40866067

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Slavonic Papers / RevueCanadienne des Slavistes.

http://www.jstor.org

The Silver Age of Russian Poetry: Symbolism and Acmeism Author(s): LEONID I. STRAKHOVSKY Source: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 4 (1959), pp. 61-87Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40866067Accessed: 07-11-2015 18:44 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 37.232.76.91 on Sat, 07 Nov 2015 18:44:28 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=taylorfrancis

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40866067

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp



The Silver Age of Russian Poetry: Symbolism and Acmeism

LEONID I. STRAKHOVSKY

During the last two hundred years Russian poetry, from its timid and awkward beginnings in the middle of the eighteenth century to the present crude and vulgar fulfilment of a "socialist order," has experienced two periods when it reached its peak: the Golden Age, initiated by Pushkin and covering roughly the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and the so-called Silver Age, started by the symbolists and embracing approximately the last two decades before the revolution. But while the Golden Age represented the natural flowering of a plant painstakingly and sometimes painfully nurtured during the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century on Russian soil though with foreign fertilizers; the Silver Age started as a revolt against the then prevailing "civic poetry," breaking away from the traditional Russian sources and raising an imported plant, though again on Russian soil which gave it a specifically Russian flavour.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, which witnessed the great development of the Russian novel, poetry became the step-child languishing on Nekrasov's famous prescription: "One has no need to be a poet, but be a citizen one must," notwithstanding the fact that such outstanding poets as Maikov, Polonsky, Count Alexis Tolstoy, Tiutchev, and Fet wrote and published during this period. But they were assailed by the radical critics who, starting with Pisarev, attacked their aestheticism, and the traditionally poetry-loving Russian public lost its taste for the finer things and glorified the mediocre versifiers, known as the "civic poets," and the sentimental pessimists such as Apukhtin and Nadson. This state of affairs reached its apogee in the 1880's, often called the "mauve decade," but it was only natural that in Russia, where, in the opinion of Sir Maurice Bowra, "any writer who is worth the name has often a higher standard of craftsmanship and a greater emotional range than his Western contemporaries,"1 a reaction was soon to set in.

1C. M. Bowra, The Heritage of Symbolism, London, 1943, p. 144.



62 CANADIAN SLAVONIC PAPERS

Three names stand out in the initial stages of the new movement: Merezhkovsky, Briusov, and Balmont. Although they were at first called "the decadents," they were "symbolists from the very beginning," in the words of Viacheslav Ivanov, "first, because of their cult of eternity and all-embracing unity of the multicoloured reflections of moments ('in Farben-Abglanz haben wir das Leben,9 says Faust), and, second, because of their dynamism and musical leaven."2

Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky ( 1865-1941 ) was the first man in Russia to use the term "Symbols" by giving it as a title to his second book of verse which appeared in 1892.3 As a poet or innovator in poetry, Merezhkovsky was of lesser importance, but as a critic he was of great influence. It was his study, entitled About the Reasons for the Decline and about New currents in Contemporary Russian Literature, written in 1892 and published in 1893, that fired the opening shot for the symbolists against the citadel of entrenched "civic" literature. Merezhkovsky considered that the decline of literature was due prin- cipally to the decline of the literary language. There are three principal destructive forces which provoke the decline of language. The first of these is the present literary criticism, a literary aggressiveness of bad manners. . . . The second one, which influences destructively the literary language, is that peculiar satyrical manner, which Saltykov has called "the slavish Aesop's language/ . . . Clarity and simplicity of speech become more and more rare attributes. . . . The third and perhaps the principal reason for the decline of the language is the growing ignorance of the literati. . . . But complete ignorance is sometimes better than complete knowledge. Pushkin maintained that one can learn good Russian from the women bakers of unleavened bread for the churches in Moscow. And, indeed, there are persons, though completely deprived of education, but retaining close ties with the common people, who speak a pure, even a beautiful language. But in the milieu of half-ignorant, half-educated persons, already torn from the common people and having not yet reached culture, in that milieu, which produces all the literary artisans, all of the democratic journalistic bohemians, the language deadens and decomposes.4 [Yet he felt that there was hope, when he wrote:] Notwithstanding the bore- dom, the lack of action, the spoiling of the language, the journalistic anarchy, the absence of great talents and the incomprehensible immobility, we are living through one of the most important phases in the historical develop-

2Viacheslav Ivanov, "O veselom remesle i umnom veselii," Zolotoe Runo, no. 5, 1907, p. 54.

3D. S. Merezhkovsky, Avtobiograhya, in a. A. Vengerov, ed., tiusskaya literatura XX veka, vol. I, Moscow, 1914, p. 292.

4D. S. Merezhkovsky, O prichinakh upadka i o novykh techeniyakh sovre- mennoy russkoy literatury," Polnoe sobrante sochineniy, vol. XV, Petersburg- Moscow, 1912, pp. 222-3, 224.



THE SILVER AGE OF RUSSIAN POETRY 68

ment of Russian literature. True, it is a subterranean, half-conscious and, like all creative forces at the beginning, an invisible current. Mysterious growths of new life, of new poetry feebly, but invincibly, are making their way toward the open, while on the surface the triumph of literary vulgarity and barbarism is reaching its ultimate limits.5

And Merezhkovsky's analysis was right. In the year following the publication of this critical study, there appeared a slender volume of some fifty pages entitled Russian Symbolists. Two more issues under the same title appeared later in the same year and early in 1895. Their editor and principal contributor was Valéry Yakovlevich Briusov (1873-1924), then a student at the University of Moscow. Since the books intended to shock the public, they were filled with eroticism and contained the startling one-line "poem" by Briusov: "Oh, cover thy pale legs!" Needless to say, they had an immediate succès de scandale. Overnight Briusov became "famous," but for five years after no periodical would publish his poetry or prose.6 Eventually, after he studied the great Russian poets, beginning with Pushkin and ending with Tiutchev and Fet, whom he "re-discovered" for the Russian public,7 Briusov mastered the technique of Russian verse. He became an accomplished craftsman, but he was never a poet by the Grace of God. Yet he was a symbolist in the real sense of the word, since the greatest influence on his work was exercised by Verlaine, whose Romances sans paroles he had translated as early as 1894, and Verhaeren, whose city themes play an important part in Briusov's later poetry. But self-made poet though he was, he reached considerable mastery, particularly in form, even if his poetry remained cold and detached and lacked that inner fire which moves the reader. Writing about him, Innokenty Annensky, a poet and a sensitive critic, said: "Briusov's poetry is clad in parnassian garments, but at the same time it is full of tests, trials and achievements, and only a careless reader will not see how often all these seekings were painful, difficult and even full of torture for the poet. . . . His torture-filled testings appear to me to be permeated with lack of confidence not only in his own forces, but also in that which he generally does, wants to do and likes to do."8 Yet undoubtedly Briusov was a poet, though he never achieved

Hbid., pp. 303-4. 6Oleg A. Maslenikov, The Frenzied Poets: Audrey Biely and the Russian

