A Literary Lion Hidden In Plain View Clues To Mikhail Kuzmin S Aunt Sonya S Sofa And Lecture By Dostoevsky

A Literary Lion Hidden in Plain View: Clues to Mikhail Kuzmin’s “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” and “Lecture by
Dostoevsky” // The Many Facets of Mikhail Kuzmin/ Кузмин многогранный. Ed. by L. Panova et al.
Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2011. P. 89-139.
1
Lada Panova (Los Angeles/ Moscow)
A Literary Lion Hidden in Plain View:
Clues to Mikhail Kuzmin’s “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” and “Lecture by Dostoevsky”1
1. Kuzmin the Prosaist: Then and Now
Mikhail Kuzmin’s career as prose writer, which started more than a century ago with the
publication of Kryl'ia [Wings] in 1906, was far from successful. Although he introduced
radically new perspectives into Russian literature, such as openly homosexual themes, a
demythologizing portrayal of characters, various techniques of stylization and a critique of
ideology-driven art, neither these innovations, nor his masterful story-telling were able to secure
his novels, novellas and short stories lasting recognition. What some of Kuzmin’s prose did
achieve was short-term notoriety,2
a response to same-sex love motifs and depictions of his
contemporaries, but then almost immediate oblivion. Although Kuzmin’s innovations aimed at
distinguishing his prose from its Modernist milieu, this went even farther than he had intended,
as his prose is now generally excluded from the Modernist canon, perhaps with the exception of
Wings. As a result, Kuzmin is cut off from the pleiad of other Silver Age prose writers, such as
Andrei Bely, Fedor Sologub and Dmitry Merezhkovsky.
1
For their help with this paper including editorial suggestions I would like to thank Marcus Levitt, Sarah Pratt and
Alexander Zholkovsky; for providing me with photos of Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana furniture, the Yasnaya
Polyana museum, and personally Galina Alekseeva, Elena Karnaukhova and Liudmila Meliakova; for various
consultations, John Bowlt, Nikolay Bogomolov and Mark Konecny.
2
As stated in two recent Kuzmin biographies, the English-language one by John Malmstad and Nikolay Bogomolov
(Malmstad, Bogomolov 1999: 93-97) and the Russian-language one by the same authors (Bogomolov, Malmstad
2007: 156-62).

2
The unlucky fate of Kuzmin’s fiction is usually explained by the preeminence of his
poetry. Similarly, Kuzmin’s accomplishments in play-writing, non-fiction, musical composition,
theatre criticism and translations were also overshadowed by his poetry. In the long run, in the
history of Russian Modernism this Renaissance man earned only a modest niche as a poet with
negligible achievements in other fields.
Several attempts have been made to save Kuzmin’s fiction from oblivion. The first was
by Boris Eikhenbaum, a major authority on Russian prose of Kuzmin’s epoch. In his short 1920
essay “O proze M. Kuzmina” [On M. Kuzmin’s Prose], Eikhenbaum pointed out the writer’s
idiosyncrasies and stressed his cultural mission: to revive the “minor,” Leskovian branch of
Russian prose which had been overshadowed by the “major” branch represented by Fedor
Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy.3
However, Eikhenbaum’s efforts were not sufficient to reverse the
existing situation, and as recently as in 1984, in a preface to the Berkeley twelve-volume
collection of Kuzmin’s prose, Vladimir Markov, the paramount living authority on Kuzmin,
complained that Kuzmin’s prose was unfairly overlooked, especially when compared with the
attention paid to the prose of Aleksei Remizov or Vladimir Nabokov4
.
So far Eikhenbaum’s insights about the nature of Kuzmin’s prose have not been followed
up by others. Similarly, Markov’s insistence on its high quality has not prevailed over the old
bias that it is inferior to Kuzmin’s poetry. As a result, the only prose work of Kuzmin that has
received consistent scholarly attention is Wings. However, in most cases it is analyzed not as a
literary work per se but rather as a long political (homosexual) polemic, or as pre-nabokovian
Modernism. The only survey of Kuzmin’s entire prose corpus was undertaken by Neil Granoein
3
Eikhenbaum 1987: 348.
4
Markov 1984: xvi.

3
in his 1981 Ph.D. dissertation (under Markov’s guidance5
). There also exist several short studies
of more than a dozen of Kuzmin’s fictional writings other than Wings, which take into account
their semantics, intertexts and references to Kuzmin’s contemporaries.
This lack of attention to Kuzmin’s prose obviously hinders Kuzmin studies. What is even
worse, it disadvantages the modern reader, who, unguided by professional criticism, can
experience only a limited pleasure of the text, perhaps appreciating, the excellent story-telling,
with its light narrative touch, and the intricate twists of plot, but who may miss out on the kind of
stylistic, emotional and intellectual pleasures as promised in Kuzmin’s 1910 manifesto “O
prekrasnoi iasnosti. Zametki o proze” [Concerning Beautiful Clarity: Remarks on Prose.]6
Along
with other Kuzmin scholars, I have no magic key to Kuzmin’s prose heritage. What I am going
to suggest in this paper is an interpretation of two of Kuzmin’s early short stories, “Kushetka teti
Soni” [Aunt Sonya’s Sofa]7
and “Lektsiia Dostoevskogo” [Lecture by Dostoevsky]8
. My point is
that these seemingly transparent short stories from modern life are in fact constructed on several
levels, including the metaliterary. They also pack a strong intellectual charge, representing
something of a riddle to be solved. The riddle, in its turn, is designed around a major figure of
Russian literature. These features suggest that Kuzmin’s prose was a precursor of Nabokov’s
riddle-ridden writing as well as of Daniil Kharms and Andrei Nikolev’s9
work, which shares
Kuzmin’s irreverent attitude to literary giants.
2. “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” and “Lecture by Dostoevsky” in Literary Criticism: A Survey
5
Granoien 1981.
6
Kuzmin 1984-2000, X: 29-34. See also English translation in Kuzmin 2005: 225-30.
7
Translated into English by Michael A. Green, first publication in 1972. Green’s translation is cited from Kuzmin
1980: 112-26.
8
Translated by Green and Stanislav Shvabrin, first publication in this volume.
9
A pen name of Andrei Egunov (1895-1968), a prosaist, poet and translator of classical literature.

4
Each story has received various critical responses. Interestingly, the negative ones belong
both to Kuzmin’s contemporaries as well as Kuzmin scholars. Should Kuzmin’s short stories
remain poorly known due to their inferior quality, it will be fair to praise these scholars for their
unprejudiced support of truth rather than the reputation of “their” author. Otherwise, a serious
reconsideration is required. To decide this question, let us start with a survey of those responses.
“Aunt Sonya’s Sofa,” finished on June 30, 1907 (old style)10
, appeared the same year in
the tenth volume of the Moscow Symbolist journal Vesy [Libra]. Between these two events its
author received a discouraging letter from Libra’s editor, Valery Briusov, who expressed his
disappointment with the short story. Finding it much inferior to Kuzmin’s cycle “Aleksandriiskie
pesni” [Alexandrian Songs] (1904-08), which had made Kuzmin his name, he advised him to
replace it with something more worthy of his gift. But the final decision he granted to Kuzmin.11
In the mid-1900s when Kuzmin was just entering Russian letters, he had taken Briusov as an
arbiter elegantiae and his patron. However, in this case he had enough courage to insist on
publishing the piece. In his reply to Briusov he explained this decision by asserting his affection
for “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa,” perhaps, undeserved.12
Compared with Kuzmin’s correspondence with
his intimate circle13
, this was a mild way to express his satisfaction with the short story. In a
letter to Vladimir Ruslov of December 8-9, 1907 Kuzmin resolutely defends the piece as an
epitome of his prose writing:
10
According to the date given in the first publication. The relative information in Kuzmin’s 1907 diary may seem
different: «Писал “Кушетку”» (from June 7; Kuzmin 2000: 369); «Пишу “Кушетку”, мог бы кончить скоро.»
(June 9; Ibid.: 370); «Кончил “Кушетку”.» (June 11; Ibid.); «Сегодня, получив повестку на заказную бандероль
из Москвы, подумал, не “Кушетка” ли моя вернулась обратно.» (June 18; Ibid.: 372).
11
A letter from September 26; Kuzmin 2006: 160.
12
Kuzmin 2006: 182-83.
13
See, for example, his letter to Valentin Nouvel from August 11, 1907: «“Кушетка тети Сони” – современна.
Там как раз два студента, институтка, старый генерал и старая дева.» (Bogomolov 1995: 284).

