A Double Life

We all know the names of those great 19thC Russian authors, even if we haven't read any of their works. Their names are part of our cultural zeitgeist. They're all men, though! So I was delighted to discover that there were women authors working in 19thC Russia, too - and rather less than delighted to learn that their names and their work have been suppressed.

Karolina Pavlova is one of those women authors, and I very much enjoyed reading her novel A Double Life (1848), translated by Barbara Heldt (1978). I found the novel very accessible and easy to read - in fact I read it twice in succession in order to appreciate better its depths. It's not half so daunting as some of the other Russian masterpieces can seem! And there are aspects of the story and the characters that we readers of English literature will find familiar.

Pavlova is as clear-sighted as Jane Austen, for instance, and the novel considers similar subject matter to Austen - specifically, the very limited options available to a gentleman's daughter, and the many ways in which the one choice they're allowed in life can often go very wrong. Though I must say that the manipulative mothers of Cecily and her friend Olga make Mrs Bennet look like a lovable goodhearted blunderer!

Cecily has been repressed and stunted into nothing more than a marriageable young woman, but at night her true nature reveals itself as she dreams in poetry. This reminded me in some ways of the character Katharine in Virginia Woolf's Night and Day, who pours tea for her mother's "at homes" in the afternoon, and works secretly on mathematics in her room at night. Cecily isn't conscious yet of her true nature, but she does start growing into more self-awareness as the story progresses.

I can't really talk about how the story ends without spoilers, but I will note that Austen and Woolf were working within a more optimistic worldview than we tend to expect from Russian novels. So there is plenty in here that we will find familiar, but it doesn't necessarily play out as we might wish.

Meanwhile, there are some terrific observations and clever wordplay to delight in along the way, such as a gentleman making a remark "with an unbearably meaningful laugh". Ugh! But what a clever way to convey his insinuation! Then there's the ironic "well-lighted and enlightened drawing room". And Cecily, of course, "so used to wearing her mind in a corset". Brilliant stuff.

Recommended for anyone interested in 19thC literature. You really can't go wrong!

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The publisher kindly gave me an ARC of this book via NetGalley. The views expressed are my own, and are (always) still evolving.

My quest to respond with the opinion of the average reader found on the average street to these high-falutin' Russian translations from this publishing house continues… This is a great academic volume for those who might have an interest in this piece, with an introduction from the lady that translated it in the 1970s, and an afterword by a more modern author. It itself is an interesting piece – who knew how comedies of manner and society would have leapt from Bath and Austen to Moscow and Pavlova in the 1840s? But to the regular reader this piece is not quite as great as it needed to be. I think I was on side with the young woman, complete with her burgeoning love for men and poetry and all that the adult world might entail, but I didn't find the telling of her tale completely to my taste. I never once enjoyed Austen, so perhaps I'm the wrong audience for this none-more-arch look at upper class life, with a Deb of her day getting engaged. What was certainly fun was the way the machinations of the engagement were played out elsewhere, and that really is universal. But the core of the piece, where the poetic spirit tries to dissuade the woman from expecting true happiness, was more than a bit too woolly. In presenting it as bland blank verse (and allegedly poetic dialogue) it really doesn't help the general browser get charmed by this 'double life', and that's a shame, for the way the muse of poetry was supposed to be an alternative for our heroine was both vital to the piece, and autobiographical for our author. Still, if you enjoy Austenesque tales of young women trying to requite their beaux and their destinies, this is certainly worth looking at.

A Double Life
by Karolina Pavlova
Translated from Russian by Barbara Heldt
2019
Columbia University Press
4.5 / 5.0

#netgalley. #RussianLibrary

Cecile Alexandrovna, a refined and well behaved daughter, in Moscow, is tired of the social structures of aristocratic society. She dreams of finding a good man, rather than a rich one. Her mother, Vera, wants her to marry the wealthy Prince Victor. She believes he is the only one that's perfect for her daughter.
However, Ceciles good friend, Olga, wants to marry Prince Victor, and begins to set Ceciles and Dmitry together, so Victor will be available for her.
Cecile does not know Olga is setting up the romance and believes Dmitry is falling in love with her, and marries him......
Pavlova originally wrote the Classic of Russian Literature in 1848. It is being published this year in the USA, and its premise is so perfect for the times we are living through. This is a work of wit and depth, originally written to show the duality of women in society and the mores of aristocratic society. This story will stay with you, the emotional range done precisely and masterfully. Herxwords are perfected crafted for this novel. Its fantastic.