Symbolists, Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1952, p. 20. 7Leonid Strakhovsky, "Fet i Akhmatova," Novy Zhurnal, no. 49, June, 1957,

p. 261. 8In. Annensky, "O sovremennom lirizme," Apollon, no. 1, 1909, pp. 25, 30.




the musicality or reached the sublime heights of some of his contemporaries, as the following poem reveals:

Terzinas on Book Catalogues Ye lists and catalogues still haunt my brain; Before me I behold you, face on face, Near me afresh on this unpeopled plain. Your secrets long ago I held in chase! By lamp-light o'er the catalogue I bent, To probe for books that scarce had left a trace; To track down names; by syllables I went, Sipping at words of foreign tongues with care, Surmising much from briefest document. Poets and epochs I upraised in air On scanty cue, as oft, to wit, would be: "No author's name" or "Bound in calf" or "Rare." And now, meseems, a skeleton are ye Of all that lived in ages long ago, That beckons with a mocking nod to me. And says: "I, having somewhat yet to grow, Of still more bones and joints must be possessed, I crave for books, that words may overflow. "Ponder and dream, and be renown your quest! 'Tis one to me, an imbecile or sage, Produce of wisdom or a merry jest. "For all things their established term I gauge. Create, and from the dreams whereon you pore, I'll keep a few scant verses, age on age. "Naught in omnipotence can stand before My verdict. I allot the deathless bays And crown a world of phantasy and lore." Thus quoth the wraith to me on silent ways, And as to earth with humble kiss I fall While the moon swiftly dies before my gaze, O transient glory, I accept your call!^

But what Briusov lacked in musicality and genuine inspiration, Constantine Dmitrievich Balmont (1867-1943), the most musical of Russian poets, possessed in profusion. It is to him more, perhaps, than to any of his contemporary Russian symbolists that the following words of Viacheslav Ivanov apply: The principal merit of decadentism, as an intimate art within the confines

9P. Selver, Modern Russian Poetry, London, 1917, pp. 21-3.




of poetry, was that simple and at the same time infinitely complex and minute undertaking through which the most modern poets have separated poetry from "literature" (remembering Verlaine's "de la musique avant toute chose'') and attached it once more, as a fullfledged member and sister, to the ring of arts: music, painting, sculpture, dance. Indeed, only recently there was a time when verses seemed to be only a form of literature and were therefore subject to the general principles of verbal and logical canons. The decadents realised that poetry has its own language and its own laws; that much that is irrational from the point of view of literature in general is rational in poetry as a specific art of the word or a specific word. Hence poetry has re-acquired, as its ancient patrimony, a large part of the possessions of which it had been deprived by literacy.10

When Balmont's second book of verse, entitled Under Northern Skies, appeared in 1894, he was immediately acclaimed as an outstanding representative of the new movement. Balmont used all the techniques and tricks of versification, such as alliterations, inner rhymes, assonances, repetition (often of a whole line), sonorous dactylic rhymes, in order to enhance the musicality of his verse. In the words of Oleg Maslenikov, "he showed the public and his fellow poets alike the musical potentialities of Russian verse. The mellifluence, ease, and natural grace of his style soon conquered the most stubborn critics of aestheticism in poetry/'11

In a poem entitled "The Reeds/' Balmont used alliteration to great effect. Words were chosen which contained the Russian letter "sh" in order to convey the sound of swishing reeds (in Russian kamyshi) in the breeze. Thus the second line contains four words out of five with the letter "sh" and even the fifth has the letter "ch" which is akin to "sh": "Chut9 slyshno, bezshumno shurshat kamyshi." Of course it is impossible to render such effect in translation, but Mr. Selver has conveyed the eerie feeling of the poem, retaining the original meter, the rhyming sequence and, at times, even the alliterations:

When midnight has come on the desolate slough, Scarce heard are the reeds, so softly they sough. Of what do they whisper and talk to and fro? For what are the flamelets amongst them aglow? They shimmer, they glimmer, and once more they wane, Then the wandering light is enkindled again. When midnight has come, then the reeds are aquake; They harbour the toad and the hiss of the snake.

10V. Ivanov, "O veselom," Zolotoe Runoy no. 5, 1907, pp. 53-4. ^Maslenikov, The Frenzied Poets, pp. 22-3.




In the slough is aquiver a perishing gaze: 'Tis the purple-hued moon that forlornly decays. There is odour of slime. And the soddenness crawls. The marsh will allure and engulf as it mauls. "But whom? And for what?" say the reeds to and fro, "For what are the flamelets amongst us aglow?" But the moon that forlornly and mutely decays Cannot tell. But yet lower she settles her gaze. 'Tis the sigh of a perishing soul that by now The reeds softly raise as they mournfully sough.12

And in another poem Balmont used repetition to great effect: I came into this world to see the sunshine,

The sky-line's bluish lights. I came into this world to see the sunshine,

And mountain-heights. I came into this world to see the ocean,

The valley's rich array. I in a single gaze saw worlds in motion, -

Where I held sway. I triumphed o'er oblivion's chill concealment,

I shaped my pondering. Filled was my every moment with revealment,

I ever sing. My pondering was roused by tribulation, -

But thus my love was won. Who is my like in strength of tune-creation?

Not one, not one. I came into this world to see the sunshine,

And when day's wane is nigh, Then will I sing . . . then will I sing of sunshine,

Before I die.13

Even though it does not make much sense, it is musical poetry. As revealed already in this poem, Balmont used the personal pronoun a great deal, as did most of his contemporary Russian symbolists, and especially Briusov. This is an obvious indication that the new poetic movement was sure of itself and did not suffer from excess humility. In this vein the following poem of early Balmont can be probably considered as characteristic of the whole new trend which broke deliberately with the immediate past:

I am choiceness of Russian, so stately of mien, The poets before me my heralds have been,

12Selver, Modern Poetry, pp. 9-11. iHbid., p. 11.




I the first in this tongue subtle byways revealed, Strains both tuneful and wrathful, and wistful I wield.

I, - a rending asunder, I, - a sporting of thunder, I, - a stream, finely-spun, I, - for all and for none.

Rills plashing in foam, that are rivenly merging, The jewels unblemished, of earth's matchless purging, The summons of woodlands in verdure of May, All I grasp, all I take, and I bear all away.

