The Symmetry Teacher
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CONTENTS
Posthumous Notes of the Tristram Club
THE
SYMMETRY
TEACHER
A Novel-Echo
Translated from a foreign tongue by Andrei Bitov
Retranslated into English by Polly Gannon
HOLY TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2011, 2:14 P.M.
VISBY, SWEDEN
Close your unholy lips,
And attend the priest’s words as he reads from the Book:
What did He say on the Tuesday?
He told them all to get lost,
And render unto Caesar what was his, and to the Pharisees what was theirs.
Clean the vial from within
Instead of polishing the sides—thus He spake.
Then will I believe you.
—Lauren, 2006
We believe that the translation of
Tristram Shandy
, like that of Shakespeare, will remain unfinished. We live in a time when the most unusual works are attempted but do not succeed.
—Voltaire on Laurence Sterne
“I believe, señor,” said Rebecca, “that you have studied the workings of the human heart inside out, and that geometry is the truest path to happiness.”
—Jan Potocki,
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
It was by dint of hearing a great many such sneers at faith that Brother Juniper became convinced that the world’s time had come for proof, tabulated proof …
—Thornton Wilder,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
A NOTE FROM ANDREI BITOV
I suppose I ought to forestall the reader’s surprise at what follows by providing an explanation. Long ago, in my pre-literary youth, during my remote “geological” past, I came across a book entitled
The Teacher of Symmetry
by an obscure English author. I took it along with me on a lengthy geological expedition, with the salutary goal of self-education. Whether due to laziness, overexertion, or the withering glances of my companions, however, I never opened a page the entire summer.
Suddenly, it was autumn. The weather had turned foul, our helicopter was delayed, and we were waiting for the skies to clear. All our reading matter had been read and reread, all our games had been played and replayed. To my misfortune, someone recalled having seen me with a book in a foreign language, and even though I did not fully understand either the language or the subject, it nevertheless fell to my lot to recount its contents amid the unremitting rain.
Without a dictionary, hazarding guesses to the point of fabrication, I jotted it all down in a notebook—one story a day. Like Scheherazade. My ordeal was over when our helicopter was finally able to land. I was glad to surrender both the book and my torment to the oblivion of that sodden taiga.
About ten years later, something extraordinary, something that beggared belief, happened to me. I found that only a certain story from that forgotten book could offer the solace and support I needed. The story rose to the surface of my consciousness with such clarity and force it seemed I had read it just the day before. Today I can no longer recall the extraordinary event in my own life that prompted my memory of the story.
I rummaged in my attic through a flotsam of stray oars and skis for the manuscript of my desultory “translation.” As I began remembering some of the other stories in the book, the book thus recounted took firm hold of my imagination. I then vowed that I would find the original text—but I had forgotten the name of the author. There was something non-English about it. Perhaps Dutch, or even Japanese? No, I just couldn’t remember. I tried asking the experts, dredging up the contents for them, but to no avail. No one had ever heard of it.
*
Years have passed since that sudden mental “reread” of the book, and still I cannot put it out of my head. Alas, I never found it again.
To cope with the importunity of the phantom book (I hadn’t thought it all up myself, after all!), I began little by little to “translate” it, not as one translates texts but as one applies waterslide decals. There was, to be sure, conjecture involved. (Let the passages that falter somewhat be mine alone.) After I had recovered a few of them, I forgot the original once and for all (as I had forgotten that unspeakable event in my own life). There was no making heads or tails of it anymore. Now, instead of recollections about a lost book, I was burdened with the responsibility for the manuscripts it had spawned. And so I decided to rid myself of them, too, and thus to forget about the whole business.
I knew nothing of the author’s biography. Perhaps he had endowed his protagonist (Urbino Vanoski), also a writer, with some features of his own life? Born in the early 1900s. Random, mixed origins (Polish, Italian, and a dash of Japanese). Belated entry into the language of his future literary oeuvre
†
—hence, certain linguistic quirks and a style that is somewhat
recherché
. For example, the author perceived the complex system of tenses in English in a very literal manner, and ascribed each fragment of text to a corresponding temporal category, organizing his titles according to a table he had devised.
