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Futility
Hailed by his famous contemporaries including Edith Wharton, H.G. Wells, Katherine Mansfield, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh, who called him a "genius," William Gerhardie is one of the twentieth century's forgotten masters, and his lovely comedy Futility one of the century's neglected masterpieces.
It tells the story of someone very similar to Gerhardie himself: a young Englishman raised in Russia who returns to St. Petersburg and falls in love with the daughter of a hilariously dysfunctional family -- all played out with the armies of the Russian Revolution marching back and forth outside the parlor window.
Part British romantic comedy, part Russian social realism, and with a large cast of memorable characters, this astoundingly funny and poignant novel is the tale of people persisting in love and hope despite the odds.
It tells the story of someone very similar to Gerhardie himself: a young Englishman raised in Russia who returns to St. Petersburg and falls in love with the daughter of a hilariously dysfunctional family -- all played out with the armies of the Russian Revolution marching back and forth outside the parlor window.
Part British romantic comedy, part Russian social realism, and with a large cast of memorable characters, this astoundingly funny and poignant novel is the tale of people persisting in love and hope despite the odds.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1922
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514 people want to read
About the author
William Gerhardie
25 books12 followersWilliam Alexander Gerhardie (21 November 1895 – 15 July 1977)[1] was a British (Anglo-Russian) novelist and playwright.
William Gerhardie by Norman Ivor Lancashire (1927-2004). Photograph by Stella Harpley
Gerhardie (or Gerhardi: he added the 'e' in later years as an affectation) was one of the most critically acclaimed English novelists of the 1920s (Evelyn Waugh told him 'I have talent, but you have genius'). H.G. Wells also championed his work. His first novel, Futility, was written while he was at Worcester College, Oxford and drew on his experiences in Russia fighting (or attempting to fight) the Bolsheviks, along with his childhood experiences visiting pre-revolutionary Russia. Some say that it was the first work in English to fully explore the theme of 'waiting' later made famous by Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot, but it is probably more apt to recognize a common comic nihilism between those two figures. His next novel, The Polyglots, is probably his masterpiece (although some argue for Doom). Again it deals with Russia (Gerhardie was strongly influenced by the tragi-comic style of Russian writers such as Chekhov about whom he wrote a study while in College).
He collaborated with Hugh Kingsmill on the biography The Casanova Fable, his friendship with Kingsmill being both a source of conflict over women and a great intellectual stimulus.
After World War II Gerhardie's star waned, and he became unfashionable. Although he continued to write, he published no new work after 1939. After a period of poverty-stricken oblivion, he lived to see two 'definitive collected works' published by Macdonald (in 1947-49 and then revised again in 1970-74). An idiosyncratic study of world history between 1890 and 1940 ("God's Fifth Column") was discovered among his papers and published posthumously. More recently, both Prion and New Directions Press have been reissuing his works.
William Gerhardie by Norman Ivor Lancashire (1927-2004). Photograph by Stella Harpley
Gerhardie (or Gerhardi: he added the 'e' in later years as an affectation) was one of the most critically acclaimed English novelists of the 1920s (Evelyn Waugh told him 'I have talent, but you have genius'). H.G. Wells also championed his work. His first novel, Futility, was written while he was at Worcester College, Oxford and drew on his experiences in Russia fighting (or attempting to fight) the Bolsheviks, along with his childhood experiences visiting pre-revolutionary Russia. Some say that it was the first work in English to fully explore the theme of 'waiting' later made famous by Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot, but it is probably more apt to recognize a common comic nihilism between those two figures. His next novel, The Polyglots, is probably his masterpiece (although some argue for Doom). Again it deals with Russia (Gerhardie was strongly influenced by the tragi-comic style of Russian writers such as Chekhov about whom he wrote a study while in College).
He collaborated with Hugh Kingsmill on the biography The Casanova Fable, his friendship with Kingsmill being both a source of conflict over women and a great intellectual stimulus.
After World War II Gerhardie's star waned, and he became unfashionable. Although he continued to write, he published no new work after 1939. After a period of poverty-stricken oblivion, he lived to see two 'definitive collected works' published by Macdonald (in 1947-49 and then revised again in 1970-74). An idiosyncratic study of world history between 1890 and 1940 ("God's Fifth Column") was discovered among his papers and published posthumously. More recently, both Prion and New Directions Press have been reissuing his works.
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October 14, 2012
This is an old reader's report on Gerhardie from my long ago publishing days....I'm sure Sonny never got past the first paragraph. So glad to see Melville House has pursued!
July 19, 1990
Sonny,
I have now read three William Gerhardie books, Futility, The Polyglots, and Memoirs of A Polyglot. On the assumption that you have no idea why I am telling you this, I will remind you that over a month ago I showed you a review in the TLS by Julian Symons of a biography of Gerhardie written by Dido Davies (Oxford University Press) which incorporated a critical essay of the author's oeuvre. (I have attached the article). I said something about Vintage or even Pantheon and you said pursue it, remember. Two novels and a memoir by a thirty-five year old polyglot later, I am utterly convinced that these novels deserve to be in print in the USA. Of course deserve is a tricky word.
Gerhardie's voice is unique because it is wholly his own while not at all his own in the sense that he is a mimic of every author that ever impressed him. He is a literary polyglot. Feeling the necessity to be more succinct in my description however, I will say that Gerhardie's prose did, at times, bring to mind a mingling of two distinct styles--on the one hand, a Chechovian dedication to detail, to the particular and the intimate, to that which appears to have no bearing on things significant yet when all taken together reveal entire worlds. And, on the other hand, Gerhardie's tone is infused with the romantic irony, the barely concealed contempt for the establishment--for politics, philosophy, religion--and the deceiving self-knowledgable voice of an F. Scott Fitzgerald (who was writing at the exact same time as Gerhardie. This Side of Paradise was published two years before Futility). But Gerhardie also has the absurd, slapstick humor of Gogol at the same time as the highly sophisticated wit of Evelyn Waugh (who, says Symons, was most assuredly influenced by Gerhardie). All three of these books are laugh out loud funny.
In one of the fine moments, and the book is a string of fine moments, in the middle of Memoirs of a Polyglot Gerhardie describes in his wonderfully suspect and egocentric voice something of what I'm trying to describe:
Just as every political party considers itself a "centre-party" threatened by revolutionaries on the left and reactionaries on the right, so every young writer tends to think his talent is compounded from the choicest ingredients. One hopes--and on what little ground!--that one incorporates the lucid sanity of a Bertrand Russell, without any of his liberal smugness; the bitter incisiveness of Bernard Shaw, without his sterility; the rich humanity of H. G. Wells, without his splashing over; the analytical profundity of Proust, whithout his mawkish snobbism; the elemental sweep of D. H. Lawrence, without his gawky bitterness; the miraculous naturalness of Tchehov without that sorry echo of the consumptive's cough; the supreme poetic moments of Goethe unimbedded in the suet-pudding of his common day; the intimations without the imbecility of William Wordsworth; the lyrical imagery of Shakespeare, without his rhetoric; the pathological insight of Dostoevski, without his extravagent suspiciousness; the life-imparting breath of Tolstoy, without his foolishness; Turgenev's purity in reproducing nature without his sentimentalism; the lyrical power of Pushkin without his paganism; the elegiac qualtiy of Lermontov with out his "Byronism"; the humour and epic language of Gogol without his provincialism; the spirit of Voltaire, without his tinniness; the human understanding of Dr. Johnson, without his overbearingness; the dash of Byron with out vanity; the faithful portraiture of Flaubert without his tortuous fastidiousness. The list could be prolonged.
He pronounces upon, makes fun of, and is humbled by his literary forbears all in one breath. But then again, Gerhardie pronounces on everyone and everything. He makes an art of being offensive, slurring race, class, nationality, and the female sex as if such naive and egotistical proclamations were a necessary stage in the development of the artist.
The first person narrator of both Futility and The Polyglots is the same as that of Memoirs of a Polyglot--a purported autobiography--which could lead one to deduce that all of these works are autobiographical. Yes and no. The material--characters and circumstances--may well be but the writing, the stuff, is pure artifice. Our narrator is one of the most elusive, untrustworthy, manipulative and repulsively endearing fictional charaters I have ever come across. (Futility, Gerhardie's first novel, begins "[The 'I' of this book is not me]"). The author and his narrator persistantly design to draw the reader into a fiction only to shove him violently out again by means of an aside or an observation or humor or satire and catapult him into a whole other "reality" which in turn is another fiction and so on. Reading these novels (for I would say Memoirs of a Polyglot classifies as such as much as the others do) is like being in a house of mirrors, your pleasure deriving from a constant, and rather discomforting, blurring of the conventions of the real and the fantastic, of life and art.
I, as a reader, am a great believer in plot and yet while reading these novels I never reflected on the virtual absence of plot until now. Things happen, characters cross continents, people die, there are wars, marriages, governments fall, fortunes are lost and yet all of this is too real to be considered part of a plot but nevertheless too artfully rendered to ever be considered a straight reflection of the real.
All three of these early novels are set against a fascinating political and cultural backdrop--Russia and England during and immediately after World War I. And all three have for a protagonist a young man whose history and education match that of Gerhardie quite remarkably. In Memoirs of a Polyglot Gerhardie gives us the "real" story which Symons outlines in his review. Though Gerhardie's life story is rich and fascinating--he particapated in one of the most intriguing literary and political periods of our century--Memoirs is really a series of impressions, digressions, humoristic sketches, philosophical musings, and political condemnations (Gerhardie was adamently anti-military). It is an enormously playful book. And it is in this work that Gerhardie reveals most readily that the notion of ardent play is at the heart of his artistic vision.
Futility is the story of Andrei Andreiech a Russian born Englishman who grows up in St. Petersburg, goes to Oxford and is recruited by the British Army's special services when the war breaks out because of his fluency in several languages, especially Russian (essentially Gerhardie's biography). He is sent to St. Petersburg and while stationed there becomes involved with the Bursanov sisters and their rather bizarre family. The narrator's focus is apparently on Nina, the second sister as it is on Sylvia in The Polyglots, but these love affairs are the means through which our hero can more closely scrutinize that which holds so much fascination for him and for us--the cast of characters who comprise her "family". Almost immediately we are led from what appears to be something akin to a drawing room comedy into what is actually a literary carnival. Nina's family is thoroughly Bourgeois by any Bolshevik's definition and the wealthy family gradually loses all financial security. Of course, as the story unfolds we see that they really had none in the first place. It is merely a question of semantics: credit, during the war, takes on new definitions. And so does the word family. Nina's father Nikolai Vasielevich becomes the ring master as lovers, and lover's entire families, distant cousins, friends, ex-wives and their new husbands all join the troupe. Toward the end of the novel, when Andrei Andreiech arranges through the British foreign office for Nikolai Vasielevich and himself to go to Siberia to discover the fate of some mines he owns but has never earned a penny off of, the entire lot (no one can bear to be left behind) goes with them. On the train ride Uncle Kostia, Nina's father's sixteen year old lover's uncle (a writer who has never written a word) and one great character, has an exchange with Andrei Andreiech which expresses the magnificent tension that pervades Gerhardie's work.
"When I am at home--I mean anywhere at a standstill--I am wretched intolerably. I write and I think--" He stopped.
"What?"
"What am I writing for: what on earth am I thinking for?"
"So you have doubts?"
"Yes, at moments I am seized by misgivings: what is it all for? I ask."
