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A Captive Spirit (page 2)
(My Encounter with Andrei Bely)1
Dedicated to Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich
Not knowing for my own part what to say in answer to such utter non-existence, I wait, knowing that in a second he will once again exist.
"I did not exist; there was: an I, an it. You, of course, understand me? (The eternal question of all those who do not count on understanding to such an extent that they do not even wait long enough to get an answer.) One second... Wait! It's floating to the surface right now. (The imperious gesture of a wizard.) It will come clear right away! But why Bichette, when it's Biquette! Because I'm prepared to mount the scaffold that it's Biquette! But why Biquette when it's Bichette?"
"Boris Nikolaevich, now you wait!"
(And, singing:)
Ah, tu sortiras Biquette, Biquette,
Ah, tu sortiras de ce chou la!23
"Because in your infancy, when you didn't exist yet, you were sung that by your French— no, Swiss Mademoiselle, who did exist."
I pause. I sit literally inundated with ecstasy from his eyes, clothed in it, as in a cloak, as in a ray of light, as in a rain, wholly, from the top of my head to the bottom of my still new for now, still blue for now, still for now, my one and only Berlin dress. Taking my hand from across the table, bringing it to his lips, not reaching his lips:
"You, you must believe that I, for that Biquette— notice that I am now talking about Biquette, the cabbage goat— I am saying that for that Swiss, milk, cabbage, infantile goat I am prepared to haul roadstones on my back for ten years running from morning until late at night for your sake."
I, shaken:
"Oh, Lord!"
He, imperatively:
"Roadstones. (A pause.) And I must say to you that I never in my life have ever felt such respect as I feel for you at this moment."
* * * * *
Dear Bichette, perhaps you are nonetheless still alive and you will read this? But perhaps even now, over my shoulder while I am writing—no, before it is written, you are already reading it? And what if you were the first to meet him at the entrance, and took him by the hand and led him—the gray-eyed girl and the gray-eyed man, the eternally-young girl and the eternally-young man — through the Groves of the Blessed, his real homeland...
* * * * *
From Berlin 1922 to Moscow 1910.
Strangely enough, only now do I notice that before I met him Bely's name was twice presented to me in a setting of three liters. The first time was in the circle of three sisters of which the oldest was Bichette, the second time was in the three-sister circle of the Turgenevs.
A separate and distinct legend circulated about the Turgenev sisters, Turgenev's grand-nieces. The poet Serezha Solovev, Vladimir's24 nephew, was in love with one of them, Andrei Bely with another, and with the third no one was in love for the time being because of her twelve-year-old age, but soon everyone would fall in love with her. The first was Natasha, the second Asya, the third Tanya. I say "legend" because when I met them it turned out that Natasha was already married, that Tanya was for the time being the most ordinary high school student, and that Andrei Bely and Serezha Solovev were in love, both of them, with Asya.
I saw Asya Turgeneva for the first time in Musaget where Max25 had brought me. She was very upright, with a small head naturally tilted upward and framed by Lamartinian "anglaises"26 like- an etching; she had a cigarette that eternally emitted smoke I mm her tapered fingers-, she moved in an eternal gray cloud of her own and Musaget's smoke, from which her uprightness emerged only the more distinct and shapely. I never saw hands more beautiful than hers. The curls and the neck and the hands... she was all from an English etching and was herself an engraver and had ulready done the cover for a book of Ellis's poems, Stigmata, with a church on it. A woman from an English etching, an engraver of the Brussels school and, the main thing, Asya Turgeneva, Turgenev's Asya,27 the love of Sergei Solovev who had Vladimir's eyes, "The Pearly Head" of his tales, Andrei Bely's fiancee and the Katya of his Silver Dove, the Darialsky of which was Serezha Solovev.28 (All this, proud of all the dramatis personae and a little bit proud of himself too, was communicated to me in a breathless rush of words by Vladimir Ottonovich Nilender, who was probably hopelessly in love with Asya himself. And it was impossible not to be in love with her.)
