Natasha's Dance (19 page)

    against our teachers and divinities? Look at our youths! Look at our ladies! The French are our Gods. Paris is our Kingdom of Heaven.’
⁹¹
Yet even in these circles there was horror at Napoleon’s invasion, and their reaction against all things French formed the basis of a Russian renaissance in life and art.

    In the patriotic climate of 1812 the use of French was frowned upon in the salons of St Petersburg - and in the streets it was even dangerous. Tolstoy’s novel captures perfectly the spirit of that time when nobles, who had been brought up to speak and think in French, struggled to converse in their native tongue. In one set it was agreed to ban the use of French and impose a forfeit on those who made a slip. The only trouble was that no one knew the Russian word for ‘forfeit’ - there was none - so people had to call out
‘forfaiture’.
This linguistic nationalism was by no means new. Admiral Shishkov, sometime Minister of Public Education, had placed the defence of the Russian language at the heart of his campaign against the French as early as 1803. He was involved in a long dispute with the Karamzinians, in which he attacked the French expressions of their salon style and wanted literary Russian to return to its archaic Church Slavonic roots.* For Shishkov the influence of French was to blame for the decline of the Orthodox religion and the old patriarchal moral code: the Russian way of life was being undermined by a cultural invasion from the West.

    Shishkov’s stock began to rocket after 1812. Renowned as a card player, he was a frequent guest in the fashionable houses of St Petersburg, and between rounds of
vingt-et-un
he would preach the virtues of the Russian tongue. Among his hosts, he took on the status of a ‘national sage’ and (perhaps in part because they owed him gambling debts) they paid him to tutor their sons.
⁹²
It became a fashion

    * These disputes over language involved a broader conflict about ‘Russia’ and what it should be - a follower of Europe or a unique culture of its own. They looked forward to the arguments between the Slavophiles and the Westerners. The Slavophiles did not emerge as a distinct grouping for another thirty years, but the term ‘Slavophile’ was first used in the 1800s to describe those, like Shishkov, who favoured Church Slavonic as the ‘national’ idiom (see Iu. Lotman and B. Uspenskii, ‘Spory o iazyke v nachale XIX v. kak fakt russkoi kul’tury’, in
Trudy po russkoi i slavianskoi filologii,
24,
Uchenye zapiski tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta,
vyp. 39 (Tartu, 1975), pp. 210-1 1).

    for the sons of noblemen to learn to read and write their native tongue. Dmitry Sheremetev, the orphaned son of Nikolai Petrovich and Praskovya, spent three years on Russian grammar and even rhetoric as a teenager in the 1810s - as much time as he spent on learning French.
⁹³
For lack of Russian texts, children learned to read from the Scriptures - indeed, like Pushkin, they were often taught to read by the church clerk or a local priest.
⁹⁴
Girls were less likely to be taught the Russian script than boys. Unlike their brothers, who were destined to become army officers or landowners, they would not have much business with the merchants or the serfs and hence little need to read or write their native tongue. But in the provinces there was a growing trend for women as well as men to learn Russian. Tolstoy’s mother, Maria Volkonsky, had a fine command of literary Russian, even writing poems in her native tongue.
⁹⁵
Without this growing Russian readership the literary renaissance of the nineteenth century would have been inconceivable. Previously the educated classes in Russia had read mainly foreign literature.

    In the eighteenth century the use of French and Russian had demarcated two entirely separate spheres: French the sphere of thought and sentiment, Russian the sphere of daily life. There was one form of language (French or Gallicized ‘salon’ Russian) for literature and another (the plain speech of the peasantry, which was not that far apart from the spoken idiom of the merchants and the clergy) for daily life. There were strict conventions on the use of languages. For example, a nobleman was supposed to write to the Tsar in Russian, and it would have seemed audacious if he wrote to him in French; but he always spoke to the Tsar in French, as he spoke to other noblemen. On the other hand, a woman was supposed to write in French, not just in her correspondence with the sovereign but with all officials, because this was the language of polite society; it would have been deemed a gross indecency if she had used Russian expressions.
⁹⁶
In private correspondence, however, there were few set rules, and by the end of the eighteenth century the aristocracy had become so bilingual that they slipped quite easily and imperceptibly from Russian into French and back again. Letters of a page or so could switch a dozen times, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence, without prompting by a theme.