Young, as dreams, evermore, Strong because I adore Both myself and the rest, I,- the verse choicely stressed.14

Thus was Russian symbolism born and launched on its ever expand- ing career in revolt against the drabness, the monotony, and the sentimental pessimism of the preceding era, ready to enhance and embellish the rhymed word and to lift it from base verse to the heights of poetry. In the appraisal of Nicholas Gumilyov, "Russian symbolists had set for themselves a difficult but lofty task- to bring our native poetry out of a Babylonian captivity formed by petty ideals and by prejudice, a captivity in which it had lingered for almost half a century."15 And this they achieved. As poets are essentially indi- vidualists, Russian symbolists varied a great deal one from another, yet they all had in common "the aristocratic thirst for the rare and for the hard-obtainable," in the words of Gumilyov.16 This aristocratic characteristic of symbolism, in the opinion of one of the theoreticians of the movement, "is equally part of it as a purely aesthetic phenomenon (subject, style, method, technique) as well as a concept of ideas and of oneness in the complexity of experience (the reversal of the general consciousness of our epoch, the re-evaluation of culture), and as a theoretical structure (the ideology of symbolism, the re- evaluation of metaphysics and of science)."17 As such, of course, symbolism had many facets, but essentially it was divided according to geographical locality: that of Moscow, led by Briusov, and that of St. Petersburg, represented by Viacheslav Ivanov, Fyodor Sologub, and Alexander Blok, with Andrey Bely flitting between the two.

uibid., p. 7. 15N. Gumilyov, Pis ma o russkoy poezu, Apollon, no. ö, 1910, p. 59. 16Gumilyov, "Naslediye simvolizma i akmeizm," Apollon, no. 1, 1913, p. 42. i^Ellis [L. L. Kobylinsky], Russkie simvolisty, Moscow, 1910, p. 31.




Viacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (1866-1949) appeared on the Russian literary horizon in 1903. In that year his first book of poetry, Guiding Stars, was published and immediately attracted attention. His lyrics combined classical Greek form with the most modern symbolist methods; their contents were full of esoteric mysteries and longings for Eros. This was natural, in a way, since Ivanov was a classical scholar by training and had long studied under Theodor Mommsen, the eminent German classicist. And although Innokenty Annensky wrote that "the pedantism of Viacheslav Ivanov hinders the understanding of his poetry,"18 he was a genuine poet and he had very definite ideas about symbolism. To him symbolism "appears as a first and nebulous remembrance of the sacred language of priests and prophets of old, who attributed once upon a time to the words of the popular tongue a special, a mysterious meaning, revealed to them alone, because only they understood the correlation between the hidden world and the limits of experience open to all."19 Ivanov worshipped Beauty and believed that "symbolism fuses the consciences so that they mutually give birth 'in beauty/ The aim of love, according to Plato, is *birth in beauty/ Plato's representation of the ways of love is a definition of symbolism. From falling in love with the beautiful body, the soul, while growing, reaches the love for God. When the aesthetic is experienced erotically, an artistic creation becomes symbolistic. The savouring of beauty, like the falling in love with the beautiful flesh, becomes the first step of an erotic ascendance. The meaning of an artistic creation, thus experienced, becomes inexhaustible. The symbol is the creative beginning of love and the guide is Eros/'20 But Ivanov's poetry was devoid of the sensational, crude and, at times, vulgar eroticism of Briusov. He possessed taste, a sense of measure and great erudition. Hence it is understandable that when he and his wife, Lidia Zinovyeva-Annibal, a writer in her own name, established themselves in St. Petersburg in 1905, their seventh-floor penthouse apart- ment, soon known as "The Tower," became the centre of literary, artistic and intellectual life in the capital of Russia. Many a budding poet or writer, after receiving the host's accolade at the famous Wednesday's meetings, was launched on a literary career, as Ivanov seemed to be recognized as an unfailing critic and arbiter. This "reign" lasted until 1912, when Ivanov went abroad and, after returning to Russia, settled in Moscow.

18Annensky: "O sovremennom," Apollon, no. 1, 1909, p. 16. 19Viach. Ivanov, Zavety simvolizma, Borozdu i mezhi, Moscow, 1916, p. 127. ^Viach. Ivanov, "Mysli o simvolizme," Ibid., p. 149.




Ivanov's poetry is difficult to translate. Here is my own rendition of a typical example, describing the mood of an evening:

A murky dusk lay by the roadside And silence fell.

Heat-lightning flashes shimmeringly glide; In heaven's well

The stars' sparse glimmers barely seen. A distant plight -

The toad's song. Someone's steps have been So light, so light.

Numb is the life, hexed once upon a time; The bleary field

And the copse form by wand sublime A mystic shield.

Numb in the heart, closed once upon a time, Is love's dark fear;

But waits for thee the tender breath of prime From far and near.

Quite a contrast to Ivanov is presented by Fyodor Sologub ( 1863- 1927), pseudonym of Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov. Sologub, whose education was limited to a teachers' college and who spent twenty-five years of his life as a school teacher and administrator, lacks Ivanov's erudition and mystic insight, but on the other hand, his verse is more musical and daring in form. He is one of the few Russian poets who have used hyper-dactylic rhymes, that is, rhyming four syllables ( Briusov was the only one to use hyper-hyper-dactylic rhymes, rhyming five syllables ) and many of his poems through the use of alliterations and the gradual shortening of successive lines sound like exhortations at pagan rites. He was called a "satanist," because he believed that this world is dominated by the devil. This philosophy or outlook on life is starkly expressed in the following poem:

The Devil's Swing Beneath a shady pine Upon a river's strand The Devil jogs a swing With grim and shaggy hand. He laughs and jogs the board Forwards - backwards - Forwards - backwards - It shakes and creaks and bends, It strains and nearly rends The bough beneath the cord. Up goes the flying board!




Down with a swish it comes! Holding his sides, the Devil Laughs like a kettle of drums. I cling, I clutch, I swing Forwards - backwards - Forwards - backwards - I wriggle and I snuggle And all the time I struggle To get a chance to spring. An imp on an upper bough Laughs from out of the blue: "You're caught upon the swing. Swing on! The Devil with you!" A herd of imps below Whirl in a hullabaloo: "You're caught upon the swing. Swing on! The Devil with you!" I know the Devil won't leave The swing by the river's strand, Until I'm brushed aside With one sweep of his hand, Until the swinging cord Is finally rubbed through And mother earth at last Turns up to me anew. I soar above the pine, Down to the earth I go. Push, Devil, push the swing Higher . . . higher . . . ho!21

Sologub was essentially a "brainy" poet and one has to agree with Annensky that "candidness was intrinsically, organically alien to him."22 But a poet he was and at one time exercised considerable influence on his contemporary symbolists, those particularly who were attracted by his "satanism." This influence was felt, though briefly, even by Alexander Blok.

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (1880-1921) was, probably, the most talented of the Russian symbolists. "Blok's perceptions are vague," wrote Annensky, "his words elastic and his verse, it seems, cannot be anything but symbolistic."23 Indeed, much of Blok's poetry follows Verlaine's recommendation: "pas de la couleur, rien que la nuance." But while the form was of the French, the substance was Germanic, following Goethe's lines: "alles Vergängliche ist nur ein

21Gerard Shelley, Modern Poems from Russia, London, 1942, pp. 41-2. '"Annensky, O sovremennom, Apollon, no. 1, 1909, p. 34. mbid., p. 23.




