Also known as Tat’iana Tolstaia and Tat’jana Tolstaja. Born: Leningrad, 3 May 1951, granddaughter of Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi and Nataliia Vasil’evna Krandievskaia; great-grandniece of Lev Tolstoi. Education: Degree in philology (Language and Literature) from Leningrad State University, 1968-74. Family: Married Andrei Lebedev, 1974; two sons. Career: Junior editor of Eastern Literature Division of Nauka (Science) publishing house in Moscow, 1974-83; writer in residence, University of Virigina, Richmond, 1988; senior lecturer in Russian literature, University of Texas at Austin, 1989; writer in residence, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, 1990; teacher of creative writing and Russian literature, Skidmore College, Sarasota Springs, New York, until 2001. Lives in Moscow, Russia. Awards: Triumph award, 2001; finalist for the Booker prize, 2001.
Publications
Collections
Na zolotom kryl’tse sideli (short stories). 1987; as On the Golden Porch, translated by Antonina W. Bouis, 1989. Sleepwalker in a Fog (selections), translated by Jamey Gambrell. 1992.
Three stories/Tri rasskaza, selections in Russian with a glossary by S.Dalton-Brown, 1996.
Liubish’—ne liubish’: rasskazy. 1997.
Sestry: sbornik, with Nataliia Nikitichna Tolstaia. 1998.
Reka Okkervil’: rasskazy. 1999.
Noch’: rasskazy. 2001.
Fiction
Kys’: roman. 2001.
Critical Studies:
”Tatiana Tolstaya” by Elena Patrusheva, in Soviet Literature, vol. 2, no. 467, 1987; ”Poeziia grusti” by Fazil’ Iskander, in Literaturnaia Gazeta, vol. 35, no. 5153, 1987; ”Mechty i fantomy” by M. Zolotonosov, in Literaturnoe Obozrenie, vol. 4, 1987; ”Rastochitel’nost’ talanta” by I. Grekova, in NovyiMir, vol. 1, 1988; ”Tat’iana Tolstaia’s ‘Dome of Many-Colored Glass’: The World Refracted through Multiple Perspectives” by Helena Goscilo, in Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. 2, 1988; ”’Golos letiashchii v kupol”’ by Karen Stepanian, in Voprosy Literatury, vol. 2, 1988; ”Tolstajan Love as Surface Text” by Helena Goscilo, in Slavic & East European Journal, vol. 34, no. 1, 1990; ”Zhenskaia proza and the New Generation of Women Writers” by K. A. Simmons, in Slovo, vol. 3, no. 1, 1990; ”Tolstoian Times: Transversals and Transfers” by Helena Goscilo, in New Directions in Soviet Literature, edited by Sheelagh Duffy Graham, 1992; ”Perspective in Tatyana Tolstaya’s Wonderland of Art” by Helena Goscilo, in World Literature Today, vol. 67, no. 1, 1993; ”Interview with Tatyana Tolstaya” by Tamara Alagova and Nina Efimov, translated by Michael A. Aguirre, in World Literature Today, vol. 67, no. 1, 1993; Fruits of Her Plume: Essays on Contemporary Russian Women’s Culture, edited by Helena Goscilo, 1993; ”Tatyana Tolstaya” by Elisabeth Rich, in South Central Bulletin, vol. 12, nos. 3-4, 1995; ”Violence in the Garden: A Work by Tolstaja in Kleinian Perspective” by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, Vera Loseva, and Alexsej Lunkov, in Slavic & East European Journal, vol. 39, no. 4, 1995; The Explosive World of Tatyana N. Tolstaya’s Fiction by Helena Goscilo, 1996; ”V minus pervom i minus zerkale: Tat’iana Tolstaia, Viktor Erofeev— akhmatoviana i arkhetipy” by A.K. Zholkovskii, in Literaturnoe Obozrenie, vol. 6, no. 253, 1995; ”Motiv igry v proizvedeniiakh L. Petrushevskoi i T. Tolstoi” by Nina Efimova, in Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Seriia 9, Filologiia 3, 1998; ”Female Space in Contemporary Russian Women’s Writing: Tat’jana Tolstaja’s ‘Ogon’ i Pyl”’ by Teresa Polowy, in Critical Essays on the Prose and Poetry of Modern Slavic Women, edited by N.A. Efimov, C.D. Tomei, and R.L. Chapple, 1998; ”Tat’iana Tolstaia” by Sophie T. Wisnewska, in Russian Women Writers, II, edited by C.D. Tomei, 1999; ”The Seduction of the Story: Flight and ‘Fall’ in Tolstaya’s ‘Heavenly Flame”’ by Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature, edited by K.L. Ryan and B. P. Scherr, 2000; ”Pushkin s malen’koi bukvy” by Ol’ga Slavnikova, in Novyi Mir, vol. 3, no. 911, 2001.
In her status as a contemporary woman writer in Russia, Tatyana Tolstaya is second only to Russia’s beloved storyteller Liudmila Petrushevskaia. In January 1983, while recuperating from an illness, Tolstaya began to write stories ”accidentally.” Her first story was published in the Russian journal Avrora in August of the same year. Described as ”heiress to Russia’s literary aristocracy,” Tolstaya has published in the literary journals Oktiabr’ [October], Znamia [Banner], Novyi mir [New World], and The New York Review of Books. Her writing has been compared to Russian prose of the 1920s, including that of Bulgakov, Grin, and Nabokov, as well as to German expressionism. With other representatives of Russian’s drugaia, or ”different,” literature, Petrushevskaia, S. Kaledin, Evgenii Popov, Venedikt Erofeev, and V. Narbikova, Tolstaya borrows freely from canonical tradition while injecting a post-modern sense of fantasy into her plots. Best known for short stories, Tolstaya has now turned to longer forms with her first novel Kys’. Despite her stated fear of the internet, Tolstaya followed the example of other Russian writers, notably V. Pelevin and S. Kaledin, by publishing her dystopic novel at a Web site (http://www.lib.ru/PROZA/TOLSTAYA/kys.txt). She is currently writing another novel while overseeing the translation of Kys’.