5
«Относительно же “Кушетки” я буду спорить, не боясь показаться в смешном виде собственного
защитника. Технически (в смысле ведения фабулы, ловкости, простоты и остроты диалогов, слога) я
считаю эту вещь из самых лучших, и, видя там Ворта и Сергея Павловича (надеюсь, Вы не
подумали, что это действительно – он: время и лета это опровергают), не вижу пастушка и Буше.
Это современно, и только современно, несмотря на мою манерность. Как слог считаю это –
большим шагом и против “Домика”, и против, м<ожет> б<ыть>, “Эме”, не говоря о других.»
(Bogomolov 1995: 209)
[In the case of “[Aunt Sonya’s] Sofa” I will disagree, unafraid of looking ridiculous as my own defender.
Technically (from the point of view of the plot construction, artfulness, simplicity and the wittiness of the
dialogues, and style) I consider this piece as one of the best, and, when you recognize Vort14
and Sergei
Pavlovich [Diaghilev. – L.P.] in it (I hope that you did not think that this is really him: the time and age
contradict this) I don’t see a shepherd and [François. – L.P.] Boucher. It is modern, and only modern,
despite my mannerism. Stylistically, I consider it a new step in comparison with “The Little [Cardboard]
House,” and, perhaps, “[The Adventures of] Aimé [Lebœuf],” not to mention others].15
Kuzmin also recited “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” to his friends and received an enthusiastic response
from them.16
Three years later, when “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” was reprinted as part of Kuzmin’s 1910
volume, Pervaia kniga rasskazov [First Book of Stories]17
, Nikolai Gumilev singled it out as
Kuzmin’s major accomplishment. In his review, Gumilev also commented on Kuzmin’s informal
way of writing (his causerie), which he defined as an ability to thrill the reader while telling him
about “nothing,” and at the same time he praised the flow of the narration and the well-
developed plot.18
However, taking into account that Kuzmin’s friendship with the Gumilevs was
14
This person is unknown.
15
All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
16
See a diary entry from October 10, «“Кушетка” друзьям очень понравилась» (Kuzmin 2000: 415).
17
For its reprint, see Kuzmin 1984-2000, I: 159-78.
18
«Опытные causeur’ы знают, что заинтересовать слушателя можно только интересными сообщениями, но
чтобы очаровать его, <…> надо рассказывать ему интересно о неинтересном. <…>
Отличительные свойства прозы М. Кузмина – это определенность фабулы, плавное ее развитие и
<…> целомудрие мысли, не позволяющее увлекаться целями, чуждыми искусству слова. <…>
Что может быть неинтереснее внешних событий чужой вам жизни? Что нам за дело, что <…>
студента Павиликина заподозрили в краже кольца <…>?
Язык М. Кузмина ровный, строгий и ясный, я сказал бы: стеклянный. Сквозь него видны все линии
и краски, которые нужны автору, но чувствуется, что видишь их через преграду. Его периоды своеобразны,
их приходится иногда распутывать, но, раз угаданные, они радуют своей математической правильностью.
<…>
В его книге рассказов собраны вещи <…> неравной ценности. Так, в его ранней повести “Крылья”
события художественно не вытекают одно из другого, многие штрихи претенциозны, и построение всей
повести неприятно-мозаичное. От всех этих недостатков М. Кузмин освободился в следующих своих
рассказах. Лучший из них – “Кушетка тети Сони”.» (Gumilev 1991).

6
flourishing at this very time, it is possible to suspect that Kuzmin’s own opinion influenced
Gumilev’s, especially concerning “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa.”
The negative assessment of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” by Briusov and Gumilev’s eulogistic
one create a dilemma for the modern Kuzmin scholar. Nikolay Bogomolov, in his recent
publication of the Kuzmin – Briusov correspondence, sided with Briusov. He even expresses his
own bewilderment about the reasons that made Kuzmin publish this feeble attempt.19
Yet other
Kuzmin scholars seem to follow Gumilev’s lead. Andrew Field in his 1963 article sees the
story’s anti-Dostoevskian orientation. He also identifies its French intertext:
“Kuzmin makes Dostoevsky the object of his satire. His b[r]illiant tour de force Auпt Sophie's Couch
(1907) is а parody of the pretense of “realistic” fiction. Its narrator is а sofa, and the action takes
place in Dostoevskian scenes in which groups of excited characters are gathered all together in the
small ante-room in which the sofa sits. The subject seems to be taken from Le Sofa by the
eighteenth-century French writer, Claude-Prosper Crébillon (1707-1777).” (Field 1963: 299)20
Granoien, in his turn, presents a summary of the story and discusses its peculiar narrative
perspective, namely, the use of the sofa’s point of view.21
A.G. Timofeev in his 2005 Ph.D.
(kandidatskaia) dissertation formulates its homosexual message as a “thematic breakthrough in
Russian literature.”22
He also suggests another French connection for Kuzmin’s sofa, a
vulgarized and pornographic twentieth-century imitation of Crébilion’s novel, Les Mémoires
d’une chaise longue [The Memories of a Chaise Lounge] (published 1903), by Victorien Du
Saussay. Released in Russia under the title Dnevnik kushetki [The Diary of a Couch] in the first
19
«Читатель переписки Кузмина с Брюсовым может, видимо, пропустить историю публикации рассказа
“Кушетка тети Сони”. Честно сказать, очень хочется согласиться с Брюсовым в том, что рассказ далеко не
относится к лучшему, что создано Кузминым, - и все-таки автор настаивает на том, что ему дóлжно быть
напечатанным. На предложение опубликовать что-нибудь другое он отвечает вежливым, но вполне твердым
отказом. Что это? Вряд ли просто желание не упустить причитающийся гонорар <…> Нам кажется, что
здесь следует вести речь о некоем существенном для автора, но непонятном нам элементе его творчества,
при котором “мелочь” может приобретать сакраментальное значение.» (Bogomolov 2006: 6).
20
It was repeated in Kuzmin English-language biography: “[T]he sofa itself narrates a gay love-story in Kuzmin’s
witty and extremely well told variation on a threadbare conceit of erotic literature that he had <…> encountered in
the eighteenth-century French novel Le Sopha by Crébilion fils.” (Malmstad, Bogomolov 1999: 129).
21
Granoien 1981: 134-36.
22
Timofeev 2005: 281.

7
half of 190723
, it may have suggested Kuzmin’s short story as itself a diary of a sofa.24
Taking
into account these valuable findings, I will demonstrate that both the French aura of the sofa25
and the same-sex love plot are subordinated to the main, metaliterary, layer of the story, and that
Kuzmin’s parody does not target Dostoevsky but rather another major figure of Russian
literature.
Proceeding to Kuzmin’s “'Lecture by Dostoevsky',” it must be said that very little is
known about it. The only source here is the last volume of Sinii zhurnal [The Blue Journal] from
1913, where it appeared (for a facsimile reprint, see pp. … of this volume). Judging from this
publication, the quotation marks in the title (see the double quotation marks above; henceforth
single quotation marks will be used) belong to Kuzmin. They obviously prefigure the qui-pro-
quo structure of the narrative. The publication in question also indicates that the story’s subtitle
“A Christmas Tale” may belong to the editors rather than Kuzmin. The subtitle helps account for
other elements of the story. For example, as the genre requires, the action takes place during
Christmas week, namely, on Christmas Eve. The journal publication also includes two
illustrations by M. Slepian, both depicting the story’s main protagonist and his newly purchased
phonograph.
The subtitle and illustrations might lead one to think that “Lecture by Dostoevsky” is a
mere trifle. This view has been recently expressed by Olga Burmakina in her M.A. dissertation
(supervised by Professor Lea Pild of Tartu University) on how Kuzmin rewrote Dostoevsky. In
her interpretation, the short story is a spoof on early Dostoevsky and his “little man.”26
I am
23
See Soss'e 1907.
24
Timofeev 2005: 270-84.
25
Kuzmin’s coushetka having French origin for Russian ear sounds French.
26
«[З]десь главный герой (“маленький человек”, описанный в духе стилистики и образности Достоевского
“докаторжного” периода) принимает по ошибке записанную на фонограф сцену убийства собственного деда
за диалог из “Преступления и наказания”. <…> “Лекция Достоевского”, опубликованная в “Синем

8
going to argue that Dostoevsky here is mainly a deceptive stand-in for another literary heavy-
weight.
3. Decoding the Rebus: A Theoretical Framework
The new reading of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” and “Lecture by Dostoevsky” proposed in this
paper is based on the assumption that they are designed like a rebus. In order to decode it I am
going to suggest five hermeneutic procedures. Some of them derive from Kuzmin’s self-
reflections, while others are based on Modernist responses to his fiction and on existing scholarly
approaches.
3.1. “Beautiful Clarity.” The trademark of Kuzmin’s early prose is “beautiful clarity,”
or, according to his 1910 manifesto, “Concerning Beautiful Clarity,” a well-constructed design,
logic, economy of expressive means, clarity of language, the harmony of content and structure,
and, last but not least, verisimilitude. Advocating these principles, Kuzmin equates prose writing
with architecture, because the latter consists in adjusting all the elements within a larger design:
“To sum up all that has been said, were I permitted to give an admonishment, I would put it like this: “My
friend, if you have talent, that is to say—the ability to see the world in your own, new way, an artist’s
memory, the capacity to distinguish the essential from the incidental, the power of true-to-life invention—
write logically, preserving the purity of popular speech. Possessing a style of your own, have a clear feeling
for the correspondence of a given form to a certain content, and for the language appropriate to it. Be a
skilled architect in petty detail as well as in the whole. Be comprehensible in your expressions.” But I
would whisper in the ear of my dearest friend: “If you are a conscientious artist, pray that your chaos (if
you are chaotic) be illumined and ordered, or, in the meantime, hold it in check with lucid form: let a tale
tell a story, in the drama let there be action, keep lyricism for verse, love the word as Flaubert did; be
economic in means and parsimonious in words, precise and genuine—and you will discover a wonderful
secret: beautiful clarity, which I would call “Clarism.” But “the way of art is long, and life is short,” and are
not all these instructions nothing more than best wishes addressed to myself?” (Kuzmin 2005: 230 with
minor editing by Marcus Levitt)
журнале”, ориентированном на массового читателя, никак не может быть отнесена к категории
произведений, определяющих подлинное значение Кузмина для русской литературы.» (Burmakina 2003: 39).

