The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Owing to the fact that the princess had strictly formed views about everything, my task in helping her to choose literary works for the young princess was very well defined. It was required that the young princess be able to learn about Russian life from this reading, while not coming upon anything that might trouble her maidenly ear. The princess’s maternal censorship did not allow the whole of any author, not even Derzhavin or Zhukovsky. None of them seemed fully safe to her. There was, naturally, no speaking of Gogol—he was banished entirely. Of Pushkin, The Captain’s Daughter and Evgeny Onegin were allowed, the latter with considerable cuts, which were marked by the princess’s own hand. Lermontov, like Gogol, was not allowed. Of new authors, Turgenev alone was approved without question, but minus the passages “where they talk of love,” while Goncharov was banished, and though I interceded for him quite boldly, it did not help. The princess replied:

“I know he’s a great artist, but so much the worse—you must admit there are arousing subjects in him.”

VII

I wished at all costs to know what precisely the princess meant by the arousing subjects she found in the works of Goncharov. How could he, with the mildness of his attitude towards people and the passions that possess them, offend anyone’s feelings?

This was intriguing to such a degree that I plucked up my courage and asked outright what the arousing subjects in Goncharov were.

To this frank question I received a frank, terse reply, uttered in a sharp whisper: “Elbows.”

I thought I had not heard right or had not understood.

“Elbows, elbows,” the princess repeated and, seeing my perplexity, seemed to grow angry. “Don’t you remember … how that one … the hero at some point … admires the bare elbows of his … of some very simple lady?”

Now, of course, I recalled the well-known episode from Oblomov and could not find a word of reply. As a matter of fact, it was more convenient for me to say nothing, since I neither needed nor wished to argue with the princess, who was beyond the reach of persuasion, and whom, to tell the truth, I had long been observing much more zealously than I tried to serve her with my recommendations and advice. And what recommendations could I make to her, since she considered “elbows” an outrageous indecency, and all the latest literature had stepped so far beyond such revelations?

What boldness one had to have, knowing all that, to name even one recent work, in which the coverings of beauty are raised far more resolutely!

I felt that, circumstances being revealed in this way, my role as an adviser should be over—and I resolved not to advise, but to contradict.

“Princess,” I said, “it seems to me that you are being unfair: there is something exaggerated in your demands on artistic literature.”

I laid out everything that, in my opinion, had to do with the matter.

VIII

Carried away, I not only delivered a whole critique of false purism, but also quoted a well-known anecdote about a French lady who could neither write nor speak the word culotte,^† and when she once could not avoid saying this word in front of the queen, faltered and made everyone burst out laughing. But I simply could not remember in which French writer I had read about this terrible court scandal, which would not have taken place at all if the lady had spoken the word culotte as simply as the queen herself did with her august little lips.

My goal was to show that too much delicacy could be detrimental to modesty, and therefore an overly strict selection of reading was hardly necessary.

The princess, to my no little amazement, heard me out without showing the least displeasure, and, not leaving her seat, raised her hand over her head and took one of the pale blue volumes.

“You,” she said, “have arguments, but I have an oracle.”

“I would be interested to hear it,” I said.

“Without delay: I invoke the spirit of Genlis, and it will answer you. Open the book and read.”

“Be so kind as to point out where I should read,” I asked, accepting the little volume.

“Point out? That’s not my business: the spirit itself will do the pointing out. Open it at random.”

This was becoming slightly ridiculous for me, and I even felt ashamed, as it were, for my interlocutrice; however, I did as she wanted, and as soon as I glanced at the first sentence of the open page, I felt a vexing surprise.

“You’re puzzled?” asked the princess.

“Yes.”

“Yes, it’s happened to many. I ask you to read it.”

IX

“Reading is an occupation far too serious and far too important in its consequences for young people’s tastes not to be guided in its selection. There is reading which young people like, but which makes them careless and predisposes them to flightiness, after which it is difficult to correct the character. All this I know from experience.” I read that and stopped.

The princess, with a quiet smile, spread her arms and, tactfully triumphant in her victory over me, said: