Krasnov, P.N.: Aska Mariam

Title

Aska Mariam [1900], in P. Krasnov, Liubov abissinki: povesti i rasskazy, Sankt-Peterburg 1903

Aska Mariam

Keywords

Summary

Aleksandr Panaev, a musician in Saint Petersburg, is deeply in love with his fiancée Nina Sergeevna. Young and with delicate features, she is an accomplished pianist, orphaned when she was little. She soon falls ill due to the harsh Petersburg climate, and, to Panaev’s despair, she dies. While keeping vigil of her dead body, he starts to hallucinate: he sees her waking up and telling him that she is not really dead; instead, she is reborn, and prompts him to search for her all over the world. She then speaks a few words in a foreign language. Suddenly, Panaev is seemingly transported to a distant, exotic and unknown land; in a bright, warm night, he sees a mysterious city, surrounded by vegetation he is not accustomed to. Black people are dancing around a fire, in what seems to be a welcoming ceremony for a three-day-old child, Aska Mariam. Panaev awakes, dismisses the dream, and lives fifteen years withdrawn into himself, haunted by the memory of Nina. One day, visiting a friend who travels a lot, he recognises in a photo the mysterious city he dreamt about, and discovers that it is the Ethiopian city of Harar. He leaves for Ethiopia, and once in Harar he starts looking for Aska Mariam. Having found her, he is soon disillusioned: she doesn’t seem to be the reincarnation of Nina, despite her surprisingly blue eyes. Nevertheless, as she is fond of him, he decides to bring her back to Russia and settles her in the apartment where Nina once lived. Yet, to the eyes of Panaev her intrinsic otherness prevents her to become integrated in Russian society: she seems constantly out of place. Soon, unaccustomed to the harsh climate, she falls ill. It is only on the verge of death that she seems to remember her past life, though her delirium makes her remembrance ambiguous. After her death, Panaev, now deeply convinced of the reality of reincarnation, buries her next to Nina.

Bio

Born in Saint Petersburg in a military family, he graduated from Pavlovsk Military School in 1888. He served as lieutenant-general in the Ataman regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. Soon after the Russian Revolution he was elected Ataman of the Don Cossacks and fought in the civil war alongside the White movement. He consequently left Russia and moved firstly to Germany and then to France (1923), where he was one of the founders of the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, a counter-revolutionary organisation. In 1937 he moved again to Germany, where he became a supporter of the Nazis. During WWII he worked for the Germans, helping in the creation of the 1^st Cossack Cavalry Division and serving with a Cossack force in the Italian Alps (Friuli region). Captured by the British, they were handed over to the Soviets, who sentenced them to death. Apart from his military career, P.K. was also a prolific writer of essays, novels and short stories, often devoted to Cossack life and enterprises, or to travels in distant lands (Siberia, Japan, China, India, the Middle East, Ethiopia). As a matter of fact, he travelled to Ethiopia in 1897-1898 as the leader of the Cossack escort to the First Russian diplomatic mission (1897-1899), headed by P. Vlasov. This experience prompted him to write memoirs as well as fiction (novels and short stories) set in Ethiopia.

Sources

M. Rait, Russkie ekspeditsii v Efiopii v seredine XIX-nachale XX vv. i ikh etnograficheskie materialy, “Afrikanskii etnograficheskii sbornik”, 1956, 1, p. 220-281;

C. Darch, P.N. Krasnov’s Journey to Ethiopia: A Note, “Africa: rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente”, 1975 (30), 4, p. 600-601;

V. Korolev, K. Polivanov, “Krasnov Petr Nikolaevich”, in Russkie pisateli. 1800-1917: biograficheskii slovar’, ed. by P. Nikolaev, Moskva 1994, p. 133-135;

M. Maguire, Spectral Geographies in Russian Émigré Prose: The Cases of Petr Krasnov and Georgii Peskov, in Utopian Reality. Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond, ed. by C. Lodder, M. Kokkori, M. Mileeva, Leiden-Boston 2013, p. 99-111;

P. Deotto, Stanitsa Tèrskaja, l’illusione cosacca di una terra, Udine 2020.

A.F.