Gleichnis." Is this, perhaps, due to Blok's original, though far removed, German origin? At any rate the methods of the symbolists were admirably suited to Blok's talent and poetic vision. These methods are thus characterized by Sir Maurice Bowra :

Everything that happens must be stated in metaphor and symbol; all that matters is the subtle recreation of a mood, an atmosphere. Put into prose the poems mean little, and they resist attempts at translation. Their effect is almost purely magical. They create a feeling of an intimate and mysterious relation which cannot be fully understood. Even natural facts like the coming of spring become in them part of a ritual, and the language of devout love, at times remarkably personal, is never addressed to a living person. Nothing can be "plus vague et plus soluble dans Vair" than this poetry. [And he adds:] Valéry has said that a poet's task is simply to transfer to another his own state. That is what Blok does. Through his rhythms and the power of his words he conveys his own unique, extremely private state.24

Even more to the point was Gumilyov, who wrote when reviewing a book of Blok's poems: "Usually a poet gives to his readers his works. Blok gives himself."25

In his poetry, as in his life, Blok pursued the eternal feminine, "das Etvig-W eibliche" of Goethe, without ever finding it. This is reflected in the following poem, a favourite of mine, in which the sequence of feminine and masculine rhymes and the profusion of open vowels and of "1" 's and V 's particularly in the opening stanza give the effect of a majestic overture, impossible to render in a translation, of course:

Glory and gallant deeds and fame forgetting, I lived awhile in lands of misery, And saw your picture in its simple setting Across the table shining back to me. But time passed by, and from my home you wandered; I flung the holy ring to nightly space. Your fortunes to another you surrendered, And I forgot the beauty of your face. The swarms of days accursed came on me falling; My life was rent by passion and by wine. Before God's shrine I knelt, your face recalling, And cried to you, as youth that once was mine. I cried to you; no word came back replying. And tears I shed, but still you did not come.

24Bowra, The Heritage, p. 147. 25Gumilyov, "Pis'ma," Apollon, no. 8, 1912, p. 60.




In a blue cloak you wrapped yourself up, sighing, And on a rainy night you went from home. I know not what a refuge may enfold you, My darling and my sweetheart, in your pride; I slumber deep and in my dreams behold you, In that blue cloak in the wet night outside. No use to dream of days renowned or tender; All now is finished, youth has had its day. That face that shone once in its simple splendour Across the table, I have put away.26

Here the woman and her picture are identified, and the events described have no sequence in time, but the mood is created and the simple sentences become full of meaning. In another poem, written entirely with masculine rhymes, the words and the action are much more fluid, much more nebulous, conveying the dreamlike irreality of the entire piece. In this poem Blok uses a broken metre, later per- fected by the acmeists, which gives to the verse a sort of syncopation, impossible to reproduce in translation:

Tender-grey the day was, grey as sorrow, and Pallid grew the evening, like a woman's hand. In the house at evening they had hid their hearts, Faint with tender sorrow, - grief that ne'er departs. Hands were clasped together, eyes forebore to meet, Unto glistening shoulders laughing lips retreat. Garb that bares the shoulders, serpent-like array, White as scaly raiment in the waning day. O'er the table-cover brow to brow inclined; O'er the glowing faces locks of hair were twined. Beat of hearts grew swifter, glances sore oppressed, In their thoughts the garden,- sultry, deep, at rest.

Mutely they together, as in covenant, stirred; Woman's white apparel on the steps was heard.

Mutely in the garden, tracelessly they fled, Softly in the heavens, shame its flush outspread. Then, perchance, a star fell, with a trail of red.27

As Blok's power as a poet grew he became more nebulous and more profound at the same time. In the words of Sir Maurice Bowra: "He wrote straight out of his emotions, and, being more emotional than

26C. M. Bowra, A Second Book of Russian Verse, London, 1948, pp. 67-68. Translated bv CM. Bowra.

27Selver, Modern Poetry, p. 17.




most men of his own or most other times, he covered a remarkable range."28 He had mastered the symbolist technique and he had infused it with a new content, which was pure art and of which even Verlaine would have been proud, as in this remarkable poem in which time and timelessness seem to merge in an everlasting quest for the real sense of life either as a fleeting dream or as the promise of eternity:

The hours and days and years are fleeting. I wish to drive a dream away, Give men and nature open greeting And dissipate my twilit day. There something flaps. Its glitter teases, (So shadows on the steps at night Make silhouettes when winter freezes, Then quickly fade away from sight) . A sword! It's gone. It was not needed. What made my arm grow weak and swoon? I call to mind pearls finely threaded That gleam at night beneath the moon. The frost is sorrowful and sickly, The sea is smooth beneath the snow . . . Eyes flash a shining horror quickly, An ancient horror - let me know. A voice? Not that. What was it falling? No dream, no phantom. Far from here It rang, then faded, ceased from calling And left the earth to disappear And die. But lips again were singing, And hours, or years, came passing by ... (Only the telegraphs were ringing On wires beneath the darkened sky.) Then suddenly with clear insistence A voice I know and understand Cries "Ecce Homo!" from the distance. Down falls my sword, trembles my hand. With stifling silk tied round me, fearful Lest blood should gush forth from my vein, I waited dutiful and cheerful And took no weapon up again. Now comes the hour. Of old I know it, Who thought, "I am no servant, no!" I tear the flowered silk and throw it. Gush forth, my blood, make red the snow!29

28Bowra, The Heritage, p. 154. 29Bowra, Second Book, pp. 71-2. Translated by C. M. Bowra.




Blok had a remarkable faculty for hearing sounds unperceivable by others. Many a critic and commentator had noticed this quality of perception. Blok himself had repeatedly referred in his diary to hearing the noise of time and of the coming revolution. But he could also hear silence. But to him silence was full of foreboding. In an essay entitled "Timelessness" he wrote:

Contemporary literature learned from the wizardry of Lermontov and Gogol, from the fallings of Dostoyevsky,- of deep, bottomless wisdom. Twisters pass by the side of the plain where we listen to Silence. Let us put our ear to the earth, so much part of us, so close to us: does the mother's heart still beat? No, beautiful silence has descended upon us, we feel warm and cosy under its protectively lowered wings, as if the prophecy about the Other Consoler has already been fulfilled, because there is nothing more for us to care; we shall give everything away, because we are not sorry for anything and, perhaps, even not afraid. We are wise, because we are poor in spirit; we become orphans willingly and willingly we shall take a stick and a bundle and start trodding the Russian plains. Can a wanderer hear about the Russian revolution, about the cries of the hungry and of the downtrodden, about the capitals, the decadents, the government? No, because the land is wide and the sky high and the water deep, but human affairs will pass away unnoticeably and will be replaced by other affairs. . . . Wanderers, we shall hear only Silence.

And what if this whole earthly and Russian silence, the whole aimless freedom and the joy of ours is merely woven from a spider's web? If a fat female spider weaves and weaves the web of our happiness, of our life, of our reality, who is going to tear the web?