9
Hence, the first hermeneutic rule: to understand Kuzmin’s prose properly means to
discover the design that underlies the verisimilar narrative.
3.2. The Intertextual Dimension. To identify the design also requires decoding its
intertextual dimension.
Intertextuality is one of the key factors of Kuzmin’s poetics. First of all, as a connoisseur
of ancient, medieval and modern literature and art, he favored “rare” works rather than
mainstream ones. Secondly, he perceived literature (and other arts) as building blocks for new
creation. This means that practically every element, from a single word to the larger structure,
may be borrowed. Thirdly, there are Kuzminian recipes about what to do with literary sources.
These are: stylization (for which he became famous in his lifetime); rewriting existing plots in a
new mode (which has already been noticed by Kuzmin scholars); and a playful attitude toward
literary canons and conventions. Thus, the second rule would be to locate Kuzmin’s sources and
to specify how they are used (from simple citation to imitation, subvertion, parody or disruption)
and identify their place in the general design of the text under analysis.
In this paper, I will deal mainly with the gallery of Russian writers from Pushkin to
Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov who have been named as Kuzmin’s predecessors. I will also take
into account the intertextual insights by Gumilev and Eikhenbaum who both discussed literary
traditions represented by Kuzmin’s prose. In his review of Kuzmin’s First Book of Stories,
Gumilev suggested Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy as Kuzmin’s Russian
predecessors and Anatole France and Henri de Régnier as his European ones. Eikhenbaum’s
genealogy of Kuzmin’s fiction was probably meant to correct Gumilev’s, even though it is not
mentioned in his essay. In Eikhenbaum’s view, Kuzmin’s fiction derives from the minor branch

10
of Russian fiction (Leskov and Pavel Mel'nikov-Pechersky) cross-fertilized with French fiction
(France and Régnier); Kuzmin’s fiction is thus opposed to the major branch of Russian prose,
i.e., Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The following analysis will provide a new perspective on
the question of Kuzmin’s lineage.
3.3. Oscillation between Fiction and Life. The verisimilitude of Kuzmin’s design
sometimes took a rather unexpected direction, turning into recognizable portrayal of his
contemporaries. Thus, blurring the boundaries between fiction and life, he created short stories,
novellas and novels à clef. Kuzmin’s gallery of portraits includes the Symbolist writer Zinaida
Gippius, the poet Anna Akhmatova (as herself and also in hybrid combination with the non-
classical dancer Ida Rubinshtein), the occultist Anna Mintslova, as well as Kuzmin’s lovers and
life partners, such as Sergei Sudeikin; he also portrays the Brodiachaia Sobaka [The Stray Dog,]
the bohemian St. Petersburg café. Some of the prototypes were recognized by Kuzmin’s
contemporaries, some deciphered by Kuzmin scholars27
.
This paper will add two new figures to the characters drawn from life, a star couple of
Russian literature. Having never met them in person, Kuzmin tapped numerous publications
about their life, including their own confessions in the press.
3.4. Deliberate Flaws. Some Kuzmin scholars have suspected that his seemingly
transparent stories convey deeper and highly sophisticated meanings. Or, as Eikhenbaum put it in
his 1920 essay, “[I]f it seems that Kuzmin is telling a story, do not believe him; in fact, he offers
27
See, for example, Timenchik, Toporov, Tsiv'ian 1978, Morev 1990 a, Morev 1990 b, Bogomolov 1995: 117-162,
Malmstad, Bogomolov 1999, Bogomolov, Malmstad 2007, Panova 2010.

11
a puzzle [rebus] from modern life.”28
Eikhenbaum never backed up this theoretical insight with
any specific decoding. The first to do so was John Barnstead. His interpretation of Kuzmin’s
short stories, “Iz pisem devitsy Klary Val'mon k Rozalii Tutel' Maier” [From the Letters of the
Maiden Clara Valmont to Rosalie Tütelmeyer] (published 1907), about a diabolic miracle, and
“Dva chuda” [Two Miracles] (published 1919), about two interdependent divine miracles, is
based on the notion of a deliberate flaw as a clue to the solution of a rebus. Barnstead names time
discrepancies and “loose” details which do not fit the plot as special devices intended to signal
that the naiveté of the narrative and its stylization hide but potentially reveal a more sophisticated
and “deconstructive” meaning of the story:
“The device of chronological discrepancy may be taken as a model of Kuzmin’s general structuring of his
prose universe: the element of autobiography at its root is ultimately subordinated to larger perspectives of
art; the boundary between art and life is dissolved; Klara’s monstrous pregnancy and Nona’s ersatz, parodic
one are equally emblematic of the process.” (Barnstead 1989: 13-14).
Barnstead suggests that “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” can be interpreted in the same way.29
Partially
agreeing with him, I would stress that “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa,” as well as “Lecture by Dostoevsky,”
do have a rebus design. However, in my opinion, rather than being invited to read more
sophisticated meanings into the story the reader is supposed to discover a strong metaliterary
message underneath. In light of this message, the “surface” narration will, of course, look
different but its status will not be diminished.
Discussing the rebus design of the two stories, one ought to bear in mind their affinity
with the structure of a poem, as described in Michael Riffaterre’s Semiotics of Poetry. In
Riffaterre’s semiotic model, a poem, while narrating one thing, signifies another. To move from
its surface, or mimetic, meaning to its inner significance (which is pertinent to its literariness),
the reader needs to notice the accidental flaws in its mimesis—its “ungrammaticalities.”
28
Eikhenbaum 1987: 350.
29
Barnstead 1989: 13.

12
Detecting the poem’s “significance” involves finding the kernel sign (or the kernel system of
signs), relative to a pre-existing literary pattern, or “hypogram,”30
and tracing, step by step, how
it unfolds, Riffaterre posits two ways of such unfolding: expansion and conversion. 31
I believe that Kuzmin’s rebuses are built in the same way as poetic structures analyzed by
Riffaterre. He introduces deliberate flaws on the surface (mimetic) level, thus inviting the reader
to seek for an explanation. This decoding process leads us to the hypogram of a sofa in “Aunt
Sonya’s Sofa” and that of a phonograph in “Lecture by Dostoevsky.”
3.5. Invariants. Understanding of Kuzmin’s narrative design, intertexts and hidden
meanings will be more accurate, if one considers them in the light of the invariants of his poetic
world. It is important to keep in mind that Kuzmin established a “school” for younger prose
writers, and his invariants were not only a part of his teaching but also penetrated into his
disciples’ works. This is what happened with Kuzmin’s life-partner Yuri Yurkun. To promote
Yurkun’s book Shvedskie perchatki [Swedish Gloves] (1914, published 1914), Kuzmin wrote a
preface to it. Besides summarizing the most characteristic features of Yurkun’s prose, he also
gave away the secrets of his own “school” of writing, his understanding of “well-constructed
design” and “rebus”:
«Роман может быть нов по сюжету, освещению, языку <...>. Новизна сюжета, к которой снова стали
склоняться ленивые люди, уверяя, что они устали от обобщений и психологии, – самая дешевая и
опасная новизна. <...> Но что новее всего и заслуживает наибольшего внимания, это самый подход
к структуре романа. <...> Вглядитесь пристальней, и подлинные очертания всей постройки
будут ясны и последовательность точно обнаружится. Я особенно настаиваю на этом, потому что
иначе автору грозила бы опасность распылиться в пространстве. <...> Снаружи все свободно,
легко, почти капризно. Кроме новизны, этот прием доказывает и наблюдательность автора,
но требует внимания и догадливости со стороны слушателей. Ю. Юркун считает читателей за
людей сообразительных и не тупых <…>. Я не хочу сказать, что он сознательно пишет ребусы,
но внимания требует.» (Kuzmin 1984-2000, X: 174-75)
30
For details, see Riffaterre 1978: 12-13, 23-25.
31
Ibid.: 47-80.

13
[A novel can be new in its plot, viewpoint, language <…> The novelty of the plot, to which lazy people
who assure us that they are sick of generalizations and psychology, are inclined, is the most cheap and
dangerous. <…> But what is newest and deserves the most attention is the very approach to the structure
of the novel. <…> Look closely, and the real shape of the whole construction will become clear and the
consequences will be revealed. I especially insist on this because otherwise the author [Yurkun. – L.P.] will
face the danger of being dispersed in space. <…> Outside everything is free, light, almost capricious.
Besides novelty, this device also proves the author’s ability to observe, but demands attention and
intelligence from his listeners. Yu. Yurkun considers readers as smart and not dumb <…>. I don’t want to
say that he deliberately writes rebuses, but [that he] demands attention].
This preface confirms that the theoretical framework we are suggesting is a legitimate approach
to Kuzmin’s fiction.
4. “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa”: The Sofa Hypogram
4.1. Pushkinian Understatements. The outstanding feature of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” is its
intricately constructed narrative, responsible for the ostensible tension between what is said and
what is withheld or omitted. Shaping the narrative this way, Kuzmin relied on Pushkin’s strategy
of understatement as deployed in Povesti Belkina [The Tales of Belkin] (1830, published 1831).
When Kuzmin was writing “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa,” Pushkin scholarship had not yet
described this technique. This came only in 1919 in Mikhail Gershenzon’s analysis of
“Stantsionnyi smotritel'” [The Stationmaster].32
Since that breakthrough, one of the established
readings of the Belkin cycle has been to view its narrative as a seemingly naïve trifle waiting to
be reconceptualized in a more sophisticated way. This reading involves telling details not
directly rooted in the plot. For example, in “The Stationmaster,” as Gershenzon demonstrates,
such a detail is the series of pictures depicting the Biblical Prodigal Son.
Being a part of the station’s interior, these pictures have nothing to do with the actual plot of the
stationmaster’s daughter’s consensual abduction and further happy life with the “abductor” in Petersburg.
However, the stationmaster perceives his daughter’s separation from him through this Biblical cliché, as a
32
Gershenzon 1919: 122-27.

