The Girl with the Teddy Bear - Viktor Domontovych

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The Girl with the Teddy Bear

by
Viktor Domontovych

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Title:	The Girl with the Teddy Bear
Author:	Viktor Domontovych
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1928 (Eng. 2026)
Length:	214 pages
Original in:	Ukrainian
Availability:	The Girl with the Teddy Bear - US
	The Girl with the Teddy Bear - UK
	The Girl with the Teddy Bear - Canada
	Das Mädchen mit dem Bären - Deutschland

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Ukrainian title: Дівчина з ведмедиком
Translated and with an Introduction by Steve Komarnyckyj

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Our Assessment:

B+ : neatly turned and presented hopeless-love story, well-set in its place and unsettled times

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Die Furche	.	25/4/2023	Anton Thuswaldner

From the Reviews:

"Dass der Roman aus dem Jahr 1928 mit politischen Stellungnahmen zurückhaltend bleibt, leuchtet ein. Dabei liefert er ein aufschlussreiches Stimmungsbild von Kiew in den 1920er Jahren. (…) Was den Roman zu einer außergewöhnlichen Angelegenheit macht, ist der Plot, der stark an Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita-Roman erinnert. Nur war Domontowytsch 22 Jahre früher dran. Nein, von einem Plagiat ist Nabokovs Version der Abhängigkeit weit entfernt, die Bearbeitung eines Motivs bringt stets neue Sichtweisen hervor. (…) Es bedarf schon literarischer Qualitäten, um nicht im aufdringlich Plakativen zu landen und den Fall plausibel rüberzubringen. Domontowytsch kann das" - Anton Thuswaldner, Die Furche
Quotes:

"The teacher, Ipolit Mykhailovych Varetsky, becomes infatuated with the younger girl, Zyna and their worlds collide. He is blinkered and emotionally naive. She, at the age of sixteen, has already assimilated the ideas of the futurists on the need to destroy the old art and morality, and proceeds to put into practice her ideas concerning sexual liberation and personal freedom, with devastating results. (...) The Achilles' heel of all these "new" people is a lack of cultural breadth and a limited understanding of human nature -- especially of their own emotional lives. Zyna, the youngest representative of this brave new world, is mimicking an accepted, indeed mandatory, style, and practicing it in her personal life. (...) Girl with Teddy Bear is a critique of a generation who appeared in the grip of a myopic, heedlessly aggressive determination to reshape society and human nature in the name of a new, supposedly rational order." - Myroslav Shkandrij, 'Avant-gardist versus Neoclassicist: Viktor Domontovych's Early Novels' (Canadian Slavonic Papers (42:3) September, 2000)

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The Girl with the Teddy Bear is narrated by Ipolit Mykolaiovych Varetskyi, a chemical engineer getting by in the very lean years in the wake of the Russian Revolution, for now, as a teacher at a variety of schools in Kyiv (with him noting that he had: "stumbled into teaching accidentally" -- it's certainly not his vocation).
       Ipolit Mykolaiovych's account begins with the fall of 1922, with the arrival of an old acquaintance, Semen Kuzmeko, who has ambitious plans to rebuild a local factory, a metallurgical plant, and wants Ipolit Mykolaiovych to help him in this endeavor. This, in turn, leads to Ipolit Mykolaiovych meeting an important government official, a representative of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy, Oleksandr Vladyslavovych Tykhmeniev, who hires him to tutor his two daughters, eighteen-year-old Lesia and sixteen-year-old Zynaida -- Zyna.
       The family is privileged and comfortably well-off -- "Packages with rations were not an issue for them" (while Ipolit Mykolaiovych depends on them) --; while ownership of their house has been taken over by the state, they are able to rent it and continue to live there in fine style. And, as Ipolit Mykolaiovych recognizes: "I did not fit in at all with these surroundings".
       The two girls are entirely different in character: Lesia is all prim and proper, and then a conscientious student, offering: "impeccably completed written exercises and carefully prepared answers". Zyna, meanwhile, is an unpredictable whirlwind and with her: "Each lesson brought new antics". While Lesia adheres to familiar convention, "Zyna is an example of violating the norms of virtuous behaviour and she acts with emphasised defiance"; she can -- and constantly will --: "disregard conventions, express sharp opinions and defend views that could shock and surprise you". But there's also the fact that: "She is a pretty girl, and it is impossible not to admire her" .....
       Ipolit Mykolaiovych falls for her, hard -- against his better judgment, but he can't help himself. He has a relationship with a fellow teacher, but it is Zyna he is drawn to -- even as he recognizes that he has: "created a fiction of who she was".
       Ipolit Mykolaiovych only slowly gives a fuller picture of himself, revealing more that also throws a clearer light on his relationships, especially then with Zyna and Lesia. As a student he asked the professor he had studied under whether he should consider continuing at university, with the goal of attaining a professorship, and was told:

