The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Ladies From St. Petersburg: Three Novellas by Nina Berberova
Michael Pinker

Nina Berberova. The Ladies from St. Petersburg: Three Novellas. Trans. Marian Schwartz. New Directions, 1998. 122 pp. $19.95.

Nina Berberova possessed a rare talent. The last writer of the post-czarist creative exodus to be discovered by the English-speaking world, the friend of Khodasevich and biographer of Blok, she wrote brilliantly. Unknown outside exile circles for most of her life, at last Berberova’s artistry begs its due. This new collection, two early stories and perhaps her last one, ably translated, should appeal to readers for their deft craftsmanship and subtle formal elegance.
The title story follows a threadbare aristocratic mother and child on holiday to the Russian hinterland on the eve of the Revolution. When Varvara Ivanovna suddenly dies, leaving her eligible Margarita alone among strangers, funeral preparations reveal the peasants’ contempt for their betters near to boiling, as if in anticipation of what will soon strike home. Yet Margarita’s distressed concern for her mother’s proper burial almost seems to belong to another world; an era is over. Likewise, self-absorbed Zoya Andreyevna, fleeing Petrograd after 1917, seeks little but a semblance of shelter and stability in her newly diminished situation. Still, the pursuing Reds prove far less threatening than those among whom she would reside, resentful harpies whose jealousy of aristocratic pretentions finds a proper target in Zoya’s effete helplessness. Finally, “The Big City” renders a new émigré’s fantastic chase after self-discovery through a metropolis modeled on New York, replete with kaleidoscopic urbanities out of Fritz Lang or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. As the unnamed protagonist reflects after stumbling through his personal maze, “I realized then that every person brings whatever he can to this big city”—not least, his sense of America.
Berberova’s style resurrects an aristocracy of outlook and taste reminiscent of Nabokov, of a Russia beyond socialism. After sampling these delightful stories, one looks forward to further sojourns into the labyrinth of her art. [Michael Pinker]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction The Ladies From St. Petersburg: Three Novellas by Nina Berberova Michael Pinker Nina Berberova. The Ladies from St. Petersburg: Three Novellas. Trans. Marian Schwartz. New Directions, 1998. 122 pp. $19.95. Nina Berberova possessed a rare talent. The last writer of the post-czarist creative exodus to be discovered by the English-speaking world, the friend of Khodasevich and biographer of Blok, she wrote brilliantly. Unknown outside exile circles for most of her life, at last Berberova’s artistry begs its due. This new collection, two early stories and perhaps her last one, ably translated, should appeal to readers for their deft craftsmanship and subtle formal elegance. The title story follows a threadbare aristocratic mother and child on holiday to the Russian hinterland on the eve of the Revolution. When Varvara Ivanovna suddenly dies, leaving her eligible Margarita alone among strangers, funeral preparations reveal the peasants’ contempt for their betters near to boiling, as if in anticipation of what will soon strike home. Yet Margarita’s distressed concern for her mother’s proper burial almost seems to belong to another world; an era is over. Likewise, self-absorbed Zoya Andreyevna, fleeing Petrograd after 1917, seeks little but a semblance of shelter and stability in her newly diminished situation. Still, the pursuing Reds prove far less threatening than those among whom she would reside, resentful harpies whose jealousy of aristocratic pretentions finds a proper target in Zoya’s effete helplessness. Finally, “The Big City” renders a new émigré’s fantastic chase after self-discovery through a metropolis modeled on New York, replete with kaleidoscopic urbanities out of Fritz Lang or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. As the unnamed protagonist reflects after stumbling through his personal maze, “I realized then that every person brings whatever he can to this big city”—not least, his sense of America. Berberova’s style resurrects an aristocracy of outlook and taste reminiscent of Nabokov, of a Russia beyond socialism. After sampling these delightful stories, one looks forward to further sojourns into the labyrinth of her art. [Michael Pinker]

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