A unique and exciting introduction to the genre and craft of historical fiction, for curious students, aspiring authors--anyone with a passion for the past. Read classics of the genre, encounter bestselling writers of historical fiction, and discover your own historical archive while interacting with a global community of interested readers.
Eva Stachniak and Bruce Holsinger discuss the context of historical fiction in their writing
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Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction
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Dialogues in Historical Fiction
This module consists of a series of interviews with authors and Professor Holsinger. Authors include: Michael McKeon, Eva Stachniak, David Robbins, Matthew Pearl and Andrew Taylor.
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Bruce HolsingerProfessor
English
For this next dialogue in historical fiction I'm joined by Eva Stachniak.
She's a Polish born novelist whose lived for a long time in Canada.
She's the author of a number of novels, including the Garden of Venus, and
most recently The Winter Palace, which is a really extraordinary portrayal of
Catherine the Great and espionage in the Russian Imperial Court.
She has another novel of Catherine the Great,
Empress of the Night, coming out in April, 2014.
Now the audio in this dialogue is pretty spotty, so
make sure you follow along on the transcript if you miss anything.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Eva, thank you so much for joining our class on historical fiction.
>> Thank you for inviting me.
>> I wanted to talk a little about your approach to the genre as a novelist and
how you deal with issues like research,
archives, location, character, that kind of thing.
So a lot of questions and I guess the biggest question I had was about
the topic of our class, and the genre of historical fiction.
I wonder, have you thought about your works in relationship to
the long history of historical fiction?
Would you put yourself in that tradition?
How do you relate to historical fiction as it's unfolded since the 18th century?
>> Yes, I thought about it because I think that for me,
there are two kind of extremes of historical fiction.
On the one hand, you can think of historical fiction as drama and
on the other hand, you can think about it as a novel set in the past.
In between you can start from Philippa Gregory and
end up with Hilary Mantel in some ways and your novel can be somewhere on that list.
Both are wonderful approaches.
Both are great historical ways of writing of historical fiction.
I see myself inheriting words writing a novel set in the past,
rather than following the prescriptions of a historical genre novel,
maybe because I'm always interested in characters.
Most writers naturally carry that interest into the past, and
also because every single novel that I wrote had a fascinating
female character that started it [INAUDIBLE].
I didn't set out to write this historical novel written in the 18th century.
I just found these fantastic women in the 18th century.
Katherine the Great, or Sophie Glavani from Garden of Venus and
they drew me into that.
For me, that's the way to approach writing historical fiction.
>> That's interesting.
Rather really affiliating yourself with a given genre that has a particular history,
you see yourself as, I'm writing a literary novel here, and
I happen to be setting it in the past.
When I do that it demands all kinds of things.
>> Yes and I want the novel to tell the story, as well.
I have a story that I have discovered, most of my historical characters are,
in fact, historical characters not fictional.
I mean the narrator of The Winter Palace happens to be a fictional character but
even she is a composite of things that happened to very many people
around Catherine.
I'm not entirely free in creating a plot for this novel.
I want to tell a story from the past but I also want to tell it in a way that
explores the character and that explores my attitude to that time and
to certain issues that I see that attracted me in the first place.
In The Winter Palace, it was the spying, for example, and the life and
the atmosphere of constant surveillance.
>> That opening is very chilling in that way.
The opening about if you're a spy, about the particular techniques of spying and
the mentality of the spy and the main character is Varvara.
>> Yes.
>> She is a spy at the court.
>> Yes. >> But the main subject character,
Catherine, doesn't know that immediately.
>> No, but also Catherine becomes, really, the mastermind of the whole spy network,
that our Varvara doesn't catch up on for a while.
I think that what attracted me, was the thought, I grew up in communist Poland.
When I moved to Canada, the secret archives were opened, and
we realized that we were spied upon far more than we ever thought we were.
I think the thought of living in a culture where you don't know who's looking
over your shoulder, and
who is taking notes of all your conversations really attracted me.
This is my approach, to have a character but also have an issue really,
really grabs me, and I think that that's a winning combination for me.
I find enough strength to really work on a novel like that.
