July 25, 2018 by Kat

What to Read When You’re Ill: Novels with Memorable Scenes of Illness

My husband caught a cold at the office. I blame it on paper clips, post-its, and office supplies.

And now everyone has it. The city is stricken with the common cold. And I’m surprised there’s not a quarantine.

And so I am coughing and drinking Cold-Eeze and wondering if there’s a yoga pose that will banish the cold. Meanwhile, I’m making a list of novels with memorable scenes of illness. Alas, I cannot remember many scenes with the common cold.

1. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Bennet catches a violent cold while visiting Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst at Netherfield Park, the home of her future fiance, Mr. Bingley. She becomes so ill that they refuse to let her go home and she sends a letter to her sister Elizabeth.

“MY DEAREST LIZZY,—

“I find myself very unwell this morning, which, I suppose, is to be imputed to my getting wet through yesterday. My kind friends will not hear of my returning till I am better. They insist also on my seeing Mr. Jones—therefore do not be alarmed if you should hear of his having been to me—and, excepting a sore throat and headache, there is not much the matter with me.—Yours, etc.”

2. In Turgenev’s On the Eve, the heroine, Elena, an intense young woman who wants a purpose, falls in love with Insarov, a Bulgarian revolutionary, and educates herself about the cause. Alas, he catches pneumonia, and though he recovers for a time, he does not live long. Elena is heartbroken but she lives to fight another day.

‘Elena!’ sounded distinctly in her ears. She raised her head quickly, turned round, and was stupefied: Insarov, white as snow, the snow of her dream, had half risen from the sofa, and was staring at her with large, bright, dreadful eyes. His hair hung in disorder on his forehead and his lips parted strangely. Horror, mingled with an anguish of tenderness, was expressed on his suddenly transfigured face.

‘Elena!’ he articulated, ‘I am dying.’

She fell with a scream on her knees, and clung to his breast.

‘It’s all over,’ repeated Insarov: ‘I’m dying… Good-bye, my poor girl! good-bye, my country!’ and he fell backwards on to the sofa.

3. In Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, the hero, Hans Castorp, visits his tubercular cousin at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, and laughs at the easy life-style there before he, too, is diagnosed with TB.

It would not have taken much for Hans Castorp to be seized by another fit of laughter. “What? You lie out on your balcony rain or shine, night or day?” he asked, his voice wavering on the edge.

4. In The Painted Veil, one of my favorite novels by W. Somerset Maugham, Kitty’s husband Walter is furious when he learns she has had an affair. He takes her with him to mainland China, where he must deal with a cholera epidemic. Needless to say no one is safe from the cholera, but Walter and a group of nuns put up a good fight. Kitty wants to help the nuns.

“There is no need to scrub the floors. That is done by after a fashion by the orphans.” She paused and looked kindly at Kittty. “My dear child, do you not think that you have done enough in coming with your husband here? That is more than many wives would have had the courage to do, and for the rest how can you be better occupied than by giving him peace and comfort when he comes home to you after the day’s work? Believe me, he needs tthen all your love and consideration.”

5. I’ve run out of respiratory illnesses and cholera and am on to a zombie novel. There is some beautiful writing at the beginning of Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth:

My mother used to tell me about the ocean. She said there was a place where there was nothing but water as far as you could see and that it was always moving, rushing toward you and then away.

The narrator, Mary, has grown up in a village behind a fence, to secure the villagers from zombies, known as the Unconsecrated, who infect human beings with their bites. After her mother becomes a zombie, Mary becomes an outcast. The Sisters, a group of secret-loving nuns who know the true history of the world, shelter her for a while after her mother “turns”–her mother chooses to become a zombie rather than to die. Although Mary is badly treated by the Sisters, she learns that the nuns have contact with the outside and that a young woman named Gabrielle has come in with news. Is there any hope? Not much.

6. Graham Greene’s A BURNT-OUT CASE deals with leprosy, but I’m too tired to write about it!

THIS IS A SHORT LIST BECAUSE I’M SICK, BUT TELL ME YOUR OWN FAVORITE NOVELS WITH MEMORABLE SCENES OF ILLNESS!

January 9, 2017 by Kat

A Turgenev Roundup: Rudin, On the Eve, & Robert Dessaix’s Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev

I spent the first week of January rereading Turgenev. It has been freezing cold here, down to zero at night. Except for a jaunt to the stunning musical, La La Land, choreographed by Mandy Moore of Dancing with the Stars, I have toughed out the cold under blankets with tea and books.

I finished Rudin, Turgenev’s first novel, On the Eve, his second novel, and Robert Dessaix’s bibliomemoir, Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev. Since I have already written about these books and want to share my enthusiasm, I am posting slightly revised versions of previous posts.

ON THE EVE (1860)

I have read both Constance Garnett’s translation ( free on the internet) and Gilbert Gardiner’s translation (Penguin, Folio Society). This was Henry James’ favorite Turgenev novel.

