Ilia Pomerantsev
Vladimir Narbut's Plot': Byto-epos
Originally from Novgorod, where he did his undergraduate work in Russian philology, Il'ia Pomeranzev joined the graduate program in Russian at the University of Ottawa in 1994, graduating with an M. A. in 1995. He continued his graduate studies at the University of Toronto, and was on the point of defending his thesis when he died in April 1999. During his year or so in Ottawa I developed immense respect for Il'ia as both a scholar and a human being. Il'ia worked as my research assistant on Boris Godunov, and exhibited both a scrupulous attention to detail and a conscientious zeal in his work. He had a profound knowledge of the subject, and was driven by genuine interest and unflagging enthusiasm. His M. A. thesis, on Boris Godunov, was a byproduct of the research he had conducted on my project. A very private man, Il'ya's non-professional world centered around his family — his wife and his son Yasha, to whom he was totally devoted. Il'ia's modesty and self-deprecating humour were of a piece with his attitude to his work and his family. With his death, the profession lost a fine young scholar, and his many friends were left with a deep sense of loss.
J. Douglas Clayton
Ilia Pomerantsev |
The beginning of the first decade of the twentieth century for Russian poetry was a period of innovations and changes. A new age brought new feelings into life and art. Symbolism, which had transformed Russian verse and given poetry new forms and ideas, “a whirlwind of new strophes, new sonority and new beauty,”1 lost its former power, declining to the level of poetical cliche in the hands of its numerous imitators. Discontent with the status quo in poetry, the theoretical principles and artistic practice of Symbolism, which neglected values of the real world, forced the young generation of poets to search for their own path in literature, a path directed toward “a greater equilibrium of forces and a more precise knowledge of relationships between the subject and the object than in Symbolism.”2 Adding bold turns of thought to their armoury, which were inherent in Symbolism, Acmeists, at the same time, rejected the vagueness and instability of the Symbolist vocabulary as well as the mysticism and individualism of decadence. They announced a desire to glorify the earthly world in all its multi-colouredness, looking in the living national speech for words with a more stable content than in Symbolism. The interest in man's inner world, as well as in life of the body itself, in life in general, that “knows everything,- and God, and vice, and death, and immortality,”3 a lapidary style, careful treatment of the poetic word, and the aspiration to describe vividness of the world which is “vibrating, colourful, that has forms, weight and time,”4 the world that has diverse earthly objects, became characteristic features of the poetry of Acmeism. Not only the beautiful served the Acmeists as a subject of interest, but also the deformed and ugly met their eye. Gorodetskii, for example, wrote:
...не только роза, звезда Маир, тройка хороши, т. е. не только хорошо все уже давно прекрасное, но и уродство может быть прекрасно. После всяких “неприятий” мир безповоротно принят акмеизмом во всей совокупности красот и безобразий. Отныне безобразно только то, что безобразно, что недовоплощенно, что завяло между бытием и небытием.5
Vladimir Narbut's book of poetry, Plot'. Byto-epos, published in 1920 in Odessa, perfectly illustrates Gorodetskii's thought that even the deformed and disgraceful could serve as a source of beauty. In this sense this book may be called a program in terms of Acmeistic poetry. However, at the time of its publication Acmeism, as a poetic movement, did not exist. This suggests that the idea “about true fascination of deformity,”6 of the sublime in the fleshly was an idea of great importance for Narbut as a poet independent of the state of the poetic market or of influence of the ideas peculiar to any artistic group. Narbut was too original, too independent to be a poetic imitator. This was noted by Briusov as early as 1911:
У него [Нарбута — И. П.] есть умение и желание смотреть на мир своими глазами, а не через чужую призму.7
The fact that Plot' consists of poems written in 1912-1914 as well as the fact that Narbut cherished the thought of publishing it as a collection from 1912 to 1920, supplementing already existing poems with new ones consonant with the idea, spirit and artistic method, gives us evidence of the importance of the cycle's concept for the poet.8
Already in Aliluia (1912) we see a confident poet, searching for the harmony of man and nature; the poet “sensibly and inflexibly loving the earth”9 and dreaming of becoming related with it: “s zemlei rodnitsa tela nagota” (113); the poet who came to hate “not only vapid, beautiful words, but all beautiful words, not only banal refinement, but all refinement in general.”10 Aliluia was successful from the point of view of the thematic unity of the poems constituted the book. Here Narbut introduces the concept appropriate, in his opinion, for the cycle of human life — movement from the earthly to the sublime, that is to the spiritual, a movement unambiguously expressed in the epigraph taken from Bible: “Khvalite Gospoda ot zemli, velikie ryby i vse bezdny…” (93). Such a concept received its logical development later in Plot', the book, in which Narbut was able to define the generic peculiarity of his poetry&nbasp;— “byto-epos.”
