The *Original* Ice Bucket Challenge

About fifteen or so years ago, I went to a conference in Russia devoted to Pushkin and Dostoevsky.

Anyone who knows Russian literature knows that these are two of the "greats," two authors who always dominate the reading lists of Russian courses in college -- whether general education survey classes or "The Russian Novel" seminars for advanced graduate students. Reading Pushkin and Dostoevsky is fascinating, a trip into the culture and psychology of 19th century Russia that lures lovers of crime and passion as well as disaffected teenagers dressed in black.

But writing about Pushkin or Dostoevsky takes chutzpah. They (along with Tolstoy) are the Shakespeares of Russian literature, and the number of books and articles written about each over the last several centuries reaches that indefinable Russian number t'ma -- uncountable.

That said, in my younger days I somehow got in with the Pushkinists and began attending their conferences in Russia to present my own work on Pushkin. I wrote pure scholarship -- it didn't occur to me to become an anthropologist and write about the conferences themselves, though now I wish the idea had occurred to me before Elif Batuman wrote her hilarious, insightful, indeed immortal essay in Harper's Magazine about a Tolstoy conference. Tolstoy scholars are often Tolstoyans -- they have imbibed the mission, the message, the mystery of Tolstoy, and have frequently become co-religionists with the Great Man himself. (I avoid Tolstoyans, though they seem to gravitate to me. I nod and smile when they try to tell me of the ways in which Tolstoy was a true Russian Orthodox believer, truer than the true, and then I look out the bus window at the scenery.)

But Pushkinists are different: smart, funny, adventurous. They can recite whole poems by heart, indeed, whole volumes, but that doesn't make them morose or boring. Instead of a mission, from their muse they imbibed a joie de vivre that belies some of the facts of Pushkin's life -- the philandering, the bitter family in-fighting, the disillusioned government service. Oh, and the untimely death by duel. Wine, women and song, and mostly wine -- that's what you can expect at a Pushkin conference.

Or really vodka. Each different type of Russian literary scholar has a preferred beverage. Scholars of Chekhov tend to drink cognac. Griboedov scholars prefer Crimean red wine. And Pushkinists primarily drink vodka. Sometimes in large quantities.

The sign reads: "Welcome to Pushkin's Boldino."

At a Pushkin conference in Nizhny Novgorod one year, we travelled to Boldino to pay homage to the master. Boldino was one of Pushkin's estates, and he had three magical autumns of fantastic poetic productivity there in the 1830s. When the conference participants showed up at the local restaurant, the tables were laden with commemorative bottles of "Boldino Autumn" vodka, which we took with us for the 4 hour bus ride home, stopping for pit stops along the road ("men to the left, women to the right!") and chasing the vodka with bottles of cold beer. I can still feel the swaying of the bus on the way back to Nizhny Novgorod from Boldino. Quite a journey.

I have attended several international Griboedov conferences now, and several international Pushkin conferences. But getting the Pushkinists and the Dostoevsky scholars together was a terrible idea -- something about an anniversary, I'm sure. We started in Novgorod, where things were lovely, but the organizer -- a fantastic scholar and wonderful, sweet man who may very well have been behind those commemorative "Boldino Autumn" vodka bottles -- had an unexpected heart attack and did not join us at the Dostoevsky museum in Staraia Russa where the conference was to continue. (Russian conferences often travel, or they used to anyway, from one location to another. Great for the American who wants to explore more of the country!) Which left a lot of Pushkinists doing the Dostoevsky thing... The events started with a requiem service in Dostoevsky's parish church, and a priest came to open the conference sessions with incense. Things only got weirder from there.

We were staying at a sanatarium, which is essentially why Dostoevsky himself first came to Staraia Russa. The local waters were supposed to have healing powers, and the mud from the lake was also used for medicinal purposes. I was sorely tempted to get checked out by the doctors and see which waters they would prescribe, but I didn't want to abuse their hospitality. Instead, I went skinny dipping with my fellow Pushkinists and listened to stories of their adventures with the local women and drank vodka after hours on their balconies.

Porfiry Ivanov (1898-1983)

But I also chatted with my roommate, at least at first. A woman in her mid-70s, she was hale and hearty and told me elaborate tales of hiking the Siberian taiga every year on expeditions. According to her, she hadn't been sick in decades -- not since beginning the regime espoused by Porfiry Ivanov of dousing herself daily with three buckets of icy water.

Yep, the original ice bucket challenge. From the age of 35, the self-proclaimed Russian "doctor" and mystic Ivanov chose to go without footwear and to wear minimal clothing, living a life of increasing deprivation and preaching his regime of cold water and cold weather healing. My roommate was one of his adherents, and she had a number of fascinating ideas about how to remain healthy and live a long life, derived from Ivanov's system. (Needless to say, she did not approve of the Pushkinists and their vodka habits. I didn't find out whether she thought my skinny dipping in the special lake with the healing mud was a good idea or not.) Although I tried to get along with her, I'm afraid we came to blows over whether abortions should be available to women who wanted to end unintentional pregnancies. (She was anti-abortion.) And so when the conference ended, so did our acquaintance.

Her icy water routine, though, kept her alive for at least another decade. Someone told me of her death quite recently. And while Ivanov died at 85, complaining of pains in his legs that may very well have been gangrene due to advanced frostbite, I believe that my former roommate succumbed to heart failure.

My friend, the scholar whose poor idea it was to bring Pushkin and Dostoevsky scholars together, has regained his health. He wasn't drinking as much the last time I saw him, but I don't know whether he has embraced the icy dousing regime of Porfiry Ivanov. I'll have to travel to Russia to ask him the next time he puts together a conference. I'm afraid that I didn't make it to the one he organized last autumn -- I have a few things to say about Pushkin, but I have absolutely nothing to say about Lermontov.