Books: Memories by Teffi

 I finished this book last week, but I've only just got round to writing this post. Teffi  was a renowned Russian satirist,  and perhaps Russia's most prominent female writer. She was admired by both the Tsar and Lenin (at least for a time). Her sympathies were Leftist, and she wrote for the Bolshevik's newspaper for a time, before Lenin sacked all those who were not Party members. Her view of Bolshevism rapidly deteriorated, and she was reported to have said, 'Who will save socialism from this garbage?'

Memories is her account of her flight from Russia, a move promoted by the arrest of an actress for publicly reciting some of Teffi's work. She travelled to Kiev, then to Odessa, then to Novorossiisk, before eventually settling in Paris. The style of the book is largely satirical, pointing out the absurdities of refugee life. In this respect it is reminiscent of Dead Souls by Gogol, in which the reader is taken on a journey and presented with numerous satirical snapshots, as it were, of characters from all walks of life. This gives everything a somewhat surreal aspect, and at points makes one doubt the veracity of the autobiography; why does Gooskin seem so much like the Bard from Mayakovsky's Bedbug? Can he really have talked his way out of all these jams and scrapes?

The lightness of tone has a very disconcerting effect, since almost everyone Teffi meets or mentions in the book either ends up dead, or betraying someone or something. For example, she notes that a man who swore he would avenge his brother's murder by slaughtering seven Bolsheviks was later to be found working contentedly as a Party functionary. The lightness of tone, the cosy familiarity of the register, and the little puns and word plays, are excellently rendered in the translation. I should also say that the explanatory end notes are wonderful.

The disconcerting effect I expect is deliberate. However, occasionally light touch is dropped in favour on genuine, grim, exactitude. At the border town where they are stranded for a few days, Teffi describes hearing the sound of an unknown man being taken out a night and shot by the Bolsheviks behind the house where she was staying. The next day she saw local dogs devouring the corpse. At the end of her account, Teffi climbs the hill on the outskirts of Novorossiisk, where there stood a gallows on which her friend, the anarchist Ksenya Goldberg, had been executed by the White army. Teffi stands and tries to imagine her friend's last moments. These parts I find more emotionally powerful than the rather affected satire of the rest of the book.

That isn't to say that the satire isn't effective. There are some very funny lines, and the sense of farce amid the frightening circumstances is also good, almost existentialist. As I have said it sometimes seems a little contrived, and unnecessarily slows the narrative at some points. Like all Russian books, it has some very quotable and profound lines. My personal favourite being, 'A jokes ceases to be funny when you're living inside it. Then it becomes tragic.'

And that line, I think, is the essence of the book.