This peculiar genre combined two concepts, which had never been brought together in Russian poetry before. Taken separately, however, neither was new for literature. In developing a new genre closely related to everyday life (byt) Narbut may have borrowed from the practices of the “Natural School,” that movement prominent in Russian literature of the early 1840's that was noted for its ingenuous, truthful depiction of reality. However, Narbut is closer to the ideas of Western European naturalism, mainly to French naturalism. Typical for this school was the exact representation of reality with heightened interest in everyday life. This depiction was based on the consideration that literature does not have the right to choose subjects, that there are no useless plots or unworthy themes for a writer. Rejecting moralization, naturalists also thought that the reality portrayed was sufficiently expressive in itself.
From the epic Plot' borrowed the organizing role of narration, which conveys to the readers an extremely detailed account of events. Narbut's narrative mode uses a rather diverse stock of literary devices, typical for epic, which make his images three-dimensional and truthful:
Detailed description of the setting of action:
В сарае рыхлой шкурой мха покрытом,
Сверля глазком калмыцким мутный хлев,
Над слизким, втоптанным в навоз корытом
Кабан заносит шмякающий зев.
(“Пасхальная жертва”, 144)
На мокрых плотных полках — скомканные груды
Из праотцов, размякших, как гужи:
Лоснящиеся, бритые верблюды,
Брудастые медведи и моржи.
Из пены мыла, взбитого в ушате
До синей белизны, до горяча; —
Выглядывают кстати и некстати
То пятка, то полуовал плеча.
(“Баня”, 147)
Portraits of the heroes:
И баба в пестром плисовом чепце,
Похлопав веками (совсем по-совьи),
Морщинки глубже пустит на лице,
Питающемся вылинявшей кровью…
(“Чета”, 146)
Скуластый, скрюченный, белобрысый,
И верхняя припухла губа…
Мошонку растормошили крысы,
и — сукровицу можно хлебать!..
(“Тиф”, 149)
Frequent reflections (rassuzhdeniia), but, as usual in Narbut, close to colloquial speech. They are earthly, human, without “vapid, beautiful words” and “banal refinement”:11
Смешно, что нынче я — никчемный человечек,
сраженный зыбкой негой, млею, чуть живой?
Ну, да.
Зато, когда б сквозь жаркий и зеленый
и васильковый бор сюда вдруг забрела
она…
(“Зной”, 152)
Ну, застрелюсь. Как будто очень просто:
Нажмешь скобу — толкнет, не прогремит.
Лишь пуля (в виде желвака-нароста)
Завязнет в позвоночнике… Замыт
Уже червонный разворот хламид.
А дальше что?
(“Самоубийца”, 150)
Frequent use of parenthetical structures (clauses, word combinations or even single words) is associated with such reflections. These structures represent independent utterances connected with thematic development. They usually contain information that the speaker finds necessary to insert when he has already started to express his thought. Therefore, the thought, in the process of expression, is interrupted by the insertion of a new piece of information. This gives the speech an element of spontaneity and creates an impression of the real process of thinking:
Не слишком дерзостен был и восторжен
(с пути долой, тюлени-облака!)