"I see."
"Now it is different. We are moving, apparently doing something, going somewhere. One has a sense of accomplishing something. I lie here in my coupe and I think: It is good. At last I am doing somehting. Living, not recording. Living! Living! I look out of the window, and my heart cries out: Life! Life! and so living, living vividly, I lapse into my accustomed sphere of meditation, and then before I know exactly where I am I begin to meditate: Where are we all going to? Isn't our journey the kernel of absurdity? And so, by contrast, as it were, I gain a sense of the importance of meditation.--That is how we decieve ourselves Andrei Andreiech.
The Polyglots is again the portrait of a young polyglot, Georges Diabologh, who is an Englishman born on Japanese soil but who grew up in Russia before going to school in England. He is stationed in Japan during the war and makes forays into Russia. His Aunt Teresa who left Belgium with her husband and daughter at the war's outbreak also live in Japan. Aunt Teresa, in a different manner but not unlike Nina's father, collects people and it is they that form the pigment that Gerhardie spreads across his canvass.
His love affair with his cousin Sylvia, whom he adores for her simple beauty and for being beautifully simple, is the centerpiece around which the rest of the novel is layed. And it is Sylvia's more or less deaf ear and meaningfully meaningless patter that gives rise to the narrators various and sundry pontifications. The juxtapositions are often glorious. Gerhardie never lets himself, nor his reader, assume or trust anything:
"You want to laugh at me then?"
"No, that is not humour. Humour is when I laugh at you and laugh at myself in the doing (for laughing at you), and laugh at myself for laughing at myself, and thus to the tenth degree. It's unbiased, free like a bird. The inestimable advantage of comedy over any other literary method of depicting life is that here you rise superior, unobtrusively, to every notion, attitude, and situation so depicted. We laugh--we laugh because we cannot be destroyed, because we do not recognize our destiny in any one achievemnt, because we are immortal, because there is not this or that world; but endless worlds: eternally we pass from one into another. In this lies the hilarity, futility, the insurmountalby greatness of all life." I felt jolly,
having gained my balance with one coup.
"The Polyglots", says Julian Symons, "is certainly Gerhardie's finest book, richer and more humane than anything else he wrote, and more deeply serious in its comedy. It is one of the classic novels of the twentieth century." I can think of no better way to describe Gerhardie's work than as deeply serious comedy. I found myself laughing out loud often while reading these novels, but it was a laughter that more often than not reverberated in the soul. With each of them, I developed a bizarre relationship which I can only describe as pleasurably disturbing. I couldn't wait to finish so that I could have a sense of the whole picture and yet I was reluctant to read on knowing that all these marvelous parts could never add up to any one whole.
Olivia Manning, in an article in The Times wrote, "The humour of life, the poetry of death and the release of the spirit--these things William Gerhardie describes as no prose writer has done before him....How did he become lost to view? How can we resurrect him? Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, C. P. Snow, Kingsley Amis, William Cooper--all acknowledge his influence. He is one of the immortals. He is our Gogol's Overcoat. We all come out of him." Twenty years later, I couldn't agree more.
FAX - 44-71-872-0332
DATE - May 16, 1990
Michael Shaw
The Curtis Brown Agency
162-168 Regent Street
London W1
GREAT BRITIAN
Dear Mr. Shaw,
We would like to consider for publication the books Futility and Memoirs of a Polyglot by William Gerhardie and would appreciate a review copy of each. I gather you control the U.S. rights. I would also appreciate your letting me know what the current situation is concerning the rights. Our fax # is 212-572-2593.
Thank you for your attention.
Regards,
Jenny McPhee
Assistant Editor
July 19, 1990
Sonny,
I have now read three William Gerhardie books, Futility, The Polyglots, and Memoirs of A Polyglot. On the assumption that you have no idea why I am telling you this, I will remind you that over a month ago I showed you a review in the TLS by Julian Symons of a biography of Gerhardie written by Dido Davies (Oxford University Press) which incorporated a critical essay of the author's oeuvre. (I have attached the article). I said something about Vintage or even Pantheon and you said pursue it, remember. Two novels and a memoir by a thirty-five year old polyglot later, I am utterly convinced that these novels deserve to be in print in the USA. Of course deserve is a tricky word.
Gerhardie's voice is unique because it is wholly his own while not at all his own in the sense that he is a mimic of every author that ever impressed him. He is a literary polyglot. Feeling the necessity to be more succinct in my description however, I will say that Gerhardie's prose did, at times, bring to mind a mingling of two distinct styles--on the one hand, a Chechovian dedication to detail, to the particular and the intimate, to that which appears to have no bearing on things significant yet when all taken together reveal entire worlds. And, on the other hand, Gerhardie's tone is infused with the romantic irony, the barely concealed contempt for the establishment--for politics, philosophy, religion--and the deceiving self-knowledgable voice of an F. Scott Fitzgerald (who was writing at the exact same time as Gerhardie. This Side of Paradise was published two years before Futility). But Gerhardie also has the absurd, slapstick humor of Gogol at the same time as the highly sophisticated wit of Evelyn Waugh (who, says Symons, was most assuredly influenced by Gerhardie). All three of these books are laugh out loud funny.
In one of the fine moments, and the book is a string of fine moments, in the middle of Memoirs of a Polyglot Gerhardie describes in his wonderfully suspect and egocentric voice something of what I'm trying to describe:
Just as every political party considers itself a "centre-party" threatened by revolutionaries on the left and reactionaries on the right, so every young writer tends to think his talent is compounded from the choicest ingredients. One hopes--and on what little ground!--that one incorporates the lucid sanity of a Bertrand Russell, without any of his liberal smugness; the bitter incisiveness of Bernard Shaw, without his sterility; the rich humanity of H. G. Wells, without his splashing over; the analytical profundity of Proust, whithout his mawkish snobbism; the elemental sweep of D. H. Lawrence, without his gawky bitterness; the miraculous naturalness of Tchehov without that sorry echo of the consumptive's cough; the supreme poetic moments of Goethe unimbedded in the suet-pudding of his common day; the intimations without the imbecility of William Wordsworth; the lyrical imagery of Shakespeare, without his rhetoric; the pathological insight of Dostoevski, without his extravagent suspiciousness; the life-imparting breath of Tolstoy, without his foolishness; Turgenev's purity in reproducing nature without his sentimentalism; the lyrical power of Pushkin without his paganism; the elegiac qualtiy of Lermontov with out his "Byronism"; the humour and epic language of Gogol without his provincialism; the spirit of Voltaire, without his tinniness; the human understanding of Dr. Johnson, without his overbearingness; the dash of Byron with out vanity; the faithful portraiture of Flaubert without his tortuous fastidiousness. The list could be prolonged.
He pronounces upon, makes fun of, and is humbled by his literary forbears all in one breath. But then again, Gerhardie pronounces on everyone and everything. He makes an art of being offensive, slurring race, class, nationality, and the female sex as if such naive and egotistical proclamations were a necessary stage in the development of the artist.
The first person narrator of both Futility and The Polyglots is the same as that of Memoirs of a Polyglot--a purported autobiography--which could lead one to deduce that all of these works are autobiographical. Yes and no. The material--characters and circumstances--may well be but the writing, the stuff, is pure artifice. Our narrator is one of the most elusive, untrustworthy, manipulative and repulsively endearing fictional charaters I have ever come across. (Futility, Gerhardie's first novel, begins "[The 'I' of this book is not me]"). The author and his narrator persistantly design to draw the reader into a fiction only to shove him violently out again by means of an aside or an observation or humor or satire and catapult him into a whole other "reality" which in turn is another fiction and so on. Reading these novels (for I would say Memoirs of a Polyglot classifies as such as much as the others do) is like being in a house of mirrors, your pleasure deriving from a constant, and rather discomforting, blurring of the conventions of the real and the fantastic, of life and art.
I, as a reader, am a great believer in plot and yet while reading these novels I never reflected on the virtual absence of plot until now. Things happen, characters cross continents, people die, there are wars, marriages, governments fall, fortunes are lost and yet all of this is too real to be considered part of a plot but nevertheless too artfully rendered to ever be considered a straight reflection of the real.
All three of these early novels are set against a fascinating political and cultural backdrop--Russia and England during and immediately after World War I. And all three have for a protagonist a young man whose history and education match that of Gerhardie quite remarkably. In Memoirs of a Polyglot Gerhardie gives us the "real" story which Symons outlines in his review. Though Gerhardie's life story is rich and fascinating--he particapated in one of the most intriguing literary and political periods of our century--Memoirs is really a series of impressions, digressions, humoristic sketches, philosophical musings, and political condemnations (Gerhardie was adamently anti-military). It is an enormously playful book. And it is in this work that Gerhardie reveals most readily that the notion of ardent play is at the heart of his artistic vision.
Futility is the story of Andrei Andreiech a Russian born Englishman who grows up in St. Petersburg, goes to Oxford and is recruited by the British Army's special services when the war breaks out because of his fluency in several languages, especially Russian (essentially Gerhardie's biography). He is sent to St. Petersburg and while stationed there becomes involved with the Bursanov sisters and their rather bizarre family. The narrator's focus is apparently on Nina, the second sister as it is on Sylvia in The Polyglots, but these love affairs are the means through which our hero can more closely scrutinize that which holds so much fascination for him and for us--the cast of characters who comprise her "family". Almost immediately we are led from what appears to be something akin to a drawing room comedy into what is actually a literary carnival. Nina's family is thoroughly Bourgeois by any Bolshevik's definition and the wealthy family gradually loses all financial security. Of course, as the story unfolds we see that they really had none in the first place. It is merely a question of semantics: credit, during the war, takes on new definitions. And so does the word family. Nina's father Nikolai Vasielevich becomes the ring master as lovers, and lover's entire families, distant cousins, friends, ex-wives and their new husbands all join the troupe. Toward the end of the novel, when Andrei Andreiech arranges through the British foreign office for Nikolai Vasielevich and himself to go to Siberia to discover the fate of some mines he owns but has never earned a penny off of, the entire lot (no one can bear to be left behind) goes with them. On the train ride Uncle Kostia, Nina's father's sixteen year old lover's uncle (a writer who has never written a word) and one great character, has an exchange with Andrei Andreiech which expresses the magnificent tension that pervades Gerhardie's work.
"When I am at home--I mean anywhere at a standstill--I am wretched intolerably. I write and I think--" He stopped.
"What?"
"What am I writing for: what on earth am I thinking for?"
"So you have doubts?"
"Yes, at moments I am seized by misgivings: what is it all for? I ask."
"I see."
"Now it is different. We are moving, apparently doing something, going somewhere. One has a sense of accomplishing something. I lie here in my coupe and I think: It is good. At last I am doing somehting. Living, not recording. Living! Living! I look out of the window, and my heart cries out: Life! Life! and so living, living vividly, I lapse into my accustomed sphere of meditation, and then before I know exactly where I am I begin to meditate: Where are we all going to? Isn't our journey the kernel of absurdity? And so, by contrast, as it were, I gain a sense of the importance of meditation.--That is how we decieve ourselves Andrei Andreiech.
The Polyglots is again the portrait of a young polyglot, Georges Diabologh, who is an Englishman born on Japanese soil but who grew up in Russia before going to school in England. He is stationed in Japan during the war and makes forays into Russia. His Aunt Teresa who left Belgium with her husband and daughter at the war's outbreak also live in Japan. Aunt Teresa, in a different manner but not unlike Nina's father, collects people and it is they that form the pigment that Gerhardie spreads across his canvass.
