A truly remarkable book -- hard to put down! | The Pearl: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in Catherine the...

A profound love story, well told | The Pearl: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in Catherine the Great's Russia | Douglas Smith

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	• The Pearl: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in Catherine the Great's Russia Douglas Smith Yale University Press, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A delightful and historically accurate view of Zsarist Russia

I loved this book! As a student of Russian Literature over thirty ago, this wonderful novel offered me an opportunity to revisit the beautiful and complex history of Zsarist Russia. The story was compelling, and I found myself unable to put it down. The attention to historical detail, which was obviously very well researched, brought the beauty and grandeur of that unique time and nation vividly to life. I learned a great deal about the Russian theatre and it's importance in the evolution of theatre as we know it today. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves history, and a good love story.

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A truly remarkable book -- hard to put down!

Douglas Smith has written a thoroughly readable, immaculately researched tale detailing the life of the talented opera singer Praskovia (aka "The Pearl")--who was born as a serf, but raised to become one of the serf "intelligentsia" (whose job it was to entertain the aristocrats), rose too become an singing star, and eventually entered into a long-term forbidden relationship with her master, Nicholas Sheremetev, whom she eventually married in secret.

Against the lush backdrop of Tsarist Russia, the story is not just a tale of "forbidden love" (as indicated by the quasi-salacious subtitle of the book) but also a fascinating piece of psycho-social history that details again and again the essential contradictions of a talented and passionate woman living a life trapped within a strict social system that officially relegated her to a position of slavery, with no official hope of ever getting out of that position. The tale is made all the more gripping for the sympathetic portrait it draws of Sheremetev, who bucks social and class convention and pursues his love for Praskovia, in sharp contradiction to the mores of the Russian nobility.

The biggest challenge Smith faced in writing this book was probably the lack of historical data about Praskovia's life. Thus, much of what he describes about, say, her separation from her family and move to the "Big House" is extrapolated from what is generally known about serf upbringing. Luckily, Smith, an internationally known expert in the Russia of Catherine the Great, is up to the task and masterfully manages to fill in details based on his extensive research of the social lives of serfs, without falling into the trap of simply fictionalizing her life.

Overall, Smith is a virtuosic writer, balancing a historian's need for well-researched detail with a novelist's flare for the telling description, the clear narrative thread, and the emblematic moment or detail that reveals a larger psychological or social truth. In particular, the "serf theater" interlude sections are masterfully written. Truly fascinating stuff. I got hooked at the beginning, and with each chapter it became harder to put the book down. Highly recommended!

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A profound love story, well told

She was a beautiful young serf with a near perfect operatic voice. He was Russia's richest aristocrat. Together, they shared an illicit love that defied the mores of their age and eventually led to tragedy.

As a quick plot summary, this sounds a bit like cover copy for a bit of pulp fiction. But life is always more interesting than fiction. The extraordinary story of Count Nicholas Sheremetyev and Praskovia Kovalyova does read at times like a bit of pulp fiction, what with the unbridgeable chasm between their social classes, his perennial life-threatening illnesses, the intrigues at court, the depravity of the aristocracy. But Smith recounts the tale not as a novelist (though you sense him fiercely resisting the urge), but as a gifted historian, reconstructing the couple's private lives from the archives, filling in ample historical background (we do, after all, want to read about Nicholas' unwitting involvement in Paul I's assassination) about what it meant to be a noble in Catherinian Russia, about travel in Russia, about theater and the arts. It is a profound love story, well told, while at the same time a valuable contribution to Russian social and political history.
(Reviewed in Russian Life)

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Filled with a remarkable cast of characters and set against the backdrop of imperial Russia, this tale of forbidden romance could be the stuff of a great historical novel. But in fact The Pearl tells a true tale, reconstructed in part from archival documents that have lain untouched for centuries. Douglas Smith presents the most complete and accurate account ever written of the illicit love between Count Nicholas Sheremetev (1751-1809), Russia?s richest aristocrat, and Praskovia Kovalyova (1768-1803), his serf and the greatest opera diva of her time.

Blessed with a beautiful voice, Praskovia began her training in Nicholas?s operatic company as a young girl. Like all the members of Nicholas?s troupe, Praskovia was one of his own serfs. But unlike the others, she utterly captured her master?s heart. The book reconstructs Praskovia?s stage career as ?The Pearl? and the heartbreaking details of her romance with Nicholas?years of torment before their secret marriage, the outrage of the aristocracy when news of the marriage emerged, Praskovia?s death only days after delivering a son, and the unyielding despair that followed Nicholas to the end of his life. Written with grace and style, The Pearl sheds light on the world of the Russian aristocracy, music history, and Russian attitudes toward serfdom. But above all, the book tells a haunting story of love against all odds.

(20080518)

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