She never spoke at Musaget ever, except to say "Yes," although it was not really a "yes" but a "no" and that "no" resounded just as weightily as the first drop of rain before a thunderstorm. She only looked on and smoked and then would suddenly get up and disappear, wafting the ashes of her curls and the smoke of her cigarette. I remember that in the general gray cloud of all the smoking cigarettes I would always single out her separate stream and follow it from the departure point of her lips to the sea—the seas—of the ceiling. At the Musaget lectures, to tell the truth, I didn't listen to a thing because I didn't understand anything, and perhaps too, I didn't understand because I didn't listen, for I was entirely preoccupied with Asya drifting imperceptibly by, with Bely flying in, and with the immobile Steiner: his black eye that reigned supreme from the wall, the twist of his Baude-lairian mouth. I only heard: gnoseology and Gnostics, the meanings of which I did not understand and, repulsed by the words' nasal sound, never asked about. Geometry in high school, gnoseology in Musaget. And that man, who had just slipped in somehow from below and who a second later, making a very slight turn (like a fragment in a kaleidoscope!), was already retorting to Gershenzon,29 was looming over him—that was Andrei Bely, the same person who, two winters ago now—an eternity!—said to Asya and me: to me (I insist on it even now, but really, how utterly it did not come true!) "All the very best," and to her "All the best!" He never spoke to me, ever. Sitting by chance on the edge of the adjacent chair, he would only say with a rambunctious and unspeakably astounded joy: "Oh! Is it you?" after which nothing ever followed because I for my part knew that it was—he.
In Musaget I never said anything, like Asya Turgeneva, only she was silent because of her superiority—her superiority over them all—I was silent because of their superiority over me. She from triumphant, I from incessantly-wounded pride. Of course I did not speak with her either, she whom I had seen from the very first meeting as "the Empress of these regions."
By what miracle was our coming together brought about? Who demanded it? I think it was no one person, but one thing: a simple bare fact, the pressing workaday necessity which serves us incomparably better than someone else's good will and our own passionate desire, which when necessary moves mountains! in the given instance, the publication proposed by Musaget of my second book and the commission given to Asya for a cover for it.
I remember that I first came to her. Through some kind of backstreet snows. Very likely to the Arbat.
Out of the undefined, unilluminated depths into the weak light from a scowling lamp came Asya, clothed in a leopard skin that lay on her shoulders, wrapped in the smoke of the "anglaises" and the cigarette, greeting me scowlingly, shaking my hand the way men do.
Her charm was in that particular combination of manly, young man's ways— I would even say her male businesslike air— with the extreme lyricalness, maidenliness, girlishness of her features and outlines. When a huge woman shakes your hand like a man it is one thing; but a hand like that! Engravings! From a hand like that, a handshake like that!
On the sofa sat the older sister Natasha. Tanya came running in, a tousled, rosy, schoolgirlish girl whom I included in my cult as an obvious supplement, to keep the account straight, because I knew for certain from my Asya, who was attending the same secondary school, that she was the most ordinary girl without any relationship to or interest in literature, a girl who did not like to read at all and with whom my Asya, despite any of my pleas, kept on refusing to make friends. "Just what I need. Make friends yourself! What do I get out of her Turgenevism? All she ever talks about is pies and nursing babies as if to spite us!" (Perhaps in actual fact she did it to spite us? Knowing that people expect "poetry" from her? More likely she was simply a genuine fourteen-year-old girl, a country miss, a child of nature.)
The watery, sofa-smooth calm of Natasha, the independent thunder of Tanya, and the bright-eyed wordlessness of Asya sitting motionless before me in a leopard shawl.
"What a wonderful catskin! "— "Snow leopard."— "Snow leopard, is that the one with the tufts on the ears?"— "That's lynx."
(You can't talk to her!) Pulling a flap of the leopard toward me, I stroke it, happy that I've found a wordless, diverting occupation. And suddenly, with the total lack of restraint of a genuine revelation I say: "Why you're one yourself , Asya, you're a snow leopard! You've taken the skin off yourself and put it on."
A miraculous laugh, the flash of miraculous eyes, a magical transformation from "Little Ida's Flowers"30 and seizing my hand while using the other to take the shade off the limp-.
"But what kind of eyes do you have? Well of course, green. I just knew it!"
As a child of the symbolist epoch, is the epoch's heroine, what could be more important to her than the color of eyes? And what was more valued than green eyes, discovered by Balmont and canonized by his followers.
