Россия и Запад
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The goal of this essay is to show that the much longer-lived but more subtle creative rivalry between Pasternak and Akhmatova was vitally important for the development of Pasternak’s art, as well sustaining the legacy of the Russian religious renaissance during Stalin’s terror. Akhmatova’s and Pasternak’s poetic conversation converges in two of the poets’ greatest works, both written in deepest secret, Akhmatova’s cycle, «Requiem», composed in the late 1930s, and Pasternak’s Nobel-prize-winning novel, «Doctor Zhivago», written in the late 1940s and early 1950s, another period of gathering persecution. This story proceeds in three episodes: 1) Akhmatova’s bold poetic «opening the Bible» in the years of a young and virulently anti-religious Soviet society and Pasternak’s overt dismissal of this gesture; 2) Akhmatova’s fearless witness to Stalin’s terror, which Pasternak seemingly ignores; and finally 3) Akhmatova’s late-life quarrel with one of Pasternak’s most famous religious poems [341] .
341
For a good overview of the personal aspects of the Akhmatova — Pasternak relationship, see: Ivanova N. Peresekaiuschiesia paralleli. Boris Pasternak i Anna Akhamatova:. Znamia 9 (2001);Ivanova does not deal with poetic and religious themes.
Akhmatova reached full poetic maturity in the awful years of the Russian Civil War, especially at the end, when her estranged husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilev, was shot August 1921 as a White counterrevolutionary. In one of her greatest books,
In contrast to Mayakovsky’s irreverent, aggressive Christ, Akhmatova describes the Russian saints emerging from their icon covers and returning to their village homes:
И выходят из обители, Ризы древние отдав. Чудотворцы и святители, Опираясь на клюки. Серафим — в леса Саровские Стадо сельское пасти, Анна — в Кашин, уж не княжити, Лен колючий теребить.The figure of the Mother of God offers a transition to Akhmatova’s ensuing biblical poems that bring alive three Old Testament women characters: «The Mother of God sees them off, / Wraps her son in a scarf, / An old beggar’s one / Dropped by the Lord’s porch» [342] . In «Lamentation» we see that Akhmatova is already moving from her earlier conscribed role as «poet of the private chamber» into the public sphere [343] . This milestone is best captured in «Lot’s Wife», written 1922–1924, in which Akhmatova foregrounds the wife. Lot’s wife is pictured following her husband and an angel away from Sodom, when she starts to feel anxious:
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Akhmatova A. The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova: 2 vols. Bilingual edition / Trans. J. Hemschemeyer. Somerville, MA Zephyr, 1990. Vol. 1. P. 570–572.
343
Naiman A. A Guest upon the Earth. P. 19.
But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her:
Но громко жене говорила тревога: Не поздно, ты можешь еще посмотреть На красные башни родного Содома, На площадь, где пела, на двор, где пряла, На окна пустые высокого дома, Где милому мужу детей родила.The poet then speaks up for this minor, almost non-existent, Old Testament figure:
Кто женщину эту оплакивать будет? Не меньшей ли мнится она из утрат? Лишь сердце мое никогда не забудет Отдавшую жизнь за единственный взгляд [344] .344
Citations from Akhmatova’s poems see: Ахматова А. Сочинения: В 2 т. М., 1990. This one: Т. 1. С. 147–148.
«Lot’s Wife» is often read as an allegory for Akhmatova’s sorrow at the loss of her vanished world of St. Petersburg, in which, as she would put it in Requiem, she was the «merry sinner». More importantly, Akhmatova infuses the single famous line from Genesis 19:26 («But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt») with the pain of losing a beloved and happy home. The poem’s real strength comes from Akhmatova’s complex reading of the lesson of Luke 17:32–33, which derives from the story of Lot’s wife: «Remember Lot’s wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it». As a poet sympathetic to the suffering of Lot’s wife, Akhmatova is at once saving and losing her own life. On one hand, she refuses to «save» herself by leaving Russia — in contrast to Lot and his wife, who did leave Sodom — to live a more secure life abroad. On the other, she insists on mourning the loss of her cultural home in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and preserving it in memory in a poem that is now a classic of Russian poetry. It is worth pointing out parenthetically that after 1917 until the 1950s Akhmatova had no actual home of her own but camped out with various friends, spouses, and lovers [345] . In thus «losing» her life, Akhmatova did preserve it in the annals of great poetry.