14
prodigal daughter and fallen woman, and even pays with his life for this misinterpretation. Hence,
Pushkin’s hidden message is to abstain from ready-made clichés and to perceive events as they are. 33
Praising Pushkin’s short story, Gershenzon reproaches the Symbolists (who obviously stand for
all Modernist prose writers) for not adopting its “ease and naturalness.”34
This is an unfair
comment insofar as it ignores Kuzmin’s apprenticeship to Pushkin. With his astute sense of
structure, Kuzmin must have discerned Pushkin’s understatement technique prior to 1919.
Gumilev’s review of his First Book of Stories mentioned above was probably influenced by
Kuzmin’s own opinions and supports this assertion. Gumilev (or, perhaps, Kuzmin himself)
derives Kuzmin’s early fiction and “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” in particular directly from the Belkin
cycle:
«Несложность и беспритязательность фабулы освобождает слово, делает его гибким и
уверенным, позволяет ему светиться собственным светом. <…>
Пушкин интуицией гения понял необходимость такого культа языка и в России и создал
“Повести Белкина”, к которым жадная до ученичества современная критика отнеслась как к
легкомысленным анекдотам. Их великое значение не оценено до сих пор. И неудивительно, что
наша критика молчанием обходила до сих пор прозу М. Кузмина, ведущую свое происхождение,
помимо Гоголя и Тургенева, помимо Льва Толстого и Достоевского, прямо от прозы Пушкина.»
(Gumilev 1991)
[The story’s unassuming simplicity frees the word, makes it flexible and confident, allows it to shine with
its own light. <…>
Pushkin with his intuition of genius understood the necessity of such a cult of language in Russia
and created “The Tales of Belkin,” which overeager, juvenile contemporary criticism took for mere light-
hearted anecdotes. Their great significance has still not been appreciated. So it is not surprising that our
literary criticism has been silent about M. Kuzmin’s prose, which derives not only, from Gogol and
Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, [but also] directly from Pushkin’s prose].
I would suggest that Kuzmin went even further than Pushkin. In “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” he
modernized the understatement technique by constructing a three-level narrative, with the story
(fabula) as its first level, discourse (siuzhet, or organized story) as the second, and a hidden
metaliterary layer as the third.
33
Brief summaries of the action of different literary works will be provided in indented segments.
34
Ibid.: 122.

15
4.2. Story and Discourse. Granoien and Timofeev, in their interpretations of “Aunt
Sonya’s Sofa,” limited themselves to the discussion of what can be classified as its fabula, each
in his own way. They also stressed its unusual narrator, the kushetka (sofa, or, literally, couch).
In my reading, Kuzmin’s narrative design invites the reader to shift from the fabula to the
siuzhet, using the sofa as the turning point. Within the fabula, this item of furniture plays
“supporting” roles, being a scene of action in the Gambakovs’ house, an inanimate object
interfering with the life of its owners, and a conversation piece. The siuzhet advances the sofa to
the major roles of eyewitness and narrator. In the process, it also acquires gender specification,
which is female, and some other human characteristics, such as old age. Both of these require
additional suspension of disbelief from the reader. What is even more important, the sofa’s
power, which within the fabula is restricted by the Gambakovs, expands within the siuzhet to
include control of the text. Thus, it becomes an emblem of textual creation.35
The fabula of “Aunt Sonya’ Sofa” itself is not merely a string of events but rather a
juxtaposition of two, as the sofa’s timeline is projected onto the Gambakov family drama.
At first glance, the family drama is relatively simple and, what is more, meets the
requirements of beautiful clarity and verisimilitude. However, upon closer examination it reveals
a strong ideological charge. It illustrates the generation gap, a theme typical for nineteenth-
century and fin-de-siècle Russian literature,36
involving what we now call “coming out of the
closet,” a bold new theme at that time. As the narrative unfolds, the gay self-identification of
Kostya Gambakov leads to his rupture with the lifestyle and traditional values of the “fathers,”
35
With this design “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” could become a classical example of Viktor Shklovsky’s distinction
between a story (fabula) and a discourse (siuzhet), introduced into literary studies in 1921, see (Shklovsky 1929:
177-204), which he illustrated on the basis of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman (1759-67).
36
From Ivan Turgenev’s Ottsy i deti [Fathers and Sons] (1860-61, published 1862) to Bely’s Peterburg [Petersburg]
(1912-13, 1922, published 1913, 1922).

16
provoking an irreparable split. Predictably, Kuzmin’s gay thesis also involves the misogynistic
portrayal of female characters, including the Gambakov women and the sofa (as in Kuzmin’s
view, woman’s nature is inferior to that of men). Given that it is a story à these, “Aunt Sonya’s
Sofa” can be seen as a further step beyond Wings, which had offered an unabashed sermon on
behalf of the superiority of male homosexuality in matters of love and art.
Each of the five protagonists enacting the family drama impersonates a ready-made
literary type, and Kuzmin supplies them with characteristic speech patterns and behavior. As a
group they form the recognizable ensemble of an aristocratic family challenged by a lower class
intruder.37
However, the outcome of the drama is uniquely Kuzminian.
In the very beginning, the four Gambakovs create an ideal symmetry based on the 2 + 2
principle. There are two men and two women, two brother-and-sister pairs, and, finally, two
generations. The older Gambakovs are Maksim Petrovich, a stylized retired general who behaves
benevolently at home, dotes upon his children and obeys his sister Pavla Petrovna. In her turn,
Pavla is a stereotypical old spinster, who runs the house and lords it over the family.38
The
younger Gambakovs are Maksim’s children, Konstantin Maksimovich, or Kostya, a Wildean
dandy in search of beauty and carnal pleasures, and Nastas'ya Maksimovna, or Nastya, a
stereotypical young silly dreamer who fails to understand what is happening around her. The life
of the Gambakovs is also stereotypical, following upper class routine, until Sergei Pavlovich
Pavilikin, or Seryozha, a young handsome man with no fortune, no name and a rather bad
reputation, enters the scene to involve Nastya and Kostya in a love triangle. This produces yet
37
This ensemble resembles those in Alexander Ostrovsky’s plays, especially, Svoi liudi – sochtemsia [It’s a Family
Affair—We’ll Settle It Ourselves!] (1846-49, published 1850), where a similar intruder involved in a similar
marriage project pretends he is not worth it, reciting the same self-humiliating proverb as in Kuzmin’s story, “Gde
uzh nam s sukonnym rylom v kalachnyi riad!” [The likes of us mustn’t be getting ideas above our station!].
38
Hence the name Pavla, with strong masculine overtones.

17
another symmetry, the two siblings’ competition for the intruder’s love. All the established
symmetries are going to be destroyed towards the end:
After a period of pure friendship Seryozha and Kostya fall in love with each other. Their romance, with its
secret nocturnal rendezvous at the Gambakovs house, trips to the opera, scenes of jealousy and
reconciliation, is complicated by Kostya’s loan to Seryozha. Nastya with her girlish fantasies is blind to the
flowering of this relationship and has a romantic interest in Seryozha herself. Having no real signs of his
affection, she invents them. She believes that the amateur Christmas performance of Esther at the
Gambakovs has brought her closer to her beloved while what really happened that very day was the first
night of love between Seryozha and her brother. At some point, Nastya herself proposes to Seryozha,
against accepted norms of behavior, tempting him with her wealth. In a while Seryozha accepts her, and
she hastens to secure her father’s blessing. Pushing Maksim and Pavla to approve of her fiancé she
provokes a huge family fracas, Dostoevsky style. Pavla claims that Seryozha has stolen Maksim’s precious
ring, a family heirloom, that very morning, and also blames him for “corrupting” Kostya. Nastya accuses
Pavla of being prejudiced against her fiancé, and takes Kostya as witness. In the course of the quarrel
Maksim screams terribly and dies on the sofa where he has been sitting. At Maksim’s funeral Kostya shares
with Seryozha his decision to start an independent life. He also encourages his partner’s visits. Seryozha, in
his turn, complains that Pavla and Nastya have banned him from the house. Seryozha will be exonerated
later. As the sofa, sold because of the misfortunes it has provoked, is being carried out of the Gambakovs’
house, the lost ring falls out of it. Pavla, who is present at the scene, puts the ring into her handbag.
In this family drama, Kuzmin compares Kostya’s successful transgression of family and
religious values with Nastya’s short-term, and thus unsuccessful, emancipation. Both rebel
against the family by finding an inappropriate partner. This challenge is rather easy in Nastya’s
case, as she only wants to marry a man of inferior social status, but much more difficult in
Kostya’s, as his same-sex romance comes into conflict with all social and religious norms. After
a temporary triumph, Nastya resigns herself to social realities while Kostya, consistent in his
search of sexual identity, finally gets what he wants.
Kuzmin also juxtaposes the brother’s and sister’s behavior in the way they express their
feelings. Nastya is unable to act as a loving and seductive woman. To demonstrate this, Kuzmin
suggests the Biblical Esther and Manon Lescaut as role models of femininity conquering men’s
hearts, but instead of following their example she adopts the “male” strategy of buying the object
of affection. Kostya, on the contrary, in his relationship with Seryozha shows himself to be a
loving, caring, understanding and forgiving partner. He is clearly more worthy of love than his

18
sister. This “happy ending,” however, contradicts the outcome of Kuzmin’s real life competition
for bisexual partners with their female lovers.
To discuss further the verisimilitude of the Gambakov family drama, it is important to
take into account the dedication of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” to Kuzmin’s sister, Varvara Moshkova
(née Kuzmina), at whose house in Parkhino village (in the vicinity of Nizhny Novgorod) it was
written. In the first publication the dedication ran as follows: “Etu pravdivuiu istoriiu
posviashchaiu svoei sestre” [I dedicate this true story to my sister]. The key word here,
“pravdivyi,” is ambiguous. While the addressee, presumably, understood its meaning, we must
admit that we do not. If Kuzmin wrote “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” as a short story à clef, pravdivyi
would involve ‘documenting real events or characters.’ If, however, no such references were
inferred, it is possible to gloss “pravdivyi” as ‘realistic.’
I will try to solve this dilemma by assuming a personal stratum in “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa”
and interpreting the Gambakovs’ story against the background of Kuzmin’s 1906
autobiographical piece “Histoire édifiante de mes commencements” [The Edifying Story of My
Beginnings], covering his early years:
In 1886 Kuzmin’s father, a retired naval officer, passed away shortly after he quarreled with his sister. In
the last hours of his father’s life Kuzmin stayed in his room engaged in reading a comic story and laughing.
After that Kuzmin lived with his mother until her death in 1904. For a long time he led a hidden
homosexual life. The turning point in his “coming out” was his suicide attempt in 1894, the result of a
contradiction between his passionate homosexuality and Christian faith. Only then he did confess to his
mother, and she accepted his gay inclination as a matter of fact.39
The comparison of the two texts, fictional and non-fictional, suggests that Kuzmin identified
with Kostya. Kostya’s initials, K. M., repeat Kuzmin’s own. On the other hand, in Kostya,
Kuzmin rectifies the zigzags of his own troublesome youth, in particular the hesitations about his
39
For details, see Kuzmin 2000: 269-70.

