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 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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