Murder. Bloody Murder.
How powerful and intense is Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk?
When I closed the book, I had the distinct feeling I just read one of
those 300-page Russian novels compressed into a mere 45 pages.
Oh,
yes, this 1865 Nikolai Leskov tale contains 15 chapters of rapid-fire
action. Do the math - each chapter is only about 3 pages long. This to
say, not a lot of frills, no room for idle chatter - the tempo of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk a constant prestissimo, literary counterpart of Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Spoiler Alert: in order to do this novella a measure of justice, I allude to chapters at the beginning, middle and end.
The
great Russian author frames his tale thusly: prosperous merchant
landowner, fifty-something Zinovy Ismailov lost his wife of twenty
years. Most disappointingly, the couple had no children.
Zinovy
desperately wants an heir and sends a matchmaker to propose to Katerina
Lvovna, age twenty-three, a young lady of pleasing appearance with her
lively black eyes and very black, almost blue-black hair. Katerina has
no choice; she’s from a dirt poor family.
For five long years,
Katerina endures the boredom of her life with strict husband Zinovy, a
joyless, isolated, day to day existence, her only freedom moving from
room to room, forever gazing out the windows at her husband’s estate.
And to add more torment, Boris, Zinovy’s ancient father, is also present
in the house, a cantankerous curmudgeon habitually blaming poor
Katerina for not blessing Zinovy with a child, most unjust since
Katerina would actually welcome a child to take the edge off her
boredom. Also, as we discover later in the story, the issue lies with
Zinovy not Katerina.
Poor, poor Katerina. And to think, during
her girlhood, she spent her hours in freedom, passionately and
enthusiastically running through fields, swimming and splashing in the
river, taking delight in simply being alive.
But then the drama:
damage at a distant Ismailov mill forces Zinovy to leave town in order
to oversee repairs. Shortly thereafter, one fine, sunny day, all alone,
sitting at a window, Katerina feels compelled to venture outside among
the estate’s peasant-slaves.
She meets strong, dark, handsome
lady's man Sergei, a new farmhand. Events quickly move apace – Sergei
comes into Katerina’s bedroom, Katerina’s heart erupts like a long
dormant volcano, the couple make passionate love and continue their
steamy, romantic affair every day for a week until grouchy old Boris
catches wind of what’s been happening.
Boris whips Sergei and
locks the peasant Romeo in the cellar. Katerina begs Boris to release
Sergei but Boris refuses and threatens to beat her as well.
Surprise,
old man! Her heart now awakened and inflamed, Katerina is no longer the
little, passive, obedient wife Boris takes her to be. Net, net - no
beating for Katerina. Katerina makes her move: she seasons Boris'
evening meal of mushrooms with poison. The next morning, after a night
of excruciating pain, ancient Boris dies "just as the rats died in his
storehouses." The old geezer is buried without anyone on the estate or
in town giving his death a second thought.
The new, transformed
Katerina assumes full charge of the estate: strutting around the house,
giving orders, even having Sergei, her lover, recover from his wounds in
her husband's bed. Ah, such unorthodox happenings in 1865! Katerina
does give each servant money to look the other way, but still. The tale
(and murders) continue but allow me to pause here to spotlight four
important points:
1, One scalding hot afternoon, Katerina closes
the shutters and rests in bed with Sergei. In a sort of daze, bathed in
sweat, she feels it's time to wake up but she can't; she begins to
caress a cat between her and Sergei, a cat rubbing itself against her, a
gray, fat cat with whiskers like a village headman, a cat that "thrusts
his blunt snout into her resilient breast and sings a soft song, as if
telling her of love." Katerina wonders about this cat then wakes with a
start.
What to make of this dream? Of course, many are the
symbolic associations with cats: some negative (darkness, pending
misfortune, witchcraft, evil)), some positive (sensuality, intuition,
rebirth). And to have this fat, gray cat sing Katerina a song (Leskov
doesn't say what song) and stroke her with prominent whiskers. Aaaaah!!
2.
That night, Katerina has a harrowing, bone-chilling nightmare: the cat
returns, only this time the cat has the face of her old, now dead
father-in-law Boris. Boris the cat speaks to Katerina, about the little
treat she prepared for him, about his return from the cemetery, about
his eyes all rotted out. Katerina looks closely; she can see "in place
of eyes there are two fiery circles spinning, spinning in opposite
directions!"
One good thing about this nightmare: Katerina wakes
with a scream, so awake she can hear husband Zinovy downstairs, his
return following a long absence. Thus alerted, Katerina rouses Sergei
and devises a plan.
Such a nightmare! However, as we continue
reading, by means of the intensity, the flames of her obsessive love, it
appears Katerina possesses the extraordinary power to burn off any
memory of her feline nightmare.
3. Marxism casts its long
shadow, as if the primal force of Katerina's obsessive love, her
rebellion against all those years of boredom, her resentment at being
from a poor family, her bitterness at having no say as to a husband, her
being relegated to passive wife status, a little nonentity brought to a
rich man's house for the sole purpose of giving him a child, an heir,
adds powder to the keg of historical dynamite that sets off the 1917
Russian Revolution. POW!
Likewise with Sergei. a handsome lover
(think of a young Omar Sharif) who knows his status as peasant-slave
farmhand locks him into living (you call this living?) a life with no
more freedom and beauty than a farm animal. POW! Gotta revolution! 52
years later, around 1917, for millions of Russian peasant-slaves, the
term Bolshevik and name of Vladimir Lenin acquire almost sacred,
supercharged meaning.
4. "A most cheerless picture: a handful of
people, torn away from the world and deprived of any shadow of hope for
a better future, sinking into the cold black mud of the dirt road.
Everything around them is horribly ugly: the endless mud, the gray sky,
the leafless, wet broom, and in its splayed branches a ruffled crow."
The concluding chapters of the novella contain the ring of Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn and The Gulag Archipelago. My goodness, such suffering.
If you would dearly love to read a hefty 19th century classic Russian novel but never seem to be able to find the time, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
is your book. Set aside 90 minutes, settle in, join Katerina as she
sits at her window - and then undergoes a complete rebirth thanks to a
heart aflame.
A special thanks to Goodreads friend Ilse for writing her fine review that alerted me to this Nikolai Leskov masterpiece.
Russian author Nikolai Leskov, 1831-1895
"In
our parts such characters sometimes turn up that, however many years
ago you met them, you can never recall them without an inner trembling.
To the number of such characters belongs the merchant's wife Katerina
Lvovna Izmailova, who once played out a terrible drama, after which our
gentlefolk, in someone's lucky phrase, started calling her "the Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk." ---- Nikolai Leskov, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
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