Odoevsky’s Sylph.

A decade or so ago I read and enjoyed a bunch of Vladimir Odoevsky’s stories from the 1830s (see this 2014 post); now, quite by accident, I’ve wound up reading another one and enjoying it as well: Сильфида (1837), translated as “The Sylph” by Joel Stern in Russian Romantic Prose: An Anthology (Translation Press, 1979) and by Neil Cornwell in The Salamander and Other Stories (Gerald Duckworth, 1992). It starts off as a series of letters by Mikhail Platonovich, an urban gentleman who, to cure his case of “the spleen,” has moved to his late uncle’s country estate (a nod to Eugene Onegin), where at first he is charmed by his neighbors and their simple, ignorant existence. Eventually they too bore him, but he discovers his uncle’s hidden library of alchemical and Kabbalistic works and begins reading and experimenting, at first skeptically. In the meantime he gets engaged to his neighbor’s daughter Katya, and invites his correspondent to the wedding. But then, by dissolving a turquoise signet-ring in a vase of water placed in the sunlight, he creates “an amazing, indescribable, unbelievable creature: in short, a woman, barely visible to the eye” — this is the titular sylph. She takes him on some sort of metaphysical voyage and shows him a better world, and he loses interest in the one he’s living in, including his fiancée. When his alarmed friend brings him back to reality (with the aid of a doctor and “bouillon baths”) he is resentful; he goes ahead and marries Katya, but tells his friend (in Cornwell’s translation; for the Russian, click on the Сильфида link and search on “Так довольствуйся же этими похвалами”):

– Then be satisfied with their praise and gratitude, but don’t expect
mine. No! Katia loves me, our estate is settled, the revenues are collected
on time – in a word, you gave me a happiness, but not mine: you got the
wrong size. You, such reasonable gentlefolk, are like the carpenter who
was ordered to make a case for some expensive physics instruments: he
didn’t measure it properly and the instruments wouldn’t go in – so what did
he do? The case was ready and beautifully polished. The tradesman re-
ground the instruments – a curve more here, a curve less there, and they
went into the box and fitted nicely. They were a pleasure to look at, but
there was one problem: the instruments were wrecked. Gentlemen! instru-
ments are not for cases, but cases are for instruments! Make the box
according to the instruments and not the instruments according to the box.

– What do you mean by that?

– You are very pleased that you have, what you call, cured me: that is to
say, blunted my perceptions, covered them with some impenetrable shell,
made them dead to any world except your box…. Wonderful! The instru-
ment fits, but it is wrecked: it had been made for a different purpose….
Now, when in the midst of the daily round I can feel my abdominal cavity
expanding by the hour and my head subsiding into animalistic sleep, I
recall with despair that time when, in your opinion, I was in a state of
madness, when a charming creature flew down to me from the invisible
world, when it opened to me sacraments which now I cannot even express,
but which were comprehensible to me… where is that happiness? Give it
back to me!

That was unexpected, and I liked it. Anyone who wants to explore the story further (and has access to JSTOR) should read Christopher R. Putney’s “‘The Circle That Presupposes Its End As Its Goal’: The Riddle of Vladimir Odoevsky’s ‘The Sylph’” (Slavic and East European Journal 55.2 [2011]: 188-204), which focuses on the philosophy of Schelling and the mysterious reversal of the protagonist’s name — for a summary, see Erik McDonald’s 2011 post.

Now as to the accidental part: I’m still making my way painfully through Lachmann’s Memory and Literature: Intertextuality in Russian Modernism (see this post), and in one section she discusses Dostoevsky’s 1848 story “Слабое сердце” (“A Weak Heart”), which I read back in 2015. At the end of the story, after Vasya Shumkov has gone mad, his friend Arkady is walking sadly home along the Neva and sees a remarkable vision of steam rising through the winter air and forming a new city, making the earthly one below it seem like a dream (“так что, казалось, новые здания вставали над старыми, новый город складывался в воздухе… Казалось, наконец, что весь этот мир, со всеми жильцами его, сильными и слабыми, со всеми жилищами их, приютами нищих или раззолоченными палатами — отрадой сильных мира сего, в этот сумеречный час походит на фантастическую, волшебную грезу, на сон, который в свою очередь тотчас исчезнет и искурится паром к темно-синему небу”). This prompts Lachmann to refer to an earlier vision of a phantasmagorical Petersburg “related by an old Finn in V.F. Odoevsky’s story ‘Sil’fida.’” Of course I wanted to read it; imagine my consternation when I finished it without any hint of an old Finn!