His love affair with his cousin Sylvia, whom he adores for her simple beauty and for being beautifully simple, is the centerpiece around which the rest of the novel is layed. And it is Sylvia's more or less deaf ear and meaningfully meaningless patter that gives rise to the narrators various and sundry pontifications. The juxtapositions are often glorious. Gerhardie never lets himself, nor his reader, assume or trust anything:
"You want to laugh at me then?"
"No, that is not humour. Humour is when I laugh at you and laugh at myself in the doing (for laughing at you), and laugh at myself for laughing at myself, and thus to the tenth degree. It's unbiased, free like a bird. The inestimable advantage of comedy over any other literary method of depicting life is that here you rise superior, unobtrusively, to every notion, attitude, and situation so depicted. We laugh--we laugh because we cannot be destroyed, because we do not recognize our destiny in any one achievemnt, because we are immortal, because there is not this or that world; but endless worlds: eternally we pass from one into another. In this lies the hilarity, futility, the insurmountalby greatness of all life." I felt jolly,
having gained my balance with one coup.
"The Polyglots", says Julian Symons, "is certainly Gerhardie's finest book, richer and more humane than anything else he wrote, and more deeply serious in its comedy. It is one of the classic novels of the twentieth century." I can think of no better way to describe Gerhardie's work than as deeply serious comedy. I found myself laughing out loud often while reading these novels, but it was a laughter that more often than not reverberated in the soul. With each of them, I developed a bizarre relationship which I can only describe as pleasurably disturbing. I couldn't wait to finish so that I could have a sense of the whole picture and yet I was reluctant to read on knowing that all these marvelous parts could never add up to any one whole.
Olivia Manning, in an article in The Times wrote, "The humour of life, the poetry of death and the release of the spirit--these things William Gerhardie describes as no prose writer has done before him....How did he become lost to view? How can we resurrect him? Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, C. P. Snow, Kingsley Amis, William Cooper--all acknowledge his influence. He is one of the immortals. He is our Gogol's Overcoat. We all come out of him." Twenty years later, I couldn't agree more.
FAX - 44-71-872-0332
DATE - May 16, 1990
Michael Shaw
The Curtis Brown Agency
162-168 Regent Street
London W1
GREAT BRITIAN
Dear Mr. Shaw,
We would like to consider for publication the books Futility and Memoirs of a Polyglot by William Gerhardie and would appreciate a review copy of each. I gather you control the U.S. rights. I would also appreciate your letting me know what the current situation is concerning the rights. Our fax # is 212-572-2593.
Thank you for your attention.
Regards,
Jenny McPhee
Assistant Editor
January 5, 2018
Scoprire il più russo degli scrittori inglesi
William Gerhardie è stato un autore molto noto in Gran Bretagna nel periodo tra le due guerre. Il suo primo romanzo, Futilità, è del 1922, e venne salutato come una delle opere letterarie più importanti di quell'epoca (è da notare, al proposito, che nello stesso anno furono pubblicati l'Ulisse di Joyce e Terra desolata di T.S. Eliot): dopo una produzione letteraria piuttosto intensa, nel 1939 si isolò dal mondo, affetto da depressione, per la scrittura di un nuovo romanzo, che però non vide mai la luce. Morì ottantaduenne, dimenticato da tutti, nel 1977. Scarsa è ovviamente la sua fortuna editoriale in Italia: l'unica opera pubblicata mi risulta sia proprio Futilità, edita prima da Einaudi sul finire degli anni '60 e quindi – nella stessa traduzione di Gianni Celati - da Adelphi nel 2003. La casa editrice di Milano peraltro annunciava in quella occasione la prossima pubblicazione di due sue altre opere, tra cui The polyglots, del 1925, considerato dai più il suo capolavoro, ma ciò non è purtroppo avvenuto.
Prima di addentrarci nell'analisi della sua opera d'esordio, è opportuno dire qualcosa in più della biografia dell'autore, perché questa può aiutare a comprendere meglio la genesi e i contenuti di Futilità.
Gerhardie infatti nacque nel 1895 a San Pietroburgo, rampollo di una famiglia di industriali di origine belga, e lì visse sino al 1913. Tornò nella sua città natale durante la prima guerra mondiale, come addetto all'ambasciata britannica, e assistette alle rivoluzioni del 1917. Negli anni successivi fu inviato in Siberia al seguito della spedizione militare con la quale le potenze occidentali tentarono di rovesciare il nascente stato sovietico.
Gerhardie aveva quindi una profonda e diretta conoscenza della Russia, della sua cultura e della sua società, anche se di quest'ultima probabilmente limitata alle classi sociali che frequentava.
Non sorprende quindi che sostanzialmente russo sia il suo romanzo d'esordio, scritto a Oxford poco dopo il suo rientro definitivo in Gran Bretagna. Futilità non è solamente un romanzo ambientato in Russia, ma è – come vedremo – impregnato di cultura e di letteratura russa, tanto che il suo autore viene spesso definito anglo-russo.
Futilità narra le tragicomiche vicende della famiglia di un patriarca della piccola aristocrazia russa, Nikolaj Vasil'evič Bursanov, negli anni che vanno dall'anteguerra al periodo della guerra civile. L'io narrante è un giovane di cui non sappiamo molto, se non che si chiama Andrej Andreevič, che è in qualche modo inglese ma si trova a San Pietroburgo qualche anno prima della rivoluzione, che vi ritorna – dopo essere andato a Oxford – nel 1917 come militare addetto all'ambasciata britannica, e che ancora dopo viene inviato a Vladivostok nelle retrovie della guerra civile. Nonostante gli evidenti riferimenti autobiografici, Gerhardie ci informa subito, in una nota che precede il testo, che l'io di questo libro non è l'autore.
Andrej Andreevič frequenta i Bursanov perché è innamorato, inizialmente forse corrisposto, di Nina, la seconda delle tre giovani figlie (all'inizio del romanzo hanno 16, 15 e 14 anni) di Nikolaj Vasil'evič. La situazione della famiglia è estremamente articolata. Nikolaj Vasil'evič convive con una donna di origine tedesca, Fanny Ivanovna, dopo essersi separato dalla prima moglie, madre delle tre ragazze, che a sua volta vive con un dentista ebreo (il quale probabilmente è il padre di Vera, l'ultima ragazza). Ora però si è innamorato di Zina, una diciassettene con una famiglia allargata fatta, oltre che dei genitori, di fratelli, zii e anziani nonni, e vorrebbe sposarla: per questo ovviamente i rapporti tra Nikolaj Vasil'evič e Fanny Ivanovna sono tesi, anche se egli non ha intenzione di abbandonare la compagna, ma semplicemente di aggiungere Zina al ménage. La casa dei Brsanov, oltre che da Andrej Andreevič, è frequentata dal barone Wunderhausen, fidanzato di Sonja, la prima figlia, e dal Kniaz, un presunto principe in disgrazia che conduce una silenziosa esistenza da parassita.
Nikolaj Vasil'evič mantiene tutti: ha un cospicuo patrimonio ed è proprietario di alcune miniere d'oro in Siberia, che sino ad allora non hanno reso nulla ma dalle quali si aspetta a breve importanti profitti. Così, oltre che della sua famiglia e dei suoi ospiti, si fa carico della famiglia tedesca di Fanny Ivanovna, di quella di Zina e della ex moglie, che intende divorziare avendo accalappiato un ricco austriaco.
Nella seconda, breve parte del romanzo, Andrej Andreevič torna a San Pietroburgo poco prima che scoppi la rivoluzione: riallaccia i rapporti con i Bursanov, la cui situazione si è ancora complicata. Fanny Ivanovna, essendo tedesca, rischiava di essere rimandata in patria: per questo ha sposato un signore malato, che naturalmente si è installato in casa; l'ex moglie del patriarca non ha sposato il suo austriaco, cui l'autorità ha confiscato tutti i beni, mentre Sonja ha sposato il barone Wunderhausen, che non avendo un soldo vive nella casa. Per il resto nulla è cambiato, se non che la guerra e la rivoluzione allontanano ulteriormente la prospettiva di un utile dalle miniere. Gerhardie descrive la rivoluzione di febbraio prima e quella di ottobre poi come un grottesco periodo di confusione totale, nel quale neppure i protagonisti, soldati, operai, borghesi, sanno bene cosa stia succedendo e come comportarsi. Traspare da parte dell'autore un atteggiamento fortemente scettico nei confronti dei grandi sommovimenti sociali di quel periodo.
Nella successiva parte, che occupa quasi la metà del romanzo, la scena si sposta a Vladivostok, dove Andrej Andreevič giunge al seguito delle autorità militari inglesi. Qui ritrova inaspettatamente i Bursanov, che hanno lasciato Pietrogrado per tentare di prendere possesso delle mitiche miniere d'oro. Naturalmente insieme alla famiglia si è spostata tutta la corte dei mantenuti da Nikolaj Vasil'evič: ancora una volta nulla è cambiato, se non per il protagonista, che comprende che il suo amore per Nina non è stato in realtà mai corrisposto. La scena si fa ancora più corale, in quanto vi compaiono generali bianchi, ammiragli inglesi, autorità dei vari governi che si susseguono in città, marinai statunitensi che corteggiano le tre sorelle. In una città fangosa e squallida, In un clima che si fa più surreale via via che diventa sempre più evidente che l'armata rossa sta vincendo, l'unico punto fermo è la certezza di Nikolaj Vasil'evič di poter riprendere possesso delle sue miniere, certezza ovviamente frustrata dagli eventi.
Il giorno della partenza degli inglesi, quando tutta la famiglia Bursanov (meno Nina) si reca al molo per salutare Andrej Andreevič, alla domanda: ”che cosa farà?” Nikolaj Vasil'evič risponde :”beh… aspetterò […] Non credo che ci vorrà molto, ora”.
Nel breve epilogo, Andrej Andreevič torna qualche tempo dopo a Vladivostok, occupata dai giapponesi, per amore di Nina, ma trova le tre sorelle in procinto di andare a Shangai, dove le avrebbero raggiunte i marinai americani loro corteggiatori (Wunderhausen, rivelatosi un falso barone, se ne era andato). Nina rivela ad Andrej Andreevič di non averlo mai amato e a quest'ultimo non resta che vederla partire dal molo, mentre Nikolaj Vasil'evič, con tutto il resto della ciurma, rimane in città sognando ancora di recuperare le sue miniere.
La prima parte del romanzo, nella quale cominciamo a comporre il complicato puzzle composto dai Bursanov e sodali, è intrisa, come si può facilmente arguire, di rimandi alla letteratura russa che Gerhardie amava di più. Se la situazione generale della famiglia e il tono del racconto possono essere definiti in qualche modo un mix di Gogol' e Gončarov, è sicuramente Čechov a farla esplicitamente da padrone, sin dal titolo di queste pagine: Le tre sorelle. A parte i richiami più o meno letterali (ad un certo punto i protagonisti vanno a teatro a vedere proprio il dramma čhecoviano) Čechov è il riferimento precipuo del romanzo in quanto due aspetti precisi della sua poetica stanno alla base dell'opera di Gerhardie: il fatto che Čechov sia il cantore dell'attesa della vita che in realtà non arriva mai perché la vita consiste proprio in quell'attesa, e che per dare forza a questa sua idea si avvalga di un luogo narrativo che è al confine tra commedia e tragedia.
