Teffi (IV) — Memories From Moscow to the Black Sea
Teffi (1871 – 1952) was the pen name for Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, a poet, playwright, novelist, and generally well-known cultural figure, born in St. Petersburg in the Russian Imperial Empire. In the early aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, she embarked upon a journey to Odesa by ship, seeking to escape the post-apocalyptic climate of the post-revolutionary world, and intensifying suppression of cultural and political freedoms. Memories is an autobiographical account of Teffi’s departure from Russia – a journey from which she would never return.
Excerpt:
Hustle, bustle, much whispering. The strange whispering that, along with a constant looking back over the shoulder, had accompanied all our arrivals and departures as we slid down the map, down the huge green map across which, slantwise, was written The Russian Empire.
Yes, everyone is whispering; everyone is looking back over their shoulder. Everyone is frightened, constantly frightened, and not until their dying day will they find peace, will they come to their senses. Amen.
The steamer shudders, whipping up white foam with its propeller, spreading black smoke over the shoreline.
And slowly, softly, the land slips away from us.
Don’t look at it. You must look ahead, into the wide, free expanse of blue.
But somehow the head turns back. Eyes are opening wide and they keep looking, looking . . .
And everyone is silent. Except for one woman. From the lower deck comes the sound of long, obstinate wails, interspersed with words of lament.
Where have I heard such wails before? Yes. I remember. During the first year of the war. A gray-haired old woman was being taken down the street in a horse-drawn cab. Her hat had slipped back onto the nape of her neck. “Her yellow cheeks were thin and drawn. Her toothless black mouth was hanging open, crying out in a long tearless wail: “A-a-a-a-a!” Probably embarrassed by the disgraceful behaviour of his passenger, the driver was urging his poor horse forward, whipping her on.
Yes, my good man, you didn’t think enough about whom you were picking up in your cab. And now you’re stuck with this old woman. A terrible, black, tearless wail. A last wail. Over all of Russia, the whole of Russia . . . No stopping now . . .
The steamer shudders, spreading black smoke.
With my eyes now open so wide that the cold penetrates deep into them, I keep on looking. And I shall not move away. I’ve broken my vow, I’ve looked back. And, like Lot’s wife, I am frozen. I have turned into a pillar of salt forever, and I shall forever go on looking, seeing my own land slip softly, slowly away from me.
Explanation:
Russian author Teffi’s Memories (released as a serialized publication between 1928 – 1930) explores the Black Sea (and its coastal borders) in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution – an event that altered the course of human history and was responsible for unquantifiable suffering and dislocation. Teffi reflects interestingly upon the form and force of the Black Sea waters – presented often, as she flees her Russian homeland by steamship, through a lens of the divine or supernatural, or as a deliverance of earthly retribution for the sins and cruelties of the human world. Across each excerpt, she ruminates upon a maritime existence of total detachment, or release from the apocalyptic confines of the shore. The sea functions broadly as a powerful and multi-faceted metaphor – illuminating volatile experiences of change, the inevitable progression of time, and sense of cruel indifference, on the part of the natural world, to human affairs.
Citation: Teffi. Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea. Trans. Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg, introduction by Edythe Haber, New York Review Books, 2016, pp. 270-271.