полет…
(“Вдовец”, 154)
... я в облако войду без колебаний
(украинский апостол) в постолах.
(“Баня”, 147)
... как вымокший заматерелый грач
я (я — не я!), мечтая о сюрпризе,
разбухший вывалю кишок калач.
(“Самоубийца”, 150)
Detailed descriptions of heroes' actions, their gestures and facial expressions:
А здесь — худой, с ужимками мартышки,
Раскачиваясь, боли покорив,
Мочалой тру попревшие подмышки,
Где лопнул, как бутон, вчера нарыв.
(“Баня”, 147)
Портрет ладони, связки пальцев грея,
Никиту, может, кликнет впопыхах,
Да, вспомнив, что давно прогнал лакея,
Закашляется, захрипит в сердцах.
Сурово сдвинет брови, тучей-туча,
Стряхнет на стул шинель с костлявых плеч…
(“Покойник”, 162)
The narrative mode of Plot' is combined with dialogues and monologues, including interior monologues:
И, мысли-жернова вращая, вдруг
Спросить у распотевшей супруги:
А не отдать ли, Машенька, на круг
с четверкой тимофеевку в яруге?… —
И баба…
Обдернет скатерть и промолвит: — Ну…
(“Чета”, 146)
Бездействие не беспокоит:
Не я ли (супостаты, прочь!)
Стремящийся сперматазоид
В мной возлелеянную ночь?
(“Бездействие не беспокоит”, 142)
Вернуться на село?!
О, никогда!
Слоняться под амбарами вдоль улиц,
Сгорать и задыхаться от стыда:
Родный, как от вора, отшатнулись!
Невеста Соня…
Господи!
(“Порченный”, 148)
Narration in Plot', in accordance with the generic peculiarities of epic, sometimes becomes self-contained, pushing the figure of the author into the background and making him barely visible (“Pakshal'naia Zhertva”); sometimes it is minimized, advancing the feelings of the lyrical hero into the foreground (“Sirius”); or it disappears temporarily (“Bezdeistviee ne bespokoit...”). However, speaking in terms of Plot' as a unity, narration predominates in Narbut's cycle, bringing together all elements of the portrayal into one whole. The narrator is a kind of mediator between the depicted and the readers, a witness and commentator on what is going on or what has happened. An important feature of epic in general is that the narrator frequently (but not necessarily, as with Narbut) possesses absolute and very detailed knowledge of the depicted events, which may exactly correspond to the forms of real life or, on the contrary, may represent a drastic recreation of these forms.
* * *
In his book of poetry Narbut methodically examines various manifestations of the flesh, be it spermatozoon in its desire to find flesh, a person who considers suicide and contemplates what would happen to him after death, or a widower with softened flesh, who lost all the aspirations of his youth when he came to the point of old age.
The poem “Bezdeistvie ne bespokoit,” which opens the cycle, clashes two diametrically opposed attitudes — inactivity and an active engagement with life. The theme of an active attitude towards life projected in “Bezdeistvie ne bespokoit” becomes supported by the appeal to love life. It is precisely for this reason that a human being has to be closer to nature, which is for Narbut the beginning of all beginnings, the source of spirituality:
Коль солнце есть — есть ветер, зной и слякоть
И радуги зеленой полоса
Так отчего же нам чураться злака,
Не жить, как вепрь, как ястреб, как оса?
Дыши поглубже. Поприлежней щупай.
Попристальне гляди.
Energetic and full of life, but purely carnal, the spermatozoon from “Bezdeistvie ne bespokoit” is transformed in this poem into a phallic image, which, at the same time, carries in itself a supply of spirituality. To create such a combination of the spiritual and fleshly in one image Narbut uses the quite unexpected simile of a church's dome with the head of the phallus:
Живи,
Чтоб купол позолоченной залупой
Увил колонны и твоей любви.