19
problematic sexual orientation, his long delay in the public acknowledgment of his
homosexuality and the penury that impeded his independent life.
Because of these dissimilarities between Kuzmin and Kostya (except, perhaps, for their
somewhat Wildean taste and love for the opera), it is probably safer to suppose that “Aunt
Sonya’s Sofa” narrates a “coming out” story of someone among Kuzmin’s acquaintances. The
first candidate for this would be Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, the famous Russian ballet
impresario and spiritus movens of fin-de-siècle Russian gay culture, mentioned in Kuzmin’s
letter to Ruslov (cited above) as bearing the same first name and patronymic as Seryozha.
Moreover, by giving his hero a telling last name, Pavilikin, which corresponds to povilika
[convolvulus], Kuzmin hints at Diaghilev’s herbal last name, with diagil', meaning according to
Russian language dictionaries ‘angelica,’ and according to Diaghilev himself, ‘fern’40
. Although
Kuzmin declined Ruslov’s suggestion that Seryozha is a thinly veiled Diaghilev, it makes sense
to relate them, as they share a corpulent stature and gay romances with quick changes of partner.
However, Diaghilev’s aristocratic lineage, refined aesthetic program and active approach to life
set him apart from Seryozha; at the same time, these qualities make him a prototype of Kostya.
In other respects the story of Diaghilev’s gay initiation was quite different from Kuzmin’s gay
characters’:
After an unsatisfactory intercourse with a woman ended with syphilis41
, as a university student he started a
relationship with his cousin, Dmitry Filosofov, and some fellow students. When Kuzmin met Diaghilev, he
gathered around him a circle of artists, musicians, ballet dancers etc. of the same sexual orientation. This
circle liberated Kuzmin from his hiding his homosexuality once and for all.42
Diaghilev could have also
attracted Kuzmin because by that time he had paid visits to many celebrities, from Tolstoy (in 1892) to
Oscar Wilde (in 1898)43
.
40
See in Serge Lifar’s 1939 memoirs: «Сергей Павлович не раз говорил мне, что его фамилия происходит от
слова “дягиль” – “папоротник”» (Lifar' 2005: 585).
41
See Lifar' 2005: 43 and Scheijen 2009: 29-30; in the latter, the woman is qualified as a prostitute.
42
See Malmstad, Bogomolov 1999: 80, Scheijen 2009: 144-45.
43
See Scheijen 2009: 45, 83.

20
By introducing the first openly gay generation in Russian history in “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa”
while placing it into the traditional framework of conflict between fathers and sons, Kuzmin
enhances the narrative with his and Diaghilev’s experience. Thus, pravdivyi means a general (not
necessarily literal) correspondence to the experiences of real people.
To defamiliarize the Gambakov family story and to dramatize it, Kuzmin incorporates the
sofa. To begin with, the sofa has its own timeline, which forms a second fabula in the story. Its
“biography” is constructed with reference to the two French novels on sofas mentioned above.
Thus, it bears recognizable signs of literariness, which strengthens the defamiliarization effect:
The sofa, an eighteenth-century artifact (the first hint at Crébillon’s The Sofa), had Oriental embroidery
with a gallant scene between a Turk and a Shepherdess typical for that age (both the embroidery and
Oriental motifs are allusions to Crébillon’s novel). After a series of misfortunes, including death and a
disrupted wedding the Gamakovs put the sofa into a storeroom for 60 years, and then, reupholstered, it was
placed in a redecorated passageway sitting-room. After the same kind of misfortune befalls its new owners,
the Gambakovs sell it. (The sale of the sofa as well as the stages of its life, from youth to old age,
summarize De Saussay’s novel).
In the perspective of the Gambakovs’ story, the sofa is a bad omen portending Maksim’s death
and Nastya’s upset marriage plans. Moreover, it signifies a fatal circle which predetermines the
younger Gambakovs’ future. Both siblings try to break out of this and start an independent life.
Nastya after a short rebellion succumbs to her traditional role, while Kostya manages to escape
it.
As the narrative unfolds, the sofa assumes greater and greater importance. The piece of
furniture takes full advantage of its narratorial role reshaping the fabula into the siuzhet to
place itself at the center of events. One of the most prominent features of this sofa-centric
narrative is the spatial orientation of all events, introduced by such linguistic formulas as “on
me.” Secondly, the protagonists are shown through the prism of the sofa’s perception. Thus, for
the sofa Seryozha is a scary outsider, so he is always presented in negative light. Moreover, the
sofa’s point of view contradicts that of Kuzmin, in the way in which an outmoded perception can

21
contradict a modern one. To demonstrate this gap, Kuzmin inserts a series of dialogues between
the human characters in the sofa’s monologue, thus allowing the reader to make a judgment from
the polyphony of voices. Thirdly, in the sofa’s monologue, its youth and metaphorical death (its
expulsion from the Gambakovs’ house) occupy key positions, defining the very beginning and
the end of the narrative.
Besides the role of the sofa, there is another important feature that differentiates the
siuzhet from the fabula: the strategy of understatement. Kuzmin introduces several proper names
which have no clear reference, be it in the story or in the extraliterary reality. Also, some
dialogues have no beginning or end, and the questions they raise are left unanswered. Finally, the
fulfillment of some plans remains unknown. These understatements are naturalized by being
ascribed to the sofa. After all, the sofa is an unreliable narrator capable of telling only what
happened on it. But seen in Riffaterre’s perspective, these understatements are deliberate flaws in
the design, inviting the reader to see and solve a puzzle.
Let us recapitulate the narrative of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa,” taking into account these
lacunae and the sofa’s central role along with a series of foreshadowings:
Chapter one begins with the sofa’s reminiscences about its youth and the following sixty years of
“imprisonment” and then passes onto the Gambakovs’ debates about its future. Kostya, who has
upholstered it, plans to put it in the passageway, which he is arranging according to his taste. Pavla warns
the Gambakovs about the misfortunes that happened on it sixty years ago: “poor Sophie”'s death and the
cancellation of a wedding. The general is sure that the sofa has lost its magic power and no one is likely to
die or propose on it, simply because its new place will be the passageway. The sofa’s comment, “the
general proved to be less than a prophet,” sets up expectations which come true in the story.
In chapter two, the younger Gambakovs are discussing an amateur Christmas performance of
Esther in which Nastya will play the title role. Both intend to invite Seryozha and try to find an appropriate
part for him. This dialogue gives away both siblings’ infatuation with Seryozha. It also lets the reader know
that Seryozha is not reliable in money matters, which creates another foreshadowing, this time false. The
dialogue ends with Kostya’s promise to do something for Nastya, which Nastya specifies later. Seryozha’s
introduction is followed by the sofa’s comments on his inferiority. It also grumbles about Nastya’s staying
by the window, preventing sunlight from getting into the room.
Chapter three describes the preparations for Esther on Christmas Eve. The sofa complains that it
does not have a moment of quiet. The older Gambakovs sitting on it are discussing Pavla’s preoccupation
with Nastya, who has fallen in love with Seryozha, and Kostya’s gay inclinations. Suddenly Nastya enters
the passageway asking Maksim to lend his precious ring for the “King” (perhaps, Seryozha?) Pavla forbids
the general to take the family heirloom from his finger, and Nastya leaves upset. Early in the morning

22
Kostya and Seryozha part after a happy night date. Seryozha apologizes for mixing his loan from Kostya
into their romance. Kostya, in his turn, reminds Seryozha that the next day his friend is going out to see
Manon with him and not with an otherwise insignificant character named Petya Klimov. The sofa’s final
venomous comment registers that it is four o’clock in the morning.
Chapter four concerns Nastya’s proposal to Seryozha. She tries to tempt him with her wealth
(estates) and he mocks his non-aristocratic lineage. Finally, lying about leaving, Seryozha makes his way
directly to Kostya’s room.
In chapter five Maksim sounds preoccupied with the newspaper news about a certain Lev
Ivanovich who died an awful death: “all that was left was his cap [furazhka] and a mess of blood and brains
on the wall.”44
He bemoans this loss and also sees it as the bad omen. Another evil sign is that the same
morning Maksim lost his ring after showing it to Seryozha. Pavla suspects Seryozha of theft. At this very
moment Nastya enters the room to announce her engagement. The family’s fracas, with Pavla’s accusation
of Seryozha and then Kostya, ends with the general’s death and, as it turns out later, Nastya’s cancelled
marriage.
Chapter six, showing the general’s funeral, which the sofa perceives as its own, centers on the new
stage of Kostya and Seryozha’s relationship. Kostya informs his partner that he is moving out of the family
house and invites him to call on him. Seryozha, in his turn, shares with Kostya a letter from Pavla asking
him to stop visiting the Gambakov house for a while. Kostya recalls a parable from One Thousand and One
Nights to strengthen his and Seryozha’s resolution.
In chapter seven, Pavla is present when the lost ring is found: as porters are taking the sofa away,
the ring falls out. Pavla hides the ring into her handbag, displeased with this turn of events.
The siuzhet, as compared with the fabula, enriches the Gambakovs’ genealogy
significantly. The sofa of the title is tied now to a certain “aunt Sonia” (also called Sophie) and
displays a grandmotherly mentality and an elderly person’s behavior, thus representing the
generation of the Gambakovs’ grandparents. This image is obviously based on the notion of a
Russian gerontocracy and the worship of seniority. With its superior symbolic position in the
family’s genealogy, that of a living matriarch, the sofa claims the right to judge the other
Gambakovs, impose family values on its youngest members and express its criticism of them; its
counterpart in the family is Pavla, who adheres to the same agenda. Perhaps, Lev Ivanovich (the
man whose death is described in the newspaper) is another member of the Gambakov family
clan. He seems to be a counterpart of Maksim, who is also a military officer (which is marked by
his furazhka) and also a pater familias. His awful death can be understood in several ways. He
was either shot during a military mission or a duel, he may have committed suicide. So the
Gambakov family tree is now extended to at least one more generation (see fig. 1).
44
Kuzmin 1980: 120-21.

