Monday, May 10, 2010

The Tsar's Dwarf by Peter H. Fogtdal (2006, trans. 2008)

I met the author at the banquet of the Baltic and Scandinavian studies conference in Seattle. When I found out he was a Danish novelist, I told him I had been reading some Swedish authors and what would he suggest I read from the Danes. Well, he had one of his novels translated into English - this one, and he and his companion suggested a couple more, which I hope to review as soon as I read them. We had all of them in our library.

Fogtdal explained that he was fascinated by the Russian Tsar Peter the Great who he considered a psychopath. One of Peter's eccentricities was that he collected dwarfs, had a special house outfitted for them, and had forced many of them to marry each other. In his author's note Fogtdal explains that he had started a book just about Peter the Great and gotten bogged down, but when he thought of telling the story from the point of view of a dwarf, it all fell into place.

Sorine is gifted by the Danish king Frederick to Peter the Great, when he is visiting Denmark, planning military cooperation. She is saucy and intelligent, but the life of a dwarf is difficult. People constantly are laughing at her and treat dwarves as playthings, tossing them about, expecting them to be entertaining. It is a miracle that some of them found ways to be funny, learned songs and dances, but maybe it was just a mechanism for survival. Sorine (renamed Surinka for the Russians) doesn't believe in a God that would give her this fate.

Surinka gives us a glimpse into history, as she travels from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg, spends time in a monastery, in the Tsar's Curiosity Cabinet (museum including live human specimens), and with a Polish wine merchant's family. I am definitely intrigued enough to want to read more about Peter. I do remember him as one of the fascinating characters from history, who built St. Petersburg on a swamp. He influenced Latvian history too, but I no longer recollect how.

Fogtdal's book felt somehow different from an American novel, like European films feel different from American ones. They seem to show more of life's tragedies, and tend to look deeper into people's souls. Though faced with atrocities, poverty, and humiliation, the spirit of the dwarf makes it through and makes my difficulties in life seem trivial.

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