Seventh grade was a disappointment. We’d been assigned The Divine Comedy, a text which, despite its excellent Russian translation by Mikhail Lozinsky, left me deeply confused. What kind of comedy was this? It wasn’t even funny.
Dante’s poem was my first encounter with “comedy” and “tragedy” in their ancient sense, as defined by their progression and ending. The Divine Comedy is comedic because things begin darkly for the poet and end somewhat better. In seventh grade, though, we didn’t get to that part. Our teacher, dubious about our intellect (and with good reason), assigned only the Inferno, and so we did not venture past Hell.
I thought of this years later, when I was back in Russia after having completed the first round of graduate studies in the States. I had a grueling two-hour commute across all of Moscow to the place where I taught. The metro was crowded, riddled with pickpockets and bodily odors. To occupy myself, I listened to a series of lectures on Shakespeare by the Oxford professor Emma Smith. It was there that I came across this quote by playwright Thomas Heywood: “Tragedies and Comedies…differ thus: In Comedies, turbulenta prima, tranquilla ultima, In Tragedies, tranquilla prima, turbulenta ultima. Comedies begin in trouble, and end in peace; Tragedies begin in calmes, and end in tempest.” Even better than the quote itself was Smith’s comment that “the difference between tragedy and comedy is largely a sense of where we choose to start and stop.”
Now, I thought, hugging my bag closer to my chest, ducking sweaty armpits, this is something I wish I’d known at fourteen. It wouldn’t have helped my understanding of The Divine Comedy, but it would have clarified the other drama that took over the seventh grade: the first romantic pursuits. My classmates wrote love notes and watched each other obsessively, messages and gossip got passed around, there were slow dances put on by the school in its basement cafeteria where arms inevitably slid lower and lower, the crushes, the whispers, the first dates and breakups and more dates. My classmates went from ecstatic to heartbroken to lovestruck again. Watched from a distance (which is exactly how I watched this drama unfold, as befits anyone who takes Dante too seriously at fourteen), these romances had no clear beginning or end—just the constant reshuffling of the same people into new pairs. Turbulenta prima, tranquilla ultima, and vice versa, and so on.
Before seventh grade ended, something else did. In his New Year’s address to the nation, our president announced he was stepping down. There and then, not waiting for the term to be over. He said it was time to give young politicians a chance.
For years, I could not reconcile my memory of that night with the historical facts. This was December 31, 1999, and for once I did not spend New Year’s Eve at home with my mother and my grandparents. A boy I liked had invited me, along with a few other classmates, to a restaurant. It was the night of the millennium; his parents footed the bill. While my country as I knew it came to an end, I was peeling clementines, staring at my crush, getting ready to step into that whirlwind of elation and heartbreak. Yet I also remembered that I had heard the president’s address live. Only recently did I discover the reason for this confused memory: because of its unprecedented content, the address was played earlier in the day. I must have heard it from the kitchen where I was helping my mother slice potatoes and grate beets for the traditional New Year’s salad.
How to explain now, from a point in time where we know how the story ended, that a quarter of a century ago this transition of power felt like a good turn of events? Our old president would get drunk on national television, cry, and dance in the village streets. The new one was younger and spoke English. It felt, for a moment, like entering a new phase of life—a happy one.
Then, of course, tranquilla prima, turbulenta ultima. If you know how things began, you know how they will end. My country has had nothing but trouble and tempest for years, and in its pain it’s hurting those around it. My only consolation is the idea that beginnings and endings bleed into each other, that they are largely a matter of where we choose to start and stop. Perhaps this moment is not the end Russia is moving towards. Perhaps we are still only moving through Hell.
Evgeniya Dame is associate editor of The Threepenny Review. A former Stegner Fellow, she has published fiction in Zoetrope, Ploughshares, and other journals.
