Two Princesses

by Vladimir Odoyevsky, Neil Cornwell (Translator), Bridget Kendall (Foreword)

"It is not people that kill, but ungovernable passions."

 

The eponymous princesses are both spinsters, but there any similarity ends. Zizi, thwarted in love, takes her lot meekly until she comes face to face with her erstwhile lover’s perfidy, and her sense of justice and familial devotion rise to claim a bittersweet revenge. Mimi meanwhile, whose own romantic failures have left her bitter and resentful, takes her revenge groundlessly, leading all around her to a tragic end. This tale portraying the two diametrically opposed sides of the nature of the Russian aristocracy reveals this frequently overlooked author to be a significant force in 19th-century literature.

Genres: Russia, Classics, Fiction, Russian Literature

142 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1834

About the author

Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky (Russian: Владимир Федорович Одоевский) was a prominent Russian philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" on account of his keen interest in phantasmagoric tales and musical criticism.

Aspiring to imitate Ludwig Tieck and Novalis, Odoyevsky published a number of tales for children (e.g., "The Snuff-Box Town") and fantastical stories for adults (e.g., "Cosmorama" and "Salamandra") imbued with the vague mysticism in the vein of Jakob Boehme and Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.

Following the success of Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, Odoyevsky wrote a number of similar stories on the dissipated life of the Russian aristocracy (e.g., Princess Mimi and Princess Zizi). On account of his many short stories from the 1820s and 1830s, Odyoevsky should be listed among the pioneers of the impressionistic short story in Europe.

His most mature book was the collection of essays and novellas entitled The Russian Nights (1844). Loosely patterned after the Noctes Atticae, the book took two decades to complete. It contains some of Odoyevsky's best known fiction, including the dystopian novellas The Last Suicide and The Town with No Name. The stories are interlaced with philosophic conversations redolent of the French Encyclopedists.

As a music critic, Odoyevsky set out to propagate the national style of Mikhail Glinka and his followers. Among his many articles on musical subjects, a treatise about old Russian church singing deserves particular attention. Johann Sebastian Bach and Beethoven appear as characters in some of his novellas. Odoevsky was active in the foundation of the Russian Musical Society, Moscow Conservatory, and St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Reviews

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze,
And one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees.’ So said Ogden Nash, about a hundred years after Odoyevsky wrote these two beautiful miniature studies of women in Russian high society, neither of whom exactly ‘blows through life like a breeze’. Princess Mimi, frustrated in her attempts to marry at a time when a woman’s status only came from marriage, devotes herself instead to becoming a gossiper, setting a tragic chain of events in motion purely to enjoy the sensations of discomfiting a rival and experiencing the emotional high of melodrama. Meanwhile Princess Zizi exists entirely as the subject of gossip, her reputation damaged by ignorant conjecture while the few who know her virtues discuss them privately among themselves. The English-language novel reader automatically reaches for comparisons and ends up situating Odoyevsky somewhere between Austen’s two inches of ivory and Tolstoy’s epic sweep of the Russian soul, with a dash of Pushkin here and an emotional pinch of the Brontes there. His novels mix humour, satire, real sympathy for the plight of the frustrated woman, and an understanding insight into human emotion and the desire for love - and passion - which leads people into dark corners in the so well furnished rooms of Russian society of the 1830s he so wonderfully brings to life. This book discovered to me an author I will be eagerly looking to read again.

[Kyra · Rating 5 out of 5]

So great. Two novellas that completely alter one another for the better. Odoevsky says so much without preaching, lamenting, or burying the simplicity of his societal criticisms. I’m surprised this book isn’t talked about more—when you think about Russian Literature on the female condition, this should be up there with Eugene Onegin and Anna Karenina. The forward by Bridget Kendall was incredibly insightful as well—but it should be an afterword. I read it both before and after the text.

[Grady Ormsby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two Princesses by Vladimir Odoevsky is a slim volume of two novellas “Princess Zizi.” and “Princess Mimi.” Odoevsky was a Russian realist and a pioneer of the impressionistic short story in Europe. Both stories are classic tales of hubris, rise-and-fall tragedies about two aristocratic women, rich, privileged and convinced of their own exceptionalism. The tales deal with failed love in two very different ways. Zinaida, Zizi, sacrifices her own time and interests in order to tend to her mother. When finally a chance at love arrives, her lover marries her sister instead. Zizi tragically continues her sacrifice by switching her devotion to her sister’s child. When she discovers her brother-in-law’s attempt to defraud the family, Zizi must finally assert herself to exact a bittersweet revenge. The second character study centers on, Mimi, a spinster who uses gossip and intrigue to exact groundless revenge against younger, more eligible ladies leading all around her to a tragic end. Odoevsky uses biting satire to expose the foibles, excesses and dissipation of the aristocracy.