Ice, Snow, and Stories from St. Petersburg

Posted by Meg Nola Jan 15, 2009

Now that’s it’s subzero here in Chicago with a lingering aura of political corruption, I’ve started feeling more Russian in spirit and wanting to reread one of my favorite anthologies. I’m referring to a little blue book that focuses on St. Petersburg — not the city in Florida, but the city of White Nights — Petrograd, Leningrad, or just Petersburg, the once-upon-a-time home of Dostoyevsky and Pushkin and backdrop for this gem of a collection.

The book, not surprisingly titled St. Petersburg, was published by Chronicle in 1995 and edited by John and Kirsten Miller. Not all of the stories take place in the winter, but intense winters are of course as much a part of St. Petersburg as the Neva River. Many fine writers in the anthology give their impressions of the city and its people, including native daughter Nina Berberova, Francine du Plessix Gray, Edmund Wilson, Leo Tolstoy, and the aforementioned Dostoyevsky and Pushkin. A turbulent glimpse of American journalist John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World is featured, Reed’s complete 1919 book having inspired Warren Beatty’s award-winning movie Reds.

More intrigue can be found in Felix Youssoupoff’s “The Death of Rasputin,” which suspensefully documents the plot of Russian royal Prince Felix and his consorts to murder “Mad Monk” Grigori Rasputin, and how they definitely did not have an easy time killing this seemingly indestructible individual. Then there’s an excerpt from the many-volumed and irresistibly-titled (I Am the Most Interesting Book of All) diary of artist Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-1884), who wrote how “Petersburg acts upon me at night. I know nothing more superb than the Neva trimmed with lanterns contrasting with the moon and the deep blue, almost grey sky…I would like to be here in winter.”

One of my favorite tales is Tatyana Tolstaya’s “Most Beloved,” recounting the life of humble and industrious Zhenechka — older, unmarried, wearer of a hearing aid and orthopedic shoes. Through her energy and good nature, however, Zhenechka’s small world is enchanted with magical moments and an everyday poetry, along with memories of a romance that never happened “at three o’clock on one prewar February afternoon” with a “gloomy, stoop-shouldered history teacher.” The teacher didn't realize that the hot tea Zenechka handed to him with extra spoonfuls of sugar was secretly full of love, and therefore no further words were exchanged and no lifetime built between the two of them.

So in essence, Chronicle Books’ St. Petersburg collection is a surely worthwhile read for Russian history and literature buffs, and for fans of good writing in general — but particularly those caught up in this Russian-like winter and longing to commiserate and escape into a parallel literary universe. Preferably while drinking hot tea, icy vodka, or both.