Selected Stories

Five tales of social satire from a forgotten sensation of nineteenth-century Russian literature

In 1830s and ’40s Russia, A. F. Veltman’s eccentric writings were a fixture on the bookshelves of the reading public. In his era, his work influenced writers including Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. The five stories collected here, united by themes of social satire, display Veltman’s characteristic pivots between the tragic, comic, and grotesque. ‘Erotida’ riffs on the genre of the society tale with linguistic puns and a bizarre plot resolution. In ‘Roland the Furious,’ provincial officials mistake a traveler for a high-ranking government. ‘Travel Impressions, and, among Other Things, a Pot of Geraniums’ plays on the travelogue genre and includes what may be the first description in Russian literature of journey by railroad. “ A Traveler from the Provinces or, A Commotion in the Capital” parodies the Moscow literary salons of Veltman’s day. Finally, ‘It’s Not a House, but a Plaything!’ toys with yet another storytelling convention of the time – the Russian folkloric tradition of ‘house spirits.’

Author Biography

Alexander Fomich Veltman (1800-1870) was a popular and influential writer in his own time whose experimental works range from prose to poetry and realism to fantasy, including time-travel fiction. He was a friend of Pushkin, and his novels were praised by both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. His novel The Wanderer is also published by Northwestern University Press.

James J. Gebhard was professor of Slavic and East European languages at Pennsylvania State University.