










































Translating Teffi’s Evocation of Pilgrims in 
“Solovki”

Robert Chandler

Teffi (pseudonym of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, 1872-1952), 
though very famous in her lifetime, was—like many 
other émigré Russians—largely forgotten during the first 

few decades after her death.  She is still often thought of as a 
light humorist, but she herself set a higher value on her more 
serious stories, and especially on her explorations of religious 
experience. She had a deep knowledge both of Russian folk 
religion and of Orthodox practice and thought.  “Solovki,” about a 
pilgrimage to one of Russia’s most important holy sites, is one of 
her finest stories on these themes.  

Semyon, a moderately well-off peasant, has discovered that 
his wife Varvara has been unfaithful to him. In his unrelenting fury, 
he takes her, against her wishes, to the Solovetsky monastery on 
the White Sea, so that she can confess and carry out a penance.  
During the celebration of the Eucharist, Varvara is one of several 
women who fall into a state of demonic possession—what the 
Russian Orthodox call klikushestvo.  Varvara is undergoing a 
church penance and would not have normally have received 
communion until she had completed this penance.  To Orthodox 
understanding, however, someone possessed by demons is no 
longer considered responsible for his or her state.  Varvara is, 
therefore, given Communion bread and wine, after which she 
appears to attain some kind of spiritual enlightenment.  There 
is, however, nearly always some ambiguity in Teffi’s treatment 
of these themes; the story can also be read as an account of 
a nervous breakdown, with Varvara eventually becoming some 
kind of mindless zombie.

Russian religious ways are, by and large, alien to a con-
temporary Western reader. The most important task for a trans-
lator of this story is to find a way to present the religious scenes 
with absolute clarity without oversimplifying them or somehow 
adapting them to meet Western expectations. A more surface 
difficulty—which I shall not dwell on—is the near-impossibility of 
faithfully reproducing the laconic peasant speech of some of the 
characters. 

The three following extracts constitute about one-fifth of the 
story.



14    Translating Teffi’s “Solovki”

1.
Подошли к Соловкам утром рано под заутренний звон.
На берегу встречать вышли монахи и чайки.1

Монахи все худые и строголикие. Чайки крупные, 
плотные, чуть не с гуся величиной, ходили в перевалку 
и озабоченно по хозяйски переговаривались. Пароход 
разгружался медленно.2

Еще часть богомольцев собирала свои котомки, как 
уже вернулась со Святого озера успевшая выкупаться в 
его ледяной воде старуха, жена кудрявого рыбака. Она 
шла в чистой холщовой рубахе и умиленно3 улыбалась 
фиолетовыми от холода губами.

Отец—гостинник, высокий монах с расчесанной 
бородой, распределял приезжих, кого куда. Народу наехало 
много, и, за неимением места, Рубаевых поместили в 
дворянскую комнату. Эта дворянская комната, большая, 
беленая, в два окна, перегорожена была на три закуточки. 
Одну занимал учитель с женой, другую, самую большую 
с тремя кроватями и диваном, целая компания: приезжий 
игумен восточного типа,4 красивый и нарядный, переодетый 
священником для удобства в пути.

— Монахов, заметил я, не любят и за все осуждают. 
Зачем курит, и зачем рыбу ест, и зачем чай с сахаром…. А 
где в дороге устав соблюдать? Ну, вот, в священническом 
одеянии соблазну меньше.5

В той же закутке помещался купец с дылдой 
гимназистом и старый ханжа чиновник. Все родственники.

Третью закутку, темную, отдали Рубаевым.

2.
Снова бродили по берегу, по монастырским коридорам.
Смотрели картинки страшного суда и притчей 

Господних. Огромное бревно, упирающееся в глаз 
грешника, видящего «сучец в глазу ближнего». И дьявол, 
прельщающий красотою, выраженный6 художником в виде 
песьей, довольно симпатичной морды, мохнатых лап с 
перепонками, хвоста винтом и скромного коричневого 
передничка, подвязанного на животе. И душистая легенда о 
цветах именуемых липки, как молилась братия во храме, а 
дьявол ходил между молящимися и невидимо наделял



Robert Chandler    15

1.
They reached Solovki as the bells were ringing for matins.
On the shore to meet them were monks and seagulls.1

The monks were all thin, with severe faces. The gulls were 
large and stout, almost the size of geese. They waddled about 
proprietorially, exchanging preoccupied remarks.  

Unloading and disembarkation took a long time.2 Some of the 
pilgrims were still packing their knapsacks when one old woman, the 
wife of the curly-haired fisherman, returned from the Holy Lake, having 
already bathed in its icy waters.  She was wearing a clean linen shirt 
and smiling beatifically,3 her lips purple with cold. 

