Literature without the boredom: Russian writers who loved mushroom hunting
Summer and early autumn are the season for gathering mushrooms. The “quiet hunt” – for some a beloved pastime, for others a veritable trade – has always had a great many devotees in Russia. Many of the classics of Russian literature were sincerely devoted to this pursuit.
Last summer, to put it mildly, was not particularly generous with mushrooms for the inhabitants of central Russia.
And yet, while some mushroom gatherers on the relevant online forums were verbosely giving themselves over to despondency or quoting contradictory forecasts from mycologists, the impatient author of these lines repeatedly tore himself away from his settled life in his book-lined study and, to borrow Baratynsky’s apt phrase, “with hope that knows no bounds”, raced by car along the Novorizhskoye Highway a hundred kilometres from the capital, to a certain mushroom forest well known to him.
Unfortunately! Only the little chanterelles, those sisters, once suddenly spilled out in golden clusters across the Moscow-region meadows of August. But the substantial, noble mushroom – by which Russians have traditionally understood an inseparable trio: the porcini, the birch bolete, and the aspen bolete – such a greatly esteemed mushroom did not show itself for a long while, neither along paths worn by decades of footsteps, nor at the edge of the marshy bogs beloved of mosquitoes, nor in the pine grove open to the wind, nor in the spruce thicket that bristled against the solitary wayfarer.
All that remained was to reminisce about the abundant harvests of years gone by, dream of mushroom-shaped pretzels, and, sitting at home, reread the works of the great Russian classics.
And, by the way, how did the Russian classics themselves regard mushrooms? Let us take a look at history.
The greatest Russian poets of the nineteenth century, for some reason, did not favour the representatives of the “third kingdom”. Pushkin remained indifferent to mushrooms, while Lermontov did not mention them even once anywhere, not even in his letters. Tyutchev and Nekrasov, although they enjoyed the “quiet hunt” as children, subsequently lost all interest in it.
The prose writers, however…
Perhaps the first writer and devoted mushroom hunter who comes to mind is Aksakov. Not only a practitioner but also a theoretician of hunting in general, Sergey Timofeyevich naturally devoted attention to mushroom forays as well, producing a useful guide that remains relevant to this day: his article “Notes and Observations of a Mushroom Hunter”. Here is how it begins: “Among the various kinds of human hunting, there is also the humble pursuit of walking through the woods in search of mushrooms, or gathering mushrooms. Although it cannot be compared with other, more lively forms of hunting, if only because there one has to deal with living creatures, it can nevertheless rival many of the, so to speak, secondary forms of hunting, which have their own particular attractions. I am even inclined to give mushrooms the preference, because they have to be sought out and, consequently, may not be found at all; this introduces an element of skill, knowledge of where mushrooms grow, knowledge of the terrain, and luck.”
Aksakov also drew his shy friend and frequent guest, Nikolai Gogol, into this delightful pastime. So much so that, eager to please his mushroom-loving host at the Abramtsevo estate, Gogol would set off early in the morning to wander through the surrounding groves, making sure to arrange the mushrooms he had found along the path where the esteemed author of “Notes and Observations of a Mushroom Hunter” habitually went for his walks. On one occasion, struck by the unusual, snake-like appearance of yet another porcini mushroom, Nikolai Vasilyevich painted its “portrait” in oils as a gift for his dear friend Sergey Timofeyevich.
The picturesque surroundings of the Moscow region’s Abramtsevo were also well known to another seasoned mushroom hunter, Ivan Turgenev. Yet the author of “A Sportsman’s Sketches” was ultimately outdone in this respect by Dostoevsky, who openly confessed in his “A Writer’s Diary in 1876”: “…there is nothing in life I have loved as much as the forest with its mushrooms…”
Only Lev Tolstoy could seriously rival Fyodor Mikhailovich both on the literary field and among the forest glades. In his memoirs, Ilya Repin recalls how, after his morning bath, Lev Nikolayevich would often take a basket and, inviting no one to accompany him, set off for the nearest pine forest. When Tolstoy gave up meat entirely in the 1880s, he began gathering and eating mushrooms more actively, together with some of his older children. And what do you think? He felt perfectly well!
Chekhov, by contrast, was constantly distracted from his principal occupation – the writing of stories and plays – by his mushroom forays. In a letter to his brother Alexander dated 6th August 1891, he reported: “We have rain and an abundance of mushrooms; the latter prevent me from sitting in one place and working.”
In another letter, Anton Pavlovich confessed, with the characteristic irony he displayed both in life and in his writing: “I’ve become obsessed with mushrooms. I spend whole days wandering through the woods like a fool, staring down at my feet. I must give it up, because this pleasure is getting in the way of my work.”
“Giving it up”, of course, did not come easily. According to the recollections of acquaintances, every morning Chekhov would pedantically make the rounds of the surroundings of Melikhovo and invariably return home with a good “catch”. His dogs often followed him – the dachshunds Hina and Brom, who happily joined in the search, energetically pawing through the earth.
His forest trophies were measured in poods. Thus, in the diary entries of Chekhov's father, Pavel Yegorovich, for 15th July 1898, we find the following entry: “Masha, Anyuta, Roman, and Ivan went mushroom picking and brought back 1 pud and 20 pounds of porcini. Antosha picked 6 pounds in the ‘quadrangle’.”
For his favourite mushrooms – porcini and saffron milk caps – Chekhov even used a special bag: a pillowcase embroidered with the words, “Sleep, rest, and don’t forget us.”
Those words would probably have prompted a sceptical smirk from another writer and mushroom enthusiast, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. In his essay In the Country (1863), published in the journal Sovremennik, he noted with irritation that some mushroom hunters, in their quest for a better haul, even resorted to all sorts of incantations – addressing, for instance, the forest spirit, the leshiy: “I, the servant (name), enter your dark kingdom, your bewildering realm; I see three mushrooms: a scarlet mushroom, a shining mushroom, an emerald mushroom.”
By doing so, Shchedrin observed, a person “damns his soul… for the sake of mushrooms!”
Alongside the supernatural creatures of the forest, Mikhail Yevgrafovich also took aim, for some reason, at the village “Russian woman”, whom he called “the mushroom’s first and sworn enemy”. She, he complained, would rise at dawn and thoroughly scour the woods, while the unsuspecting summer resident (here the great satirist was transparently alluding to himself) is still dreaming mushroom dreams in his bed.
And yet, at least one of his conclusions is hard to disagree with: “Anyone who wishes to hunt mushrooms successfully must seek them not so much in the forests and groves as in their own heart.”
Although Saltykov-Shchedrin, as is well known, had little love for poetry or poets, I shall conclude this brief look at mushrooms in Russian literature with a poem by a contemporary writer whose sensibilities are, in some ways, close to his own:
If you have never risen at the break of day, Along woodland paths, gathering mushrooms with care, Then you can never take one step away From the dull, dreary life that a loafer must bear.
If you’ve never seen a red-capped bolete at dawn, Nor plunged your soul in the hush before light, How dare you praise nature, you foolish young man, Or speak of her beauty so carelessly slight?
Why furrow your brow in a useless endeavour? It’s all for nothing, though your life may be long, If you cannot tell, at a glance, now or ever, A porcini from a false one that doesn’t belong.
Why wander the forest as if in a daze, Why hang your head low, so weary and meek? For, brother, it’s not only mushrooms that amaze – But the mushroom hunter who still cannot seek.