>> Speaking of strength, going into some of the archival and
historical depth of your novels, I think, is really impressive.
How do you approach the archive, how do you approach the process of research?
What are the sort of unusual places that you look for sources to bring out and
incorporate into your characters, and to your settings, and to your scenes?
>> I tend to live the century I'm writing.
The moment I started writing about Catherine the Great,
I read 18th century books, I read 18th century memoirs.
If I traveled out anywhere that was historically related to the 18th century,
I would take notes of what remained of that time, so
I just switch myself into that mode.
That's my initial approach, and then as I write and as I have a better
sense in my draft of who my characters are, then I do more specific research.
For example, after reading everything I could find about Catherine the Great,
I realized that I didn't do a lot of my research about
spying in the 18th century at all, because that idea came later.
I have to stop my writing and go into the memoirs once again,
and search for references to spies and spying and then talk to historians.
I have a wonderful network of historians, I can ask any question.
There is someone with a specialist in the history of medicine,
others in the history of politics, others in other aspects of history and
any writer of historical fiction probably is extremely grateful to historians,
who have changed tremendously.
In the last 20 years, you go through the historical papers on any time,
you realize there's a history of childhood, history of everyday objects.
These are marvelous sources for a writer of historical fiction.
So that's one source.
I collect that and I have a whole library of books on that topic but
I also go to archives depending on which book.
For Catherine, it wasn't reading feasible because,
first of all the Russian archives are still not organized, and you
have to have a really high clearance to be admitted, so it was almost impractical.
My previous novel, the 19th century novel,
I went to the Polish archives and that was right in the time of Catherine the Great,
so a lot of that research I got to sort of carry on.
I did a lot of research on children, on medicine,
18th century medicine, that was all available.
Also, archives give you this chance to touch objects that
other characters, it's not just papers or letters, it could be gloves.
One of the really most touching discovery in the Polish archives of the 18th
century was a little envelope, and in it a silver thread, and then a little note
saying that this is the thread from the coffin of my child.
It reminds you that mortality of children was very,
very high and it was just heartbreaking to read it but that was a connection with
the mother would collect that and to keep it in family archives
of a big aristocratic family, so that was a treasure.
>> When you touch the past like that, when the archive gives you a glimpse of that,
I say even just a museum perhaps can be an archive for
people who write historical fiction.
Leaving aside the question we began with like genre versus writing a novel,
what do we need to know do you think about historical fiction in general as a craft?
What is it that we can learn from it?
What does it teach us that's not available in other forms of fiction writing?
>> I think that having to transport yourself into a different century
is fairly difficult.
That's a wonderful lesson for a writer, it's wonderful,
in it nothing is simple for a historical writer.
If you are writing a contemporary novel and your character travels,
then you can imagine it very easily but then it's in 19th century and
you have a carriage and you have to go from the Alps.
Then when you read a diary of someone whose actually done it,
you may realize that when the carriage cannot go through, there's no roads,
they all there's an impasse.
There's a moment in which your carriage will be dismantled, you'll be seated on
a donkey, and you'll go through and then the cart will be put together again.
You're a mother, you have a baby with you.
How scared are you on that donkey?
Suddenly, a simple act of traveling or
a simple act of consulting a doctor, having a toothache,
it involves a real leap, a real change in your way of thinking.
You think about traveling in a different way,
you think about illness in a different way, motherhood.
I find that extremely challenging but
also wonderful when you deal with the past because you have to be
imaginative and you have to really let yourself be in this other century.
If you write of your own time, you don't have to do that.
There are other challenges but that is not a challenge.
>> Right, right.
Plus, I think what's also wonderful is how to convey that to the reader.
After you've read all about traveling, medicine in the 18th century,
you're not going to give your reader your lecture on it.
Maybe you have studied this topic but you're not going to give a lecture,
that won't work.
You have to find the detail,
a telling detail that will carry through your research.
For me, the master of that is Penelope Fitzgerald.
I don't know if you remember the beginning of The Blue Flower?
>> It's been a while.
>> It starts with the description of a wash day and
you think very quickly that's very, very normal.
Sure, mats of linen and everything else and then the telling detail.