Ma, come dice Nina durante un litigio con Andrej Andreevič, che aveva accusato la famiglia proprio di sembrare uscita da una pagina di Čechov, egli ora è morto. Siamo infatti in pieno '900 e, pur prendendo le mosse da Čechov, Gehardie è pienamente consapevole che non è più possibile scrivere come lui. Subito dopo, infatti, dice, per bocca di Andrej Andreevič: ”E infatti quest'è il problema della letteratura moderna: un romanzo non è un buon romanzo se non è verosimile, e d'altronde non c'è vita degna d'essere raccontata, se non è una vita fuori dall'ordinario; ma essa apparirà poi improbabile come un romanzo”. L'autore sceglie quindi l'unica via che gli rimane per fare letteratura: raccontarci futilità, il nulla, e raccontarci come questo nulla alligni nel periodo più convulso che la storia ricordi, nel paese dove queste convulsioni raggiungono il massimo grado di frenesia. Così, i drammatici contorcimenti causati dalla rivoluzione e dalla guerra sono anch'essi futilità, e fanno da contraltare solo apparente alla immutabile situazione di attesa dei Bursanov, perché, come rileva Fanny Ivanovna verso la fine del romanzo riferendosi agli anni di Pietroburgo: ”Sentivamo che la crisi non poteva durare ed attendemmo l'esplosione. Ma non vi fu mai esplosione. La crisi si trascinò trasformandosi in crisi cronica; […] E nulla accade, Non accadrà nulla. Nulla accade...”. Non siamo di fronte alla necessità che tutto cambi perché tutto rimanga come prima, ma alla negazione di un prima e di un dopo, alla cronicità della crisi come dato strutturale, che impedisce qualsiasi visione in prospettiva. Una metafora di questo stato di cose, che appare molte volte nel romanzo, è quella del ballo, cui i protagonisti si dedicano anche nelle situazioni più disperate. Una radicalizzazione della posizione di Čechov, quindi, una sua piena trasposizione al '900, la coscienza che le sue analisi esistenziali possono essere applicate non solo alla provincia russa ma allo stato del mondo. In questo, essenzialmente, sta la modernità di Gerhardie, e forse la necessità di una sua piena riscoperta. Di converso, se un appunto si deve muovere a questo romanzo, è proprio dato dall'aver ridotto anche un avvenimento che avrebbe sconvolto il mondo, l'ondata rivoluzionaria del 1917, a episodio quasi folcloristico, fatto di autocarri di proletari in gita di piacere, di soldati ubriachi e di rivoluzionari che per sbaglio cantano un inno allo Zar. Gerhardie da buon inglese ricco parteggia apertamente per la rivoluzione borghese di febbraio, mentre – come emerge anche nelle pagine ambientate a Vladivostok - non ha alcuna idea di cosa sia il comunismo e di cosa vogliano i bolscevichi, che vede solo come dei pazzi assetati di sangue.
Uno degli elementi di grande fascino del libro, che lo ammanta di una ambiguità altrettanto moderna che il senso della crisi, è dato dal fatto che Gerhardie ci consegna un messaggio così disperante in un involucro leggero e ironico, che è costituito da una riuscita miscela di humor inglese (parlando di un ammiraglio britannico dice ad un certo punto: ”mi dispiacque separarmi da quel vecchio. V'era in lui qualche cosa che lo rendeva quasi umano”) e vis umoristica russa. Come detto, l'autore ha assorbito in profondità la lezione dei grandi maestri russi dell'800 (soprattutto qui, come detto, Gogol' e Gončarov) e ne fa uso a piene mani sia per descriverci i personaggi e l'atmosfera che circonda il clan Bursanov sia in alcune situazioni riguardanti la mentalità russa - che Gerhardie guarda indubbiamente con un filo di aristocratico razzismo tipicamente inglese - e l'incompetenza dei funzionari governativi. Un altro personaggio gogoliano è Zio Kostja, un parente di Zina, considerato dalla famiglia l'intellettuale del gruppo perché, alzandosi tardi la mattina, non fa altro che scrivere, pur non avendo mai pubblicato nulla. Al di là del risvolto satirico il personaggio permette a Gerhardie di sottolineare incisivamente l'inutilità della letteratura.
La futilità del titolo è perciò per l'autore totalizzante, nel senso che tutto è futile: futile è la vita, dalla quale non dobbiamo attenderci nulla che non sia ciò che è; futili sono gli sforzi per cambiare la società, che altro non portano se non crisi, confusione e dolore; ma futili e finanche comici sono anche i tentativi di andare contro questi cambiamenti, assommando crisi alla crisi; futile è infine scrivere cercando di dare un senso a questa attività. Si può non essere d'accordo, ma è indubbio che Gerhardie ci pone, facendoci sorridere, questioni su cui riflettere attentamente, anche alla luce dei quasi cento anni passati da allora. Chissà se avremo modo di leggere altro di lui: me lo auguro.
William Gerhardie è stato un autore molto noto in Gran Bretagna nel periodo tra le due guerre. Il suo primo romanzo, Futilità, è del 1922, e venne salutato come una delle opere letterarie più importanti di quell'epoca (è da notare, al proposito, che nello stesso anno furono pubblicati l'Ulisse di Joyce e Terra desolata di T.S. Eliot): dopo una produzione letteraria piuttosto intensa, nel 1939 si isolò dal mondo, affetto da depressione, per la scrittura di un nuovo romanzo, che però non vide mai la luce. Morì ottantaduenne, dimenticato da tutti, nel 1977. Scarsa è ovviamente la sua fortuna editoriale in Italia: l'unica opera pubblicata mi risulta sia proprio Futilità, edita prima da Einaudi sul finire degli anni '60 e quindi – nella stessa traduzione di Gianni Celati - da Adelphi nel 2003. La casa editrice di Milano peraltro annunciava in quella occasione la prossima pubblicazione di due sue altre opere, tra cui The polyglots, del 1925, considerato dai più il suo capolavoro, ma ciò non è purtroppo avvenuto.
Prima di addentrarci nell'analisi della sua opera d'esordio, è opportuno dire qualcosa in più della biografia dell'autore, perché questa può aiutare a comprendere meglio la genesi e i contenuti di Futilità.
Gerhardie infatti nacque nel 1895 a San Pietroburgo, rampollo di una famiglia di industriali di origine belga, e lì visse sino al 1913. Tornò nella sua città natale durante la prima guerra mondiale, come addetto all'ambasciata britannica, e assistette alle rivoluzioni del 1917. Negli anni successivi fu inviato in Siberia al seguito della spedizione militare con la quale le potenze occidentali tentarono di rovesciare il nascente stato sovietico.
Gerhardie aveva quindi una profonda e diretta conoscenza della Russia, della sua cultura e della sua società, anche se di quest'ultima probabilmente limitata alle classi sociali che frequentava.
Non sorprende quindi che sostanzialmente russo sia il suo romanzo d'esordio, scritto a Oxford poco dopo il suo rientro definitivo in Gran Bretagna. Futilità non è solamente un romanzo ambientato in Russia, ma è – come vedremo – impregnato di cultura e di letteratura russa, tanto che il suo autore viene spesso definito anglo-russo.
Futilità narra le tragicomiche vicende della famiglia di un patriarca della piccola aristocrazia russa, Nikolaj Vasil'evič Bursanov, negli anni che vanno dall'anteguerra al periodo della guerra civile. L'io narrante è un giovane di cui non sappiamo molto, se non che si chiama Andrej Andreevič, che è in qualche modo inglese ma si trova a San Pietroburgo qualche anno prima della rivoluzione, che vi ritorna – dopo essere andato a Oxford – nel 1917 come militare addetto all'ambasciata britannica, e che ancora dopo viene inviato a Vladivostok nelle retrovie della guerra civile. Nonostante gli evidenti riferimenti autobiografici, Gerhardie ci informa subito, in una nota che precede il testo, che l'io di questo libro non è l'autore.
Andrej Andreevič frequenta i Bursanov perché è innamorato, inizialmente forse corrisposto, di Nina, la seconda delle tre giovani figlie (all'inizio del romanzo hanno 16, 15 e 14 anni) di Nikolaj Vasil'evič. La situazione della famiglia è estremamente articolata. Nikolaj Vasil'evič convive con una donna di origine tedesca, Fanny Ivanovna, dopo essersi separato dalla prima moglie, madre delle tre ragazze, che a sua volta vive con un dentista ebreo (il quale probabilmente è il padre di Vera, l'ultima ragazza). Ora però si è innamorato di Zina, una diciassettene con una famiglia allargata fatta, oltre che dei genitori, di fratelli, zii e anziani nonni, e vorrebbe sposarla: per questo ovviamente i rapporti tra Nikolaj Vasil'evič e Fanny Ivanovna sono tesi, anche se egli non ha intenzione di abbandonare la compagna, ma semplicemente di aggiungere Zina al ménage. La casa dei Brsanov, oltre che da Andrej Andreevič, è frequentata dal barone Wunderhausen, fidanzato di Sonja, la prima figlia, e dal Kniaz, un presunto principe in disgrazia che conduce una silenziosa esistenza da parassita.
Nikolaj Vasil'evič mantiene tutti: ha un cospicuo patrimonio ed è proprietario di alcune miniere d'oro in Siberia, che sino ad allora non hanno reso nulla ma dalle quali si aspetta a breve importanti profitti. Così, oltre che della sua famiglia e dei suoi ospiti, si fa carico della famiglia tedesca di Fanny Ivanovna, di quella di Zina e della ex moglie, che intende divorziare avendo accalappiato un ricco austriaco.
Nella seconda, breve parte del romanzo, Andrej Andreevič torna a San Pietroburgo poco prima che scoppi la rivoluzione: riallaccia i rapporti con i Bursanov, la cui situazione si è ancora complicata. Fanny Ivanovna, essendo tedesca, rischiava di essere rimandata in patria: per questo ha sposato un signore malato, che naturalmente si è installato in casa; l'ex moglie del patriarca non ha sposato il suo austriaco, cui l'autorità ha confiscato tutti i beni, mentre Sonja ha sposato il barone Wunderhausen, che non avendo un soldo vive nella casa. Per il resto nulla è cambiato, se non che la guerra e la rivoluzione allontanano ulteriormente la prospettiva di un utile dalle miniere. Gerhardie descrive la rivoluzione di febbraio prima e quella di ottobre poi come un grottesco periodo di confusione totale, nel quale neppure i protagonisti, soldati, operai, borghesi, sanno bene cosa stia succedendo e come comportarsi. Traspare da parte dell'autore un atteggiamento fortemente scettico nei confronti dei grandi sommovimenti sociali di quel periodo.
Nella successiva parte, che occupa quasi la metà del romanzo, la scena si sposta a Vladivostok, dove Andrej Andreevič giunge al seguito delle autorità militari inglesi. Qui ritrova inaspettatamente i Bursanov, che hanno lasciato Pietrogrado per tentare di prendere possesso delle mitiche miniere d'oro. Naturalmente insieme alla famiglia si è spostata tutta la corte dei mantenuti da Nikolaj Vasil'evič: ancora una volta nulla è cambiato, se non per il protagonista, che comprende che il suo amore per Nina non è stato in realtà mai corrisposto. La scena si fa ancora più corale, in quanto vi compaiono generali bianchi, ammiragli inglesi, autorità dei vari governi che si susseguono in città, marinai statunitensi che corteggiano le tre sorelle. In una città fangosa e squallida, In un clima che si fa più surreale via via che diventa sempre più evidente che l'armata rossa sta vincendo, l'unico punto fermo è la certezza di Nikolaj Vasil'evič di poter riprendere possesso delle sue miniere, certezza ovviamente frustrata dagli eventi.