You, Mr. Varetskyi, have a grasp of all the data for scientific work, and I would gladly submit an application to the faculty to retain you at the Department of Chemistry, but unfortunately you lack ideas. You have technical abilities that can be applied practically. You are a worker and a practitioner. My advice to you is to go to a factory, into industry.

Ipolit Mykolaiovych lacks imagination; indeed, flights of fancy mostly puzzle him. So also, for example, he admits: "I don't read books, I only buy them. I don't have enough time to read and I don't like fiction, especially modern fiction, at all". And yet he does buy books -- lots of them. Zyna is amazed by how many he has in his bookshelves-lined room -- but he does not engage with them, not in the usual manner: "I don't like books. I buy them and I repair them, but I detest them". As he sums up:

My bibliophile obsession turned into a kind of cult, however the cult was essentially atheistic, because I did not respect books. A book that had been bought and fitted in an appropriate cover seemed to me tamed and subdued.
I buy books in order to bind them in silk, chintz, leather, brocade, paper. I am attracted to the art of book binding. I am used to being in workshops and am familiar with bookbinders and second-hand booksellers. You can see me near their windows and those of printers. I have learned to divide the goods into those suitable for binding and those which are not suitable for binding and to look for valuable and rare editions.

While Ipolit Mykolaiovych lacks imagination, and Zyna's family is still stuck in all the old ways and traditions, the girl herself is unmoored, an entirely free spirit in a new age where nothing is yet set. She poses nude for a photographer -- and teases Ipolit Mykolaiovych: "I will give you one of the pictures he took. You can choose in which pose I am more to your liking".
For a while -- until he dies -- Zyna is an ardent supporter of an artist who styles himself the: 'master of the Guild of Destructivists', one Stefan Khomynskyi:

Stefan Khomynskyi believed that it was necessary to resolutely and ultimately break with the entire previous period of poetry. The corrupt European bourgeois civilisation and its art must both be rejected and destroyed. [...] He is not only against Balmont and Blok, but also against Yesenin and Mayakovsky. He is against everyone ! Poets lined up against the wall ! À la lanterne ! Everyone must fight the counter-revolution in literature ! He, Stefan Khomynskyi, is the most left-wing: the very left of the left.
The destruction of art is the path to clarity, such was the philosophy of Stefan Khomynskyi.

He also paints, and among his paintings is one: "painted with schematically cubic cows and a similarly schematic Khomynskyi with real hay glued to the canvas invoking the impression of the unnecessary purpose for art of feeding the cattle". Lesia, of course, doesn't take him or his work seriously -- it's not what she understands or can accept as being art --, while Zyna is enthralled by his contrariety (and absolutism):

The implausible figure of the poet with his strange symbols of faith and his no less bizarre and fantastic cult of the future was a significant stage in the history of her personal development. This acquaintance stimulated Zyna's thoughts, was compelling her onto new paths and decanting her usual escapism into new forms. During the crucial transition from a girl into a young woman she had met this extraordinary person, Stefan Khomynskyi. He was akin to an enchanted traveller, as if he were read aloud from the work of E.T.A Hoffmann.

