Irina Reyfman

By Eva Spier

Illustration by Derin Ogutcu

The Columbia students who dare stray into the Russian department—further than the mandatory two-year language requirement—gather in single-digit numbers in Hamilton classrooms to revel in declensions and verbs of motion. Every two years, these students are offered a literature seminar devoted to foundational scary stories in the Russian tradition, conducted entirely in Russian. I wade through these texts with my classmates under the guidance of Professor Irina Reyfman, whose warm demeanor and sharp insight coaxes our robust participation. 

Irina Reyfman grew up in Estonia, which was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939 to become one of the Soviet Republics. Estonia was marginally freer than most of the Soviet Union, allowing the Department of Russian Literature at the University of Tartu to become the best department in the country. It was there that Reyfman studied before coming to the United States in 1980, as a refugee in the third wave of emigration from the Soviet Union. 

To teach horror—and its accompanying religious, cultural, and historical aspects—to students in a language in which they have limited flexibility is not a small feat. As always, the conversation reared its head in different directions. Why is there a strange obsession with the Queen of Spades in children’s horror stories? What is a Petersburg story? And can we admire authors like Nabokov and Tolstoy who deceive their readers?  

…

B&W: You ask us at the beginning of class sometimes: “Were you scared?”

IR: Right. 

B&W: There are many scary stories in Russian literature that are not necessarily scary for adults, but they're socially humiliating, like a bad dream. In the case of Gogol, there’s “Nose” and also “The Overcoat.” The protagonist in “The Overcoat” is this awkward clerk who—upon reporting the theft of his overcoat to a person of higher importance—is dismissed immediately and he practically dies of embarrassment. In “Nose,” Major Kovalyov is mortified by his nose being of a higher rank than he is. And even in Pushkin’s “The Coffinmaker,” the coffinmaker Adrian is confronted with a young skeleton who, in front of all of the corpses he’s buried, reveals that Adrian sold his coffin made of cheap wood instead of oak.  

IR: That’s a good point, Adrian is really humiliated and offended and upset by that. You probably know what a Petersburg story is in the Russian tradition. It's possible to group together stories that take place in Petersburg—Petersburg is an iffy place in Russian culture. We all know that Peter founded it in the wrong place, the weather is horrible, there is virtually no summer, it’s bad for human health and mental health, and so on and so forth. And uncanny things happen. Like in “The Overcoat.” And it's interesting that “The Coffinmaker” actually takes place in Moscow, but it has many features of this Petersburg story. 

B&W: There are white nights in St. Petersburg too, which adds to the iffyness? 

IR: Right. 

B&W: Through reading Russian horror, what would you say students begin to understand about Russian culture? 

IR: In Russian culture, the folk tradition that has to do with the “other world” and scary creatures that can penetrate our world is more alive than in other European cultures—creatures like ведьма, like чëрт, like леший, like русалка. These are really remembered, even now, by Russians. Gogol, of course, used all of that to become famous. 

B&W: And does anyone look at that with contempt? That he used folk tales to get famous? 

IR: Contempt? No. No, but there are some very good works that analyze the way Gogol manipulated the reader’s response to become famous, using the voice of a Ukrainian and Ukrainian folk beliefs to win the Russian audience, pretending that he didn't speak Russian, all of that. And he abandoned it as soon as he achieved success. And then come the Petersburg stories and Dead Souls—they don't have to do anything to do with Ukraine. But yes, I think the folk tradition is still there, like yuletide, it's technically between Christmas and Epiphany, with New Year in the middle. It's the time when all those creatures can creep into our world. Like нечистая сила. I don't think it's remembered well in European tradition, and Russia sort of remembers it still.

B&W: Нечистая сила was in “Viy” on the last night. I find the image of the gnome creature with big eyelids quite scary. It’s a really horrible little thing that I've never imagined before in my life. 

IR: Read “A Terrible Vengeance,” it’s even worse! 

B&W: Did it scare you? 

IR: As a child, yeah. I remember reading it, probably violating my bedtime using a little flashlight. I was 12, probably. 

B&W: Why do you think people read and write scary stories? 

IR: At some point I decided to take a look, poke a little bit on the internet and see what people say about why children are telling these strashilki to each other. I read some study that looked at the age when children are scared, and then the age where they’re not sure, and then the age where they look back and smirk. And the explanation is, I don't know how deep it is, how profound it is, but children telling each other these stories is probably a process to stop being scared by such things. You need to be scared, you need to be sceptical, and then fine. 

B&W: So it's like training. 

IR: Right. Children train themselves. Why adults do that? I don't know! 

B&W: And what's the age when they start to smirk? 

IR: I think after six, seven—you can look at your own history. Probably at the same time when you start questioning whether Santa Claus exists.

B&W: I went to a lecture with Gary Saul Morson about a week ago and he was talking about Brothers Karamazov, saying that everyone has a little bit of evil inside of them, something that even living in a utopia could not eradicate. He describes this fascination people have when something bad happens, where you want to look away but you can’t. So maybe that’s why adults do it. And in the strashilki, they all have a similar plot, where the child doesn't listen to a warning. It's not like they did something stupid like in “Вий,” where he beats that woman, and so he suffers the consequences. But in страшилки they just are attacked and there's nothing they can do, there are typically three warnings and then it's over. 

IR: There's different genres there. Sometimes children really violate some rule or don't listen and then they’re punished. But sometimes you just see a little spot on the wall, and there is a whole series of stories like that. A black piano with white or red spots, and then— 

B&W: There are a lot of spots and a lot of colours. 