The most fearful demon is now whispering to us the sweetest words: let the beautiful violet glance of the Bride - the Nocturnal Violet shine eternally through the mist of the marshes; let the happiness of the rider, who rides in circles on a tired steed over the marshes under a large green star, flow silently.

Be it not so.30

In the silence of his day Blok heard the rumblings of the coming upheaval of 1917. He was for it and anticipated it with great expecta- tions. "Making a distinction between the real life of the spirit which he called culture," writes Sir Maurice Bowra, "and its dead formalisa- tion, which he called civilisation, Blok thought that the time had come for Western civilisation to collapse, and he believed that he heard it falling. He thought that it would soon be succeeded by the real and lively culture of the masses, released from the moribund traces of an effete humanism and in perfect harmony with the Spirit of Music."31 And Blok heard the music of revolution and joined it enthusiastically.

30Alexander Blok, "Bezvremenye," Zolotoe Runo, nos. 11-12, 1906, pp. 113-14. »ißowra, The Heritage, p. 170.




Consequently he wrote The Scythians, directed against the West, and The Twelve, glorifying the Red Guards, which is certainly blas- phemous. It was his personal destiny to die in the belief that he was wrong and that the revolution had cheated him if not betrayed him. Yet if he erred as a prognosticator or a prophet, Blok was undoubtedly a great poet and certainly the greatest of the Russian symbolists.

Andrey Bely (1880-1934), pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, was the most erratic and inconsistent of the symbolists. As a poet he does not rank with those already mentioned, but as a prose writer and theoretician of symbolism, he is probably the best that the movement has produced. "The great Russian poets," says Sir Maurice Bowra, "have in their different ways sung of their country. Of all European countries it is the one which most wins devotion, pity and anger from its sons."32 Andrey Bely had his share in this as exemplified by the following poem:

Russia Wail, element tossed by the tempest In pillars of thunderous fire: O Russia, my Russia, my Russia, Rage, rage, burn me up in thy pyre! For into thy fated destruction, Thy shrouded abysses, is borne A host of winged spirits like angels Whose dreams are as bright as the morn.

Then weep not, but kneel in devotion And pray in the hurricane's blaze, The thundering chorus of seraphs, The torrent of cosmical days.

Thy dry, barren wastes of dishonour, The seas of unquenchable tears, From light in His look, though He speak not, Will sparkle when Christ's face appears. Leave Heaven its girdle of Saturn, Its milky and silvery ways; And seethe, blaze like light in the tempest, Earth-ball, with thy fiery rays! O element, fiery, blazing, Rage, rage, let thy flames feed on me, O Russia, my Russia, my Russia, Messiah of days soon to be!33

Mlbid.. d. 165. 33Bowra, Second Book, pp. 88-9. Translated by C. M. Bowra.




The symbolist movement flourished until about 1909, when it under- went a deep crisis and was superseded by acmeism. But during its heyday it was represented by a number of publications whose circula- tion was not large, but whose influence on the development of Russian literature was dominant- The most important of these were the month- lies Vesy (1904-9), and Zolotoe Runo (1906-9), and the annual miscellany Severnye Tsvety (1901-4), Grif (1903-5) and Fakely ( 1906-7 ).34 By 1909 all of them had ceased publication and were superseded by the monthly Apollon (1909-17), which became the principal organ of the acmeists.

What caused the decline or crisis of Russian symbolism? In 1910 the symbolists themselves tried to diagnose the malaise. Viacheslav Ivanov wrote: "Until now symbolism complicated life and complicated art. From now on, if it is to be, it will simplify. Formerly the symbols were separate and dispersed, like a surface mine of precious stones (and from this was derived the dominance of lyric poetry); from now on symbolistic creations will be like symbols-monoliths. Formerly there was 'symbolisation'; from now there will be 'symbolics/ The monolithic 'Weltanschauung of the poet will discover it in him, whole and one."35 Blok, on the other hand, offered a different explanation: A symbolist is from the very beginning a teurg, i.e., a possessor of mysterious knowledge, behind which stands mysterious action; but he looks on this mystery, which only later appears to be universal, as his own. . . . Art is Hell. It was not in vain that V. Briusov gave this legacy to the artist: "As it did to Dante, the infernal flame must burn your cheeks." . . . What then happened to us? Why did the golden sword lose its glitter, why did the purple-blue worlds invade and merge with this world, creating chaos? . . . This is what happened: we were "prophets," but we wanted to become "poets." ... Is there or is there not a remedy to what happened to us? This is the question, in essence, to which applies another question: will there be or will there not be a Russian symbolism? . . . We have experienced the madness of other worlds, having demanded a miracle prematurely; the same thing happened, indeed, to the people's soul: it had demanded a miracle before it was time and it was reduced to ashes by the purple worlds of the revolution. But there is something indestructible in this soul, where it is yet an infant. . . . We must learn anew from the world and from that infant who is still alive in the scorched soul."36

To this Briusov replied: Symbolism wanted to be and always was only art. . . . Symbolism is a

34Maslenikov, The Frenzied Poets, p. 29. 35Ivanov, Zavety simvolizma, pp. 142-3. Original; italics. ¿»Alexander Blok, O sovremennon sostoyanu russkogo simvolizma, Apollon,

1910, no. 8, pp. 22, 27, 28, 29, 30. Original italics.




method of art, conceived in that school which was called "symbolistic." By this method art is differentiated from the rationalistic understanding of the world in science and from extra-rational attempts to penetrate its mysteries in mysticism. ... Is it possible that after art had been forced to serve science and society, it will now be forced to serve religion? Give it, at last, freedom! . . . Symbolism does not recognize itself guilty of those sins to which A. Blok confesses. Symbolists will remain poets, as they were all the time. . . . Viacheslav Ivanov and A. Blok are excellent poets, they have proved it to us. But whether they can become not only great, but merely "good" teurgs, is permissible to doubt. . . . What is consoling, however, is that up to this time the theories of V. Ivanov and of A. Blok did not prevent them from being true artists.37

Yet a minor symbolist poet, but a recognized theoretician of the movement, L. L. Kobylinsky-EUis, was aware of the seriousness of the crisis in a book also published in 1910: We must express our definite opinion on the question of the crisis of symbolism, viewing this phenomenon in all its importance and not shutting our eyes to the fact that some of its symptoms reveal it as a universal phenomenon. Of course, in Russia a whole series of specific causes especially sharpen and deepen this phenomenon. The great political and generally moral crisis of 1905-1906, which provoked a general unbalance and an unprecedented disintegration, the vagueness and instability of literary and ideological groupings in our yet culturally immature society, the easy and much too quick victory of symbolism and the absence of firmly unified opposition movements, which were unable to provoke a contrario the unified action of symbolism, the extreme chaotic state and individualistic tendencies of the principal leaders of the movement, generally characteristic of Russian undisciplined life, - all these elements contributed to the crisis of Russian symbolism. However, its internal, its principal cause is to be found not in these, but much deeper, where lay the source and the inevitability of the crisis of symbolism generally speaking. The latter consists in the instability of that general form into which symbolism cloaked itself from the beginning. . . . What then is the crisis of symbolism? A paroxysm or the agony?38

To this question Kobylinsky gave an answer that it was only a temporary state, an illness, and that symbolism would survive this crisis. Events, however, proved that he was wrong. No matter what the causes, symbolism had outlived itself. As Gumilyov, leader of the acmeists stated: "Symbolism was the result of the maturity of the human spirit when that spirit proclaimed that the world is what our conception of it is. But at present we cannot be symbolists. This is not an appeal, not a wish, but merely a certified fact."39

37Valery Briusov, "O 'rechi rabskoy', v zashchitu poezii," Apollon, 1910, no. 9, pp. 33-4. Original italics.