From fairly early on Zyna also has views on sex and marriage that set her apart from those her family -- and similarly old-fashioned Ipolit Mykolaiovych -- still cling to, finding it ridiculous that so much is made of a woman's loss of virginity:

Innocence ! The fall ! These are meaningless and vulgar words, and they are not typical of our generation. Our grandmothers, if we are to believe what we read in the old novels, may have had some reason to think and speak in that fashion. These novels describe typically how a girl who gave birth to a child would be disgraced; her parents would curse her, and having cursed her, would drive her insane. Then, typically, in despair she would go to a river, search for a recess and drown herself while holding the child in her arms.

       Ipolit Mykolaiovych can barely keep from laughing when the seventeen-year-old girl says such things and when she claims: "I doubt basically that a girl can say that she has lost anything when she gives herself to a man" -- though it does leave him wondering: "Had this psychology of female independence spread to everyone and become characteristic of the time ?"
       Ipolit Mykolaiovych does make efforts, over these years, to be in Zyna's proximity, but otherwise does not really act on his passion -- even as Zyna plays the coquette, after her fashion. But she is also cautious: only when he is leaving and it is too late for anything to happen, after having spent a month with them summering in Crimea -- where Lesia's interest in him also becomes more apparent, even if he is too dense to realize it -- does Zyna whisper to him: "If you wanted me more and were bolder, I would give myself to you". Back in Kyiv, she eventually arranges an evening-rendezvous in his room -- her note to him ending: "Make sure that no one else is there" -- but, once there, remains in control and only lets him kiss her palms (and then walk her home).
       Here as elsewhere, Ipolit Mykolaiovych understands part of his problem: "I lack words". Not only does he lack imagination, but he doubts language itself -- another reason, presumably, he is not a reader, especially of fiction. Already very early on he maintains: "Words are relative, conditional and dubious". He likes absolute clarity and certainty -- and knows that Zyna is aware of this:

She knew that I have never flirted with anyone and do not even know how to flirt, that I weigh up my every word with special care and attention before uttering it, that I am perpetually afraid of making a wrong move or expressing a rash thought.

Eventually, Zyna does 'give herself' to him (not surprisingly, in the family home -- her dominion -- rather than his room), but even in describing finally having her completely (as he presumably imagines it) he doesn't bask in the moment but rather immediately sees it as part of a progression leading to his true ambition:

It is usually assumed that marriage is a natural conclusion which solves, or at least should solve, all the complications of life and literature. The traditions of the novel from the eighteenth to the twentieth century insist that there is no superior way for a novelist to conclude his work than by marrying 'him' and 'her'. In the present case, al the appropriate conditions had been met: there was the precedent of literary tradition, there was a 'he' and 'she' accordingly, the mutual desire of the characters, the vicissitudes of the -- love story had dragged on for a sufficient enough time to fill the required number of printed pages. Everything, therefore, seemingly would force the heroes of the novel to ensure they married without further ado and would not be troubling the author with the necessity of searching for an unconventional resolution to his literary work.

For all his dislike of (the contents of) books, it's amusing to see Ipolit Mykolaiovych nevertheless fall back on literature as model and template. But, like the pre-Revolutionary society whose forms Zyna's mother and sister still adhere to, the novels on his shelves chart an always predictable course -- and both the course and its predictability appeal to him.
For a while after they have become intimate, his inability to express himself gets the better of him -- "I was silent and avoided the subject" -- but finally he can't help himself: as he puts it: "I permitted myself to speak to her, quite cautiously, concerning marriage, my duty to her as a woman, and the awkwardness of our situation". These are sentiments that Lesia could appreciate -- "Lesia, who would make a beautiful, kind, intelligent and gentle wife" --, though of course she would have never slept with Ipolit Mykolaiovych before they were married. Lesia appreciated -- and could see herself only as pillar -- of that institution:

She did not belong to the culture of 'today', she lives outside of time and place; her 'today' is a repetition of 'yesterday' and its norms. As far as she is concerned, 'marriage', 'husband', 'wife' are established and unchanging concepts.

