An odyssey without return. Exile in the chronicles of Arkady Averchenko and Teffi

Abstract

Based on the translations of the chronicles of Arkady Averchenko (“The Tragedy of the Russian Writer”, 1920) and Teffi (“Que Faire”, 1920 and “The Small Town”, 1927), which accompany the article, we intend to analyze some issues that marked the first wave of Russian emigration as isolation; the idea of recreating Russia abroad and the gradual loss of memories and cultural and linguistic references. The chronic genre seems especially conducive to this analysis, since, as it transitions between literary fiction, historical record and journalism, it allows to capture the immediate impressions of the first wave of Russian emigration that took place after the 1917 Revolution and the subsequent Civil War. Taken from the perspective of mythological epics, the chronicles of Aviértchenko and Teffi also reveal exile, for the Russians, as a kind of trip to the world beyond borders, where everything is turned upside down. Ultimately, these narratives of exile refer to a universal human tragedy, which is the encounter with the ‘other’, with the strange. However, on the fictional level, the anguish and insecurity related to exile are re-signified through irony and grotesque subversion, including at the linguistic level, in which occur the most unusual combinations betweenRussian and French.