    Tolstoy played on these differences in
War and Peace
to highlight the social and cultural nuances involved in Russian French. For example, the fact that Andrei Bolkonsky speaks Russian with a French accent places him in the elite pro-French section of the Petersburg aristocracy. Or that Andrei’s friend, the diplomat Bilibin, speaks by preference in French and says ‘only those words in Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis’ indicates that Bilibin was a well-known cultural stereotype that readers would easily recognize: the Russian who would rather he were French. But perhaps the best example is Helene - the princess who prefers to speak in French about her extramarital affairs because ‘in Russian she always felt that her case did not sound clear, and French suited it better’.
⁹⁷
In this passage Tolstoy is deliberately echoing the old distinction between French as the language of deceit and Russian as the language of sincerity. His use of dialogue has a similarly nationalist dimension. It is no coincidence that the novel’s most idealized characters speak exclusively in Russian (Princess Maria and the peasant Karataev) or (like Natasha) speak French only with mistakes.

    Of course, no novel is a direct window on to life and, however much it might approach that realist ideal in
War and Peace,
we cannot take these observations as an accurate reflection of reality. To read the correspondence of the Volkonskys - of course not forgetting that they became the Bolkonskys of
War and Peace
- is to find a far more complex situation than that presented by Tolstoy. Sergei Volkonsky wrote in French but inserted Russian phrases when he mentioned daily life on the estate; or he wrote in Russian when he aimed to underline a vital point and emphasize his own sincerity. By inclination, particularly after 1812, he wrote mostly in Russian; and he was obliged to in his letters from Siberia after 1825 (for his censors only read Russian). But there were occasions when he wrote in French (even after 1825): for example, when he wrote in the subjunctive mode or used formal phrases and
politesses;
or in passages where, in contravention of the rules, he wanted to express his views on politics in a language the censors would not understand. Sometimes he used French to explain a concept for which there was no Russian word -
‘diligence’, ‘duplicite’
and
‘discretion’
.
⁹⁸

    In its customs and its daily habits the aristocracy was struggling to

    become more ‘Russian’, too. The men of 1812 gave up feasts of
haute cuisine
for spartan Russian lunches, as they strived to simplify and Russianize their opulent lifestyle. Noblemen took peasant ‘wives’ with growing frequency and openness (what was good for a Sheremetev was also good for them) and there were even cases of noblewomen living with or marrying serfs.” Even Arakcheev, the Minister of War who became so detested for his brutal regime in the army, kept an unofficial peasant wife by whom he had two sons who were educated in the Corps des Pages.
¹⁰⁰
Native crafts were suddenly in vogue. Russian china with scenes from rural life was increasingly preferred to the classical designs of imported eighteenth-century porcelain. Karelian birch and other Russian woods, especially in the more rustic stylings of serf craftsmen, began to compete with the fine imported furniture of the classical palace, and even to displace it in those private living spaces where the nobleman relaxed. Count Alexander Osterman-Tolstoy, a military hero of 1812, was the owner of a magnificent mansion on the English Embankment in St Petersburg. The reception rooms had marble walls and mirrors with sumptuous decorations in the French Empire style, but after 1812 he had his bedroom lined with rough wooden logs to give it the appearance of a peasant hut.
¹⁰¹

    Recreations were going Russian, too. At balls in Petersburg, where European dances had always reigned supreme, it became the fashion to perform the
pliaska
and other Russian dances after 1812. Countess Orlova was renowned for these peasant dances, which she studied and performed at Moscow balls.
¹⁰²
But there were other noblewomen who, like Natasha Rostov, had somehow taken in the spirit of the dance, as if they had breathed it ‘from the Russian air’. Princess Elena Golitsyn danced her first
pliaska
at a New Year’s Ball in Petersburg in 1817. ‘Nobody had taught me how to dance the
pliaska.
It was simply that I was a “Russian girl”. I had grown up in the country, and when I heard the refrain of our village song, “The Maid Went to Fetch the Water”, I could not stop myself from the opening hand movements of the dance.’
¹⁰³

    Rural recreations were another indication of this newfound Russian-ness. It was at this time that the
dacha
first emerged as a national institution, although the country or suburban summer house did not become a mass phenomenon until the final decades of the nineteenth

    century (Chekhov’s
Cherry Orchard
was famously cut down for
dacha
building land). The high aristocracy of Petersburg was renting
dachas
in the eighteenth century. Pavlovsk and Peterhof were their preferred resorts, where they could escape the city’s heat and take in the fresh air of the pinewood forests or the sea. The Tsars had elaborate summer palaces with immense pleasure gardens in both of these resorts. During the early nineteenth century the
dacha
fashion spread to the minor gentry, who built more modest houses in the countryside.