The hosteller, a tall monk with a combed beard, was organizing 
the new arrivals, arranging who should sleep where.  Since there were 
crowds of people and little space, the Rubaevs were put in what had 
once been the best room; with two windows and whitewashed walls, 
it was now divided into three by partitions.  One part had been given 
to a teacher and his wife, and the biggest part, with three beds and 
a sofa, had been given to a party of four. The head of this party was 
an Oriental-looking abbot.4  Handsome and well turned out, he had 
chosen, for convenience while travelling, to abandon his monastic 
dress for that of a priest: 

“People, I understand, have little love for monks, and they criticize 
them for everything: Why’s he smoking?  Why’s he eating fish?  Why’s 
he got sugar in his tea?  But how can a man observe the rule when 
he’s on the road?  Dress as a priest—and you don’t tempt people to 
judge.”5

Together with the Father were a merchant, a lanky young 
gymnasium student—and a hypocritical old bigot of a public official.  
All three were family. 

The remaining little cubicle, with no window, was allocated to the 
Rubaevs.

2.
And then they would all wander along the shore again, or along 

the monastery corridors. 
They looked at the paintings of the Last Judgement and the 

Parables of Our Lord.  A huge beam planted in the eye of the 
sinner who so clearly beheld the mote in his brother’s eye.  And the 
temptation of beauty, illustrated6 by a devil—with a rather appealing 
canine muzzle, shaggy webbed paws, a twisting tail and a modest 
brown apron tied around his belly—and a sweet-scented legend: 
as the brothers were praying in church, the devil had moved 
unseen between them, handing out the pink flowers known as



16    Translating Teffi’s “Solovki”

их розовыми цветами, и кому доставался цветок, тот не 
мог больше молиться, а тайком уходил на волю, в соблазн 
весеннего солнца и трав, пока не был дьявол уличен 
святым старцем. И всякие мытарства и хождения по мукам, 
грехи и мучения, грехи и мучения....

3.
Чуть шевелясь, чернели в стенных нишах тихие фигуры 

монахов с застывшими четками в руках. Струйкой зыбилась 
толпа, пропуская вперед причастников. Монастырский 
хор, высоко до самого купола забирая детскими голосами 
послушников, затянул херувимскую, и вдруг резкий женский 
голос исступленно закричал: — Куда! Куда! Куда!(7)

Кричал все громче, все неистовее.
—Кликуша! Кликуша кудахчет!—зашептали бабы.
—Куда, куда-а.(8)
И еще вскрикнул кто-то и заголосил и залаял 

заливистым собачьим лаем.
Варвара крепко стиснула руки, увидела, как, 

закачавшись, поплыла в бок паникадила, почувствовала, 
как ноги и плечи задрожали быстрой и крупной дрожью, 
как лицо вытянулось, словно облепило скулы, как вздулся 
живот, подкатился под горло и из самой темной глубины 
тела, корча и разрывая его и ударяя красными светами в 
темя, вылетел дикий крик: — Аа-й. Да-а. Да-а.(9)

Мгновение подумалось: —Остановиться бы....
Но что-то заставляло напрягаться все сильнее и 

сильнее, кричать громче, сжимать все тело, помогая 
судороге. Все равно было что кричать. Первым звуком 
вырвалось: «Да-а». Так и наладилось, и только бы не 
остановиться, только бы сильнее, крепче изойти в крик еще, 
еще, вот еще.... Ах, не помешали бы, дали бы дотянуть.... 
Так трудно дотянуть, сил не хватит....

— Да-а. Да-а (10). Ах, еще бы, еще как сладко будет....



Robert Chandler    17

house lime.  Whoever received a flower had been unable to go on 
praying; charmed by the spring sun and grasses, he had stolen 
out to freedom—until in the end the devil was caught by the Holy 
Elder.  And ordeals and hardships of every kind, and sins and 
torments, sins and torments.

3.
In the alcoves the monks’ silent, shadowy figures were 

barely stirring, their prayer beads as if frozen in their hands.  A 
ripple passed through the congregation as people stepped back 
to let the communicants through.  The choir had already begun 
the Cherubic Hymn, the youngsters’ high voices soaring right up 
to the cupola, when a woman’s piercing voice began shrieking 
frenziedly, “Kuda-a-a!  Ku-u-da-a-a!  Ku-da-a-a!”7

Her shrieks grew ever louder, ever more violent. 
“She’s possessed,” whispered the peasant women.  
“Possessed good and proper!”8

Then someone else let out a scream and a wail—and 
began to bark like a dog, not letting up. 