Thanks to the publisher, author and netgalley for this e- book ARC for review.

This is marvellous – oh, I’m so glad it came into my life.

This book is an even more cutting Jane Austen set in 1800s Russia.

If I’m being honest, the least compelling part for me is the poetry, but poetry is just not my thing. That being said, it is lovely poetry and the combination of prose and verse in each chapter is really effective. Each chapter follows Cecily, our ingénue protagonist, during a day of her youth and courtship and engagement [as well as the days of those surrounding her (with all their deviant machinations regarding the young lady)]… and then concludes in poetry which comes to Cecily in her dreams. The poetry is dreamy and melancholy and lovely while the prose is <b>pure sass</b>, seriously Pavlova knew how to write a barb. It is needle sharp. The contrast between the two is dissonant, but compelling. I think it speaks to the tension between Cecily's experience and worldview and her (to use an expression the author would be more comfortable with than I am) 'artistic soul'.

The Introduction and Afterword add some much needed scholarly context for the story and the author. I don’t think Pavlova is as well known as she should be with stories like this!

A dutiful daughter

Written in 1848, A Double Life voices sharp observations on the mentality, attitudes and morals in Russian high society with regard to marriage and the position of women in a patriarchal society. The story revolves around Cecily von Lindenborn, a eighteen year old naïve, dreamy and romantic young woman who becomes the object of marriage plotting – Cecily’s best friend Olga together with Olga’s mother cunningly will trap the ingénue (and her parents) into a to Cecily not so favourable marriage with a spineless (and worse, not rich!) man– to have her out of the way as a rival for Olga, who hopes to seize a far better match, the wealthy Prince Victor.

Each of the ten chapters of the novel is structured along ‘the double life’ of Cecily – the events taking place during conventional, brainless and banal society life at daytime (balls, dresses, jewels, carriages, tea-drinking) are recounted in prose and are followed by oneiric, poetical almost mystic outbursts closing the day, dreamlike sequences expressed in verses musing on nature, the moon and the soul when Cecily is alone and touched by the ‘melodious thoughts’ and ‘improper delights’ of the muse (Pavlova was mostly a poet; A Double life is her only novel). The juxtaposition of the prose and the poetry structuring the novel by symbolising the stark contrast between Cecily’s outer and inner life is intriguing, but also slows down the pace of the story and as I cannot say the lofty Romanticism of the poetry enthralled me, I had to withhold myself from rushing through those parts.

As this was the first work of a female Russian author from the 19th century I have come across so far, I was curious to get a glimpse on this period from a Russian woman’s perspective. As a story, A double Life didn’t captivate me much. In my humble opinion, it is interesting to read as a proto-feminist manifesto denouncing in a satirical, almost vitriolic way both the hypocrisy and pretence of the aristocratic class (which Pavlova makes obvious by the frequent use of the word ‘lies’) and their insensitivity to art and poetry as the blatant injustice to deny young women a more proper upbringing and the freedom to live a fulfilling life instead of just preparing them for marriage. Pavlova criticizes how women are turned into docile domestic geese who are merely destined to be ornaments for potential husbands and who, once they have become mothers themselves, don’t know any better than to repeat the same patterns with their own daughters all over again and so essentially sustain patriarchal society – a vicious circle of narrow-mindedness which is also manifest in an indifference to art and poetry:

Although Vera Vladimirovna greatly respected and loved poetry, she still considered it improper for a young girl to spend too much of her time on it. She quite justly feared any development of imagination and inspiration, those eternal enemies of propriety. She molded the spiritual gifts of her daughter so carefully that Cecily, instead of dreaming of the Marquis Poza, of Egmont, of Lara and the like, could only dream of a splendid ball, a new gown, and the outdoor fete on the first of May.