23

24
…….
……..
Figure 1. The Gambakov genealogical tree
4.3. The Metaliterary Layer. The hidden metalitery layer of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” is
accessible through a labyrinth of omissions. To list some: which act of Esther was chosen for the
performance? What part did Seryozha play? What was Nastya going to ask her brother? How
exactly did Lev Ivanovich die? Who are Sonya, Lev Ivanovich and Petya Klimov? And, finally,
whose “aunt” is Sonya? There are at least two details which in the sofa’s context refer to
extraliterary reality, and thus acquire meaning. These have to do with Sonya and Lev Ivanovich.
Together with the sofa they refer to the Yasnaya Polyana estate, famous then and now. Lev
stands for its owner, count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, in 1907 the living patriarch of Russian
prose; Sonya—for his wife Sof'ia Andreevna, or Sonya, as Tolstoy called her45
; and the
kushetka—for Tolstoy’s legendary leather sofa, or, in Russian, divan, which appears in a set of
his major works, including Voina i mir [War and Peace] (1863-69, published 1867-69) and Anna
45
See, for example, Afanasy Fet’s 1890 memoirs, citing the dialogue between the Tolstoys:
«– Соня! Ты видела Афанасия Афанасьевича?
Но замечание это явно опоздало, так вся в белом графиня уже подбежала ко мне по аллее и
тем же бегом <...>, не взирая на крайне интересное положение, бросилась тоже к пруду» (Fet 1992:
425-26).
Sonya/ sofa
Pavla Petrovna
Maksim Petrovich
Nastya
Lev Ivanovich ?
Kostya
Petr (not mentioned)

25
Karenina (1873-77, published 1874-77). This lends “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” an additional “roman à
clef ” dimension. It revolves around Tolstoy, who for Kuzmin and his fellow writers was a
symbolic father figure; Alexander Blok is known to have said: “Mne meshaet pisat' Lev Tolstoi”
[Leo Tolstoy hinders my writing].46
As a result, the sons-and-fathers’ conflict enacted on the
levels of the fabula and siuzhet spreads to the metaliterary one as well.
By 1907 Tolstoy had earned the reputation of a literary genius as well as of a neo-
Christian prophet, notoriously excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901.47
His private life at all its stages had been consistently covered by the media. Yasnaya Polyana had
become a place of pilgrimage and the subject of numerous memoirs, diaries, essays, folk stories
and, last but not least, gossip that filled up the Russian and world press. Encouraging his
compatriots to visit Tolstoy, Vasily Rozanov wrote that to be a Russian and have never seen
Tolstoy was as absurd as to live near the Alps and never see them.48
Nearly all of Tolstoy’s
guests religiously recorded everything they observed in Yasnaya Polyana, including the leather
sofa. Interestingly, on the very days Kuzmin was finishing (or, perhaps, had just finished) “Aunt
Sonya’s Sofa” Nikolai Breshko-Breshkovskii’s account of his stay at Yasnaya Polyana and the
famous sofa appeared under the title “V Iasnoi Poliane u grafa L'va Nikolaevicha Tolstogo” [At
Yasnaya Polyana with Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy] in “Peterburgskaia gazeta” [Petersburg
Gazette] (1907, June 26, № 172):
«Толстой сидел сбоку небольшого письменного стола. Все в этой комнате было небольшое,
уютное, интимное. <…> Только громадный клеенчатый диван с прямой спинкой и прямыми
подлокотниками напоминал простор <…> былых дворянских усадеб. Этот диван пришлый в Ясной
Поляне. И у него своя история. <…>
Каждое слово графини дышит <…> любовью к Льву Николаевичу.
46
From Blok’s conversation with Anna Akhmatova in 1913, as remembered by the latter, see Akhmatova
2000/2001: 561.
47
The excommunication is still effective.
48
«Быть русским и не увидеть гр. Л.Н. Толстого – это казалось мне всегда таким же печальным, как быть
европейцем и не увидеть Альп.» (see Sergeenko 1909: 284).

26
– Теперь у нас нет нужды, но прежде, давно, мы были совсем бедные. Приходилось самой
шить и для себя и для детей. Все они родились вот на этом диване; на нем же родился и Лев
Николаевич.» (Lakshin 1986: 267, 269)
[Tolstoy was sitting at the side of a small desk. Everything in this room was small, comfortable,
intimate. <…> Only the huge oilcloth sofa [divan] with a straight back and straight arms was reminiscent
of the spacious <…> old time estates of the gentry. This sofa was brought to Yasnaya Polyana. And it has
its own story. <…>
Every word of the countess breathes with <…> love for Lev Nikolaevich.
– Now we are not hard up, but earlier, long ago, we were absolutely poor, I had to sew for myself
and the children. All of them were born on this very sofa; Lev Nikolaevich was also born on it].
Originally this sofa was made of green Moroccan leather. Later Sof'ia Andreevna had it
upholstered with black oilcloth. It was dear to Tolstoy as having belonged to his parents. Both
had died in his childhood (he lost his mother at one and a half years old and his father at nine)
and in his adult life Tolstoy surrounded himself with their furniture. The leather sofa was part of
his study (see fig. 2 showing his last study, on the second floor of the manor house, and fig. 3,
Ilya Repin’s 1891 drawing with Tolstoy on this very sofa reading a book). Tolstoy and his wife
were convinced that the leather sofa was lucky for delivery. According to family legends,
Tolstoy himself as well as his brothers and sister were born on it. Sof'ia Andreevna gave birth to
all of their thirteen children on it.
Along with the story of Tolstoy’s sofa (in reduced or complete version49
), Kuzmin must
have been aware of the fact, also widely discussed by the media, that Tolstoy’s fiction was
written from his own experience. For example, the prototypes of Princess Mary Bolkonskaya and
Nikolai Rostov in War and Peace were his parents, while Anna Karenina’s second major couple,
Levin and Kitty, were based on the writer and Sof'ia Andreevna before and after their marriage.50
Taking that as a starting point, Kuzmin must have noted that in War and Peace Tolstoy’s leather
49
For full version, see Puzin 2005: 50.
50
“At last he married the daughter of a German physician in Moscow. The courtship is told as that of Kitty and
Levine in Anna Karénina; the history of Levine in that story being Tolstoy’s own history up to this period of his
life” (Kenworthy 1971 [1902]: 131). See also Steiner 2005 [1904]: 118, 139 ff, with many parallels between
Tolstoy’s courtship and family life, on the one hand, and his oeuvre, on the other.

27
sofa belongs to the Bolkonsky estate of Lysye gory, and, thus, to Princess Mary. There it is used
for delivery (an irrelevant motif for Kuzmin), dying (the old Bolkonsky gradually dies on it,
which in “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” is transformed into the older Gambakov’s sudden death), and
overcoming of a loss. In Anna Karenina, the same leather sofa is placed in Levin’s study:
“Она <...> сидела на диване, на том самом кожаном старинном диване, который стоял всегда в
кабинете у деда и отца Левина, и шила broderie anglaise.” (Tolstoi 1951, IX: 55)
“She [Kitty. – L.P.] <…> sat with her embroidery on that same old leather-covered sofa which had stood in
the study through his [Levin’s. – L.P.] father’s and grandfather’s times.” (Tolstoy 1970: 439).
There are other sofa episodes in War and Peace, including a declaration of love, table talk and
deaths, taking place in the divannaia (a sitting or drawing room organized around the sofa),
which Kuzmin used as material for his own family drama. Moreover, he appropriated his
predecessor’s hypogram of the sofa as representing the aristocratic flow of life and the continuity
of generations.
In “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” this Tolstoyan “family” hypogram of the sofa is spliced with the
French one, in which the sofa (or the chaise lounge) symbolizes love and sexual pleasure. Thus,
the French version of the name Sof'ia, Sophie, is brought into linguistic interplay with
Crébillon’s title Le sofa, or, in Russian, Sofa. On the whole, the erotic connotations of the sofa
are underscored only in the beginning of Kuzmin’s tale. The old covering of the sofa has a
gallant love scene embroidered on it, while in its new incarnation the sofa describes how “[t]hey
<…> threw over my arm a shawl with a pattern of bright roses, as if some beauty from the days
of my youth, disturbed at a tender tryst, had left it behind in her flight.”51
This is a quotation of
Pushkin’s poem “Tsvetok” [The Flower] (1828, published 1829), about a dried up flower kept in
a book in memory of an amorous encounter. However, in the course of the story the sofa’s
associations with love and sex are superseded by those of family.
51
Kuzmin 1980: 112.