IR: And the child doesn't do anything wrong! If you're interested, you need to seriously collect them and look at them and see how they work. Some strashilki are connected to Russian literary tradition. For instance, there is a huge group of stories connected with Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades.” This is probably one of the Petersburg stories and there's a scary twist to the plot. And pikovaya drama is the incarnation of someone coming from some other world and punishing the character. There are quite a few strashilki about pikovaya dama. When I was growing up, they didn't exist, they appeared later. At least I never heard them. So, you know, some strashilki respond to tradition, some respond to something that's happening now. I have no idea why all of a sudden there is story after story about this pikovaya dama. You can go on the internet and look up “scary story pikovaya dama,” and you will get dozens. 

B&W: And she's a witch?

IR: Well, look at Pushkin’s story!

B&W: [laughs] I feel like scary stories are supposed to be told orally. I think that's their most natural form, I guess unless it's adult horror in which case it's a novel and it's built up over a long time, but things like страшилки and some of the shorter stories are more conducive to being told orally. I was thinking there's something about horror stories that needs that, but then in every story I could think of the narrator plays a very specific role. 

IR: Well, Dostoyevsky in general created something that is very unique, in that he has a narrator who is outside the system of characters and is barely participating. 

B&W: He doesn't have a relationship to the characters at all. 

IR: And does not necessarily know what characters think, but still is kind of in between. It is almost embodied, but at the same time, not quite. They call him chronicler, хроникёр—it’s very specific. 

B&W: If we take our first story, “Ostrov Borngolm,” if you told the story starting from the end, I don't think it would be that scary because you know what’s going on. So confusion or obscuration of information is part of the scary thing. And so maybe it's the same with the narrators, it's scary because it's confusing. 

IR: I think you're right, it probably adds to the confusion. Chekhov is very strange and interesting in this way. And then Bunin, who we will read later, is just told in third person and it is still scary. 

B&W: You've been studying Russian literature for a long time. 

IR: Oh, I can’t tell you how long—for more than fifty years.

B&W: Can you pinpoint what it has specifically given you? How do you live your life differently?

IR: First of all, we probably have two ways to read literature. As a reader I sort of suspend my skills. Not that I don't notice things, but I do not pay attention to them. I allow literature to come—

B&W: Like music?

IR: Yes, to affect me directly without going oh, the narrator does this and that. Scholars have noticed that readers remember the created world of the work. However unimaginable Gogol’s world is, you will remember that world. And they do not remember as well all those little technical things, like who narrated the story, and how, and so on. 

B&W: But the general effect of all the little technical things is there.

IR: It is there, but, you know, in two years, you will remember this scene in the forest, the murder of Ivas. And you will not necessarily remember that it was Foma Grigorievich or the aunt narrating it. So you probably will not forget, but the most important thing for you will be the feel for the world that Gogol created. Totally fantastic, but still quite vivid, right? So when I read it as a reader, well, I am like all other readers. And when I do professional work, that's different. Then I look for those little things. 

B&W: That reminds me, my dad read Ulysses a few years ago. He was saying it's so difficult you can't actually pay attention to what's going on, you just read the words and let them wash over you, and then you have just the feeling of the book in your mind. 

IR: Right. And that's the best reading in a way. 

B&W: Yeah? 

IR: Yeah. You know, professional reading is kind of perverted! To enjoy the story or novel or poem, you need to allow it to affect you. 

B&W: If you could grant everyone in the world the ability to read and understand one work or novel in Russian, what would it be? 

IR: One is, you know, a little bit too restrictive. And again, as a professional, I know the good things and bad things about writers. War and Peace is an amazing, amazing book. But I see, and cannot unsee, how Tolstoy manipulates his reader. 

B&W: Manipulates? 

IR: Oh, yeah. Tolstoy is so persuasive. Morson calls it “absolute language.” Tolstoy uses language that doesn't allow you to doubt. For instance, he says: “as always” or “as it always happens…” And, you know, I counted! Now you can count, you can go online and see the digitalised copy, and you can count. “Как всегда бывает/как часто бывает…” [“How it always is/how it often is…”] And you think, are you sure this всегда бывает? No! But it affects you. And he has many tricks like that, that prevent you or discourage you from questioning. Like in Kreuzer Sonata, the main character murders his wife. And you end up thinking, oh, he's right to do so! This is Tolstoy’s power of speech. Do I admire it? I see it, and I admire it because this is a talent. But do I like it? No! So it's hard to tell. Do you enjoy Dostoyevsky? Likely not very much. It's very important. But you need to read Dostoyevsky because he's so important not just for understanding Russian culture, but human psychology. 

B&W: I find him a million times harder to read than Tolstoy. 

IR: And it affects you, it's scary. 

B&W: Right. I was talking to one of my friends who went to a Nabokov conference and he was telling me how Nabokov was fascinated with chess puzzles.

IR: He was very, very good at chess. 

B&W: And butterfly collecting too.

IR: He was a professional, there are butterflies that he discovered and they are named after him.

B&W: I read half of his memoir. He was obsessed with the chess puzzles because the pieces on the board are supposed to trick the player into making the wrong move. And then he—apparently, this is hearsay through three different people at a conference I didn't attend—wanted to do the same thing with his novels where he wanted to trap the reader into making the wrong decision or having the wrong belief, something they didn't completely agree with, through the way the story was written. So that reminds me of what you said about Tolstoy, by the way you're trapped in his world. 

IR: You are very right! One of my graduate students who wrote a dissertation under my sponsorship, she has a chapter where she actually demonstrates how Lolita is indebted to that Kreuzer Sonata technique to make us overlook that Humbert Humbert is a horrible person. And there are scores of critics, like Lionel Trilling, saying this is a book about great love. Because it's told in Humbert Humbert’s voice! And we forget that he is a rapist. And Nabokov said that he hated Tolstoy, and hated Dostoyevsky, all of them, and then at same time of course he borrowed, or, adopted some of their techniques.