»»Ellis, Russkie sinwolisty, pp. 324-5. 30N. Gumilyov, "Zhizn stikha, Apollon, 1910, no. 7, p. 16.




So Russian symbolism came to the end of its journey, but it had played a major part in the renaissance of Russian poetry at the turn of the century. "The symbolist movement was, in fact, one of the peaks in the history of Russian culture," wrote Professor Maslenikov. "It opened a new era in Russian literature and restored lyrical poetry as an accepted, legitimate means of expression. Thanks to the symbolists, an ever increasing number of readers came to appreciate modernism in art and music, and the new verse forms of Russian poetry. If symbolism as a philosophy and a way of life failed, symbolism as an artistic method and artistic style won a complete victory and thereby became one of the most significant phenomena in the cultural history of Russia/'40 But now it was to be superseded by a vigorous young movement, born out of symbolism's own entrails, but ready to find its own new ways- acmeism, from the Greek word acme, which means: the highest degree of something, the flower, the flowering era-

"Acmeism arose from repulsion: away from symbolism, long live the living rose!" So wrote Osip Mandelstam, one of the leading poets of the movement.41 And "because the acmeists set forth as their goal in poetry a chiseled verse, a precision of images, an exactness of epithets, detachment, a rational approach to creation, and, above all, craftsmanship and the proper use of the word in its exact and not its transitory meaning, they brought to Russian poetry a clarity and vigour which it had not known since the times of Pushkin."42 Their leader was Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov (1886-1921). Student of French mediaeval literature at the Sorbonne, explorer of Abyssinia, whereto he went twice, soldier in the First World War, when he volunteered and was decorated twice with the Cross of St. George, then Russia's highest military decoration, a true knight without fear and reproach, a fine literary critic, but primarily a poet of divine inspiration, who led Russian poetry out of the impasse into which the symbolists had forced it inadvertently, Gumilyov replaced the vagueness, shadowiness, and uncertainty of symbolism, with the clarity, vigour, and manliness of acmeism. As Mandelstam wrote: "Acmeism is not only a literary, but also a social phenomenon in Russian history. With it a moral force was reborn in Russian poetry. ... So far the social pathos of Russian poetry reached only to the 'citizen,' but there is a greater conception than that of 'citizen'- the conception of 'manliness.' "43

^Maslenikov, The Frenzied Poets, p. 222. 41Osip Mandelstam, O prirode slova, Moscow, 1922, p. 11. 42Leonid I. Strakhovsky, Craftsmen of the Word- Three Poets of Modern Russia:

Gumilyov, Akhamatova, Mandelstam, Cambridge, Mass, 1949, p. 2. 4<JMandelstam, V pnrode, p. 12.




Starting in the folds of symbolism (Gumilyov dedicated his third book of poems, Pearls, "to my teacher- Valéry Briusov"), he gradually freed himself of its tenets. By the end of 1909 he had shaken off the last shackles of symbolism and found his own original way following Théophile Gautier 's famous pronouncement: "L'art robuste seul a l'éternité?' From then on his poetic talent grew and developed rapidly until his untimely death at the hands of Bolshevik executioners. His last book, The Pillar of Fire, was published shortly before his death. It contained twenty poems- each one a masterpiece. Here is one, entitled "Memory", which contains autobiographical and even pro- phetic elements :

Only serpents change their outward skin And permit their souls to grow and age. But alas! we men are not their kin, - We discard our souls and not the cage. Memory, who with a mighty hand Leads our lives to some uncertain aim, You will tell of those who lived and planned In this shape of mine, before I came. Number one: he loved the forest's dark, Little wizard, thin and rather plain, He knew every leaf and every bark, And spoke magic words to stop the rain. One wild dog and one wild tree he chose As his friends, to live with him and die. Memory, you never would suppose, Anyone could think that he was I. And the second loved the southern wind, Every noise, he said, was music sweet; He called life his girl who never sinned, And the world- a mat beneath his feet. I don't like him, nor his lust to shine As a god for mortals to adore; It was he who pinned the poet's sign On my modest dwelling's silent door. I prefer that freedom's knight and bowman, Sailor, roamer, hater of the crowds, Who could watch the skies and read their omen, Loved by oceans, envied by the clouds.

High upon the hills he built his tent, And his mules were strong and unafraid; Like some fragrant wine he drank the scent Of the land he was the first to tread.




Was it someone else, or was it he (Memory, you weaken more and more) , Who exchanged his happy liberty For the long awaited holy war? He knew nightmares in his endless quest, Thirst and hunger in the roadless maze; But St. George touched twice his brazen breast Which a bullet never dared to graze. I am now the stubborn architect, Jealous of my predecessors' fame, Trying arduously to erect The Cathedral that shall shine like flame. So my heart will burn and mind condemn, Till the glorious day when there will stand Golden walls of New Jerusalem In the pastures of my native land. Eerie winds will blow and bless the hour, And the skies will send a blinding ray From the planets, stars and suns in flower In the gardens of the Milky Way. Then a stranger with a hidden face Will appear, and I shall know and break, When I see the lion's kingly pace And the eagle flying in his wake. I shall know; and where the road divides I shall cry for help without reply . . . Only serpents can discard their hides, - We must change our souls - and see them die.44

Gumilyov was a perfectionist. In a remarkable article entitled "Life of the Verse," he gave a formula for what constitutes a perfect poem, when he wrote:

A poem must have thought and feeling, as without the first a lyric poem will be dead and without the second even an epic ballad will seem to be a boring unreality; it must have the softness of contour of a young body where nothing protrudes and nothing is lost, and the sharpness of a statue illumi- nated by the sun; it must have simplicity, because the future is open to it alone, and refinement as a living avowal of the heritage of all the joys and sorrows of past ages; and above all this - it must have style and gesture.

In style God shows himself through his own creation; the poet reveals himself, but a hidden self unknown even to himself, permitting one to guess the colour of his eyes, the shape of his hands. ... By gesture in a poem I understand such a placement of words, such a choice of vowels and consonants, of the speeding up and of the slowing down of rhythm,

44Bowra, Second Book, pp. 99-100. Translated by Y. Hornstein.




that the reader of the poem involuntarily adopts the pose of his hero, repeats his facial expressions and his body movements and thus, thanks to this imaginary transformation of his own body, feels the same things as the poet himself. . . .

