The Twelve Chairs: A Novel

Foreword

✦ xi ✦ Foreword Alexandra Ilf In 1928, in Soviet Russia, a novel by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov came out under the none-too-appealing title The Twelve Chairs (Dvenadtsat’ stul’ev). This was way back when, more than eighty years ago. First the novel was serialized in seven issues of the Moscow monthly magazine 30 Days (30 dnei), then it came out in a book edition that same year. No one suspected that it would go on to become one of the most popular novels ever written in Russian. Ilf and Petrov began working on the novel in August or September of 1927, when Ilf was twenty-nine and Petrov was twenty-four. The idea for the plot was a present of sorts from the well-established writer Valentin Kataev, Petrov’s older brother and Ilf’s friend. This all happened in the editorial offices of The Steam Whistle (Gudok), the railroad workers’ newspaper , where they all worked at the time. In his memoir, My Diamond Crown (Almaznyi moi venets), the “master writer” Kataev eschews false modesty as he describes his role in forming his brother’s and his friend’s creative alliance: As I saw it, the search for diamonds hidden in one of twelve chairs scattered all over the country by the Revolution offered the chance to portray a satirical picture gallery of character types from the NEP era. I laid it all out for my friend and my brother. I’d decided to follow Dumas père’s example and turn them into my literary Negroes:1 I suggest the idea, the springboard, and they work it up, clothe it in the flesh and blood of a satirical novel. Then I go over their xii ✦ foreword writing with the master’s expert hand. And we end up with an amusing picaresque novel.2 The entire process of coming up with the idea of the novel The Twelve Chairs and writing it is described in detail in Kataev ’s My Diamond Crown, in Evgeny Petrov’s memoirs about Ilf, and in Petrov’s notes to the book he never wrote called “My Friend Ilf” (Moi drug Il’f). Valentin Kataev really was a talented writer, and, in a sense, the future coauthors’ masterteacher , so the first book edition of The Twelve Chairs in 1928 was dedicated to him, Valentin Petrovich Kataev. That dedication has remained on the novel’s title page to this very day. ✦ The Twelve Chairs, composed “for four hands,” is Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s first attempt at writing together. Such an unexpected , magnificently achieved first attempt! How did they do it? It’s alarming to think that if Valentin Kataev hadn’t had the idea of becoming Dumas père back in 1927, we’d never have been able to enjoy the fruits of their marvelous collaboration. But as it happened, both authors were from Odessa. Both came to Moscow in 1923. Both worked for magazines and newspapers . Both wrote sketches, stories, and feuilletons. They both worked alone until the fall of 1927. And then they started writing together, and they wrote the novel The Twelve Chairs. They might not have been able to pull it off. “Writing together wasn’t twice as easy, it was ten times as difficult,” Petrov admitted.3 But by that time they were both full-fledged writers : both of them worked for The Steam Whistle, the railroad workers’ newspaper, and contributed to many humorous publications . The idea of writing an adventure novel was much to their liking. “Let’s try writing together,” Ilf suggested. “At the same time. We’ll write every line together . . . One of us will foreword ✦ xiii write, and the other one will be sitting next to him the whole time. You know: writing together.”4 So they did. They pulled it off, and they didn’t need “the master’s expert hand,” and they worked together for almost ten years. But now, all this time later, readers still want to know things like: How did they do it? Who are they, anyway, this “Ilf and Petrov”? How did two men write one novel? Ilf and Petrov’s creative association didn’t just happen by chance. It’s true that young people make friends easily, but even so, there has to have been some kind of connective tissue of mutual affection and like-mindedness between them for them to just sit down and produce not only a three-page feuilleton but a thick novel...