I managed to pen it down:
Altering the names of works is the first liberty a translator is permitted. And this was the first thing I did:
That was just a diversion. Russian grammar resists such peculiarities—which are, by definition, untranslatable.
Now the only thing that remained for me to do was to translate the elusive book into Russian. I offer my efforts to the sophisticated reader with trepidation, taking recourse in a passage from my favorite author:
However this may be, in anticipation of my celebrated quarto I intend to share several excerpts from my notebook with you. I should like to warn you in advance that it is rife with theft: for every page of my own it happens that there are sometimes ten pages of pure translation, and then as many pages again of extracts. It would be pointless to grace the pages with references to the sources from which I have purloined. Some of the works you would never be able to find; others you would not wish to read. The books are manifold—some sensible, some senseless: medical, mathematical, philosophical, and some falling into none of the aforementioned categories. I make a deep bow in advance to all those victims of my plunder; few in our time are capable of such candor. [from V. F. Odoevsky,
Letters to Countess E.P.R. on Apparitions, Superstitious Fears, Deceived Emotions, Magic, Cabbalism, Alchemy, and Other Mysteries
]
Each chapter of
The Teacher
may be read as a stand-alone piece. The reader is free to take the chapters on their own merits as individual stories; but if one manages to read all of them in sequence and hears an echo carrying over from each story to the next, from any one story to any other, one will have discovered the echo’s source—and will be reading instead a novel, not merely a collection of stories.
1971, Rybachy settlement (formerly Rossitten), Russia
P.S. 2008
The 1970s were upon us. In Russia, no one heard anything, saw anything, or traveled anywhere outside the country. Myself included. This was why my companions were eager to sit through my oral account of the book, however inexactly I quoted from it, thinking: Well, how about that? The world is full of peculiar things. I would ask the modern reader to respect the translator’s labors to the same degree and in the same manner that the translator respects the efforts of the reader: from the first word to the last.
The author of this translation would like to express his gratitude to the places where it came into being:
The Rybachy Biological Station, Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly Rossitten), Kaliningrad Oblast, 1969–1975;
Peredelkino House of the Arts, 1967–1977;
The village of Goluzino in the Antropovsky region of the Kostroma Oblast, 1978–1985;
Petropavlovskaya Street and Dostoevsky Street in Leningrad, 1986;
New York and Princeton, U.S.A., 1995–1997;
The Baltic Centre, the island of Gotland, Sweden, 2007;
Hotel Alpengut, Elmau, Bavaria, 2008.
I would also like to thank Zuger Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr, Zug, Switzerland, who offered me material support for completing my translation.
Andrei Bitov
PART I
VIEW OF THE SKY ABOVE TROY
(Future in the Past)
A flash of lightning,
A drop of dew,
An apparition—
A thought about oneself.
—Prince Ikky
ū
I am the only person in the world who might have been able to shed light on the mysterious death of Urbino Vanoski. Alas, it is not within my power. What makes a legend a legend is its immutability.
This is the way he died, or, rather, was reborn in the minds of readers and critics—in complete obscurity, ignorant of his own fame, and poor as a church mouse (I would not resort to this idiom if it were not literally true: according to legend, he lived out his final days as a churchwarden, selling devotional candles). His grave is unmarked, and this is only fitting. Obscurity during one’s lifetime fans the flames of posthumous glory, and the nonexistent gravestone gives off a scorching heat. For him, the literary prize for lifetime achievement remains forever posthumous. Having established a foundation in his honor, we—Vanoski scholars all—began to meet annually on the Adriatic Sea. After each session, we publish a volume of our proceedings that we ourselves read, leaving no trace of our efforts which might be of any benefit to potential geniuses languishing as churchwardens.