Il giorno della partenza degli inglesi, quando tutta la famiglia Bursanov (meno Nina) si reca al molo per salutare Andrej Andreevič, alla domanda: ”che cosa farà?” Nikolaj Vasil'evič risponde :”beh… aspetterò […] Non credo che ci vorrà molto, ora”.
Nel breve epilogo, Andrej Andreevič torna qualche tempo dopo a Vladivostok, occupata dai giapponesi, per amore di Nina, ma trova le tre sorelle in procinto di andare a Shangai, dove le avrebbero raggiunte i marinai americani loro corteggiatori (Wunderhausen, rivelatosi un falso barone, se ne era andato). Nina rivela ad Andrej Andreevič di non averlo mai amato e a quest'ultimo non resta che vederla partire dal molo, mentre Nikolaj Vasil'evič, con tutto il resto della ciurma, rimane in città sognando ancora di recuperare le sue miniere.
La prima parte del romanzo, nella quale cominciamo a comporre il complicato puzzle composto dai Bursanov e sodali, è intrisa, come si può facilmente arguire, di rimandi alla letteratura russa che Gerhardie amava di più. Se la situazione generale della famiglia e il tono del racconto possono essere definiti in qualche modo un mix di Gogol' e Gončarov, è sicuramente Čechov a farla esplicitamente da padrone, sin dal titolo di queste pagine: Le tre sorelle. A parte i richiami più o meno letterali (ad un certo punto i protagonisti vanno a teatro a vedere proprio il dramma čhecoviano) Čechov è il riferimento precipuo del romanzo in quanto due aspetti precisi della sua poetica stanno alla base dell'opera di Gerhardie: il fatto che Čechov sia il cantore dell'attesa della vita che in realtà non arriva mai perché la vita consiste proprio in quell'attesa, e che per dare forza a questa sua idea si avvalga di un luogo narrativo che è al confine tra commedia e tragedia.
Ma, come dice Nina durante un litigio con Andrej Andreevič, che aveva accusato la famiglia proprio di sembrare uscita da una pagina di Čechov, egli ora è morto. Siamo infatti in pieno '900 e, pur prendendo le mosse da Čechov, Gehardie è pienamente consapevole che non è più possibile scrivere come lui. Subito dopo, infatti, dice, per bocca di Andrej Andreevič: ”E infatti quest'è il problema della letteratura moderna: un romanzo non è un buon romanzo se non è verosimile, e d'altronde non c'è vita degna d'essere raccontata, se non è una vita fuori dall'ordinario; ma essa apparirà poi improbabile come un romanzo”. L'autore sceglie quindi l'unica via che gli rimane per fare letteratura: raccontarci futilità, il nulla, e raccontarci come questo nulla alligni nel periodo più convulso che la storia ricordi, nel paese dove queste convulsioni raggiungono il massimo grado di frenesia. Così, i drammatici contorcimenti causati dalla rivoluzione e dalla guerra sono anch'essi futilità, e fanno da contraltare solo apparente alla immutabile situazione di attesa dei Bursanov, perché, come rileva Fanny Ivanovna verso la fine del romanzo riferendosi agli anni di Pietroburgo: ”Sentivamo che la crisi non poteva durare ed attendemmo l'esplosione. Ma non vi fu mai esplosione. La crisi si trascinò trasformandosi in crisi cronica; […] E nulla accade, Non accadrà nulla. Nulla accade...”. Non siamo di fronte alla necessità che tutto cambi perché tutto rimanga come prima, ma alla negazione di un prima e di un dopo, alla cronicità della crisi come dato strutturale, che impedisce qualsiasi visione in prospettiva. Una metafora di questo stato di cose, che appare molte volte nel romanzo, è quella del ballo, cui i protagonisti si dedicano anche nelle situazioni più disperate. Una radicalizzazione della posizione di Čechov, quindi, una sua piena trasposizione al '900, la coscienza che le sue analisi esistenziali possono essere applicate non solo alla provincia russa ma allo stato del mondo. In questo, essenzialmente, sta la modernità di Gerhardie, e forse la necessità di una sua piena riscoperta. Di converso, se un appunto si deve muovere a questo romanzo, è proprio dato dall'aver ridotto anche un avvenimento che avrebbe sconvolto il mondo, l'ondata rivoluzionaria del 1917, a episodio quasi folcloristico, fatto di autocarri di proletari in gita di piacere, di soldati ubriachi e di rivoluzionari che per sbaglio cantano un inno allo Zar. Gerhardie da buon inglese ricco parteggia apertamente per la rivoluzione borghese di febbraio, mentre – come emerge anche nelle pagine ambientate a Vladivostok - non ha alcuna idea di cosa sia il comunismo e di cosa vogliano i bolscevichi, che vede solo come dei pazzi assetati di sangue.
Uno degli elementi di grande fascino del libro, che lo ammanta di una ambiguità altrettanto moderna che il senso della crisi, è dato dal fatto che Gerhardie ci consegna un messaggio così disperante in un involucro leggero e ironico, che è costituito da una riuscita miscela di humor inglese (parlando di un ammiraglio britannico dice ad un certo punto: ”mi dispiacque separarmi da quel vecchio. V'era in lui qualche cosa che lo rendeva quasi umano”) e vis umoristica russa. Come detto, l'autore ha assorbito in profondità la lezione dei grandi maestri russi dell'800 (soprattutto qui, come detto, Gogol' e Gončarov) e ne fa uso a piene mani sia per descriverci i personaggi e l'atmosfera che circonda il clan Bursanov sia in alcune situazioni riguardanti la mentalità russa - che Gerhardie guarda indubbiamente con un filo di aristocratico razzismo tipicamente inglese - e l'incompetenza dei funzionari governativi. Un altro personaggio gogoliano è Zio Kostja, un parente di Zina, considerato dalla famiglia l'intellettuale del gruppo perché, alzandosi tardi la mattina, non fa altro che scrivere, pur non avendo mai pubblicato nulla. Al di là del risvolto satirico il personaggio permette a Gerhardie di sottolineare incisivamente l'inutilità della letteratura.
La futilità del titolo è perciò per l'autore totalizzante, nel senso che tutto è futile: futile è la vita, dalla quale non dobbiamo attenderci nulla che non sia ciò che è; futili sono gli sforzi per cambiare la società, che altro non portano se non crisi, confusione e dolore; ma futili e finanche comici sono anche i tentativi di andare contro questi cambiamenti, assommando crisi alla crisi; futile è infine scrivere cercando di dare un senso a questa attività. Si può non essere d'accordo, ma è indubbio che Gerhardie ci pone, facendoci sorridere, questioni su cui riflettere attentamente, anche alla luce dei quasi cento anni passati da allora. Chissà se avremo modo di leggere altro di lui: me lo auguro.
February 21, 2018
“’How long ago it seems,’ she said at last. ‘To think how long ago!...and we are still the same. Nothing has changed...nothing...Life drags on: a series of compromises. And we drag along, and try to patch it up...but it won’t. And it won’t break. And nothing happens. Nothing ever happens. Nothing happens...’... ’Yes,’ she said, pursuing her own thought. ‘Nothing happens. Nothing...’”
Poor Fanny. She takes some small comfort from living her life as a life, not like a character in a novel, but wicked old William Gerhardi has denied her even that. Oh, the futility of it all!
Largely autobiographical, the novel is set against the background of the Russian revolution and its long drawn-out aftermath which Gerhardi – brought up in St Petersburg – experienced at first hand. Indeed, the aftermath was still ongoing when the book was first published in 1922. The narrator is a young Englishman brought up in Russia who attaches himself to the indefinitely extendable family of Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna, their various husbands, wives, lovers, children, uncles, in-laws, grandparents, possibly aristocratic houseguests, and assorted hangers-on – all of whom are dependent on Nikolai’s semi-mythical goldmining investments, the pursuit of which forms the basis for what little movement takes place in this essentially static, circular novel.
It doesn’t quite work, at least for me. The many characters are thinly sketched and never sufficiently amiable or eccentric enough to be interesting – even when you can remember who’s who. Occasional lines raise a smile (“I was sorry to part with the old man. There was a quality about him that made him almost human.”), but the wit is spread thinly and the satire on the futility of bourgeois life, misplaced romantic yearnings, and incompetent military interventionism is all a bit commonplace. There is probably a subtext playing on classic Russian literature which I have either not read or read so long ago that it comes to the same thing, so perhaps there is more is to be gleaned by those who are better informed. Otherwise Futility ended up being rather repetitive and a little dull.
I have a copy of Gerhardi's Doom on my shelves. That sounds jollier...
Poor Fanny. She takes some small comfort from living her life as a life, not like a character in a novel, but wicked old William Gerhardi has denied her even that. Oh, the futility of it all!
Largely autobiographical, the novel is set against the background of the Russian revolution and its long drawn-out aftermath which Gerhardi – brought up in St Petersburg – experienced at first hand. Indeed, the aftermath was still ongoing when the book was first published in 1922. The narrator is a young Englishman brought up in Russia who attaches himself to the indefinitely extendable family of Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna, their various husbands, wives, lovers, children, uncles, in-laws, grandparents, possibly aristocratic houseguests, and assorted hangers-on – all of whom are dependent on Nikolai’s semi-mythical goldmining investments, the pursuit of which forms the basis for what little movement takes place in this essentially static, circular novel.
It doesn’t quite work, at least for me. The many characters are thinly sketched and never sufficiently amiable or eccentric enough to be interesting – even when you can remember who’s who. Occasional lines raise a smile (“I was sorry to part with the old man. There was a quality about him that made him almost human.”), but the wit is spread thinly and the satire on the futility of bourgeois life, misplaced romantic yearnings, and incompetent military interventionism is all a bit commonplace. There is probably a subtext playing on classic Russian literature which I have either not read or read so long ago that it comes to the same thing, so perhaps there is more is to be gleaned by those who are better informed. Otherwise Futility ended up being rather repetitive and a little dull.
I have a copy of Gerhardi's Doom on my shelves. That sounds jollier...
August 14, 2016
Life in Russia before, during, and after the Revolution, seen through the eyes of a rather self-absorbed young Anglo gent. The chaotic nature of the "White" cause in the Civil War (endless splits and coups and a plethora of "All Russia" governments competing) is portrayed, and the general uselessness of the forces available to it. What is striking for a modern reader is to realise that the half-hearted, complacent and incompetent Allied "Intervention" is the model for the later American-lead debacles, in the era when the USA supplanted the British Empire as Top Nation. The emissaries of the imperial power are smug placeholders looking forward to their next appointment, with little knowledge of or interest in the country they are interfering in, and they lose because they can't conceive of defeat as a possibility. There is a great opportunity for an ambitious young Arab-American novelist to reboot this story around Iraq or Libya in the early 21st century.
The parallels between Gerhardie and Vladimir Nabokov and their fictions have also been noticed before - see Brigid Brophy's essay "The Eye Of A Penholder" (reprinted in "Baroque'N'Roll"), which links "Futility" to Nabokov's "Glory".