(“Очеловеченной душой…”, 143)
“Paskhal'naia zhertva” tells of the fates of a boar and turkeys which are concerned only with how to garnish their flesh with fat and are in a state of blissful ignorance that soon they will become an Easter dish and that all that awaits them is a cool knife and smoke. The poem is structured on the parallelism of the fates of the boar and turkeys and the hero with the soul of a child-little old man, whose heart is similar to the barn covered with “the friable skin of moss” and whose spiritually poor life reminds the close death of the Easter sacrifices:
Молчите, твари! И меня прикончит,
По рукоять вогнав клинок, тоска,
И будет выть и рыскать сукой гончей
Душа моя ребенка-старичка.
In its essence “Paskhal'naia zhertva” is a passionate protest against spiritually poor life poisoned by purely fleshly needs, a protest against pointless existence in favour of life, which has true spiritual values, an appeal to dig up the heart, which is friable as moss, in order to compel it to live full-blooded life:
В раздутых жилах пой о мудрых жертвах
И сердце рыхлое, как мох, изрой,
Чтоб, смертью смерть поправ, восстать из мертвых,
Утробою отравленная кровь!
(“Пасхальная жертва”, 145)
Nothing distinguishes the country couple (“Cheta”) who devoted their lives to hoarding goods and to developing goiters, thus squandering the spiritual potential from the ready for slaughter boar and turkeys. The elegiac melancholy of measured narration, which gives a clear indication that, for the narrator, the couple is not indifferent, at the same time contains a pitiless condemnation of the sweet idlers:
И что с того, что хлопотливый поп
Похряскивает над тобой кадилом,
Что в венчике бумажном стынет лоб,
Когда ты жил таким ленивцем милым,
Когда и ты наесть успела зоб…
(“Чета”, 146)
The motifs of the cleansing of flesh and of spiritual revival dominate in the poem “Bania.” “The home-bred scorching heat of the baths” (147) becomes transformed into purgatory, a place inside the earthly hell, where not only bodies, but also souls (not of the dead, but of living people) undergo purification by redemptive heat in order to enter paradise. In his poetry Narbut speaks not about paradise in heaven, but about paradise on earth, that is close and quite attainable, paradise as a possible unity with earth, a goddess to whom those taking steam in Russian baths send the praise-hosanna:
…какому божеству, смывая грязи,
жиров и пота радужный налет,
в глухом самодовлеющем экстазе
за вас хвалу-осанну всякий шлет?
Не матери-земле ль, чтоб из навоза
Создать земной, а не небесный рай?
(“Баня”, 147)
According to Narbut, paradise means to stretch out on the ground, to dissolve in it, to feel yourself as the “useless little man who was struck by the unsteady comfort” (“Znoi,” 152) and to watch nature, be it a “silly blue dragon-fly” sticking to the ripening ear of grain or an overstrained grasshopper:
Земля-праматерь!
Мы слились:
твое — мое, я — ты, ты — я.
(“Одно влеченье…”, 153)
In Narbut, not only closeness to earth, but also to work is able to ennoble, to give a meaning to human existence. The narrator admires the confident movements of the joiner (“Stoliar”), who becomes acquainted with the meaning of life. Work as a hallowed act, as a sacred assignment of man on earth converts an ordinary earthly joiner who creates a case for the old Gospel into an apostle, while the image of the blooming Aaron's rod symbolizes a special election of work as a cult act sanctified by God:
О светлая, рассыпчатая манна!
Не ты ль приветствуешь господень труд,
Не от тебя ли тут благоуханно,
И мнится: злаки щедрые растут?
Смотри, осенний день, и на колосья,
Что вырастить, трудясь, рука могла.
Смотри и молви:
— Их пучок разросся
цветеньем Ааронова жезла!
