Chronicle
A Family Chronicle
Семейная хроника
Sergey Aksakov · 1856
Opening lines
Тесно стало моему дедушке жить в Симбирской губернии, в родовой отчине своей, жалованной предкам его от царей московских; тесно стало ему не потому, чтоб в самом деле было тесно, чтоб недоставало лесу, пашни, лугов и других угодьев, — всего находилось в излишестве, — а потому, что отчина, вполне еще прадеду его принадлежавшая, сделалась разнопоместною.
My grandfather felt cramped living in the Simbirsk province, on his ancestral estate granted to his forebears by the tsars of Moscow; he felt cramped not because it was really cramped, not because there was a lack of forest, ploughland, meadows and other holdings, for there was an abundance of everything, but because the estate, which had still belonged wholly to his great-grandfather, had become divided among several owners.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from ru.wikisource.org
Synopsis
In the eighteenth century, Stepan Mikhailovich Bagrov, a landowner in the province of Simbirsk, feels cramped on his lands. He honestly buys from the Bashkirs vast tracts on the banks of the Buguruslan, in the province of Orenburg, and settles there with his people. An upright man and a good master, he is subject to terrible fits of anger. The chronicle then follows the fate of a cousin, then the marriage of his son Alexei to Sofia Nikolaevna, a brilliant young woman from Ufa, against whom the old man was at first prejudiced.
Context
The author transposes into fiction the story of his grandfather and his parents, under the family name Bagrov. The book appeared in Moscow in 1856 and forms, with his recollections of the same year and the Years of Childhood of Bagrov the Grandson, published in 1858, a set of three narratives. The author, who came late to literature, had first made his name with his notes on fishing, in 1847, and on hunting, in 1852. Critics have above all praised the accuracy of his view of family psychology.
Who it is for
A book without a continuous plot: an estate, marriages, serfs; a French translation is in bookshops.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the best of its author's three narratives, and as a classic of Russian prose.