой, Домом портного Дмитриева. Их аргумент был «железным» и непробиваемым: «Не в каждом доме, где у писателя случился роман, надо открывать музеи».

Такой узкий краеведческий подход к событию (без культурного и литературного контекста) сделал своё грустное дело: открыть музей в Новокузнецке удалось только в 1980 году – то есть спустя 130 лет (!!!) после событий в Кузнецке.   Вообще удивительно, как это удалось сделать! Если бы не помощь руководства музея Достоевского в Москве, если бы не местные энтузиасты-краеведы Новокузнецка, если бы не человеческая память, этого бы вовсе не случилось.   И тогда еще одно место, связанное с жизнью Достоевского в Сибири, навсегда было утрачено.

Anyway, the house–the museum–is beautiful.

Elena takes me through the house. It is not an ordinary museum; rather it offers a kind of adventure, a three-dimensional experience or even performance that loops in the story of Dostoevsky’s courtship of Maria with the larger story of the way his time with her influenced his writing. Novokuznetsk is a Dostoevsky city because of Maria’s story. Elena tells me this story, leading me from room to room. Vladimir Semyonovich is with us.

The diorama shows what Kuznetsk looked like when Maria lived here. The different rooms each offer a

part of her story, display documents and artifacts related to her relationship with Dostoevsky, and offer connections to his works. Here, for example, are copies of documents registering witnesses to their wedding ceremony, and Dostoevsky’s own scrawled lists of wedding expenses he had to cover. Elena is an active scholar herself, and works in archives to fill out the pictures relating to these years. For example, she found a document recording that Maria Dmitrievna had served as godmother of a baby (of the local citizen Petr Sapozhnikov) during her time in Kuznetsk. And, it turns out (as other scholars discovered), Maria Dmitrievna served as godmother to another child in that family AFTER her marriage. So the question stands; did Maria Dmitrievna and her husband (?!) make another visit to Kuznetsk?! The research continues.

The displays remind us of the ways Dostoevsky drew upon Maria Dmitrievna’s personality when creating characters such as Crime and Punishment‘s Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova, and even Nastasia Filippovna of The Idiot. I take a quiet minute to ponder what it is, anyway, that writers do with life experience… Back in the museum, Dostoevsky’s famous meditation on the impossibilty of shedding the ego–written by his wife’s deathbed–“Masha is lying on the table,” is exhibited here on the wall.

    .

One emerges from the museum full of impressions and thoughts about what life was like for Maria, and about why this person, time, and place were so formative for Dostoevsky’s life and works.

Elena then walks me around Novokuznetsk, to buildings that were standing during Dostoevsky’s time,   

and to the town’s major attraction, the hilltop fortress, which in addition to its historical value, offers a beautiful view over Novokuznetsk:

We visit a newly renovated church (glimpsed in the photo above), and a newly built chapel by the train station.

Tolstoy fans will appreciate the fact that Valentin Bulgakov, the writer’s secretary during the last year of his life, was from Kuznetsk. The name is familiar to anyone who saw the recent movie about Tolstoy’s last year, The Last Station, which draws on Bulgakov’s memoirs. On a longer visit I’d definitely visit the district school where Bulgakov’s father served as inspector–now a branch of the Novokuznetsk Ethnography Museum. Elena shows me the monument to him and Tolstoy: “Teacher and Student” (Учитель и ученик).

But let us not get distracted. Check out the Novokuznetsk Dostoevsky Museum’s website and many activities, including a virtual tour of an earlier iteration of the museum. And recently specialists in 3D graphics have produced a new virtual visit to the museum’s permanent exhibit, “A Guide to Novokuznetsk”: read about it here: http://www.dom-dostoevskogo.ru/novosti/3d-dostoevskij.html

Here’s the actual tour: http://vrkuzbass.ru/muz/nvkz/fmd/

And more! Check them out:

http://www.museum.ru/M1875

http://eng.md.spb.ru/dostoevskij/drugie_muzei_pisatelya/kuzneck/

https://www.fedordostoevsky.ru/museums/novokuznetsk/

http://dom-dostoevskogo.ru/muzei_dostoevsk/index.html

Take my word for it, Novokuznetsk has a lot to offer, and not just to Dostoevsky fanatics like me.

I am nurtured, mind, body and soul. But I cannot stay….there is a train to catch.