Le Précipice / Le Ravin (Obryv), Ivan Goncharov

Overview

Obryv (Обрыв, "The Precipice"; a recent English version is titled "Malinovka Heights") is the third and last novel of Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891), after An Ordinary Story and Oblomov. It was conceived in 1849 and first published in the January-May 1869 issues of the St Petersburg monthly Vestnik Evropy (Wikipedia, "The Precipice (Goncharov novel)"); a book edition followed in 1870. The central figures are the dilettante artist Boris Raisky, his grandmother-figure Tatyana Markovna, her two young relatives, the sweet Marfenka and the restless Vera, and the sceptical outsider Mark Volokhov.

Marie and this novel

Marie met it in the summer of 1873, at Nice, most probably in Russian (the French titles are her own renderings of Obryv). The identification rests on the characters she names: Raïski, la grand-mère, Marfinka, Véra, Marc, Vikentieff.

• 17 July 1873 (007.0028): "Maman a lu le roman Le précipice à haute voix, j'ai écouté quelques minutes et puis je suis partie; c'est si bête les romans !"
• 2 September 1873 (009.0030): "J'ai lu Le ravin, mais je n'ai jamais la patience de finir un roman."
• 6 September 1873 (009.0059-0060): she reads it by fits and starts and is won over: "Jamais je n'ai lu rien de plus drôle, naturel et avec tant d'humour." Raïski is "ennuyeux parfois, mais le reste charmant. La grand-mère sublime, Marfinka comme beaucoup. Véra folle, Marc original insolent, Vikentieff plein d'humour et de verve". She laughs aloud at the comic dream of Vikentieff and counts "cinq rêves originaux et jolis"; her cousin Dina wants to retell Vikentieff's dream as her own, with the names changed (in her words: "Au lieu de Nil Andrieivitch Nicolas, de Polina Karpovna Mme Vigier, etc."; Vikentieff's comic dream names two minor characters of the novel).
• 7 September 1873 (009.0079): still reading it that day, before an afternoon at Monte Carlo.

She reads it with open pleasure despite declaring, in the same entry, her "mépris pour les romans".

Notes and doubts

• Marie never names the author. The identification is by title (Le précipice / Le ravin = Obryv) plus the character names, which match the novel (Raisky, the grandmother, Marfenka, Vera, Mark Volokhov, Vikentiev).
• Which text she and her mother used (a Vestnik Evropy run or the 1870 two-volume book) is not stated. The project has not found a French translation from 1873, so Russian is the working assumption.
• The English links are given for convenience; the Gutenberg text is an older, abridged version (Gutenberg ebook 7307; the Knopf 1916 volume on Internet Archive is credited to M. Bryant).

Sources

• Wikipedia, "The Precipice (Goncharov novel)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Precipice_(Goncharov_novel)
• Russian Wikisource, Обрыв, for the original text and chapter list.