John Bayley

The Priest Who was Never Baptisedby Nikolai Leskov, translated by James MuckleBramcote Press, 81 Rayneham Road, Ilkeston, Derbyshire, DE7 8RJ, £13.95, pp. 216, ISBN 1900405121 In 1936 Stalin walked out of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk which for two years had been performing with great success in Moscow and Leningrad. He objected that it was ‘modernist’, vulgarly sensational that is to say, as well as disgustingly pornographic. In fact altogether nekulturny. It was very nearly the end of poor young Shostakovich’s career; he had been just 26 when he completed the opera. With one or two alterations it was based on Leskov’s powerful sketch of 1865 with the same title.

It all comes out of War and Peace? Well, Tolstoy makes a good starting-point anyway for such an adroit historian of place and people as Dr Figes. In an early chapter Natasha, the young Countess Rostov, is visiting 'Uncle', an old family friend and retired army officer who has gone native and lives in a wooden izba beside the forest with his peasant mistress. Some visiting locals start to dance, and without thinking or knowing the complicated rustic measure Natasha joins in and executes the steps correctly, to general applause. Well, well. However unaware of it she may be Natasha lives in two worlds, and finds herself as much at home dancing among the peasants as she has come to be in a Moscow ballroom. At least so Tolstoy says, and the idea clearly gives him great satisfaction.