The parallels between Gerhardie and Vladimir Nabokov and their fictions have also been noticed before - see Brigid Brophy's essay "The Eye Of A Penholder" (reprinted in "Baroque'N'Roll"), which links "Futility" to Nabokov's "Glory".
March 28, 2024
I felt there was more love between Andrei and Nikolai then Andrei and Nina. I am not a English man born in Russia, Russia is cold, Nikolai is a good man EXECPT he likes children. Fanny should have beaten Nikolai. Sir Hugo is splendid. Half the characters in this story are lazy and deserve a good spanking. He should give up on the mines. I do not wish to be any of them. However, I like this book very much. Mwah
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 14, 2013
Nothing worthwhile seems to have been written about the Russian character that was not funny. One of the interesting things about this novel is how well the comic vignettes and the lyrical passages fit together - perhaps because there is no real flow to the narrative and no sense of composition. In some ways, Futility reads like an amateurish work. I have always suspected that Waugh's ubiquitous quote about Gerhardie was spurious (for one thing, one can't imagine Waugh being so pompous). On the strength of this first novel, Waugh is much the greater artist, but Gerhardie is refreshing to read for breaking so much old ground in a completely new way. Another interesting thing is the striking difference in the characterisation of male and female characters. The former are, in a word, ineffectual (including the British narrator); the latter, alluring and ineffectual. The characters have no inner dimension: all that we know of them is revealed through dialogue. This is something that Waugh may have learned from Gerhardie (and polished its use to perfection). Except that, of course, the Russian characters always speak of their feelings - but only male characters. The three sisters (yes, Chekhov is a major influence) are much more elusive - essentially unknowable, as the narrator all but admits. Their characterisation is romantic with some pleasingly kinky touches, like in this particularly striking passage: The snow in the yard was pink from the sun as we jumped about on the sofa. She took water in her mouth and blew it out into my face, whereupon I got her into a corner and slapped her hard, while the others looked on in amusement. She was trying to bite my hands; and then as we went out she would insist on fastening my overcoat. There are such marvellously and instantly recognisable details of character and situation scattered throughout the book. An interesting question is to what extent the sisters' behaviour - particularly Nina's - is influenced by a negative animus. Nabokov probably read Futility and may have noted its circle structure for future use. Aickman's Russia in The Model is almost certainly lifted out of Gerhardie.
October 8, 2015
Великолепный около-модерновый «роман на русские темы», совершенно, впрочем, в России неведомый. Что странно, поскольку вышел в 1922-м и не полюбил его только ленивый, ибо в числе поклонников «Тщеты» — Кэтрин Мэнсфилд, Эдит Уортон, Бернард Шо, Грэм Грин, Ивлин Уо, Ч. П. Сноу, Херберт Уэллз и десятки других писателей. Да, писатели полюбили его отдельно, потому что он насквозь литературен и среди прочего представляет собой сатиру на примерно всю русскую литературу и одновременно оммаж ей же. Но больше всего в нем, конечно от Чехова (и лишь как исследователь Чехова Джерхарди известен ру-литературоведам и отдельным критикам) — и Чехов в «Тщете» плавно перетекает в Бекетта. Запутанные отношения в семье Бурсановых — одновременно и экзерсис в исследованиях «загадочной русской души», и метафора череды русских революций, и тонкая пародия на великую русскую литературу.
Роман лукав, остроумен, пронзителен и, как говорила про него Мэнсфилд, «дышит». Что важно — без клюквы (автор, в общем, считается русско-английским писателем, ибо родился в Петербурге). И для меня не менее важно, что половина действия в нем происходит во Владивостоке (спорим, вы не знали?), в нем увековечены некоторые местные достопримечательности (вроде дорогой моему сердцу Зеленой гимназии, Садгорода или ресторана «Золотой рог»). С книжкой Кесселя, изданной по-русски, сравнивать его не имеет смысла, ибо Кессель — проходная писанина, а Джерхарди — натуральный шедевр, хотя оба автора в означенный период во Владивостоке присутствовали, и даже если б интервенции союзников не случилось, еле бы следовало организовать только для того, чтобы «Тщета» была написана.
Роман лукав, остроумен, пронзителен и, как говорила про него Мэнсфилд, «дышит». Что важно — без клюквы (автор, в общем, считается русско-английским писателем, ибо родился в Петербурге). И для меня не менее важно, что половина действия в нем происходит во Владивостоке (спорим, вы не знали?), в нем увековечены некоторые местные достопримечательности (вроде дорогой моему сердцу Зеленой гимназии, Садгорода или ресторана «Золотой рог»). С книжкой Кесселя, изданной по-русски, сравнивать его не имеет смысла, ибо Кессель — проходная писанина, а Джерхарди — натуральный шедевр, хотя оба автора в означенный период во Владивостоке присутствовали, и даже если б интервенции союзников не случилось, еле бы следовало организовать только для того, чтобы «Тщета» была написана.
February 4, 2015
I picked up _Futility_ at a library sale - a book by an unknown (to me) author with a glowing preface by Edith Wharton. What tremendous luck - I'm utterly in love. This wonderful, warm, dazzling book reminds me so much of another little gem that takes place in revolutionary Russia, Penelope Fitzgerald's_ The Beginning of Spring_. Unlike Fitzgerald, who somehow managed to "get" Russia without having been there, Gerhardie is an Englishman who grew up there, one of those weird cosmopolitan creatures who are at home everywhere and can "translate" the Russian soul for the West. And he's funny, in a Waugh sort of way. A solid 5 out of 5!
January 21, 2013
Satire and observations on Russia during the revolution by an Englishman who was stationed there with the British Military Mission. Early humor involving an assortment of characters who all depend on a man waiting for his mine to come in gives way to darker reporting on waves of Russian Army disasters around Vladivostok. Intermittently very funny, but not as satisfying in the last third, where his never-resolved love story mimics the never-resolved story of the patriarch waiting for someone to solves his problems.
August 19, 2021
"Futility", first published in 1922, is a delightful read told in four parts. The title may suggest a kind of depressing tale, but, though our hero, the Russian-born young Englishman Andrei is frustrated in his courtship of a pretty miss with two sisters, and although all hell is breaking loose in St. Petersburg, Russia on the eve of the Revolution, much of the story dwells on the often-comic domestic life of the Bursanov family and their many hangers-on.
Gerhardie, himself, though British, grew up in Russia and has a great feel for the Slavic cultural nuances and peculiarities. The book was written in English even though you might be thinking it was translated from the Russian, since he captures the spiritual and soul of those Andrei interacts closely with. In fact, he nearly becomes a member of the family household as they confide in him, tease him and have no problem letting their hair down around him.
I, myself, spent 23 years in Moscow (1991-2015) teaching English. I never became fluent in Russian but was still "adopted" by a couple of Russian families and had many friends among my students and a variety of adventures. Though this book is set in a period a century earlier, I easily recognize this cast of characters and their entangled relationships and hopes.
"It was somewhat in the manner of an Ibsen drama with retrospective revelations that I was initiated into the Bursanov family." Andrei calls on the three sisters (shades of Chechkov here) mid-summer at their dacha outside St. Petersburg. Sonia, Nina and Vera were 16, 15, and 14 then and they introduce him to their beloved Papa, Nikolai Vasilievich and his common-law wife, German Fanny Ivanova. Fanny is not their mother, in fact, their biological Moma (still the legal wife) Vera arrives from Moscow soon after, along with her manfriend Eisenstein.
"Nikolai Vasilievich came back and we sat down to dinner, and amongst us appeared Vera. I was to understand her presence a little afterwards. The atmosphere was tense. No doubt they had all been discussing the family tangle." The "tangle" had to do with a possible divorce that Vera refused to give but that Fanny truly desired for her own self-respect and for her family back in Germany.
Added to the household regulars is Baron Wunderhausen, a Balt, who was "polite, cunning and adaptable to any circumstances, had big calf's eyes, was habitually somewhat overdressed, twenty-five years of age, and [who] had a billet in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He came regularly every evening, made love with his eyes, and we danced..." The Baron soon attached himself to the household.
On top of it all, Nikolai has fallen for a seventeen-year-old beauty, Zina, and is promising to marry her. But she demurs saying, "Don't marry me, don't. It's superfluous. I love you so much that I am perfectly prepared to live with you... just to show how much I love you. A piece of paper. It's absurd. It means nothing. What do I care?" She proclaims to Andrei "I am ready to give my life for him... Oh, you have no idea what a thoroughly good man he is when he's away from all those petty worries, those mean jealousies, those paltry domestic squabbles, those innumerable families all hanging round his neck, and he, alone, standing up against those legions, yes, legions of relatives and dependents and hangers-on. Oh, don't laugh. I'm not excepting my own people. Oh, no! I am ashamed... that it should be so."
So Andrei meets Zina's parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, sisters-in-law, second cousins. And middle-aged Uncle Kostia, "the writer". This creation of Gerhardie, "had never published a line. His two departments were history and philosophy, and every one of the family had the greatest respect for Uncle Kosta and thought him very clever... He would wake up extremely late and then would sit for hours on the bed, thinking...Uncle Kostia rarely dressed and rarely washed. When at length he parted with his bed he would stroll about through all the rooms in his dressing gown, and think. No one spoke to him because, for one thing, all were frightened of displaying their ignorance in conversation."
Fortunately, the patriarch Nikolai has some resources to accommodate and finance this basic crew, but his less-than-productive gold mines out in Siberia are imperiled by the Bolshevik Takeover. In fact, the family itself has fled to the Far East to await their fate. The third chapter, Intervening in Siberia, has the enlarged household following Nikolai on a train from Vladivostok to Omsk in order to check on their financial source. "And so we arrived at Lake Baikal, that crystal sea imprisoned in a frame of snow-capped mountains. We stopped our train and lingered on the rocks, drank in the harmony of a strange light, glassy water, snow, fir, and perfect quietude; and when at last we said goodbye to Lake Baikal, that proudest of lakes, a gale fearful and furious had blown in upon this serenity of beauty and lashed huge waves in the inky blackness of the night."
In Omsk, under counter-revolutionary Admiral Kolchak's rule, "most of us were very much at sea as to why exactly we had arrived at Omsk." But "Nikolai Vasilievich seemed immune from doubt. Nikolai Vasilievich, suspicious of the punitive expedition, had arrived at the seat of the anti-Bolshevik Administration to seek redress and compensation in regard to his gold mines. I think it was chiefly for my British uniform that Nikolai Vasilievich asked me to accompany him on his visit to the General at the General Staff, before whom he was going to lay his case."
"We entered a large dirty waiting room where crowds of petitioners awaited their turn with patience that bordered on spiritual resignation: after the Russian manner they all desired to see the head man personally, whose life was consequently spent in interviews. A nasty dirty little woman with a nasty dirty little child, pointing at me with a dirty finger, was saying to her howling offspring, in an attempt to pacify her next-of-kin, 'Is that your daddy, is he? Is that your daddy?
"The General was an elusive person, a wily man, a master of the art of compromise. He was the idol of the Allies. He was one of those few who could so wangle things, so balance favours, as to please at once all the multitudinous Allies and curry favour with a large majority of Russians." To Nikolai Vasilievich, he said "'You may rest assured that all will be quite all right. Call again one of these days.' Nikolai Vasilievich went out, beaming. 'Well,' he said, 'it seems settled.' I tendered my heartiest congratulations." Of course, on a return visit, he was merely advised to wait and have patience. Nikolai finally snapped and began hurling abuse on everyone and the General threw them out.