Varvara clenched her hands tight.  The chandeliers swayed, 
slid to one side—and she felt her legs and shoulders begin to 
shudder, swiftly, violently, while her whole face stretched as 
if clinging tight to her cheekbones, and her stomach swelled, 
climbing right up to her throat, and a wild scream flew out from 
the darkest depth of her body, twisting her whole body, tearing 
her body apart, smashing red lights against the crown of her 
head: “Ai-i-i!  Da-a-a!  Da-a-a!”9 

A momentary thought: “Should I stop?”
But something made her tense herself more and more 

powerfully, forcing her to cry out more and more loudly, to 
clench her whole body, to will on the convulsions.  The words 
didn’t matter.  The first sounds to burst out had been “A-i-i!” 
and “Da-a-a!” —and so she’d continued.  What mattered was 
not to stop, to expend more and more of herself in the cry, 
to give herself to it more intensely, yes, more and more of 
herself: Oh, if only they didn’t get in her way.  Oh, if only they 
let her keep going….  But it was so hard.  Would she have the 
strength? 

“A-a-a!  A-a-a!10 If only….  If only….  How sweet….  How 
sweet that would be….”



18    Translating Teffi’s “Solovki”

Notes

1   An example of a sentence where it is possible, by changing the 
syntax, to follow the Russian word order almost exactly. Needless 
to say, this is not always desirable, but here it works well.

2   In the original, this sentence comes at the end of the preceding 
paragraph. Russian writers often end a paragraph with a sentence 
that, in English, comes more naturally at the beginning of the 
following paragraph.

3   First I had “with tender emotion,” then “tremulous.”  A colleague 
wrote to me that “this is a smile of someone who has had a 
religious experience. Teffi uses a word that, in this context, echoes 
Umilenie [умиление], as in the icon of Our Lady of Tenderness. 
The old woman has the smile of someone with peace in her soul.”

4   The literal meaning of the Russian is “an abbot of an Eastern 
type” [игумен восточного типа].  I was unsure, at first, what 
this meant.  I now think it probable that he was an Armenian 
or, possibly, Georgian.  Armenian priests often dress very finely 
indeed.

5   The Russian is vaguer: literally, “and there is less temptation.”  
But it is important to make it clear that it is not the abbot himself 
who is being tempted.  According to the monastic rule, monks 
were allowed to follow a less strict diet when they were travelling.  

6   A complex passage, made still more complex by a textual 
variant.  The first publication (in the journal Zhar-ptitsa [Жар-
птица], 1921, 1) gives d’yavol, prel’shchayushchii krasototoyu, 
vyrazhennyi khodozhnikom [дьявол, прельщающий красотой, 
выраженный художником], whereas the second publication, 
in the collection Vechernii den’ [Вечерний день] (1924), 
gives vyrazhennoi khodozhnikom [выраженной художником]. In 
the first case, it is the devil who is “portrayed” by the artist in a 
particular way; in the second case, it is beauty that is portrayed 
in this way.  At first I thought there were two figures—a devil, and 
a beautiful woman (or image of a woman) with which he was 
tempting men.  Then I thought the devil was himself pretending to 
be a beautiful woman. Finally, I understood that vyrazhennyi must 
be the correct reading, that there was no beautiful woman and 
that the temptation the devil was holding out to the monks was 
simply the beauty of the natural world.  Such a way of thinking 
is so alien to most people today that it seemed crucial to do 



Robert Chandler    19

everything possible to clarify this central point.  I have rearranged 
the passage in order to link the dog-faced devil more clearly to 
the flower legend.

7   Teffi evidently chose this word kuda [куда] both for its sound and 
for its meaning: “whither.”  In English it is impossible to reproduce 
both, so we have transliterated, reproducing the sound alone.

8   In the original: “Klikusha [Кликуша].  Klikusha kudakhchet 
[Кликуша кудахчет].” The word klikusha is the standard term for a 
woman in the grip of demonic possession.  The verb kudakchchet 
literally means “to cluck” or “to cackle”.  Neither English verb 
fits here, and the women have clearly chosen this word simply 
because it picks up the kuda [куда] of the possessed woman’s 
cry. Since this effect cannot be reproduced in English, I thought it 
best simply to emphasize the theme of possession.

9   Da means “Yes.” Important though this is, I have been unable 
to do more at this point than simply transliterate. It is, of course, 
also important that Varvara’s “Ai-da!” echoes the first woman’s 
“Ku-da!”

10  In the original, this is Da-a! Da-a! In English the simpler “A-a-a!” 
better conveys her excitement.  And there is an affirmative quality, 
like a “Yes”, about a long-drawn-out “A-a-a!”

Few translators are likely to acquire the knowledge required 
to enter fully, and in detail, into all the different worlds where their 
work will take them. If at all possible, it is always worth asking an 
expert to check through one’s work.  With regard to this story, I 
am deeply grateful to Christine Worobec, who knows a great deal 
about Russian religion and folk religion and who has corrected 
several serious misunderstandings on my part.

The translation of Teffi’s story above, by Robert and Elizabeth 
Chandler, is based on the publication in Vechernii Den’ (1924). 
Our translation will be included in Other Worlds: Peasants, 
Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints (NYRB Classics, 2020).