"And what a wonderful name you have. (Testing.) But art-you really Marina, and not Maria? Marina: oceanic. Do you smoke? (Silently I extend my cigarette case.) She smokes too, and has green eyes, and is oceanic," says Asya in the tone of an accountant to her sisters.
We are already sitting on the sofa, already poems are being recited to the unpacified thunder of Tanya—such a skinny girl and how she thunders!—amid the variegated clatter of cups, saucers, dishes being set on the table with a flourish. I don't remember a word about the book cover. (That is how all my business meetings ended!) But to make up for it, I remember everything about the snow leopard, this small snow leopard here: the little demon with its own skin on its shoulders, tremulous, quivering... Not a word about Andrei Bely either. (The word "fiance" at that time was felt to be awkward, and "husband"—both the word and the thing—was simply impossible.)
And strangely enough (but then, everything here is strange or nothing is), there was already the beginning of an undefined jealousy, already a perceptible despondency, already the first stab of Zahnschmerzen im Herzen31 because she is going away, you see, and I will lose her, lose her affection. And there was a nobler, deeper feeling: a longing for the whole race, the lament of the Amazons32 for the one who was going away, going over onto that other shore, for the sister departing—to them.
"A wonderful snow leopard. The next time come to Musaget in snow leopard. Bring the snow leopard with you so there will be an opportunity to unburden our hearts."
(Silently: Asya! Asya! Asya! Don't get married, even if it's to Andrei Bely!)
Aloud: "I don't understand what gnoseology is and why they talk about it all the time. And why they all say something different when it is one thing."
(Silently: Asya, you're really Mignon, not from the opera, but from Goethe. Mignon ought not to get married, even to the young Goethe...)
Aloud: "I don't like Vyacheslav Ivanov33 because he told me that my poetry is a squeezed-out lemon. To see what I would say to that. And I said: 'You're quite right!' Then Gershenzon got very angry at me; he turned rabid immediately."
(Silently: O lasst mich schienen, bis ich werde! Zieht mir das weisse Kleid nicht aus!34 Asya! It amounts to a betrayal of that man, your man, Bely! You ought to be more intelligent, stronger because you are a woman... You ought to understand for him!)
Aloud: " 'You know perfectly well that your poetry is not a squeezed-out lemon! So why are you laughing at Vyacheslav Ivanovich and all of us?' "
(Silently: Of course, Asya, I do have squared-off fingers, and I am, all of me, not worth your little finger and a fingernail of Bely's, but Asya, I do write poetry and I don't know myself what I still might become—I do know that I will be!—so you see, Asya, don't marry Bely, let him go alone to Sicily and to Egypt;35 stay here alone, stay here with the snow leopard, stay here—be a snow leopard.)
"Marina, what are you thinking?"
I notice that I have completely forgotten to speak about Gershenzon. (Oh, the shock of a person who has suddenly realized that he has been silent and does not have any idea for how long.)
"Be afraid of me. I know how to read thoughts."
And, with a turn of her head to her sisters:
"Why do the Tsvetaevs have such red lips? Both Marina and Asya have them. Aren't they vampires? Maybe /, Marina, must be afraid of you? Won't you drink my blood?"
"And what do you have that leopard for? At night he sleeps by your bed and he has fangs!"
* * * * *
Another apparition—a vision—of Asya, tremulous and quivering, without the snow leopard, but invisibly wearing it, on the boundary of the ballroom and the parlor at Three Ponds, a place with a ceiling so high that there was room enough for any and all smoke to go up and go away.
Between us there is already the simplicity of love which has come to replace the rope—the strangulation—of being infatuated. I know that she knows that we are of one species. You are infatuated only with what is alien; what is akin, you love. We don't talk about her departure, we don't name him, we don't ever name him. For the time being it is still girlhood: girls' freedom on this side of that river.
21. Afanasy Afanasevich Fet (1820-1892) was a leading poet of the mid-nineteenth century. His first published collection was The Lyric Pantheon [Liricheskii panteon), 1840. In 1883-1885 he published a large number of extremely melodious lyrics in a series of volumes having the collective title Evening Lights, Vols. 1-5 (Vechernie ogni. Vyp. 1-5).