As they returned to the station, Nikolai told Andrei that they didn't realize that you can't live on nothing.
"Waiting doesn't feed you, and waiting doesn't clothe you, and when you have a family--"
"Of course, one can borrow," said Nikolai Vasilievich.
"Yes, of course," I agreed.
Fanny Ivanova greeted him with, "Well, Nikolai, is it all arranged?"
A fiendish look came over his face, as though he said, "The hell it is!"
She sighed conspicuously. And her sigh gave him a nervous shudder. A look of hate came into his steel-grey eyes."
This bedraggle group now returned to Vladivostok, wrapped up in their own drama of insecurity and fatalism. They barely grasp the collapse of the Kolchak White Army and the killing surrounding them. As the crisis deepens, and the need to further escape becomes inevitable, Andrei gives a farewell dinner party for his soon-to-be-dispersed-to-the-four-winds Russian friends and companions.
Gerhardie here reaches a pitch of poetic language:
"Who can convey at all adequately that sense of utter hopelessness that clings to a Siberian winter night? Wherever else is there to be found that brooding, thrilling sense of frozen space, of snow and ice lost in inky darkness, that gruesome sense of never-ending night, and black despair and loneliness untold, immeasurable? Add to this the knowledge of a civil war fumbling in the snow, of people ill-fed, ill-clothed and apathetic, lying on the frozen ground, cold and wretched and diseased. A snowstorm is blowing furiously; the wooden house groans and yells in the night; the tin roof squeals in agony, fearful lest it be cast to the winds; and the storm howls like a beast, now sobs like a child, now dies away, gathering for another outburst..."
On one level this is a comedy of manners, filled with absurd characters and laughable situations, but there is a much deeper story told here, as Edith Wharton describes in her introduction. Gerhardie "has enough of the true novelist's 'objectivity' to focus the two so utterly alien races to which he belongs almost equally by birth and bringing-up the English and Russian; to sympathize with both, and to depict them for us as they see each other, with the play of their mutual reactions illuminating and animating them all... [in] the thronged sprawling tale."
Highly recommended.
Gerhardie, himself, though British, grew up in Russia and has a great feel for the Slavic cultural nuances and peculiarities. The book was written in English even though you might be thinking it was translated from the Russian, since he captures the spiritual and soul of those Andrei interacts closely with. In fact, he nearly becomes a member of the family household as they confide in him, tease him and have no problem letting their hair down around him.
I, myself, spent 23 years in Moscow (1991-2015) teaching English. I never became fluent in Russian but was still "adopted" by a couple of Russian families and had many friends among my students and a variety of adventures. Though this book is set in a period a century earlier, I easily recognize this cast of characters and their entangled relationships and hopes.
"It was somewhat in the manner of an Ibsen drama with retrospective revelations that I was initiated into the Bursanov family." Andrei calls on the three sisters (shades of Chechkov here) mid-summer at their dacha outside St. Petersburg. Sonia, Nina and Vera were 16, 15, and 14 then and they introduce him to their beloved Papa, Nikolai Vasilievich and his common-law wife, German Fanny Ivanova. Fanny is not their mother, in fact, their biological Moma (still the legal wife) Vera arrives from Moscow soon after, along with her manfriend Eisenstein.
"Nikolai Vasilievich came back and we sat down to dinner, and amongst us appeared Vera. I was to understand her presence a little afterwards. The atmosphere was tense. No doubt they had all been discussing the family tangle." The "tangle" had to do with a possible divorce that Vera refused to give but that Fanny truly desired for her own self-respect and for her family back in Germany.
Added to the household regulars is Baron Wunderhausen, a Balt, who was "polite, cunning and adaptable to any circumstances, had big calf's eyes, was habitually somewhat overdressed, twenty-five years of age, and [who] had a billet in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He came regularly every evening, made love with his eyes, and we danced..." The Baron soon attached himself to the household.
On top of it all, Nikolai has fallen for a seventeen-year-old beauty, Zina, and is promising to marry her. But she demurs saying, "Don't marry me, don't. It's superfluous. I love you so much that I am perfectly prepared to live with you... just to show how much I love you. A piece of paper. It's absurd. It means nothing. What do I care?" She proclaims to Andrei "I am ready to give my life for him... Oh, you have no idea what a thoroughly good man he is when he's away from all those petty worries, those mean jealousies, those paltry domestic squabbles, those innumerable families all hanging round his neck, and he, alone, standing up against those legions, yes, legions of relatives and dependents and hangers-on. Oh, don't laugh. I'm not excepting my own people. Oh, no! I am ashamed... that it should be so."
So Andrei meets Zina's parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, sisters-in-law, second cousins. And middle-aged Uncle Kostia, "the writer". This creation of Gerhardie, "had never published a line. His two departments were history and philosophy, and every one of the family had the greatest respect for Uncle Kosta and thought him very clever... He would wake up extremely late and then would sit for hours on the bed, thinking...Uncle Kostia rarely dressed and rarely washed. When at length he parted with his bed he would stroll about through all the rooms in his dressing gown, and think. No one spoke to him because, for one thing, all were frightened of displaying their ignorance in conversation."
Fortunately, the patriarch Nikolai has some resources to accommodate and finance this basic crew, but his less-than-productive gold mines out in Siberia are imperiled by the Bolshevik Takeover. In fact, the family itself has fled to the Far East to await their fate. The third chapter, Intervening in Siberia, has the enlarged household following Nikolai on a train from Vladivostok to Omsk in order to check on their financial source. "And so we arrived at Lake Baikal, that crystal sea imprisoned in a frame of snow-capped mountains. We stopped our train and lingered on the rocks, drank in the harmony of a strange light, glassy water, snow, fir, and perfect quietude; and when at last we said goodbye to Lake Baikal, that proudest of lakes, a gale fearful and furious had blown in upon this serenity of beauty and lashed huge waves in the inky blackness of the night."
In Omsk, under counter-revolutionary Admiral Kolchak's rule, "most of us were very much at sea as to why exactly we had arrived at Omsk." But "Nikolai Vasilievich seemed immune from doubt. Nikolai Vasilievich, suspicious of the punitive expedition, had arrived at the seat of the anti-Bolshevik Administration to seek redress and compensation in regard to his gold mines. I think it was chiefly for my British uniform that Nikolai Vasilievich asked me to accompany him on his visit to the General at the General Staff, before whom he was going to lay his case."
"We entered a large dirty waiting room where crowds of petitioners awaited their turn with patience that bordered on spiritual resignation: after the Russian manner they all desired to see the head man personally, whose life was consequently spent in interviews. A nasty dirty little woman with a nasty dirty little child, pointing at me with a dirty finger, was saying to her howling offspring, in an attempt to pacify her next-of-kin, 'Is that your daddy, is he? Is that your daddy?
"The General was an elusive person, a wily man, a master of the art of compromise. He was the idol of the Allies. He was one of those few who could so wangle things, so balance favours, as to please at once all the multitudinous Allies and curry favour with a large majority of Russians." To Nikolai Vasilievich, he said "'You may rest assured that all will be quite all right. Call again one of these days.' Nikolai Vasilievich went out, beaming. 'Well,' he said, 'it seems settled.' I tendered my heartiest congratulations." Of course, on a return visit, he was merely advised to wait and have patience. Nikolai finally snapped and began hurling abuse on everyone and the General threw them out.
As they returned to the station, Nikolai told Andrei that they didn't realize that you can't live on nothing.
"Waiting doesn't feed you, and waiting doesn't clothe you, and when you have a family--"
"Of course, one can borrow," said Nikolai Vasilievich.
"Yes, of course," I agreed.
Fanny Ivanova greeted him with, "Well, Nikolai, is it all arranged?"
A fiendish look came over his face, as though he said, "The hell it is!"
She sighed conspicuously. And her sigh gave him a nervous shudder. A look of hate came into his steel-grey eyes."
This bedraggle group now returned to Vladivostok, wrapped up in their own drama of insecurity and fatalism. They barely grasp the collapse of the Kolchak White Army and the killing surrounding them. As the crisis deepens, and the need to further escape becomes inevitable, Andrei gives a farewell dinner party for his soon-to-be-dispersed-to-the-four-winds Russian friends and companions.
Gerhardie here reaches a pitch of poetic language:
"Who can convey at all adequately that sense of utter hopelessness that clings to a Siberian winter night? Wherever else is there to be found that brooding, thrilling sense of frozen space, of snow and ice lost in inky darkness, that gruesome sense of never-ending night, and black despair and loneliness untold, immeasurable? Add to this the knowledge of a civil war fumbling in the snow, of people ill-fed, ill-clothed and apathetic, lying on the frozen ground, cold and wretched and diseased. A snowstorm is blowing furiously; the wooden house groans and yells in the night; the tin roof squeals in agony, fearful lest it be cast to the winds; and the storm howls like a beast, now sobs like a child, now dies away, gathering for another outburst..."
On one level this is a comedy of manners, filled with absurd characters and laughable situations, but there is a much deeper story told here, as Edith Wharton describes in her introduction. Gerhardie "has enough of the true novelist's 'objectivity' to focus the two so utterly alien races to which he belongs almost equally by birth and bringing-up the English and Russian; to sympathize with both, and to depict them for us as they see each other, with the play of their mutual reactions illuminating and animating them all... [in] the thronged sprawling tale."
Highly recommended.
August 19, 2021
A neglected novel that manages to combine Russian comic absurdity, with British irony.
Our hero, Andrei, is a British-Russian who meets three sisters in St Petersburg, before the First World War. He falls in love with one of the sisters, Nina, and in doing so, becomes involved with the fraught domestic arrangements of Nina's father, Nikolai. Nikolai owns gold mines in Siberia. The mines distinguish themselves by not producing much, if any, gold. However, the mere existence of the mines, supports a complex ecosystem of familial relationships - Nikolai's not-so ex-wife and her boyfriend; Nikolai's current partner, Fanny Ivanova, and her family in Germany; Nikolai's new love interest, Zina, and her family, including her Uncle Kostia, 'the intellectual', and two ancient grandfathers. All of them rely on Nikolai's money and possible wealth. In addition, there are sundry impecunious aristocrats, who pop up or in the case of Prince Kniaz, never leave.
After a great deal of sitting around, Andrei follows the family, as it embarks on an absurd amount of travel as Nikolai's tries to regain his mines; there are wars and revolutions and along the way they meet a comic cast of admirals, generals and British diplomats.
What happens? Well, rather like Chekhov, not a great deal and everything.
Our hero, Andrei, is a British-Russian who meets three sisters in St Petersburg, before the First World War. He falls in love with one of the sisters, Nina, and in doing so, becomes involved with the fraught domestic arrangements of Nina's father, Nikolai. Nikolai owns gold mines in Siberia. The mines distinguish themselves by not producing much, if any, gold. However, the mere existence of the mines, supports a complex ecosystem of familial relationships - Nikolai's not-so ex-wife and her boyfriend; Nikolai's current partner, Fanny Ivanova, and her family in Germany; Nikolai's new love interest, Zina, and her family, including her Uncle Kostia, 'the intellectual', and two ancient grandfathers. All of them rely on Nikolai's money and possible wealth. In addition, there are sundry impecunious aristocrats, who pop up or in the case of Prince Kniaz, never leave.