Yes, obviously she's the more appropriate match for him -- as Zyna thinks entirely differently, responding furiously to Ipolit Mykolaiovych's mention of marriage:

So you thought that now I have given myself to you we would talk about marriage ? You are mistaken. It is precisely because I have given myself to you that there can be no talk of marriage. I don't want any marriage. I gave myself to you to destroy the possibility of marriage. I want to do what I want to do. I am not going to be married.

       Ipolit Mykolaiovych, however, can abandon neither her nor his sense of obligation, of making an honorable woman out of her. Their intimate relationship continues, but it's no grand romance ("She would just come, lay on her back, give herself then leave, complaining of being bored" -- oof ...) -- and eventually Ipolit Mykolaiovych decides to propose (typically, in approaching Zyna's mother, preparing: "the ground in roundabout manner before asking her for Zyna's hand in marriage"). Zyna's reaction, once the proposal is on the table, neatly blows everything up (shocking even indulgent mom, sure to the last that the girl just: "liked to play tricks and to have everything different from the norm").
       Ipolit Mykolaiovych reveals the aftermath of "Zyna's incomprehensible act" several years later, when he is writing this account, reporting also how her family had taken Zyna abroad, but she disappeared in Germany, breaking completely with them. Still, there is a final reckoning with her -- though Ipolit Mykolaiovych can only conclude that: "Zyna had become entangled in the search for the implausible. Everything was lost, destroyed".
       Ipolit Mykolaiovych should, of course, have known better from the start; after all, Zyna proudly proclaimed: "You must know that I cannot bear the ordinary. I would prefer that which was absolutely extraordinary and indeed the utterly implausible". And so, while one can see chemical engineer Ipolit Mykolaiovych falling for the free spirit, he was obviously incapable of offering her what she needed. He failed -- and failed her -- in both words and deeds, so limited in his capabilities. She did, at some points, reach out and ask for his help in guiding her -- but he proved unable to answer the call:

Well, I am free ... but what good is being free if you don't know how to fulfil that freedom ? Teach me what to do, Ipolit Mykolaiovych.

       (Amusingly, he does know his limitations -- all too well, perhaps --, responding here: "Teach you ? My dear Zyna, there is one thing which I don't have: the ability to teach. I am able to work, but I lack the talent to teach, orate, or write manifestos".)
       Ipolit Mykolaiovych does not register much of the enormous upheaval of society in these years, focused on his work and on getting by somehow, but he can see clearly that: "The old forms of married life had been broken apart and new ones had not yet been discovered". He clings to the old forms and ideals, while Zyna looks ahead, wanting something new and different: "she was searching for new horizons. Exactly what horizons, she did not know but it didn't matter to her; it was enough that she desired them, yearned for them". All along, their love was a hopeless one -- yet this too makes it all the more compelling in the telling.
       The contrast in character(s) is perhaps too strong to be plausible and it's a bit difficult to see what Zyna might see in him (whereas Lesia's feelings, barely registered by Ipolit Mykolaiovych but bubbling up repeatedly, are convincingly presented), but The Girl with the Teddy Bear is a fine novel of passions that also uses the background of time, place, and circumstances very well (and gives an interesting glimpse of Soviet/Ukrainian life in the mid-1920s). For all of Ipolit Mykolaiovych's dislike of books and especially fiction, The Girl with the Teddy Bear is also steeped in (and often refers to) the literature and culture of the times, with some appealing angles on them.
       A neat little (re)discovery.

- M.A.Orthofer, 3 February 2026

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Links:

The Girl with the Teddy Bear:

Dedalus publicity page
Комора publicity page
Septime Verlag publicity page

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of literature from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union
See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945

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About the Author:

Ukrainian-writing Soviet author Viktor Domontovych (Віктор Домонтович; actually: Viktor Petrov) lived 1894 to 1969.

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