Because of the marriage plotting and the revolting manipulations in that respect of Olga’s cunning mother, I was reminded of the scheming of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan and particularly of the villainous Lady Susan’s plan to marry off her poor daughter to some (rich) nitwit – but where Austen’s sarcasm and irony made me laugh, Pavlova’s razor-sharp wit leaves mostly a bitter and pessimistic aftertaste (which sadly seem to reflect her own experiences).

Pavlova choses hyperboles, repetition and sweeping statements rather than subtlety to vent her obvious anger and indignation. The contrast between the angelic, refined, hypersensitive femininity of Cecily and the almost caricatural depiction of crude masculine boorishness, weakness and flaws (particularly Cecily’s future husband, Dmitry Ivachinsky is mercilessly bestowed with sins - Suggestible! Gambling! Drinking! Debauchery! Double-faced!) annoyed me rather than fuelling my sympathy for her. Even if Cecily is facing a bleak future, the way Karolina Pavlova portrayed her and her sad situation weren’t able to move me much, such unlike the very few lines in which Dostoevsky evoked a young Russian woman’s deplorable situation with regard to marriage in the poignant ending of his The Christmas Tree and the Wedding.
Both the introduction from the translator (Barbara Heldt) and the afterword are greatly worth reading and enlightening, as these texts situate Karolina Pavlova’s life (1807-1893) and work among her Russian contemporaries and discuss her vocation as a woman poet in 19th century Russia, her work as a translator (she knew eight languages), the literary salon she held and the reception of her work by her male counterparts and critics (a lot of scorn and ridicule were her part). As some of the autobiographical elements are candidly echoed in this novel (Pavlova’s – née Karolina Karlovna Jaenisch - partly German descent, her disastrous marriage) I’d nevertheless wished I had steered clear from the preface and had read the novella first, as it added a layer of resentment and a veering to self-pity to the story that rather stimulated a dislike of the author’s (apparently theatrical) personality than winning sympathy for poor Cecily’s fate.

Now, at eighteen, Cecily was so used to wearing her mind in a corset that she felt it no more than a silk undergarment that she took off only at night.

However understandable Karolina Pavlova’s anger about the constraints of a woman’s life at that time, I was reminded of what Virginia Woolf wrote about Charlotte Brontë (in A Room of One's Own):

That is an awkward break, I thought. It is upsetting to come upon Grace Poole all of a sudden. The continuity is disturbed. One might say, I continued, laying the book down beside Pride and Prejudice, that the woman who wrote those pages had more genius in her than Jane Austen; but if one reads them over and marks that jerk in them, that indignation, one sees that she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire. Her books will be deformed and twisted. She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters. She is at war with her lot. (…) Now, in the passages I have quoted from Jane Eyre, it is clear that anger was tampering with the integrity of Charlotte Brontë the novelist. She left her story, to which her entire devotion was due, to attend to some personal grievance. She remembered that she had been starved of her proper due of experience—she had been made to stagnate in a parsonage mending stockings when she wanted to wander free over the world. Her imagination swerved from indignation and we feel it swerve.

Revenge is a dish best served cold and I wonder if both Karolina Pavlova’s searing rage as well as the society she lived in might have encumbered her creativity.

160 years after this novella was published, now a proper education fortunately is open to more people regardless of gender, I wonder if we – men and women alike – could boast we have become so much wiser. Like Cecily, we might not be immune yet from the risk to throw away our lives in the tunnel of love. We don’t have to fear to be forced into the straitjacket of marriage anymore but might still hope and dream of love. Which doesn’t have to be bad thing.

Dreams fly away faster than the years!