28
By making use of the sofa hypogram Kuzmin engages Tolstoy in polemics. To better
understand this controversy, let us, first of all, outline the Tolstoian intertextual layer in “Aunt
Sonya’s Sofa” by citing other borrowed elements. The main accompaniment to the sofa is Sonya.
This name appears in War and Peace and other of Tolstoy’s works such as Semeinoe schast'e
[Family Happiness] (published 1859). Another allusion to Tolstoy and other Russian classics is
massaka, the new color of the sofa, which in nineteenth-century novels, including War and
Peace, meant dark red with a dark blue tint. Kuzmin’s having a young lady propose on the couch
refers to Family Happiness, which contains a similar scene (not on a couch but outdoors); it may
also recall War and Peace, in the scene where the young Natasha declares her love to Boris
Drubetskoi. The mysterious scene of Lev Ivanovich’s death, described in the newspaper as
leaving only “brains and blood left,” can be seen as a replica of either the death during a wood-
cutting military expedition in “Rubka lesa” [The Wood-felling] (1853-55, published 1855) or the
gambler’s suicide in “Zapiski markera” [Memoirs of a Marker] (1855, published 1855), both of
which display the horrible remains of men’s bodies. Finally, the use of a non-human narrator
follows Tolstoy’s “Kholstomer” [Strider] (1861-63, published 1885), with the piebald gelding in
the same role.52
To sum up, Kuzmin surrounds Tolstoy’s sofa with Tolstoy’s signature motifs,
providing the reader with more keys to the story’s rebus.
The polemics with Tolstoy centering on the key-image of the sofa suggest a farewell to
the traditions of nineteenth-century Russian literature, which in Kuzmin’s view were inadequate
to the task of portraying modern life. True to his own quest to write in a new mode, in “Aunt
Sonya’s Sofa” Kuzmin makes a shift from an old, family, plot, into a gay one. As a result, the
52
In Russian literary tradition, similar attempt was undertaken by Anton Chekhov in his 1887 “Kashtanka”, where
everything is shown from a dog’s point of view. The eighteenth-century French tradition, which produced
Crébillon’s The Sofa, was famous for even more daring experiments. For example, Denis Diderot in his 1748
Les bijoux indiscrets [The Indiscreet Jewels] introduced vaginas as narrators.

29
sofa, first lamenting its nearing end and then being taken away from the Gambakovs’ house,
emblematizes the death of both the “aristocratic family” plot and the traditions of “aristocratic
family” literature. For the same reason, Kuzmin “murders”—physically, but also symbolically,
in the Bloomian sense—both Tolstoy in Lev Ivanovich and Sof'ia Andreevna in Sonya.
“Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” may also represent a subtle jab at Tolstoy, dismissing him from
“father” status to that of just “uncle.” This hypothesis, if true, would support Eikhenbaum’s
claim that Kuzmin aligned himself with the minor branch of Russian prose as opposed to the
major one, that of Tolstoy-Dostoevsky.
4.4. The Overall Message. The metaliterary layer of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” we have
revealed channels the same message as its plot: to be in line with modernity is to transcend
accepted rules. Thus, while Kostya, in search of his sexual identity, transcends family values and
norms of decency, Kuzmin the prose writer, in search of his unique voice, transcends the
“family” canons of Tolstoy and other classical authors. As a result, Kostya’s “coming out”
iconically expresses Kuzmin’s authorial position.
As Kuzmin converts the nineteenth-century family masterplot into a modernist
homosexual plot, he performs a number of remarkable shifts. The first is from “Oriental
Russian” values to purely Western ones. Oriental motifs tinge the picture of the traditional
Russian aristocratic mode of life as depicted by Kuzmin. Tellingly, its main sign, the sofa, was
originally embroidered with the figure of a Turk. What is more, the Gambakovs’ family name,
deriving from Gambak, with its vowel harmony on a and ending -ak, sounds Turkic. The
Gambakovs’ life, in its turn, is presented as ruled by the fate and evil omens. To cast an Oriental

30
light on it, Kuzmin introduces the parable “The Merchant and the Genie” from One Thousand
and One Nights, on fate and evil omens53
:
“[A] man is throwing date stones [kostochki finikov]—a perfectly harmless occupation—and happens to hit
a Genii’s son in the eye, thus, bringing down on his head a whole series of misfortunes. Who can predict
the results of our most trivial actions?” (Kuzmin 1980: 125).
On the whole, the significance of the Gambakovs’ life is that it reproduce one and the same
pattern in each generation. The younger Gambakovs are fated to repeat the biography of their
predecessors, for example, to die or to have a wedding cancelled, all on the same sofa. Both
Nastya and Kostya make an attempt to “westernize” their lives, thus solving Russia’s age old
East-West dilemma. Nastya, after a short period of emancipation (of which her proposal of
marriage is the epitome), gives up. In fact, Kuzmin doomed his heroine to the traditional path by
dressing her in an Oriental Esther costume. Its colors, pale blue and yellow, and its headgear, a
turban [chalma], are replicas of the sofa’s old embroidery, also in pale blue and yellow, and
featuring a stereotypical Turk, obviously, with a turban.54
Kostya, in his turn, succeeds in
distancing himself from his family’s Oriental lifestyle. His westernization is announced from the
very beginning, as he behaves like a Wildean dandy bringing beauty into the house (for example,
he changes the cover of the sofa and rearranges the furniture) and enjoying art (opera). The
epitome of his rejection of the family’s Orientalism is his view of the above-quoted tale from
One Thousand and One Nights, which he uses to encourage Seriozha and himself not to be afraid
of fate.
This East-West tension goes hand in hand with a shift from a fate-governed life to
freedom of choice. The motif of fate is brought into “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” by two family artifacts:
53
Scheherazade tells this tale to the Sultan on their first and second nights.
54
Interestingly, yellow (or even golden) and pale blue were typical colors of Esther’s cloths in painting, see for
example, “Esther before Ahasuerus” by Artemisia Gentileschi (c. 1628-35) or Nicolas Pussin (c. 1640).

31
the sofa55
and the ring. In the end, the sofa, responsible for the current misfortunes, is carried out
of the house. The ring, in its turn, while being lost, leads to its owner’s death, and when found,
exonerates Seryozha of its theft. On the one hand, Kuzmin’s treatment of these objects is based
on traditional Russian superstitions about things bringing either good luck or misfortune. On the
other, they are “ready-made” symbols already charged with set meanings, which Kuzmin either
gratefully accepts or mockingly undermines. The fatal potential of the sofa was most likely
invented by Kuzmin himself, as a subversion of Tolstoy’s treatment. The use of a precious ring
as an emblem of fate has a venerable literary tradition. Friedrich Schiller’s “Der Ring des
Polycrates” [The Ring of Polycrates] (1797), based on Herodotus, as well as its famous Russian
translation by Vasily Zhukovsky, “Polikratov persten'” (1831, published 1831), feature the tyrant
of Samos who ruled from c. 538 BC to 522 BC:
Polycrates is so incredibly successful that he receives friendly advice to escape a reversal of fortune by
getting rid of his most valuable possession. He obeys and throws his emerald-encrusted ring into the sea.
However, the ring returns inside a fish caught by a fisherman, so the tyrant is doomed to a disastrous end.
“Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” follows this archetype by borrowing the image of a ring with a valuable
emerald along with two other motifs. The first is that of a ring lost and found, while the second is
the dependence of the owner’s life and death on it. The motif of invalid accusations of stealing a
ring also has literary origins. Alexandr Herzen’s “Soroka-vorovka” [The Thieving Magpie]
(1846, published 1848) involves a serf actress playing in a French play La pie voleuse by J.M.T.
Baudouin d’Aubigny and Louis-Charles Caigniez (published 1815)56
and also a victimized
maidservant wrongly accused of stealing a silver plate, which in fact was taken by a magpie. The
55
In the furniture perspective, the family name Gambakov might have phonetic associations with the German
furniture-maker Heinrich Gambs (1765-1831), who had a famous workshop in Russia.
56
Hertzen also mentions Gioachino Rossini’s La gazza ladra (premiered in 1817) based on this play. As a
connoisseur of Rossini’s oeuvre, Kuzmin must have known this opera as well. Moreover, it may be another source
for his story.

32
“fate” motif also correlates with Christmas Eve mythology.57
The Russian literary genre of
Christmas tale [sviatochnyi rasskaz] (including Zhukovsky’s famous ballad “Svetlana,” 1808-12,
published 1813), based on Russian folk rituals, in one of its versions depicts how on Christmas
week an unmarried girl gets to know her future. Usually, this future is her fiancé. Going through
Christmas rituals, she can see him in a mirror or in a dream. She can also learn his name by
overhearing a male name in the street. Finally, she can meet him in person at a Christmas ball or
party. This is the context for Nastya’s expectation that the Christmas Eve theatrical performance,
with Seryozha, probably, playing the Persian king, promises a link between them. But of course,
in Kuzmin’s anti-traditional story, the magic power of Christmas Eve fails to help Nastya,
serving Kostya instead. On the whole, the only Gambakov to achieve freedom is Kostya.
The third and last shift in question is from focusing on a young female debutante in
search of a husband to focusing on a gay man and his love interest. Not only is Nastya
overshadowed by Kostya and Seryozha (for example, it is Seryozha’s handsome appearance that
is fully described, not Nastya’s), Kuzmin also deprives her of links to traditional emblems of
femininity, such as Esther or Manon Lescaut, by passing them on to his male favorites. Esther, a
symbol of femininity and also of courage, is shorn of its female perspective. This Biblical story
(retold in drama many times, for example in Jean Racine’s eponymous tragedy, premiered in
1689), could have been a parallel to Nastya’s:
Esther, a Jewish orphan of exceptional beauty, lives in the Persian kingdom concealing her national
identity. After the Persian king marries her, she finds out that the grand vizier, Haman, is plotting against
her stepfather, Mordecai, and has issued an order to kill all the Jews in Persia. Esther bravely reveals her
Jewishness to the King, informs him about Haman’s plot and, thus, saves her compatriots. (Esth. 2-7)
However, this becomes rather an emblem of Kostya’s “coming out”, which subtly equates the
issue of forbidden homosexuality with the similar Jewish question. The same happens with the
57
On this subject, see Dushechkina 1991, Starygina 1992, Dushechkina, Baran 1993, Dushechkina 1995.