    In contrast to the formal classicism of the urban palace, the
dacha
was constructed in a simple Russian style. It was usually a double-storeyed wooden building with a mezzanine verandah that ran all round the house with ornate window and door-frame carvings seen more commonly on peasant huts, although some of the grander
dachas
might incongruously add a Roman arch and columns to the front. The
dacha
was a place for Russian relaxations and pursuits: picking mushrooms in the woods, making jams, drinking tea from the
samovar,
fishing, hunting, visiting the bath house, or spending the whole day, like Goncharov’s Oblomov, in an oriental
khalat.
A month in the country allowed the nobleman to throw off the pressures of the court and official life, to become more himself in a Russian milieu. It was common to dispense with formal uniforms and to dress in casual Russian clothes. Simple Russian food took the place of
haute cuisine,
and some dishes, such as summer soup with
kvas (okroshka),
fish in aspic and pickled mushrooms, tea with jam, or cherry brandy, became practically synonymous with the
dacha
way of life.
¹⁰⁴

    Of all the countryside pursuits, hunting was the one that came the closest to a national institution, in the sense that it united nobleman and serf as fellow sportsmen and fellow countrymen. The early nineteenth century was the heyday of the hunt - a fact that was connected to the gentry’s rediscovery of ‘the good life on the estate’ after 1812. There were noblemen who gave up their careers in the civil service and retired to the country for a life of sport. The Rostovs’ ‘Uncle’ in
War and Peace
was typical:

    ’Why don’t you enter the service, Uncle?’

    ’I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it…I can’t make head or tail of it. That’s for you- I haven’t brains enough. Now hunting is another matter…

    There were two kinds of hunting in Russia - the formal chase with hounds, which was very grand, and the simple type of hunting by a man on foot with a solitary hound and a serf companion, as immortalized in Turgenev’s
Sketches from a Hunter’s Album
(1852). The formal chase was conducted in the manner of a military campaign, sometimes lasting several weeks, with hundreds of riders, huge packs of dogs and a vast retinue of hunting serfs camping out on the estates of the nobility. Lev Izmailov, Marshal of the Riazan Nobility, took 3,000 hunters and 2,000 hounds on his ‘campaigns’.
¹⁰⁶
Baron Mengden kept an elite caste of hunting serfs with their own scarlet livery and special Arab horses for the hunt. When they left, with the baron at their head, they took several hundred carts with hay and oats, a hospital on wheels for wounded dogs, a mobile kitchen and so many servants that the baron’s house was emptied, leaving his wife and daughters with only a bartender and a boy.
¹⁰⁷
This type of hunting was dependent on the gentry’s ownership of vast serf armies and virtually all the land - conditions which persisted until the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Like the English hunt, it was serious and stuffy, rigidly observing the social hierarchy, with the hunting serfs, if not running with the hounds, then clearly in a subservient role.

    By contrast, Turgenev’s type of hunting was relatively egalitarian -and it was so in a distinctly Russian way. When the nobleman went hunting with his serf companion he left behind the civilization of his palace and entered the world of the peasantry. Squire and serf were brought together by this type of sport. They dressed much the same; they shared their food and drink when they stopped along the way; they slept side by side in peasant huts and barns; and, as described in Turgenev’s
Sketches,
they talked about their lives in a spirit of companionship that often made them close and lasting friends.
¹⁰⁸
There was much more to this than the usual ‘male bonding’ around sport. As far as the squire was concerned, the hunt on foot was a rural odyssey, an encounter with an undiscovered peasant land; it was almost incidental how many birds or beasts were shot. In the final lyrical episode of the
Sketches,
where the narrator sums up all the joys of hunting, there is barely mention of the sport itself. What emerges from this perfect piece of writing is the hunter’s intense love of the Russian countryside and its changing beauty through the different seasons of the year: