In translating Sergei Chavain’s novel Elnet into English, one of the most difficult aspects of this mainly straightforward tale is the bilingualism of its setting. The simple Mari villagers whose trials and tribulations the novel depicts often come into confrontation with officials who speak only Russian.

Chavain highlight these villagers’ citizenship in two worlds by even calling them different names depending on context. The protagonist of the novel is introduced to us as Eprem Sakar, in which not only are the Orthodox names Zachary and Ephrem adapted to Mari phonology, but the family name comes first before the personal name (a word order still in use among the Hungarians, Chinese and Japanese, though now lost among the Mari). But many pages in, as someone files charges against this character and thus enters Russian-speaking bureaucracy, his name is entered in the charges as Zakhar Efremov. The translator must thus decide whether to maintain both names in their contexts, or use the Mari name throughout in order to make things easier for the foreign reader. I recalled how the English translation of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago comes with a short introduction to Russian patronymics and affectionate forms, written as if there were some regret that the reader had to deal with all these complications.

Later, as an official questions Sakar in Russian, there’s a joke involving code switching which can be glossed with some effort, but not translatable in a satisfactory manner:

— Ну, какое у тебя будет ходатайство? — йодо земский начальник.

Сакар нимомат ыш умыло, шеҥгекше ончале.

— Ты меня понимаешь?

— Он русским плока калякыт, — шоктыш шеҥгечын Левентей кугызан йӱкшӧ.

Well, what is your plea? the magistrate asked.

Sakar didn’t understand anything and looked around.

Do you understand me?

He speaks Russian badly, came the voice of old man Leventej from the back.

The funny line is Он русским плока калякыт, where the character has adapted the pure Russian phrase Он по-русски плохо говорит to Mari phonology, and then added the Mari accusative ending -m to the object. The best one could do to reproduce the character’s imperfect knowledge of Russian would be with the broken English of the stereotypical foreigner, ‘He no speak the Russian’, but this doesn’t carry across the tension between two spheres of society that is such a key part of Chavain’s novel.

I’ve posting Sergei Chavain’s poem Ото (The Grove) here before, but it’s worth showing again in the content of this abstract of Kim Vasin’s study Сергей Чавайн: Жизнь и творчество (Sergei Chavain: His Life and Work) on Chavain’s role in Mari literature.

Sergei Grigoryevich Chavain wrote this poem on December 2, 1905 while a student at the seminary in Kazan’.

On the path of intellectual development there is in every national literature a writer who leaves an unforgettable track and greatly enriches the cultural life of his native people. Such is S. G. Chavain (1888–1937), the songster who laid the foundation of Mari literature. His name is tied to the most glorious pages of Mari creative writing.

The poem ‘The Grove’ is a joyful Romantic work. Its contents, its series of images, is reminiscent of folksongs and traditional storytelling. In one of the sayings of his people, strong young people are compared to a green grove and tall oaks. The Mari thought it necessary to spare young trees. They lovingly praised beautiful forest lakes and the small springs issuing from the bottom of ravines, and they thought up fine words and glorified their strength and beauty. The flowering forest became a common image and poetic symbol.

The writing of ‘The Grove’ was only the beginning of the development of Mari literature. Back in the 19th century, some enlightened writers had embarked on collecting Mari sayings and writing ethographical researches, and they compiled schoolbooks. After the creation of Chavain’s work, Mari literature became truly literary. Chavain’s subsequent literary work was prolific. His novel Elnet, the musical drama The Beehive, his historical tragedy Akpatyr, and his many poems and songs enriched Mari literature.

The Soviet people commemorate this glorious writer and talented son of the Mari. His collected works have appeared not only in our region, but have been translated into the languages of many peoples of the Soviet Union and have been published in other countries. Sergei Grigovyevich Chavain, who laid the beginnings of Mari literature, is the first classic author. His work strengthened Mari writing and laid a noble basis for later victories.

Notice the typical features of Soviet-era writing, such as the triumphalistic tone, the omission of Chavain’s death under Stalinist persecution (unmentionable even as late as 1987) and the rather untenable suggestion that Chavain’s very personal and national work somehow glorified the whole USSR.

Vasin’s claim that all peoples have national writers and Chavain fits that role for Mari leaves me uneasy. With the development of national cultures in Eastern Europe, one sees certain writers being installed as the founder of indigenous literature, but are they really any good? My own acquaintance with Mihai Eminescu is coloured by fond memories of beginning the study of the lovely Romanian language, but if I try to think dispassionately, he was in the main mediocre. Perhaps the exceedingly limited interest show abroad in his work could be proof of limited talent. I daresay the same might be said about Sándor Petőfi, Hungary’s national writer, and Taras Shevchenko, the founder of Ukrainian literature.

It’s hard to think of an analogous early writer in English. Shakespeare is lauded as the greatest of all English writers, but aside from a few histories his works have little to do with the land of Britain. Chaucer was also quite cosmopolitan, and Beowulf is set in another country completely.

One of my many projects with Mari is a translation of Sergei Chavain’s novel Elnet into English. Portions of the translation will appear here in due time. In the meantime, this description of the novel by Ville Ropponen, from a review of the recent Finnish translation, may do much to introduce the work.

The novel Elnet by Sergei Chavain (1888–1937) depicts the Russian revolution in a Mari village of yesteryear and the conflict around Mari identity. The fate of two young men are intertwined in its plot. These characters are perfect opposites: Sakar is an unlettered hunter, a mischievous fellow who obeys no one and mocks the authorities, while Grigori Petrovič Vetkan is a village schoolteacher and part of the Mari nationalist intelligentsia.