33
image of Manon Lescaut.58
It becomes a symbol of Seryozha’s attitude to Kostya, with periods
of pure love alternating with betrayals. Unlike nineteenth-century Russian literature, where the
leading young lady symbolizes the beauty of life and domestic comfort, Kuzmin transfers these
roles to young men. It is Kostya, not Nastya, who arranges the passageway to his own taste and
makes decisions how to cast the performance. Furthermore, as noted, the Christmas Eve Esther
performance leads not to Nastya’s union with Seryozha but to her brother’s. In his way, Kuzmin
changes the gender conventions of Russian prose in the direction of Wilde’s The Picture of
Dorian Gray (published 1890, 1891).
Similar shifts take place on the metaliterary level. Kuzmin tests Tolstoy’s sofa hypogram
for its ability to express modernity. Establishing its inadequacy to do so, he creates a new,
homosexual, paradigm. Inside it, he works out a multilayer design, which allows him to develop
a metaliterary thesis and at the same time to illustrate it with a story.
4.5. A Seminal Text. In conclusion, let us return to the centrality of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa”
in Kuzmin’s prose. Supporting evidence for this idea is that in his other works Kuzmin reused its
signature characters and situations (such as Nastya Gambakova, Kostya Gambakov and Seryozha
Pavilikin; a gay ménage a trois), sometimes in a predictable way. The first to point out the
multiplication of Gambakovs and Pavilikins was Granoien.59
Relying on his findings and adding
new ones, it is possible to name three short stories that feature characters adopted from “Aunt
Sonya’s Sofa.” In “Okhotnichii zavtrak” [A Hunter’s Repast] (published 1910) the socialite
Sof'ia Nikolaevna registers in her diary all the inconveniences of the married life that her old
58
By Manon Kuzmin most likely meant Jules Massenet’s Manon (premiered in 1884). Another possibility is
Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (premiered in 1893).
59
Granoien 1981: 138.

34
friend, Nastya, née Gambakova, and her “rustic” husband Sergei Pavlovich (obviously,
Pavilikin) lead in the countryside. She also pays attention to Nastya’s brother Kostya, perhaps, a
hidden gay with some interest in Sergei Pavlovich. The minute entries of Sof'ia Nikolaevna’s
diary cover the stages of her romance with Sergei Pavlovich, who after a passionate courting and
sexual victory expresses a complete disregard towards her. While she is sure of her full control
of the situation, it is in fact Sergei Pavlovich who sets the rules of the game. Another piece,
“Opasnyi strazh” [A Dangerous Guardian] (published 1910/11), focuses on Seryozha Pavilikin’s
visits to the Grodelius family. His marriage to Vera Grodelius, planned and encouraged by her
mother (the “dangerous guardian” named in the title), is upset after her mother secretly reads
Seryozha’s letter to the notorious Kostya Gambakov. The letter depicts the Grodeliuses in a
comic light, reminiscent of the finale in Gogol’s play Revizor [The Inspector General] (1835,
published 1836), and, what is worse, gives away the gay relationship between the letter writer
and addressee. To make “A Dangerous Guardian,” part of a cycle, as it were, about the
Gambakovs, Kuzmin introduces some gossip into it about Seryozha’s cancelled wedding with
Nastya. Finally, the brother and sister Gambakov, but under different first names, reappear in a
war story “Ostanovka” [The Stop] (published 1915). When Ekaterina Gambakova’s car breaks
down while she is travelling with her English governess, Miss Betty Brighton, she gets a ride
from a French woman, M-lle Claudine Pelier60
, a demimondaine known in some Petersburg
circles. In Claudine’s house, Miss Betty, who has been secretly in love with Vladimir
Gambakov, recognizes him on a photograph that bears a frivolous dedication to Claudine.
Claudine easily confesses that she is Vladimir’s lover and is going to be this as long as he wants
her. Hence, Kuzmin confronts a British woman suffering platonic love with a French one
60
The Russian “Пелье” can also correspond to the French last names Peliet or Peliez.

35
enjoying its carnal pleasures. In the end, all three heroines express the wish that Vladimir come
back alive from the war.
The fourth variation on “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa,” “Dama v zheltom tiurbane” [The Lady in
the Yellow Turban] (published 1916), shares several key motifs with it, i.e., ancestral furniture;
members of the younger generation following the footsteps of the older one; and of course the
young lady wearing a turban, but develops them into a sort of “vaudeville”:
Being in desperate need of money, the mother and daughter Viatskii sell their family heirloom, a commode.
The honest dealer, who discovers a miniature by the eighteenth-century Russian artist Vladimir
Borovikovsky inside it, returns the commode to its owners. The miniature is a picture of Lisa Viatskaia’s
grandmother, a young woman in a yellow turban.61
Suddenly, an aristocratic young man who noticed this
miniature at the dealer’s shop and immediately fell in love with it, calls on the Viatskiis. He is ready to pay
any amount of money for the beautiful portrait. What he gets instead is Lisa herself, as she meets him
wearing a yellow turban exactly like her grandmother’s. The happy ending that one expects to complete
this tale is omitted.
But the real masterpiece among Kuzmin’s rewritings of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” is the fifth
one, “Lecture by Dostoyevky.” It manages to repeat the deep design of “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa,” not
literally but as a completely new variation and with the sofa replaced by a phonograph.
5. “Lecture by Dostoevsky”: The Phonograph Hypogram
The title and subtitle “' Lecture by Dostoevsky': A Christmas Tale” foreground the
tension between fiction, non-fiction and the metaliterary level. “Lecture by Dostoevsky”
suggests that the narrative will unfold in a non-fictional and metaliterary way, while “A
Christmas Tale” creates a mystical aura and an expectation of fiction; the quotation marks which
are part of the title also problematize the assumption that an actual lecture by Dostoevsky is
61
There are several portraits of turbaned ladies by Borovikovsky. The most well-known among them is of the
elderly M-me de Staël (see Alekseeva 1975, fig. 35, 53, 176). However, none of them fits Kuzmin’s description.
This type of portrait was indeed practiced by Russian artists; see Kirsanova 1995: 284-85 and especially Karl
Briullov’s “Turchanka” [Turkish Woman] (1837-39, unfinished) in Briullov 1960, fig. 15.

36
going to be featured. All these interpretive issues implicit in the (sub)title are actualized in the
narrative. The story has three twists. The first consists in switching from the interpretation of the
phonograph recording as a real metaliterary speech by Dostoyevsky, presumably about literature
(Dostoevsky’s most memorable speech was on Pushkin, delivered not long before his death in
1880) to perceiving it as fiction, as the performance of a chapter from Prestuplenie i nakazanie
[Crime and Punishment, 1866, published 1866] in two voices. The second twist reinterprets the
recording as testimony about something that had happened to the protagonist’s ancestor. To be
sure, this turn to “reality” requires a suspension of disbelief, as Kuzmin has produced a story
based on verisimilitude rather than a true work of non-fiction. Groping through the labyrinth of
false interpretations and deliberate non-sequiturs, the sophisticated reader, sensitive to the short
story’s design, should not, however, settle for any of the above explanations. The final twist
leads us back to a metaliterary interpretation with the difference that Dostoevsky is replaced with
a figure of equal cultural significance, who did indeed produce a lecture recorded for the
phonograph. A further hermeneutic step in finding the key to Kuzmin’s puzzle is the replacement
of the story’s characters and situations with others from nineteenth-century Russian literature.
This promises a definitive understanding of Kuzmin’s hidden message.
5.1. The Phonograph Plot. At first glance, the content of “Lecture by Dostoesvky” is
rather simple, with the third person, i.e. disembodied, narrator and no gap between the fabula and
the siuzhet. Kuzmin seems to focus on the representatives of two divergent generations,
grandsons and their grandfathers, connecting the hobby of Ilya Ivanovich Koshkin, a modern day
forty-five year old denizen of Petersburg, with the death of his namesake grandfather.
Ilya Ivanovich, Jr., a passionate collector of music boxes and recording machines, is an old
bachelor with no living relatives. On Christmas Eve he spends a lot of time choosing what to buy as a gift

37
for himself, and only at Aleksandrovsky Market decides on a phonograph and a disc with a “Lecture by
Dostoevsky.” On his way home he suddenly realizes that his grandfather also had a phonograph and that he
had mysteriously died exactly on Christmas Eve.
Alone, at a laid dinner table, Ilya Ivanovich plays the disc. First he is perplexed by the lack of a
standard opening like Ladies and Gentlemen. What he hears instead is a senile masculine voice addressing
a certain Sonya. He interprets this strange recording as a scene from Crime and Punishment. And only
when his own name, Ilya Ivanovich, is pronounced, is he struck by a revelation. What he is listening to is
his grandfather’s deathbed dispute with his young wife, Sonya. Koshkin, Sr. accuses her of being
unfaithful, does not let her to go to the church service and tries to rape her.62
Defending herself against the
despicable old man, Sonya kills him.
The next morning Ilya Ivanovich’s landlady finds him paralyzed with horror. He calls a yard
keeper to smash the disk and later disposes of his entire collection of sound-making contraptions because
he is afraid of listening to something awful.
The three-generation genealogy, the death of an ancestor and a descendant involved in
old time family events with the help of a family heirloom may all be seen as self-borrowings
from “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa.” “Lecture by Dostoevsky” also continues to develop techniques of
understatement (for example, the recorded dialogue has no beginning; Sonya’s infidelity is
neither confirmed nor refuted; the way Koshkin, Sr. is killed remains unknown). Finally, it
shares with the earlier short story the motif of a fateful thing interfering in its owner’s life, here
in the form of the object’s rebellion against its owner. But there is another motif that “Lecture by
Dostoevsky” inherits from “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” with a twist. The Gambakovs’ circumstances,
with Kostya as the best fruit on the Gambakov genealogical tree, are reversed in Koshkin, Jr.’s
case. With his repressed sexuality (especially in comparison with Kostya’s sensitivity) and
vulgar passion for music boxes playing operettas (in comparison with Kostya’s going out to
Manon) he is a degenerated version of his grandfather. Another difference between the two short
stories lies in the main artistic effect of the narrative. While in “Aunt Sonya’s Sofa” it derives
from the repetition of past events, here it is based on the gradual recognition of “who is who” in
the embedded story.
62
Sex on holy days is forbidden by the Russian Orthodox Church.

A Literary Lion Hidden In Plain View Clues To Mikhail Kuzmin S Aunt Sonya S Sofa And Lecture By Dostoevsky

A Literary Lion Hidden In Plain View Clues To Mikhail Kuzmin S Aunt Sonya S Sofa And Lecture By Dostoevsky

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