A poem possessing the enumerated qualities, in order to be worthy of its name, must retain among them complete harmony, and, what is most important, must have been evoked to life not 'by the irritation of a captive thought* (Pushkin), but by an internal necessity which gives it a living soul - temperament. Besides, it must be perfect even to its faults. ... In one word, a poem must be a cast, a likeness of the beautiful human body, this highest form of imaginable perfection. After all, men have created even God himself according to their own image and likeness.45

These precepts were followed not only by Gumilyov, but also by the other poets of the acmeist school, and are still followed by some poets in Soviet Russia, although Gumilyov's works are prohibited there but circulated in mimeograph copies, as well as outside Russia. Of the former poets of the acmeist school, the most outstanding is Anna Akhmatova (1889- ), pseudonym of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, who was Gumilyov's first wife. Akhmatova is, undoubtedly, the greatest woman poet that Russia has produced. Her poetry does not touch upon deep human problems, also but rarely on important events; it is essentially an intimate, even an introspective poetry about woman's emotions and especially woman's self-sacrificing tragic love, as in the following:

You are always new and always hidden; More each day I yield to your desire. But your love, hard-hearted friend, has bidden Me to tests of iron and of fire. You forbid my song, forbid my laughter, Long ago you told me not to pray. But I care not for what happens after, If from you I am not cast away. From the earth and skies you would me sever; I live, and my songs have ceased to swell. 'Tis as if to my free soul for ever You had shut both Paradise and Hell.46

Akhmatova learned from the acmeists the precision of words and images, but she brought into her poetry herself new rhythms of syncopation, often approaching the peasant- woman's lament (babiy plach), and the ability to say much in a few words. Here is my rendition of

45N. Gumilyov, "Zhizn* stikha," Apollon, no. 7 1910, pp. 8-9. 4«Bowra, Second Book, p. 111. Translated by C. M. Bowra.




one such poem which in eight lines conveys the gamut and depth of emotion of a woman whose lover has left her:

I saw the friend to the entrance hall, I stood for a while in the golden dust. From the belfry nearby a gentle roll Of solemn sounds seemed to last and last. Discarded! That's an invented word - Am I a letter or bloom to discard? But the mirror's reflection is dim and blurred, And the eyes look already stern and hard.

In this little gem one finds, in the words of a Soviet critic, that "the psychic condition, the experience is not revealed directly, but only its symptoms are given in the pose, in the gesture, in the psychophysio- logical process which follows it, in the traces of actual objects"47 It is obvious that in this piece Akhmatova has fulfilled Gumilyov's formula for a perfect poem.

Akhmatova did not publish anything for seventeen years from 1923 to 1940. Then a new book of her poems appeared and in an article in the Literary Gazette entitled "On Reading Akhmatova" a Soviet critic after stating that "Akhmatova of 1940 still writes well. Perhaps even better than before,"48 quotes the following, here presented in my translation:

The Muse When nightly I await her silent coming, Life, seemingly, hangs on a single hair. What's freedom, youth, and honours so becoming, Before my guest with flute and features fair? She entered. Throwing off her azure mantle She looked at me and waited for my bid. I asked of her: "Did you dictate to Dante The stark Inferno?" She replied: "I did."

Curiously enough one finds in this poem a similarity with one of Fet's entitled "To the Muse."49 It is the only instance of Fet's influence on any acmeist poet.

Since 1946 Akhmatova has been barred from Soviet publications. But although her voice has been silenced for a second time, undoubtedly she continues writing, since a poet's voice cannot ever

4?B. V. Mikhailovsky, Russkaya literatura XX veka, Moscow, 1939, p. 335. 48V. Pertsov, "Chitaya Akhmatovu," Literaturnaya Gazeta, no. 38 (389), Nov.

10, 1940, p. 3. 49Strakhovsky, "Fet i Akhmatova, Novy Zhurnal, no. 49, June, 1957, pp. 261-4.




be silenced permanently. And one of these days, let us hope, the poetry of her later years may be available to her eager readers. (A few of her new poems appeared in a Soviet monthly, Moskva, in 1959. )

In the year 1907, a twenty-three year old student woke up one morning and, like Byron, found himself famous overnight. He was Sergey Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky (1884- ), who at one time was a friend of Gumilyov and a leading light of the acmeist movement. Gorodetsky still lives in the Soviet Union, but has not published any poetry since the late 1920's. His fame came with the publication of a slim volume of verse entitled Spring-Corn. Its lilting, singing lines, full of alliterations and repetitions, bore the unmistakable influence both of Balmont and of Russian folklore. Because of these qualities his verse was easily memorized and the following poem, particularly, was soon on everybody's lips:

Spring in the Convent Bells and sighs, bells slowly tolling Bells and mourning, bells and dreams. High and steep the hill-slopes rolling, Green the sloping hillside gleams. White the walls are bleached anew; So the Abbess bade them do. At the gate on sentinel Weeps a maid who tolls the bell.

Ah, the fields where 111 be free, Ah, the road, the road for flight! Bridge and clean fields waiting me, Holy Thursday's clean bright light! Ah, my light that brightly burned, 'Twas for him it died away. I was faint, my breath returned Hotter than my heart that day. How I quavered, how I quivered By the tall bridge parapet. Flame of candles shook and shivered, And our lips in kisses met. Where art thou whom then I kissed? Darling, where art thou, so kind? Ah, the haze of spring, the mist, Ah, for girlhood's quiet mind!

Bells and sighs, bells slowly tolling, Bells and mourning, bells and dreams. High and steep the hill-slopes rolling, Green the sloping hillside gleams. White the walls are bleached anew;




So the Abbess bade them do, Not in idleness to wait At the convent gate.50

At that time it seemed that a new literary star was born, but it proved to be only a meteor. Not such was the case of Osip Emiliyevich Mandelstam (1891-1945?), who like Akhmatova and Gorodetsky had also remained in Soviet Russia. Next to Gumilyov and Akhamatova he is the most talented and the most outstanding representative of the acmeist movement. Mandelstam's first published poetry appeared in the July-August 1910 issue of Apollon. "These poems were astonishing. Indeed, astonishing . . .," wrote Georgiy Ivanov- "When I read them I felt a knocking at my heart: 'Why did I not write them?' Such envy is a very characteristic feeling. Gumilyov considered that it evaluates 'the weight' of poetry more accurately than any analysis. If one has the feeling 'Why not I?'- you may be sure that the poetry is 'genuine.' "51 One of these poems was the following, here in my translation:

A body's given me- what then to do with it, When it is so my own, so very definite? Whom should I thank, Oh! tell me, for the bliss, The quiet bliss to live and breathe like this? I am the gardener and the bloom as well, In nature's prison I do not rebel.