What a great job Columbia University Press’s Russian Library series is doing in reintroducing works that have fallen from view. Nowhere is this more welcome in this reissue of Karolina Pavlova’s fascinating short novel A Double Life, a sharp and critical exploration of mid-19th century Russian upper-class life. Anyone with an interest in Russian literature is probably familiar with the male writers of the time, but in fact, it turns out, there were many women writers as well who have been largely written out of literary history. Karolina Pavlova (1807-1893) was very much part of the mid-century literary scene and for some years even held a salon, attended by her contemporary literary luminaries. She was known as a poet and translator but her dedication to her art made her suspect to her male peers, and eventually she left Russia for Germany. Her one novel was, however, well received at the time and I’m delighted to see it reintroduced now. It’s the story of Cecily von Lindenborn, a typical young lady who has had a typically constrained upbringing subject to the societal norms and expectations of her day. Each of the 10 chapters take us through one of her days, filled as they are with visits, balls, tea parties, gossip and matchmaking. But at night, alone in her bedroom, Cecily enters another world in her dreams, a world in which her imagination and creativity can soar free and untrammelled (and this half a century before Freud introduced the idea of the subconscious). With a sharp and acerbic wit, Pavlova attacks the vacuous and meaningless daily round Cecily is caught up in, a much sharper and less subtle wit than Jane Austen is famed for, but just as cutting. Daily life is described in everyday prose, but Cecily’s nights are described in romantic and lyrical poetry. It’s a risky strategy but one I felt succeeded, although I admit to not being personally engaged by the poetry. Overall it’s a compelling novel which examines the positon and education of women at that time and does it with insight and an obvious frustration. The excellent introduction and afterword are essential reading to fully understand the narrative and make for some fascinating reading in themselves. Altogether a must-read for anyone interested in Russian literature, the position of women and social history in general.

I can never resist an elegantly written (or, at least, elegantly translated) comedy of manners, particularly when it is suffused with anger – and it was no different with A Double Life (1978, tr. Barbara Heldt. Original: Двойная жизнь, 1848).

Our protagonist, 18-year-old Cecily von Lindenborn, has been trapped her whole life inside a bubble, under the watchful eye of her controlling mother, Vera Vladimirovna. A good daughter of considerable means and marriageable age, Cecily has been brought up to think that her sole purpose in life is to find a husband. She is “so used to wearing her mind in a corset that she felt it no more than she did the silk undergarment that she took off only at night.”

Her mother has her eyes set on a suitable match with the wealthy Prince Viktor. However, things are not as smooth as Vera would wish, and Cecily’s closest friend, Olga, encouraged by her mother, is also intent on winning the Prince’s heart. To make matters more complicated, Dmitry Ivachinsky, a young gambler with insufficient means, is about to be nudged by Olga’s mother, Madame Valitskaya, to try his luck on Cecily’s naïve heart (thereby leaving Prince Victor open for Olga…). Dmitry “falls in love” with Cecily the minute he hears that she might inherit a considerable amount of money.

We follow this group of rascals through a complicated web of gossip and intrigue, while Pavlova distils all her delicious venom against the false moralism and the double standards of her time.

Her narrowminded upbringing has left our Cecily completely blind to society’s duplicitous machinations, and her mother’s watchful eye has pruned away any promising traces of creativity, individuality, or “any development of imagination and inspiration, those eternal enemies of propriety”.

Even Cecily’s talents have been toned down to the minimal necessary to secure a good (which, to her mother means rich) husband: “Her mother’s lessons and moral teachings were about as useful to her in relation to life as are the endless commentaries of zealous scholars to Shakespeare and Dante. Once you have read them, you can no longer grasp even the clearest and simplest meaning in what the poets have written. Her morals and intellect had been improved as arbitrarily and thoroughly as the pitiful trees in the gardens of Versailles, shamelessly pruned into columns, vases, spheres, and pyramids so that they looked like anything but trees.”

Each chapter describes a day in the closeted life of our protagonist, and ends with a poem, where her unconscious mind seems to be finally given free rein. During the day, we follow her colourless mind to meaningless balls, soirées, and visits; during the night, however, when she is asleep, her mind dazzles us with poetry, as she struggles to break free from the narrow confines of her day.

In her poetic dreams, Cecily’s sleeping mind takes off the undergarment to which she has been brainlessly trained to conform in her waking life: “That prisoner of society’s world, / That sacrifice to vanity, / The blind slave of custom, / That small-souled being isn’t you”, the voice in the poem warns her. “You always turn / My happiness to lies”, the sleeping Cecily seems to be accusing this voice (her muse? herself? her guardian angel?), “You light a ray of thought in me.”