Helena Goscilo, the foremost scholar of Tolstaya’s work, has noted the important role color and smell play in Tolstaya’s atmosphere; her texts are dense with allusive sensual details. One word that appears again and again in interpretations of Tolstaya’s work is ”kaleidoscopic,” referring especially to her treatment of childhood impressions. Tolstaya has said that life is interesting only in the mind, where the ordinary is transformed by fantasy. Imagination thus gives beauty to life; life in the mind seems real because it is a gestalt of one’s perceptions of the universe and its possibilities. Yet Tolstaya’s characters show ambivalence toward their fantasy lives. Her protagonists share the flaw of trying to make what they imagine real by forcing reality to fit. Illusion is important to these characters, but they are not satisfied with temporary escapism. They want permanent refuge from everything that is ugly and dreary in life, and a fantasy alone is not enough to sustain them. Their ultimate goal is to make the imagined real, but its eventual disintegration brings disillusionment. In a manner reminiscent of Nabokov, Tolstaya fulfills her role as puppet-master with relish as she reveals the tawdry props behind her characters’ dreams.
The competition between what is real and what is imagined is especially well-demonstrated in the story ”The Fakir.” The ”fakir,” Filin (whose name refers to a mythological bird) charms the young woman Galya with his worldly mystique; she imagines him to be all-powerful, able to transform the ugliness of reality into something beautiful. But Filin’s power, like imagination’s, is limited. His power to create a beautiful world for Galya goes only as far as his apartment. Galya comes into Filin’s apartment, admires the Wedgwood, envies his sophistication—and then she must go home to her dismal apartment on the outskirts of Moscow. Filin’s tasseled robe, snuffboxes, and china are magical talismans fending off the tiresome world outside. When Galya tries to escape ordinary life, she is pulled down by worldly details. Filin, however, has the trappings of luxury—he seems wonderful—and Galya believes in him until those trappings are snatched away. Then her fantasy is unrecognizable in the real man, the sublet apartment, and the borrowed robe. Galya feels that Filin has unfairly abused her trust, but by the same token, he has exposed her to the only luxury that she will ever experience. She and Filin are conspirators in a game of make-believe, although Galya does not realize that she is playing. Her sense of betrayal, of moral outrage against Filin, is expressed by many of Tolstaya’s characters in other works. It stems from a conviction that life is not fair, that fate is withholding the glittering stuff of dreams in real life.
In ”Rendezvous with a Bird,” the child Petya is similarly seduced by a quasi-imaginary being and brutally disenchanted at the end. The child, in the beginning, is not yet convinced that dreams do not come true and that fate is brutal. Again Tolstaya shows the conspiracy of the one imagining with the one imagined. Petya’s neighbor, Tamila, is self-consciously exotic. She lives in a fantastic way, surrounded by magical objects and legend: a toad ring, without which she will turn into powder, a dragon robe ”retained from her captivity,” the egg of a mythical bird, the Alkonost, and even Chinese roses in her garden. Unlike other people, Tamila eats only chocolates and drinks ”panacea” from a black bottle. Petya wants to escape from the hateful Uncle Borya, from rice kasha, from his grandfather’s illness: Tamila presents a means of escape. For Petya, the ultimate betrayal is Tamila’s affair with Borya. At the moment of this discovery, Petya realizes that everything of Tamila’s is a fraud—the ring, the robe, the enchanted garden, and Tamila herself. Not only is Grandfather dead, but the lake, the forest, and the entire world seem dead, too. The eternal anguish in the Alkonost’s egg then symbolizes disillusionment and a longing for a fantasy world which will never be real.
In ”Okkervil River,” the dream is inspired by a woman’s music instead of by the woman. The fantasy takes on a life of its own in the same way that art has a life of its own once it leaves the hands of its creator. A voice, captured on records, ”rises from the depths, spreads its wings, shooting up over the world.” Yet as soon as Simeonov embarks on his quest for Vera, the voice behind the recording, the fantasy is undermined. Simeonov takes Vera chrysanthemums and a cake, offerings to his imagined Vera Vasilevna. If it were still a dream, the flowers would be fresh and beautiful and the cake would not have a fingerprint on it. Unfortunately, real life is full of irritating, worldly, sordid details. Thus the flowers, instead of an offering to Simeonov’s goddess, become funeral flowers for her bier. Vera’s ‘death’—the death of the imaginary Vera Vasilevna whom Simeonov had created so lovingly in his mind—is Simeonov’s disillusionment. Instead of realizing the fantasy, Simeonov has destroyed it; his recognition of the reality has made it impossible to continue the dream.
In Tolstaya’s stories, the discovery of the schism between illusion and reality is portrayed as the death of the imagination and of part of the protagonist’s psyche. Simultaneous with this death is a realization that the beloved’s magical accessories are tawdry and fake. Thus not only the beloved but everything associated with him or her is discredited. The protagonists’ desire to make fantasy real burdens it with mundane details, with the weight of reality, and the fantasy is destroyed. The qualities of imagination are often related to birds and images of flight; nowhere is this more disturbingly demonstrated than in the story ”Serafim,” in which the hero envisions himself as a pure, heavenly being, only to be revealed as a loathsome reptile from Russian folklore. Tolstaya’s protagonists try to escape the earthly bonds that hold them to soar over the workaday world into the realm of beauty and impossibility. Illusion only maintains its freedom in the imagination—otherwise the dream hardens into real life and loses its magic.
