Smoke

Baden-Baden is the setting of the novel “Smoke.” It is the “Summer capital of Europe,” a “royal” resort located between the mountains of the Black Forest and the Rhine Valley. After the marriage of the then-heir to the throne, the future Emperor Alexander I, to the Baden princess Louise (after converting to Orthodoxy she took the name Elizabeth Alexeyevna), the entire Russian aristocracy began to vacation in Baden-Baden: the Dolgorukys, Volkonskys, the Menshikovs, the Vyazemskys, the Golitsyns… By the mid-19th century, the Russians had created the largest foreign community in the city. The local newspaper “Badenblatt” wrote about the Russians: “No nation can compare with them in terms of politeness, good taste, elegance, and liberal views…” M. Twain in the book “A Tramp Abroad” noted that in Baden-Baden people from Russia are treated best of all. To some extent, the formation of such an image of the Russians was also aided by outstanding writers—Turgenev, Gogol, Vyazemsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Goncharov.

As is well known, Turgenev was neither a Slavophile nor a Germanophobe. Baden-Baden was not for him a paradise “little corner,” like it was for Zhukovsky; not “hell,” like it was for Dostoevsky—but simply a place where he was happily living for almost ten years. Here Turgenev wrote the story “Phantoms” and the novel “Smoke,” in which he subtly conveys the spirit of the time and the city’s atmosphere.