Elnet is a classic — it is the first Mari novel. To be more precise, of the two dialects of the Mari language, Meadow Mari and Hill Mari, Chavain wrote the first thing worth mentioning. Elnet cannot counted among the best works of early revolutionary literature. In the Soviet Union of the 1920s and 1930s many novels were written which depict the revolution and the transition to socialism. This is also the main theme of Chavain’s novel.

Elnet’s interest lies rather in its depict of the Mari and in a sort of dawning postcolonialist perspective. The Mari folktales and folksongs interspersed with the novel’s prose — such as the tale of the Bread Dough Hero — are fascinating. The social conditions depicted in Chavain’s novel are not so far from current conditions in Mari El, which since 2001 has been dominated by the racist governor Leonid Markelov, Kremlin-sanctioned oppression and Russification.

Love stories and racism

Elnet’s intirigues are rather unsurprising. In the years 1913–1918, on the banks of a major Mari river, the Elnet, events precede rather like in folk-tales.

In the beginning Sakar loves Čači, the daughter of a tar maker, with an unrequited love. Later in the novel Čači rises to become a third main character and a strong female presence.

Grigori Petrovič is taken with the Russian Tamara, the daughter of a regional governor who studies at university. Through this, we get a picture of a Russian bourgeois family. Tamara’s father says that he he would gladly give his daughter to Grigori Petrovič, if only he weren’t Mari.

Chavain depicts Russian racism in a striking fashion. The relationship of the Russians to the Mari is reminiscent of the concept of Orientalism initiated by Edward Said. To the Russians, the Mari are childlike, impulsive, uncultured savages. The school headmaster belittles Grigori Petrovič for speaking Mari and forbids the teaching of Mari history, ‘because the Mari don’t have any history.’

Chavain’s prose is a loose realism of sharp observations. The storytelling maintains a gentle humour, but for the most part its events are tragic. Chavain depicts his characters with feelings, though they don’t develop in a multidimensional way, but rather remain stock characters, as is common in socialist realism.

When Čači is married off against her will to the son of a rich man, Čužgan’s son Makar, she knocks her husband out on their wedding night and makes a getaway. Čači seeks help from Grigori Petrovič, and subsequently a relationship develops between them.

The drama involves love stories as well as social conflict. Among whistling forests, grain sprouts up and girls sing.

Grigori Petrovič plays a part in the opposition to the tsar. Russia under the tsar is a prison for the Mari. Grigori Petrovič dreams of being free from Russia, and he thinks that such freedom will come from the Left. The Bolsheviks want to help the Mari, so Grigori Petrovič believes.

Insurrections among the populace

The novel depicts Stolypin’s land reforms, under which village commons were divided among individual landowners. Chavain suggests that this gave large landowners the possibility to hoard up land and designate the best parts for themselves.

When the meadows along the Elnet were assigned to the boyar Pankrat Ivanyč in 1914, the Mari staged a rebellion. Police were called in to quell the revolt and shootings, arrests and home searches followed. It happens that Sakar is among the crowd in the meadows, and is arrested. He is persuaded to become a revolutionary.

Russia under the tsar is shown as a brutal dictatorship. The police beat suspects, they are cut down in the army, and prison conditions are inhuman. Russification and conversion to the Orthodox faith is the law.

Chavain depicts estate owners and the public authorities as greedy, deceitful and corrupt — their sons are lazy and libertine. The conflict between rich and poor is underlined a bit much. As a Communist Chavain opposes religion as well, whether Orthodoxy or the Mari indigenous religion, whose priests are shown as degenerate figures, although Chavain does depict the Maris’ firm connection to nature in a positive light.

Feeling cornered, Grigori Petrovič is driven to murder. ‘If we don’t kill, we will be killed’, he thinks. Strangely, murder is not shown a problem, and between the lines it even seems a good thing, because the victim is a bourgeois. Sakar is sent to the front in place of a rich man’s son as cannon fodder.

The novel breaks off with the violent year 1917. The formal scheme of a revolutionary romance drains some energy from a novel relatively interesting compared to others.

The fate of Mari literature’s founding father

Chavain wrote the first literary poem in the Mari language in 1905, having begun studies at the teachers’ seminary in Kazan three years before. For the most part Chavain is remembered as a dramatist. His first play, the ironical Wild Ducks (1912), about Russian bureaucracts, saw great acclaim. The play Akpatyr (1935) tells of the participation of the Mari in Pugachev’s rebellion.

Chavain prepared the first volume Elnet for publication in the spring of 1936, and the work appeared in Moscow. By 1937, the winds had shifted, and the novel’s second volume was not published. The second volume of Elnet lie for nearly two decades in the archives of the Center for Literature and Art. On the manuscript was written ‘Written in the language of the gypsies.’ In 1963 the writer V. B. Muravjev found it, and the work was published in both Mari and in Russian translation in 1966.

Chavain intended to write third and forth installments of Elnet as well. Judging from the publishing world and speeches of the time, the plot of Elnet was to move in a direction typical of socialist realism, with its main characters finding a place in Communist society.

Chavain had high hopes after the October Revolution, like some others among the Mari intelligensia. Things turned out differently. During Stalin’s persections the Mari intelligentsia were murdered almost to a man. Chavain was executed by firing squad in November 1937.