My breathing and my warmth have been impressed Upon the windows of unendingness. Their pattern will be set in rigid rhymes, Unrecognisable from recent times. And let the moment's turbidness flow down- The lovely pattern's lines it could not drown.

Here the personal pronoun, unlike in the poetry of the symbolists, is really impersonal. This impersonal quality of Mandelstam's poetry was noticed by critics both before and after the revolution. Zhirmunsky wrote in 1916: "Using the terminology of Friedrich Schlegel, one may call Mandelstam's verse not a poetry of life, but a poetry of poetry (die Poesie der Foesie), i.e., a poetry which has as its subject not life itself as perceived directly by the poet, but someone else's artistic conception of life."52 And the Soviet critic Selivanovsky commented twenty years later: "Mandelstam's poetry is not a direct reflection of life, but

50Bowra, Second Book, p. 90. Translated by C. M. Bowra. 51Georgiy Ivanov, Peterburgskiya zimy, Paris, 1928, p. 113. 52V. Zhirmunsky, "Preodolevshie simvolizm," Russkaya MysV, no. 12, 1916,

pp. 43_4.




a reflection of its reflection in art."53 This quality is clearly revealed in the following gem, also in my translation:

Thy image, wavering tormenting, I could not in the fog discern. "Oh, Lord!" I cried, my slip lamenting, Nor thinking in my deep concern. God's name, its wings unfurling holy, Flew out of my oppressed breast. In front- thick fog is rolling slowly, Behind - an empty cage unblest.

Mandelstam loved "heavy," ponderous words and chose them with care as a stonemason would choose his stones when building a cathedral. Hence I called him "architect of the word." And it is significant that his first collection of poems was entitled Stone. But Mandelstam chose carefully not only his words, but also his images. Yet he could be immensely moving as in this beautiful, haunting poem about the former capital of Russia, written after the revolution and presented here in my rendition:

On fearful heights - an erring light. But is it thus a star is hieing? Translucent star, the erring light, Your kin, Petropolis, is dying. On fearful heights burn earthy dreams; An emerald star is slowly flying. If you are sky's and water's kin, Your kin, Petropolis, is dying. A monstrous ship on fearful heights Unfurls its wings all space defying. Oh, emerald star! In great distress Your kin, Petropolis, is dying. Translucent spring o'er Neva's night Broke down. Eternity is crying. If you're Petropolis, oh star, Your town, Petropolis, is dying.

Mandelstam wrote and published his poetry in Soviet Russia through the twenties and early thirties. After that his name disappeared from the pages of Soviet periodicals and even the date of his death, pre- sumably in a concentration camp, is uncertain. But in the words of a sensitive critic, "Mandelstam's place as one of the most outstanding poets of our time is firmly established and generally recognized. The high art of the word, linked as it is with an 'instinctive restraint of

53A. Selivanovsky, Ocherki pò istorii russkoy sovetskoy poezii, Moscow, 1936, p. 60.




speech/ gives his poems a unique and exclusive charm."54 Indeed, as I have said before, "together with Gumilyov and Akhmatova, he forms the immortal trinity on the poetical Olympus of Russia's literary renaissance of the twentieth century."55

But the influence of acmeism was not confined to certain poets in Soviet Russia. Naturally, it was felt by a number of Russian émigré poets, among whom the most outstanding was Georgiy Vladimirovich Ivanov (1894-1958), a former pupil and friend of Gumilyov, who carried the acmeist tradition into our midst. When reviewing his first book, which appeared in 1911, Gumilyov wrote: "The thing which attracts one's attention in the book of Georgiy Ivanov is the verse. It is rare among beginners in poetry to find it so refined, at times impetuous and rapid, more often just lingering, but always in con- formity with the theme of the poem. Therefore, each poem in reading gives an almost physical feeling of satisfaction. When reading on, one can find other important merits: an unquestionable taste displayed even in the boldest attempts; an unexpectedness of themes and a kind of graceful 'foolishness' in that measure which was demanded by Pushkin."56 This appreciation can best be illustrated by the following poem in my translation:

In the middle of September Cold and changeable is the weather. Skies are like a curtain. And nature Is full of theatrical splendour. Every stone, every blade of grass, Which under the wind is moving, Like one out of Maeterlink's plays, In wonderful whispers says: - I love thee, I love and die . . . - Like wax, like smoke is my heart . . . - Oh, soon to a new blue sky - With swans we shall also depart . . . In autumn when the eyes are mist, When thoughts are confusion, the heart is ice - Sweet 'tis to listen to this dying tryst While gazing at the stagnant water's bice. And sweet 'tis to walk o'er the yellow rug With the head so light and ready to spin, Absent minded to light a match in the wind And to throw it away with a shrug.

MKn. D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, "O. Mandelstam: shum vremeni," Sovremennyya Zapiski, vol. XXV, 1925, p. 541.

55Strakhovsky, Craftsmen, p. 97. 5öGumilyov: Fis ma, Apollon, nos. Í3-4, 1912, p. lui.




Georgiy Ivanov left Russia in 1922 and settled in France. Although emigration has often stilted the creative abilities of many writers, particularly of poets, his talent grew and matured. With the passing of years, his vocabulary became more terse, his verse more precise, as in this soul-rendering poem about Russia, also in my translation:

Russia is gladness. Russia is light. Or is there any Russia in this night? And o'er the Neva the sun did not set? And Pushkin on the snow had never bled? Yes, there's no Petersburg or Kremlin oft rebuilt, But only snow and snow, and field and field . . . Snow, snow and snow . . . And night is long. And never will there come a spring along. Snow, snow and snow . . . And night is dark. And never will a dawn its ending mark. Russia is stillness. Russia is dust. Or is now Russia only fear, mistrust? A rope, a bullet - all in icy gloom, And music sending mind and soul to doom. A rope, a bullet, and a convict's dawn O'er that for which no designation's drawn.

Although in the last decade or so Georgiy Ivanov had become more of an "expressionist," he was until his recent death the outstanding representative abroad of the acmeist school, because while his themes and philosophy had changed, his technique stemmed from Gumilyov's precepts. Of course, there are other able and talented poets among us, who preserve the acmeist tradition, but as I wrote in an article about Georgiy Ivanov, he was "a true paragon of verse."57

The Silver Age of Russian poetry, inaugurated by the symbolists and continued by the acmeists, came to an untimely end as a result of the revolutionary upheaval. It is doubtful whether Russian symbolism will ever be revived, because essentially it was alien to Russian poetry. But because "the acmeists considered as their principal aim the preservation of the verse as such," in the words of the critic Eikhenbaum, "and their principal concern was the balance of all its elements- rhythmic as well as of meaning,"58 acmeism will be the leaven which will regenerate Russian poetry when at last it will be free.

57Leonid I. Strakhovsky, "Georgi Ivanov- Paragon of Verse," Russian Review, Jan., 1949, p. 7.

58B. Eikhenbaum, Anna Akhmatova, Petersburg, 1923, p. 66.

University of Toronto



40866067

Documents

Transcript of 40866067