The Enchanted Wanderer: And Other Stories (Vintage Classics)

Of the great Russian prose writers of the 19th century, Nikolai Leskov was an outsider. He was not a member of the gentry, he lacked a privileged education, and he wrote about common serfs and the country clergy in their own language. He managed to alienate both the left and right wings of the Russian intelligentsia early in his career, and though his work was popular, critics dismissed it. His work was capable of great darkness and brutal cynicism, but it lacks the angst, romantic and existential, present in so much other prose of the time. And Leskov himself was confused enough as to his own strengths that he said that his brilliant storytelling abilities would be forgotten in favor of his ideas, when, in fact, his legacy lies in the unique qualities of his stories, which are hilarious, unpredictable, surreal, and often baffling.His best-known story, "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (1865, later adapted into an opera by Shostakovich), is a blueprint for Leskov's narrative strangeness. It tells of the sad, passionate Katerina and the wretched rake Sergey, who seduces her and leads her to murder her husband and father-in-law. The story is most remarkable for a technique which Leskov would repeatedly use: an extended epilogue taking the story beyond its logical endpoint. When the two are found out and hauled off to prison for murder, things seem to be at a close, justice has been done, etc. But no, Katerina is still happy as the two join the same party of convicts going to Siberia, until she catches the sleazy Sergey with another woman, whereupon Katerina kills the other woman but dies in the process.Leskov's subsequent work varies wildly in tone and content, but across it all, Leskov's characters are pretty much who they appear to be. It is rare for them to reveal hidden depths, even rarer to have epiphanies. The messiness arises instead from the placement of these simple characters in a variety of situations in which their essential character demonstrates itself in unexpected ways, contorting the plot out of typically expedient narrative shapes. Leskov claimed a greater connection with the lower classes than other writers, and even when he satirizes them, he is never condescending and takes their lives very seriously. Though his stories are sometimes rich with plot to an absurd extent, the plot is placed at the service of the character.The brilliant The Enchanted Wanderer (1874), the greatest piece by Leskov I have read, confounds every moral generalization that could be placed on it. Passengers on a boat listen to a long tale from a monk, Ivan, who is a bit of a holy fool, though not so holy and not so foolish. Ivan is a simple, large man who recounts his journey to the clergy. The story careens through one adventure after another, frequently taking hairpin turns over the course of a few sentences.Ivan's demeanor seems to forestall traditional conflict and character development, and this dictates the apparent haphazardness of the plot. Leskov's aim seems to have been to set him against a series of the craziest adventures he could think of and see how this queer stoic handles them. He has a series of principles that he obeys-patriotism, love, and bravery-but he doesn't articulate them except offhandedly.If anything, the lesson Leskov teaches in The Enchanted Wanderer is one of humility, to defy any attempt to draw a simple moral out of a story. In this he resembles a gentler Kleist, and The Enchanted Wanderer deserves to sit alongside Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas as one of the great, chaotic novels of the 19th century.Leskov is notoriously hard to translate and Pevear and Volokhonsky do as good a job as any I've read. I'm sorry that they didn't make space for a few of my favorite Leskov stories like The Amazon and The March Hare, which are only available in out of print collections of varying translation quality. But the presence of The Enchanted Wanderer, Lefty, the Sealed Angel, and others make this one of the greatest collections of stories published this year (or any year).(I have written a longer overview of Nikolai Leskov for the Quarterly Conversation, available on the web, which goes into Leskov's themes in greater depth.)

I was only recently made aware of Leskov. A contemporary of the "Big Three" Russian writers -- Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev -- and cited as an influence by Chekhov, Leskov remains little known outside of academia, yet this collection demonstrates that his work deserves a place amongst the true greats of Russian literature.Leskov has been described as a Russian Mark Twain, and I think this is true to some extent. His flair for anecdote, dry sense of humor, and knack for capturing everyday speech all invite such a comparison, and his stories are as quintessentially Russian as Clemens's are American. But while Clemens seems to focus his insights primarily on the social issues of his time, Leskov takes a more philosophical approach, inviting his readers to reflect on larger questions of human existence.The seventeen (!) stories in this volume take the reader on a whirlwind tour of 19th century Russian life, touching on topics such as the place of women in Russian society, the power of religious belief, the effects of serfdom on the serfs and their masters, the nature of spirits, and, above all, the question of what truly defines a Russian man or woman. The stories are told with honesty and compassion, taking an unflinching look at some of the darker aspects of Russian society, yet always managing to capture the incredible resilience of the human spirit and the power of good against the evils in life. But there are few places where Leskov explicitly makes clear his opinions, preferring instead to let the reader glean what they may from the stories themselves. These are true icebergs of stories, concealing at least as much beneath the surface as is immediately visible. This is not to say a casual reader won't enjoy these stories -- in fact, they are incredibly readable and enjoyable -- but for those who like to dig deeper there is much to find here.Stylistically, Leskov is tremendously original and engaging, even in translation. Many of the stories are structured in a deliberately un-literary way, more like someone recounting a tale out loud than a written work. (Indeed, several of the stories are framed by just such a storytelling context.) This gives the stories a certain unpredictability and excitement, leaving the reader never certain of where the narrative is going to go next.The collection contains the following short stories and novellas: The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Sealed Angel, The Enchanted Wanderer, Singlemind, The Devil-Chase, Deathless Golovan, The White Eagle, A Flaming Patriot, Lefty, The Spirit of Madame de Genlis, The Toupee Artist, The Voice of Nature, A Little Mistake, The Pearl Necklace, The Spook, The Man on Watch, and A Robbery.A note on the translation. Some have compared Pevear and Volokhonsky's translations of some of the stories unfavorably with others available, but not having read the alternatives I can't comment. I will say that in comparison to other translations by P&V, this one seems a little less polished, but it makes up for it by the number and variety of stories contained within this single volume. Well worth a read!

I read a review in the TLS of two translations of Nickolai Levsky's The Enchanted Wanderer.  The Enchanted Wanderer: and Other Stories  (The TLS review was written A. N. Wilson and entitled "Chekhov's less famous master." It appeared in the 15 May 2013 issue. you can easily find it for free by googling this information.) I have to agree with the reviewer that the Ian Dreiblatt translation is far superior to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky 's. The Dreiblatt translation is hilarious (when it is supposed to be hilarious).  The Enchanted Wanderer (The Art of the Novella)  The humor and general rawness and immediacy of Dreiblatt's rendering does just not come across in P and V's rather stilted rendering. Dreiblatt knows how to use the same word to set up a joke. See the repetition of "fake" passport in chapter five, for example. Dreiblatt sets up "fake" as the punchline ("it's just that it was fake"). Peaver and V first use "illegal" and then "false," totally spoiling the effect. And whoever heard of a "false" passport? "Fake" is clearly the correct word. Similar examples could easily be multiplied. I am happy to have both translation as the the P and V is not only a handsome and inexpensive hardcover but contains many other wonderful stories and novellas by Leskov as well. I am baffled by the relative poverty of imagination in the P and V translation. I am amazed by the amount of effort and energy that went into their translation, and I am grateful that they did it. Both are obviously brilliant scholars. Somehow, they don't seem to have an ear for English, or at least not for the kind of English that would best suit Leskov..

brilliant and brilliantly translated -- in his own way up there with dostoyevsky & tolstoy

prompt and correct