There is, however, a parallel vision, part of the metaphysical voyage, which Cornwell translates as follows (the Russian begins with “…Ты ли это, гордый Рим”):

…Is this you, proud Rome, capital of centuries and of nations? How the convolvulus has distended over your ruins…. But the ruins are stirring, bare columns rise from the green sward and stand erect in orderly formation, an arch has bowed valiantly across them, shaking off its eternal dust, the rostrum drifts in like a frivolous mosaic; on the rostrum throng living people, the potent sounds of an ancient tongue mingle with the murmur of the waves – an orator in a white robe and laurel wreath is raising his hands…. And it has all vanished: the splendid buildings bend to the ground; pillars stoop low, arches plunge into the earth – the convolvulus again weaves over the ruins, and all is silent. A bell calls to prayer, the basilica is opened, audible are the sounds of a mellisonant instrument – thousands of harmonious modulations vibrate beneath my fingers, thought strives after thought, flying away the one after another like dreams… if one could have seized and stopped them? And the submissive instrument again repeats, like a faithful echo, all the transient and irrevocable movements of the soul…. The basilica has emptied, the lunar brightness falls on statues without number; they step down from their places and walk past me, full of life. Their speech is ancient and new, their smiles are portentous and their glances grand. But once more their pedestals support them and once more the lunar brightness falls on statues. … But it is late… a happy, quiet refuge awaits us. The Tiber shimmers in the windows. Beyond it the Capitol of the eternal city…. An enchanting picture! It has fused into the tight frame of our fireplace… yes! There we have another Rome, another Tiber, another Capitol. How merrily the fire is crackling…. Embrace me, charming maid. … A sparkling beverage foams in a pearl goblet… drink… drink it. … Out there snowflakes are falling and blocking the road – here your embraces are warming me. …

And it turned out that the story with the old Finn is actually Odoevsky’s Саламандра (“The Salamander”), originally published in 1841 as “Южный берег Финляндии в начале XVIII столетия” [The southern coast of Finland at the beginning of the 18th century].

By the way, the conclusion, with Mikhail Platonovich having to give up his alchemical books and return to normal life, is reminiscent of Prospero’s renunciation at the end of The Tempest, and there is a good discussion of that at the end of Catherine Nicholson’s NYRB review (archived) of several books on Shakespeare’s First Folio:

Prospero’s books—the cherished remains of a once grand library, amassed when he was Duke of Milan, before his treacherous younger brother, Antonio, deposed and banished him—remain in the magician’s possession until the play’s final act, when he voluntarily relinquishes them.

Or, rather, voluntarily relinquishes it, for the magical library now seems to have dwindled to a single, irreplaceable book. Having brought his brother to justice, reclaimed his dukedom, matched his teenage daughter, Miranda, with the son of the King of Naples, and foiled Caliban’s plotting, Prospero declares:

But this rough magic
I here abjure, and when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.

It’s a famous speech, culminating in what looks like a gesture of wise self-limitation, a willing descent from magical omnipotence to the merely human world. (Nineteenth-century Shakespeareans eager to construct a biography for the bard read it as his farewell to the London theater, though in fact Shakespeare collaborated on at least two additional plays before his retirement to Stratford-upon-Avon.)

From another vantage point, however, the drowning of Prospero’s book isn’t a constraint on his power but a necessary step to regaining it. As he admits to Miranda in the play’s opening act, the loss of his dukedom to Antonio was a direct consequence of his absorption in books:

Those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies.

Over time, unsurprisingly, Antonio comes to resent the arrangement—having assumed all the responsibilities of the role, “he did believe/He was indeed the Duke”—while Prospero seems almost to crave his own deposition: “Me, poor man, my library/Was dukedom large enough.” In this version of events, he is not the possessor of a magical library but a man dangerously possessed by one; the hard lesson of his life—and the deep irony of Caliban’s planned revenge—is that books can be distractions, too. What is the right amount, and the right kind, of attention to pay to a book? It’s a hard question to answer in The Tempest, and a hard question to ask of the volume to which we owe our acquaintance with that play, and so much more.

The whole essay is well worth reading if you have any interest in the history of the publication and appreciation of the Bard’s works.