(“Столяр”, 155)
There is no tranquillity in Narbut's poetry. Its heroes are in a constant pursuit of flesh to find spirit, in a constant search for self. This is the reason for the abundance of questions to which Narbut's narrator or the heroes of Plot', in whom he materializes, try to find answers: what will happen to man after death? (“Samoubiitsa”); who will look for the dead? (“Sirius”); what is the nature of sorrow which gnaws at a man? (“Ona nekrasiva...”); why instead of a soul is there an empty hollow? (“Liudskaia povest'”). Narbut neither gives exact, exhaustive answers, nor provides reasons for why his heroes are sorrowful: “O chem ona plachet ne znaiu,/i vriad li pridetsa uznat'” (“Ona nekrasiva...,” 160).
What is important is to find the meaning of life, as it does the hero in the poem “Samoubiitsa”:
Так, расточась, останусь я во всем.
Но, собирая память, кокон бабий
И воздух понесет, и чернозем, —
И (вырыгнутый) прокричу о жабе,
Пришлепывающей (комок-весом)
В ногах рассыпавшегося меня…
(“Самоубийца”, 151)
The rakish sprightliness of the poem “Ukrop” which closes the cycle takes us back to the theme of active search of man for the place in life projected in “Bezdeistvie ne bespokoit,” thus giving Plot' compositional and thematic wholeness and completeness:
Пошастать бы амбарами,
Замки травой взломать:
Не помирать же старыми,
Такую твою мать! (164)
Undoubtedly, Gogol' was close to Narbut's heart. We encounter the Gogolian world many times in Narbut's poetry: there are the epigraphs taken from the works of his famous fellow-countryman for the cycle Stikhi or the poem “Gorshechnik,” the title for the cycle Vii has the same name as Gogol's tale and, of course, images borrowed from Gogol', such as Khoma Brut (“Levada”) or Akakii Akakievich Bashmachkin (“Pokoinik”). In his time Gogol' boldly introduced Ukrainianisms into Russian prose. Narbut did the same thing, but into Russian poetry. However, in reality the bond between the two writers is much deeper than intertextuality or the usage of Ukrainian vocabulary. Perhaps,Narbut felt himself to be a Gogol' of poetry, discovering, as did Gogol', his higher predestination — to influence the moral state of society through his literary creations in an attempt to reform his fellow citizens by showing them the spiritually poor life which they live. Therefore, it is not surprising that the poet calls himself the “Ukrainian apostle” (“Bania,” 147). Moreover, in the poem “Zachem ty govorish' ranoi...” Narbut unambiguously questions the existing morals:
<...>ужели смыть невозможно
с проклятой жизни румяна
и весь наш позор осторожный? (209)
* * *
By creating the genre of “byto-epos,” Narbut succeeded in avoiding the didactic tone and exhortations which are typical of the mature Gogol'. At the same time, in his poetry he was able to give an appraisal of reality and to succeed in showing life in its wholeness. These things became possible not because of the passive contemplation of his narrator, nor because of simple imitation and passionless copying of life, but because of the conscious selection of the heroes and happenings for his poetry. Absolute knowledge posture is not typical for Narbut's narrator. What is typical for him is compassion and understanding, penetration into his heroes' inner world in an attempt to guess the riddles which life raises for them, and to comprehend “what is the reason for our human turmoil” (“Liubov',” 168).
Thus, behind the everyday life depicted in Plot', behind the intense, almost microscopic examination of life by the narrator — who notices such non-poetic things as an abscess, a palate's sore, manure, and mucus — is hidden the search for true spirituality, the eternal aspiration of the flesh for finding the soul and unifying with it. Behind the deliberate coarseness is veritable lyricism. Behind the affected indifference is genuine pain for man. Narbut proved that the non-poetic subjects and unworthy themes do not exist for a poet, that even the non-poetic contains poetry. It is only necessary to unmask it.
© Ilia Pomerantsev
© J. Douglas Clayton
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