This is the family that washes only once a year.
Other families that are not as wealthy have to have a wash day twice a year.
Suddenly, all these details fall into, this is a different world.
As the family of five, we'll have to limit to less than one a year and
you will have to have servants to take care this.
So just one piece of information that wash day happens once a year or
maybe twice a year, if you were a little bit poorer,
and that is the designation of your status.
Immediately, she transports you into that.
Far more than if I gave you a lecture on how to do a wash at that time.
I think that that is a skill that I admire in writers of historical fiction,
you just pick this one little detail that will help me imagine myself elsewhere.
>> It's a nice metaphor for almost picking one thread out of a piece of embroidery or
a tapestry and that little thread just tells you about that whole world
that you see in front of you.
>> I find these details, generally, in travel logs and memoirs of the times.
For example, Catherine, I read a marvelous collection of diaries and letters of
the Wilmette sisters who spent six years in Russia as guests of Princess Dashkopf.
It's trouble to really imagine better witnesses to what they see
than people who live there because they notice the unusual.
When it's caught, an Irish woman arrives in St. Petersburg and
she's woken up by a servant, carrying a bowl with chunks of ice for
rubbing your face and for her, it's odd, that's why she writes it down.
A Russian woman perhaps would not even give it a thought.
She would say, doesn't everybody?
Travelers are marvelous and luckily,
a lot of people left a lot of thoughts on traveling and
you tend to trust certain writers because they write down a lot of details.
I think that that's attractive.
It's hard work though because it takes a lot of time.
>> Tedious. >> To have the knowledge of a different
time.
>> What do you think, maybe as a last question, picking right up on that,
what about your own self knowledge?
What is setting your novels in the past, a particular past,
or just in general, what has that taught you about yourself as a writer?
Are there things that you've learned about yourself, not just by writing a novel but
specifically, by writing a novel set where you've set your latest one?
>> I think that the sort of short answer is yes,
I have learned a lot and first of all,
I've learned how difficult it first was for me to
put myself into the mind of a 18th century or a 17th century person.
The difficulty of accepting certain attitudes that really
are difficult to accept like master, servant, perhaps the class society,
the sexism, the misogyny of these times.
I learned to deal with these with less prejudice,
I mean I'm still not accepting of it, of course, but I learned to be able to write
it with respect of how people brought up in that area would understand it.
I got a much better tolerance, compassion maybe, for people.
Learned more of a sense of seeing
basic humanity manifesting itself even at times when it was very,
very hard to cross certain barriers.
That there were people who were able to do it, and now I am maybe able to present it.
So that part, then I also became more confident about my writing process.
Writing an historical novel teaches you that just
because you have this wealth of material.
You have to kind of trust yourself that yes,
there's this mass of research, mass of thoughts but when the time comes,
you can pull back and there will be something to trigger your imagination.
You have to trust yourself because otherwise, you're terrified.
You've got volumes and volumes of books.
It's like for The Winter Palace, it's one sentence in Catherine's letter,
I have three spies in the bedroom of the Empress.
The sentence that I probably read before and it didn't do anything but
when I was ready to focus, suddenly that sentence focused me.
I think these moments in the writing process, they will come.
Don't despair, I don't think the novel will never get written.
>> I love that lesson, trust yourself or otherwise, you'll be terrified.
I think that's a good one for any writer.
>> I think that that's probably true but
I think that maybe every writer goes through it in a different way.
Whether the novel is set in the present times, you probably have similar issues.
You may be less related to the history.
The other thing that I've learned,
I think, is to have a really good network of people that you can ask questions
and have them vet your intuition.
In one of my novels, I wrote a scene of, an autumn scene in the 18th century,
sort of 19th century, to have a doctor who knows the history of medicine read it.
Before you can do it, you have to work on maintaining the network of doctors,
specific historians with specific knowledge of the past.
I think that I learned that, that I need that set of experts.
That it's not only fellow writers to comment on the craft but
also historians to comment on the authenticity of my details.
So that's quite important.
>> Yes. Eva Stachniak, thank you so much for
joining our class.
Thank you so much, Bruce, and all the best.
>> Thank you.
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