Our protagonist can only experience a sense of freedom when sleeping, when she experiences art, or when she is riding on horseback: “She gave herself over to the joy of riding horseback, to the attractions of this living force, this half-free will that carried her off and that she was guiding.” She is leading a double life of which she is still unconscious: confined in prose during the day, and freed in verse during the night. “You will understand earthly reality / With a maturing soul: / You will buy a dear blessing / At a dear price.”

I like how the book is structured in an interplay of opposing forces: conscious/ unconscious, day/ night, truth/ lie, freedom/ restraint, male/ female. This interplay is suggested both by the novel’s dedication and its epigraph. Pavlova dedicated the book to “You Cecilys unmet by me, / All of you Psyches without wings, / Mute sisters of my soul!”. She framed the book as an offer to them of “One sacred dream mid sinful lies, / In the prison of this narrow life/ Just one brief burst of that other life.” In a similar vein, Pavlova borrowed the opening lines of Byron’s “The Dream” for her epigraph: “Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world, / A boundary between the things misnamed / Death and existence.”

The contrast between two opposing lives (the inner life experienced during the night, and the public life during the day) also plays into the idea that some real core feature is being left in the dark, while a superficial role is played in daylight, so as to please an audience. The contrast also hints at society’s duplicity and double standards, as well as to a woman artist’s double life – confined to the domestic sphere, but craving for a public voice.

In Cecily’s world, women are not expected to be more than a fancy piece of decoration. In one scene, a man gets alarmed when a woman speaks, “not having expected the unseemly retort from this living piece of furniture.” Our protagonist has been trained to think that a woman with a gift is a cursed woman: “She knew that there were even women poets, but this was always presented to her as the most pitiable, abnormal condition, as a disastrous and dangerous illness.”

While professing to like poetry, Vera Vladimirovna “considered it improper for a young girl to spend too much of her time on it”: in one sentence, Pavlova creates humour by disclosing the way she is unconsciously trying to please two opposing gods – Vera is paying her respects to a socially well-regarded craft, while also submitting to society’s contradictory sense of propriety regarding this craft.

I love the fierceness with which the author pokes fun at society throughout the book: “How and by what means may one in an aristocratic drawing room distinguish the vulgar man from the brilliantly intelligent one? Surely only by the fact that the former usually seems more clever”.

Cecily’s mother has taken special care to stifle every sign of the girl’s individuality to a very narrow set of conventional features, beyond which our protagonist cannot see. Vera was “very proud of her daughter’s successful upbringing, especially perhaps because it had been accomplished not without difficulty, since it took time and skill to destroy in her soul its innate thirst for delight and enthusiasm.”

Despite her mother’s best efforts, however, Cecily’s inner life unfolds in poetry and cannot be entirely suppressed. Some of her dreams trespass into her waking life, and she has the uncanny feeling that everything is happening twice, or that she is forgetting something, or a feeling that there is something she is failing to understand. “And she felt and knew that everything going on now had definitely already happened to her once, that this moment was a repetition of something in her past and that she had already lived through it once before”. Lines from her dreams come back to her out of the blue, when she is awake, and she whispers: “So, go, as you’ve been sentenced, / Defenseless and alone…”

The ending of the book reads as if her dreaming and waking life were briefly touching – as in Byron’s poem, dreams “do divide our being; they become / A portion of ourselves”. The shift from the third to the first person in the last poem in A Double Life also hints at a possibility of growth: as her dreams trespass into reality, Cecily is given a voice of her own, and is finally able to look beyond the narrow confines of her upbringing. She most probably will not be able to trespass such confines, but she will not remain blind to their existence: “Though I throw treasure after treasure / Into the stormy depths of the sea of life: / Blessed the one who, arguing with the storm, / Can salvage something precious”, Cecily vows to herself, reclaiming agency at the very moment when she has lost the possibility to make an informed choice. From her dreams, she has received the gift of vision, and this is a doomed but precious gift.