Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "satire"
The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov
The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, and its sequel, The Golden Calf, have enjoyed an immense popularity in Russia and Eastern Europe. I had read (and greatly enjoyed) The Golden Calf many years ago in Romanian, and as a consequence, I was very excited by the recent publication of a new English translation of The Twelve Chairs (Northwestern, 2011, translated from the Russian by Anne O. Fisher). I wondered, however, whether a satirical Russian novel set in 1927 and published a year later could be understood by a contemporary American reader. Now that I read all its 500 plus pages, I can say that, surprisingly, the answer is yes. The American reader won’t understand all the references, of course, but most of the humor is fairly universal.
The plot is set in motion by the confession of Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov’s mother-in-law on her deathbed: before the Soviet regime forced them out of their home she’d managed to hide her jewels, including her diamonds, in one of the twelve upholstered chairs that were part of a Gambs furniture set. All their possessions, including the chairs, were confiscated by the regime and allocated to various individuals and institutions. The problem is that the woman confessed to both her son-in-law and Father Fyodor, so both of them set out on a journey across the Soviet state, during which their paths sometimes cross, causing hilarious encounters. Vorobyninov is accompanied by Ostap Bender, “the smooth operator,” a self-appointed “technical director” who is one of the greatest crooks in the history of literature (a more vulgar version of Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull). The tragicomic demise of Father Fyodor is paralleled by the absolutely unexpected ending of the novel and of the diamond search. I won’t reveal it here, but suffice it to say that the Communist censors might have had something to do with it.
This journey across nations, cities, mountains and sea(s) allows the writers to depict all the social strata of Soviet society, and to give the reader a good understanding of its functioning in the 1920s. This novel proves, once again, that reading literature is the best way to understand history. Thanks should be given to Anne O. Fischer for her (mostly successful) effort to translate this huge and difficult novel, and for the research she’s done in the process. The book has a long, helpful and non-intrusive list of notes at the end.
[This is not the edition I read, but the link to the new edition is broken]
The plot is set in motion by the confession of Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov’s mother-in-law on her deathbed: before the Soviet regime forced them out of their home she’d managed to hide her jewels, including her diamonds, in one of the twelve upholstered chairs that were part of a Gambs furniture set. All their possessions, including the chairs, were confiscated by the regime and allocated to various individuals and institutions. The problem is that the woman confessed to both her son-in-law and Father Fyodor, so both of them set out on a journey across the Soviet state, during which their paths sometimes cross, causing hilarious encounters. Vorobyninov is accompanied by Ostap Bender, “the smooth operator,” a self-appointed “technical director” who is one of the greatest crooks in the history of literature (a more vulgar version of Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull). The tragicomic demise of Father Fyodor is paralleled by the absolutely unexpected ending of the novel and of the diamond search. I won’t reveal it here, but suffice it to say that the Communist censors might have had something to do with it.
This journey across nations, cities, mountains and sea(s) allows the writers to depict all the social strata of Soviet society, and to give the reader a good understanding of its functioning in the 1920s. This novel proves, once again, that reading literature is the best way to understand history. Thanks should be given to Anne O. Fischer for her (mostly successful) effort to translate this huge and difficult novel, and for the research she’s done in the process. The book has a long, helpful and non-intrusive list of notes at the end.
[This is not the edition I read, but the link to the new edition is broken]
Notes on Books
Book reviews and occasional notes and thoughts on world literature and writers by an American writer of Eastern European origin.
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