Set on the eve of the Crimean War and written in 1859, the year before the emancipation of the Russian serfs, this stunning novel reflects Turgenev’s own agitation on the brink of political unrest. In the introduction to the Folio Society edition, Hisham Matar quotes one of Turgenev’s letters. Like one of his own despairing characters, Turgenev asks,

Is there any enthusiasm for anything left in the world? Do people still know how to sacrifice themselves? Can they enjoy life, behave foolishly, and have hopes for the future?

At the center of the novel is one of Turgenev’s most intense heroines, Elena, an aristocratic young woman who lives in the country and longs to fall in love or undergo some life-changing experience. The daughter of a hypochondriac mother and a materialistic father who openly visits his mistress, Elena has high ideals and wants a change. She “struggled like a bird in a cage, though there was no cage.”

The Folio Society edition

Sometimes it seemed that she wanted something that no one else wanted, that no one dreamed of in all Russia. Then she would calm down, and spend day after day in carefree indifference, even laughing at herself; but suddenly some strong, some nameless thing which she could not control boiled up inside her and demanded to break out. The storm passed, the tired wings dropped without being flow; but these moods were not without their cost…

Men fall in love with Elena. Two close friends, Bersyenev, a philosopher, and Shubin, an artist who loves to tease, are enjoying their summer in the country. Both young men are in love with Elena, whose cousin Shubin, is staying with her family. She cannot take Shubin seriously, and anyway he has made out with Zoya, a German girl who is her companion. She is more interested in Bersyenev, but she falls in love with Insarov, a Bulgarian revolutionary in exile. She needs the political cause as much as love, but her journey does not end where you think it will.

An illustration of Elena looking out the window (Folio Society edition)

RUDIN (1856)

I enjoyed both Constance Garnett’s translation (Faber Finds, or free on the internet) and Richard Freeman’s translation (Penguin).

Rudin, Turgenev’s first novel, is elegant, lyrical, and spellbinding. Not much happens, but you don’t need action with this exquisite level of lyricism. The characters are delicately drawn, like figures in a water-color painting. They converse endlessly and take long walks, and we learn about them mostly through dialogue

Turgenev begins the novelwith the first of many walks.

She moved without haste and as though she were enjoying the walk. The high nodding rye all round her moved in long softly rustling waves, taking here a shade of silvery green and there a ripple of red; the larks were trilling overhead. The young woman had come from her own estate, which was not more than a mile from the village to which she was turning her steps.

The walker is Alexandra Palovna Lipin, a widow who lives with her brother. She is on her way to visit a sick old womanand meets Lezhvyon, an intelligent, eccentric landowner who is in love with her. Both love the quiet rural life in Russia.

These two are contrasted with their urbane neighbor, Darya Mihailovna, a pseudo-intellectual who holds a salon at her summer country house. Her guests include Pigasov, a misanthropic old man, Pandavlevsky, a parasite, and Bassistoff, a tutor. But it is her teenage daughter, Natalya, who is most susceptible to the charms of strangers.

As in so many of Turgenev’s novels, the action, such as it is, is touched off by the appearance of an outsider. Rudin, a stranger, arrives unexpectedly at Darya Mihailovna’s estate, bearing a note from her friend the baron. She invites Rudin to stay. He dominates the conversation, and he turns ideas and relationships upside-down as he discourses on philosophy and human nature. Only Lezhvyon, who knew Rudin years ago, is unimpressed. As each character gradually finds that Rudin is not quite who he seems to be, Rudin himself undergoes a transformation.

ROBERT DESSAIX’S TWILIGHT OF LOVE: TRAVELS WITH TURGENEV.

This short, lyrical, meditative book is part biography of Turgenev, part memoir/travel book, and part literary criticism. If I were Oprah, and thank God I’m not, because then I’d have to share my thoughts by underlining passages for the special e-book version, Dessaix’s Turgenev-inspired travel book would be my Book Club “pick.”

Dessaix, an award-winning Australian writer, novelist, scholar, and former Russian professor, fuses personal and literary history. This genre-bending volume of belles-lettres is divided into three parts: Baden-Baden, France, and Russia. As Dessaix retraces Turgenev’s footsteps and sight-sees with his friends, he meditates on his own relationship with Russian literature, and connects his own Australian identity to the “barbaric” Russian identity of Turgenev in the 19th century (both places were said to have “no culture,” and travel to Europe was necessary for intellectual development). Dessaix recreates not only the atmosphere and mood of Turgenev’s 19th-century world and novels, but also describes the changes in Europe and Russia since the ’60s and ’70s when he first traveled there.

September 23, 2015 by Kat

A Russian Literature Binge: Turgenev’s On the Eve & Chekhov’s The Collected Stories, Vol. 1

Folio Society books are expensive, but they can help one recommit to the classics. After acquiring lovely editions of Turgenev’s On the Eve and a four-volume set of Chekhov’s short stories, I spent a happy summer indulging my enthusiasm for 19th-century Russian literature.

