“An anecdote is funny when it’s being told, but when someone lives it, it’s a tragedy. And my life has been sheer anecdote, that is—tragedy” Teffi Teffi was a Russian humorist writer. Teffi was the pseudonym of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya. Together with Arkady Averchenko she was one of the prominent authors of the magazine Satiricon. Most often compared to Chekhov and reminiscent of Zoshchenko, Teffi is most famous for her short stories that humorously – and sometimes scathingly – highlight human fallibilities, flaws, and subservience to material objects, but also reveal a psychological depth belied by her satirical subject matter. According to one legend, Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya chose the pseudonym ‘Teffi’ because it was similar to the name of a local fool. Fools were supposed to bring luck and given license to speak the truth. Or she may have picked up the name from Kipling’s story featuring a girl Taffy or an English rhyme “Taffy was a Walesman / Taffy was a thief” - the mischievousness of the verse would have appealed to her. Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya was born in 1872 into an eminent St. Petersburg family, where literature and poetry were an integral part of life. Her older sister Mirra Lokhvitskaya gained national fame for her verse, and was even dubbed “the Russian Sappho”. Teffi had wit, talent, fierce intelligence, and great personal charm. She began to publish in her early 30s and tried her hand in various genres, but it was her short stories, with their keen and hilarious observations of contemporary society, that were read by everyone from common people to top government officials. They won her literary success on a scale unprecedented in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Interestingly both Tsar and Lenin loved Teffi’s humorous writings. When Tsar Nicholas II was asked which writers he’d like to see included in an anthology of Russian literature marking the 300th anniversary of Romanov rule, he replied, “Teffi. Her alone. No one else is necessary.” On the opposite end of the political spectrum, Teffi had a fan in Vladimir Lenin, with whom she worked in 1905 at the short-lived New Life newspaper. Teffi’s witticisms echoed throughout St. Petersburg’s salons. There were Teffi bonbons in multi-colored wrappers and a Teffi perfume. Teffi made fun of her own fame as she described how she gorged on big box of Teffi candy and as a result, as she put it, becoming sick of celebrity. Teffi lived through many upheavals of the 20th century. Russian Revolution in Petrograd, the Civil War in southern Russia and Ukraine, and the Nazi Occupation of France in Biarritz. She left Russia in 1919 and never went back; her writing was banned in the Soviet Union. For a while, Teffi was very popular and widely read Russian émigré writer in Paris, even if she was sometimes misunderstood. Teffi was expected to be funny but oftentimes her humor was really laughter through tears. Teffi found the “funny” expectation bothersome enough that one of her collection of stories appeared with a warning label, informing readers that some of the stories were not meant to be funny. Many of her very funny stories were small tragedies given a humorous spin. Teffi had a great appreciation of the absurd, of the comic minutiae of every day life, and an understanding of human nature and its foibles.

click here