Netochka Nezvanova . . . no saintly orphan

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translated by Jane Kentish

Penguin

176 pages

By Comrade Reviewer Overcoat

Christmas Eve. I was minding my own business, drinking a bottle of strengthening vodka, and reading Netochka Nezvanova. I have always been curious about the Comrade housekeeper Nezvanova's past. Dostoyevksy confirmed my suspicions.  But not before I experienced a moment of unsteadiness.  I tried to reach for the vodka to right myself, but tumbled backward instead receiving a sharp blow to the head. At least I think I received a sharp blow to the head. When I awakened, I found myself in the company of a geisha somewhere in the wilds of Japan.  Although she attempted to assault my manly virtue, I remained firm, at which point she made snide remarks about my overcoat.

I escaped nearly scathed (but not quite) and attempted to find a troika to take me home.  Strangely none was to be found. Instead I caught a slow boat to China and from there made my way painfully on foot back to Russia. Possibly the sake I drank in Japan bore some responsibility for my belated return home. 

I was much relieved to leave Japan as I also escaped a Methodist Faun, whom I met at a sake bar. He is quite a tiresome fellow. Really, he would have been much happier in a Russian novel (preferably one by Dostoevsky but any Russian novel would do). Why he lives in New England with his progenitor Anne Parrish is beyond me. I fear he will turn out to be another Miniver Cheevy . . . but more of the Faun later (much later one hopes).

Having arrived home at no small trouble to myself, I settled down in what passed for a comfy chair (I do not think genuine comfy chairs exist in Russia) and read Netochka Nezvanova. By the time I finished, I was giddy with laughter. How not in novel dominated by a mad musician (talented but a wastrel), a long-suffering wife—the recipient of his sadism and without whom he would long ago have starved, a step-daughter (the eponymous narrator) who adores him and spends much of her time despising her mother, a brief lesbian interlude between two teenagers who spend several days in ecstasy before being separated, mysterious princes and princesses, one murderous dog named Falstaff, and lots of death. Why my mother did not take me on her knee and read this one aloud to me when I was a wee tot is beyond my comprehension.

Unfortunately Dostoevsky did not finish Netochka Nezvanova. Arrest, a fake execution, and a trip to Siberia interrupted his writing for a while. One wonders whence he would have proceeded with this novel? But he didn’t proceed, leaving only a mystery: What happened to Netochka, who is barely eighteen when the novel stops? Did she marry? Did she become a great artist? Did she turn out like her stepfather? Was she reunited with Katya? Did she become a monster or a saint? (I think we all know the answer to this question. She is a menace with her iron skillet.) And finally, who is S.O.? Is he S.? Does B. play a bigger role than hitherto suggested in the novel?

Netochka Nezvanova cries out to be made into a tragic opera with a musical score composed by Schoenberg, who unfortunately is dead. How inconsiderate of D., and Schoenberg to die before either Netochka Nezvanova the novel or Netochka Nezvanova the opera could be completed. Only Schoenberg could have written the brilliantly forceful violin solo that would recur throughout the opera as a thematic and musical motif (I know, I know, Schoenberg didn’t like recurring motifs). Lest my kind reader(s) doubt my choice of Schoenberg, listen to this clip (make sure you click “sound on ”) while reading the following passage from Netochka Nezvanova:

. . . then the music began. But it was not music . . . I remember everything distinctly; to the end I can remember everything that caught my attention. No, this was not like the music I later came to hear. They were not the notes of a violin, but the sound of a terrible voice that was resounding through our room for the first time. Either my first impressions were incorrect or delirious, or else my senses were so thrown by all that I had witnessed that they were prepared for frightful, agonizing impressions—but I am firmly convinced that I heard groans, the cries of a human voice. Complete despair flowed forth in these chords and . . . , at the end, there resounded the last awful note, in which was expressed all that is terrible in a cry, the agony of torture and the misery of hopelessness.

Now that I know Comrade Nezvanova's lascivious and perfidious nature, I will be watching her closely.  I fear a horrible exposé about her may be forthcoming in the Dark Tea Times.  Indeed, I have often urged Comrade editor Davushka (still missing) to investigate her past.  He has refused. Perhaps he has succumbed to the blandishments of a Transylvanian crime ring and for a discreet sum has agreed to paper over this woman's nefarious past.  But the truth will out. As he is missing, l must take on the onerous and thankless task of investigation.

Editor's Note: We cannot vouch for Comrade Overcoat's veracity.  He often thinks he has been assaulted by geisha (who are not those kind of women) when in truth he has merely passed out in his Soviet issue hovel.  Good help is hard to find.