Turgenev is not spoken of with the same breathlessness as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, perhaps because short books are considered less demanding. But his lyrical style, sharp dialogue, and political and philosophical musings reflect the preoccupations of the time. Fathers and Sons is Turgenev’s best-known work, but his other books are also little gems. On the Eve (1860), his third novel, is an exquisite little book about politics and love that undeservedly has fallen out of print. The Folio Society has reissued Gilbert Gardiner’s elegant translation, first published by Penguin in 1950.

Set on the eve of the Crimean War and written the year before the emancipation of the serfs in Russia, this novel reflects Turgenev’s own restlessness on the brink of change. Hisham Matar quotes one of his letters in the introduction. Like one of his own despairing characters, Turgenev asks,

Is there any enthusiasm for anything left in the world? Do people still know how to sacrifice themselves? Can they enjoy life, behave foolishly, and have hopes for the future?

In On the Eve, Turgenev concentrates on four characters in their twenties, Bersyenev, a kind and studious philosopher, Shubin, an artist who often plays the clown, Insarov, a Bulgarian revolutionary, and Elena, the intense woman with whom all of them are in love. The wealthy Elena has too little to do: she reads widely and is charitable to the poor, but longs for something to take her out of herself. The daughter of a hypochondriac and a materialistic man with a mistress, “she struggled like a bird in a cage, though there was no cage.” After she almost died at 18, she longed for love or some meaningful experience.

Sometimes it seemed that she wanted something that no one else wanted, that no one dreamed of in all Russia. Then she would calm down, and spend day after day in carefree indifference, even laughing at herself; but suddenly some strong, some nameless thing which she could not control boiled up inside her and demanded to break out. The storm passed, the tired wings dropped without being flow; but these moods were not without their cost…

turgeneve illustration elena EVE_13105504090

Illustration by Lauren Nassef (Folio Society)

Turgenev’s descriptions of the country are lyrical, the philosophical arguments among the young heroes are hugely enjoyable, the eternal conflicts between the generations are realistic, and Turgenev’s women struggle to balance love with their ideals. In On the Eve, Bersyenev is by far the kindest character, but he does not get the girl. The revolutionary Insarov captures Elena’s love, and she becomes as political as he is. Virgin Smoke, his last novel, also about politics, is perhaps is a better book, but I loved On the Eve, and the ending is surprising. If you can find a copy, I urge you to read it.

I have struggled for years to comprehend the beauty of Chekhov’s stories in Constance Garnett’s translation: “The Kiss,” “The Lady With the Dog,” and “Ward Number Six.” Ronald Hingham’s translations, originally done for Oxford and reissued in this beautiful Folio Society set, have finally made me value the beauty of these stories. Today I am writing only about Volume 1.

In Volume 1, “The Steppe” is by far my favorite. It is really a 100-page novella, and the descriptive prose is reminiscent of Thomas Hardy’s. There isn’t much of a plot. Kuzmichov and Father Christopher Siriyski, both wool merchants, are on their way to the city to sell their wool; they are taking Kuzmichov’s nine-year-old nephew with them so they can drop him off to his new school. They stop at people’s houses to have dinner, camp out in fields and chat to rustics, and enjoy the ride. Little happens, but the dialogue is comical, and the descriptions of the country are sheer poetry.

In “Thieves,” the medical orderly, Yergunov, “a nonentity known in his district as a great braggart and drunkard,” stops at an inn in a blizzard. Also present are Kalashnikov, a horse thief, and Merik, a gypsy. The blowsy barmaid, Lyubka, flirts with all of them, but it is clear that she is not serious about Yergunov. These amateur criminals are way out of his league. And when they cheat Yergunov of his horse, he is not even surprised. More surprising is the fact that after Yergunov loses his job and been out of work for eighteen months he believes he has been missing out on fun andwonders if a good burglary might not be the ticket.

Is “Peasant Women.” Chekhov uses a frame narrative to tell the story. A traveller, Matthew, tells Dyudya, an entrepreneur who dabbles in everything from tar to honey and cattle, how he came to adopt a boy called Kuzka. Matthew used to live next door to a woman whose new husband goes to war. Soon Matthew is seeing Mashenka every day and advising her about her business. Soon after that, he moves in with her.

Then the husband returns, and things turn topsy turvy. Both men try to persuade Mashenka to go back to her husband. Instead, she kills him with arsenic because she is madly in love with Matthew. She is sentenced to a prison term. The son remains with Matthew. And the women of Dyudya’s house cry because they see that Kuzka is badly treated by Matthew. They think he needs to be with women, but they have no power.

Characterized by unexpected details, sharp dialogue, and masterly storytelling, Chekhov’s stories are mysterious and elegiac, precise and realistic. Hingley’s translation is excellent, and most of these stories appear in the Oxford World Classics edition of The Steppe and Other Stories.

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