After a great deal of sitting around, Andrei follows the family, as it embarks on an absurd amount of travel as Nikolai's tries to regain his mines; there are wars and revolutions and along the way they meet a comic cast of admirals, generals and British diplomats.
What happens? Well, rather like Chekhov, not a great deal and everything.
July 6, 2015
Written just a few years after the events recounted, Futility is able to deal with the classes an issues involved in the Russian civil war with insight and humor that would soon become rare. The tragic fate of the overthrown nobility had not, in 1922, yet fully unfold d, nor had the tragic end of the revolutionary euphoria on the other side. Perhaps for these reasons, reading the book now makes it poignant in ways the author had not intended.
August 18, 2007
"There are honest men in Russia, and there are clever men in Russia; but there are no honest clever men in Russia. And if there are, they're probably heavy drinkers."
March 17, 2013
I didn't get it. Perhaps too cerebral for me.
April 11, 2023
Vond het lekker lezen
fic-guided
July 10, 2020Not a paperback of this novel exists that does not feature prominently on its front cover Evelyn Waugh’s encomium: ‘I have talent, but he [Gerhardie] has genius’. Posterity, unfortunately, has not concurred with Waugh. The author’s name is known (the spelling uncertain – there are two official versions – and pronounciation even more uncertain) but his novels, alas, are unread. They deserve to be read, Futility particularly. Its presuppositions about the human condition anticipate DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, not entirely to Pasternak’s advantage. The principal theme in both novels is identical: most human beings live their lives ‘underneath’, or ‘alongside’, history – not ‘in’ history. There are few good Russian novels by British writers. Futility is by far the best. There was a reason for this. Gerhardie had the unusual background of being born British but brought up as a child in Russia. He returned in a military and diplomatic role to that country as it was undergoing the cataclysm of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Futility has the terse epigraph: ‘The “I” of this book is not me’. And the moon is green cheese and cows jump over it. Hey-diddle-diddle.
The narrative opens: ‘And then it struck me that the only thing to do was to fit all this into a book.’ The aim is to make some sort of sense of what is otherwise overwhelmingly incoherent. The Bursanovs are the living incarnation of Russian ‘futility’ – a complex, lovable, admirable, infuriating thing. Not least to the Russians themselves. In his novel Wild Berries (1984), Yevgeny Yevtushenko laments:
Why do we still have lines [queues]? Because we’re poor? Ludicrous . . . No country is richer than ours. But take a look into our railroad stations: they’re mobbed, people sleeping there, piled up on one another . . . When will we get organised like normal people?
Futility asks the same question. The only answer is a forlorn ‘we are a holy people’ – and who expects ‘organisation’ from a nation of saints? The Russians are not what Yevtushenko calls ‘normal people’.
Central to Gerhardie’s narrative are the three Bursanov daughters: Nina, Sonia, and Vera. The first section of Futility is called, with rather too obvious a nod to Chekhov, ‘Three Sisters’. Chekhov’s depiction of the paralysis of the Russian soul is endorsed throughout. The Bursanov paterfamilias, Nikolai, has gold mines in Siberia which produce not an ounce of metal but warrant him taking charge of a horde of dependants. He has a wife who will not divorce him but who requires he support her and her Jewish dentist lover, who sees more gold in his patients’ mouths than Bursanov will ever see from the steppes. Bursanov lives with his German common-law wife, Fanny Ivanovna, a former governess to his daughters, who, in her turn, declines to give him his freedom when his roving eye lands on the sixteen-year-old Zina. Among the hangers-on is a faux-baron and writer so intensely involved in his creation that he cannot stop to put a word on paper. The whole ensemble live on mortgage, overdraft, debt and hope. They are not a ‘family’ but a ‘protectorate’.
The first section is set in St Petersburg on the eve of war. There is an interval in which the story’s hero, Andrei, returns to Oxford. The second part, ‘The Revolution’, picks up events in 1917. Now a diplomat, Andrei returns on a ‘special mission’ to St Petersburg (not long, as he apprehends, before it’s Leningrad). The third section (‘Intervening in Siberia’) jumps forward to 1921. Andrei has been posted again to the new post-Revolutionary Russia. The Bursanov caravanserai has gone on a pilgrimage in search of its mine-wealth in the far steppes – wealth as illusory as the rainbow’s pot of gold. On the endless and pointless train journey, Kostia, the writer who never writes, cries out: ‘Where are we going? Why are we going?’ No answer is forthcoming. But wherever the great engine of life is going it is not towards happiness for Andrei. Nina rejects him.
‘Will you marry me?’ I said.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I am tired of you.’
So it all ends as it began. In futility.
The narrative opens: ‘And then it struck me that the only thing to do was to fit all this into a book.’ The aim is to make some sort of sense of what is otherwise overwhelmingly incoherent. The Bursanovs are the living incarnation of Russian ‘futility’ – a complex, lovable, admirable, infuriating thing. Not least to the Russians themselves. In his novel Wild Berries (1984), Yevgeny Yevtushenko laments:
Why do we still have lines [queues]? Because we’re poor? Ludicrous . . . No country is richer than ours. But take a look into our railroad stations: they’re mobbed, people sleeping there, piled up on one another . . . When will we get organised like normal people?
Futility asks the same question. The only answer is a forlorn ‘we are a holy people’ – and who expects ‘organisation’ from a nation of saints? The Russians are not what Yevtushenko calls ‘normal people’.
Central to Gerhardie’s narrative are the three Bursanov daughters: Nina, Sonia, and Vera. The first section of Futility is called, with rather too obvious a nod to Chekhov, ‘Three Sisters’. Chekhov’s depiction of the paralysis of the Russian soul is endorsed throughout. The Bursanov paterfamilias, Nikolai, has gold mines in Siberia which produce not an ounce of metal but warrant him taking charge of a horde of dependants. He has a wife who will not divorce him but who requires he support her and her Jewish dentist lover, who sees more gold in his patients’ mouths than Bursanov will ever see from the steppes. Bursanov lives with his German common-law wife, Fanny Ivanovna, a former governess to his daughters, who, in her turn, declines to give him his freedom when his roving eye lands on the sixteen-year-old Zina. Among the hangers-on is a faux-baron and writer so intensely involved in his creation that he cannot stop to put a word on paper. The whole ensemble live on mortgage, overdraft, debt and hope. They are not a ‘family’ but a ‘protectorate’.
The first section is set in St Petersburg on the eve of war. There is an interval in which the story’s hero, Andrei, returns to Oxford. The second part, ‘The Revolution’, picks up events in 1917. Now a diplomat, Andrei returns on a ‘special mission’ to St Petersburg (not long, as he apprehends, before it’s Leningrad). The third section (‘Intervening in Siberia’) jumps forward to 1921. Andrei has been posted again to the new post-Revolutionary Russia. The Bursanov caravanserai has gone on a pilgrimage in search of its mine-wealth in the far steppes – wealth as illusory as the rainbow’s pot of gold. On the endless and pointless train journey, Kostia, the writer who never writes, cries out: ‘Where are we going? Why are we going?’ No answer is forthcoming. But wherever the great engine of life is going it is not towards happiness for Andrei. Nina rejects him.
‘Will you marry me?’ I said.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I am tired of you.’
So it all ends as it began. In futility.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2022
The title says it all: this is the story of the narrator's futile pursuit of a girl whose father is himself in futile pursuit of an income from some Siberian gold mines he once possessed, or maybe not. From the beginning, the N. is besotted not so much with Nina herself as with her being the middle one of Three Sisters, just like in Chekhov. Nina doesn't live with her parents, but with her father, Nikolai Vasilievich Bursanov, and his now discarded German mistress, Fanny Ivanovna. A few years ago, Nina's mother bolted with an incompetent Jewish dentist, Eisenstein, who is the biological father of her youngest daughter Vera. However, she now would like to marry the Austrian Cecedek, which she can't do because she is not divorced from Bursanov, who is now in love with a teenager called Zina. Out of a dwindling and largely imaginary income, Bursanov somehow provides for all of these women, their extended families, and the inevitable retinue of parasites familiar to readers of Russian literature. Probably because he is a reader of Russian literature, the N. just loves the atmosphere of constant bickering and making up which prevails in this madhouse. When the whole circus moves to Siberia, the N. follows suit, relishing the spectacle of the Russian Revolution just as much as that of the Bursanov caravanserai. For no valid reason, he makes a third arduous journey back to Vladivostock and Nina, only to learn on arrival that the girls and their mother are off to Shanghai, supposedly to set up a millinery shop. The book is very entertaining but also quite static, in spite of the huge distances travelled across the steppes and over the oceans, because its main theme is that all these people are wedded to an existential passivity which relieves them of the need to actually look for solutions to their problems. Paralyzed by his fascination with these living embodiments of the famous "Russian Soul", the N. is as if bewitched by his own dream of belonging with them.
September 21, 2025
Cleverly penned, even as it is one of many Russian family dramas, Futility starts strong, with compellingly frustrating characters, and the romantic atmosphere of the Russian masters. However, as the novel progresses, it is hindered by its own breadth. Neither a historical epic nor relegated to a purely domestic affair, it ends up occupying an uncomfortable middle. It doesn’t help that the novel is scattered with moments of antiquated and, at times, offensive language. Yes, Gerhardie’s talent is undeniable. Waugh called him a genius. Futility, however, was a struggle to finish.
July 8, 2025
Maravillosa novela envuelta de sentido del humor: un inglés se mimetiza con la familia de Nikolai Vasilievich, patriarca disminuido que ocupa su tiempo intentando que sus minas de oro produzcan, sin lograrlo, mientras ocurre la Revolución de Octubre. Además de las tres hijas, adolescentes hermosas, desfilan aquí una serie de personajes inútiles: familiares, amantes, parásitos. Gran comedia de traiciones y absurdos.
May 15, 2017
"It is a consolation to think there are other useless people in the world besides ourselves...."
Bah! Found no interest in any of the characters. And as for this being funny in any way ... ugh. That appears to get repeated in reviews, but I just don't see it.
Bah! Found no interest in any of the characters. And as for this being funny in any way ... ugh. That appears to get repeated in reviews, but I just don't see it.
July 1, 2019
One of the many things that I found interesting is the attitude of several of the military figures. They seem to believe that war is natural, to be expected, the ordinary way of things. And completely necessary to prevent bloodshed, although they appear to miss the irony of this statement.
I loved Gerhardie's humor and spot on social commentary.
I loved Gerhardie's humor and spot on social commentary.
November 30, 2023
Plodding, rather pointless tale of a family in pre-revolutionary Russia and their lives afterward. Despite reviews of its brilliance, I found it rather dull, and without the scope of other books of this genre and topic.
December 6, 2019
As the name would suggest...
March 14, 2020
Qualcuno traduca "I poliglotti"!
April 26, 2020
Hilarious, great characterisation, and gives an insight into the Russian civil war too.
May 12, 2020
Уши Антон Палыча заметны отовсюду -)) но заметны талантливо :-)
Как-то с трудом верилось, что автор книги англичанин, даже после прочтения введения.
Как-то с трудом верилось, что автор книги англичанин, даже после прочтения введения.
September 11, 2021
It certainly evokes a feeling of futility.
February 11, 2023
Tedious in the middle, suddenly beautiful at the end. Evelyn Waugh's admiration makes sense.
Want to read
February 9, 202405/09/19
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