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See: Ivanova N. Peresekaiuschiesia paralleli. Boris Pasternak i Anna Akhamatova: Иванова H. Пересекающиеся параллели // Знамя. 2001. № 9:Ivanova compares Akhmatova and Nabokov, two great, homeless Russian writers.
To convey the impression these poems made on the people who heard them at a time, in which Scripture was forced inexorably into oblivion, we recall the words of the great memoirist and friend to both Akhmatova and Pasternak, Lidiya Chukovskaya The Bible, she wrote in her memoirs, was «dead to me — but Akhmatova’s „Biblical Verses“: „Lot’s Wife“… resurrect the Bible [Bibliiu voskreshaiut]» [346] . In contrast, in 1924, when the poems appeared, the not very approving Formalist critic, Iurii Tynianov wrote that in these poems «the Bible, which used to lie on her table, an accessory to the room, has become the source of her imagery» [347] . In his view, Akhmatova’s poetry thereby became tendentious and flat.
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Чуковская Л. Записки об Анне Ахматовой. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1980. Т. 2. 1952–1962. С. 391.
347
Тынянов Ю. Промежуток (1924) // Поэтика. История литературы. Кино. М.: Наука, 1977. С. 175.
Publishing these poems was a bold move on Akhmatova’s part, a gesture of non-acceptance to a regime that increasingly demanded unerring fealty. It was partly this open animation of biblical figures that made Akhmatova suspect in the eyes of the Bolshevik authorities, an act for which she would be condemned to public silence for nearly two decades. After a 1924 resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party not to arrest Akhmatova but also not to publish her, Akhmatova «threw herself into reading, or to be more exact, into the study of the Bible, the ancients, Dante, Shakespeare, French and English poets of the 19th century, and contemporary European and American literature» [348] . Out of this long silence and serious study would come an altered Akhmatova, no longer the «nun who crosses herself as she kisses her beloved» but the moral voice of her people and witness to the horrors of her time [349] . Hers became «people’s poetry» without ever becoming officially accepted, and certainly had much greater truth value because it was never officially accepted [350] .
348
Naiman A. A Guest upon the Earth. P. 17.
349
Reeder R. Introduction // The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova P. 7.
350
Naiman A. A Guest upon the Earth. P. 19.
Pasternak’s journey to the status of national poet passed by another route — first embracing the revolution, until he began to reflect on the misfortune sown by the new regime. He shot to fame in 1922 with the appearance of his first book of poems, «My Sister Life». Iurii Tynianov, who had disliked Akhmatova’s biblical poems, hailed Pasternak for giving Russians a new «literary thing»; in these poems, Tynianov wrote, a «downpour starts to be verse» and the «thing comes alive» [351] . Although Pasternak’s would later become a powerful dissenting voice, in part through engaging the perspective offered by the modern Orthodoxy of the Russian religious renaissance and the new biblical themes of Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova, now he was a voice of ecstasy, celebrating the chaotic forces of life.
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Тынянов Ю. Промежуток. С. 183.
The great memoirist, Nadezhda Mandelshtam, saw Pasternak’s poetry as a «type of revelation» filled with the «великая радость узнавания» [352] . Later in life Pasternak would characterize poetry as a form of miracle working. As he wrote in the «Doctor Zhivago» poem, «August» (1953), poetry «captured in words, the image of things», an act that was «both making and miracle-making» [353] . Pasternak’s «miracle» vocabulary intersects with Akhmatova’s, who in her poem, «Disaster» («Все расхищено, предано, продано», 1921), and well before, sought miracles and celebrated miracle workers.
352
Мандельштам Н. Об Ахматовой. С. 201.
353
Pasternak В. Sobranie sochinenii v 5-i tomakh. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literature, 1989–1992. Vol. 3. P. 526. The original reads: «obraz mira, v slove iavlen-nyi, / i tvorchestvo, i chudotvorstvo» (my trans.). Henceforth «Sobranie sochinenii v 5-i tomakh» will be abbreviated to SS5.