22. Solomon Gitmanovich Kaplun-another Berlin Russian-language publisher, owner of Epoch (Epokha).
23. French. "Oh, you will get out, Biquette, Biquette / Oh, you will get out of that mess!"
24. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovev (1853-1900) was a central figure in the thought and art of the second generation of Russian Symbolism. As religious philosopher, poet, publicist and critic, he initiated some of the main themes which preoccupied Russian literature and thought for some three decades around the turn of the century: the relationship between East and West and the possibility of a synthesis between the two cultures; the possible synthesis of Platonism, Christianity, German idealism and scientific empiricism; the function of art as an intuitive, symbolic form of integral knowledge; and the expectation of an immanent apocalyptic end to human history. Particularly important to the poets among the young Symbolists were Solovev's poems devoted to a kind of eternal feminine figure named Sophia, the mystical incarnation of Solovev's Utopian metaphysics. See Samuel Cioran, Vladimir Solovyov and the Eternal Feminine (Toronto: University of Ontario, 1979).
25. The poet and painter Maximilian Voloshin. See "A Living Word about a Living Man."
26. French. A noun formed from the adjective meaning "English" and designating hair curled in small ringlets.
27. Turgenev's novella "Asya" (1858), recounts the romantic attachment of a young man to a woman who proves to be his father's mistress.
28. Bely's novel The Silver Dove was written in 1909 but was based largely on experiences dating to the month of August 1906 when Bely stayed with his friend Sergei Solovev in the village of Dedovo. Bely's memoirs, written in the late twenties and early thirties, provide the key to identifying some of the fictional characters. Daryalsky (based on Solovev) abandons his fiance'e Katya (based on Asya Turgeneva) and becomes involved in a quasi-mystical peasant group whose main symbol is the silver dove mentioned in the novel's title.
29. Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon (1869-1925)-Russian philosopher, literary historian, and critic. Gerhsenzon's works include studies of the intellectual ambiance of Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century, philosophical and religious writings, editions of the writings of Ivan Kireevsky and Peter Chaadaev, and critical studies devoted to Pushkin and Turgenev. He collected valuable archival material, edited it and saw it through publication under the title Russian Propylaea (Russkie Propilei), six volumes from 1915 to 1919, and New Propylaea (Novye Propilei), 1923. Gershenzon also translated Petrarch's prose.
30. Probably the title of some favorite piece of reading from Tsvetaeva's childhood, perhaps a storybook or possibly a selection from one of the peiodicals that came to the Tsvetaev house: Wellspring (Rodnik), and Field of Grain (Niva). Wellspring was primarily for children. Field of Grain, a weekly, sent out a supplement twelve times a year containing articles on contemporary life and politics, works of literature, accounts of travel and natural history, and the like. Stories for children were included. Tsvetaeva mentions this publication in her prose work "The Devil."
31. German. "Heartache."
32. The Amazons were probably a legendary race, although some historical anthropologists have postulated some foundation of fact in the mythological stories concerning them. The Amazons' main occupations were hunting and fighting. Their weapons were the bow-and-arrow, a crescent-shaped shield, the axe, and the spear, all of which they wielded on horseback. They were said to provide themselves with children by meeting seasonally with men from another race. When the children were born the girls were taken into the tribe. Their right breasts were destroyed to prepare them for their warlike existence. Tsvetaeva regularly refers to the Amazons as living beside a borderline river.
Stories from classical mythology also tend to placethem at the boundary of the known world. The so callled "Conspiracy of the Left Breast" was an important theme in Tsvetaeva's poetry. (See Note 64 to "Voloshin")
33. Allthough somewhat older in actual age, the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949) was a leading figure of the second, or "younger," generation of Russian Symbolism, along with Bely and Blok.Thc principal unifying influence on the three was the work of Vladimir Solovev. Ivanov spent his youth in Western Europe devoting himself to the study of ancient history and classical literature. In 1904 he made contact with the Moscow Symbolists; in 1905 he became the leading intellectual force of Symbolism in Petersburg where he took up residence and maintained a literary salon. Of all the Symbolists Ivanov was the most erudite. He regarded the poet as heir to ancient mysteries, as the bearer of new culture, and as magician and Seer. Ivanov's knowledge of Greek and Latin left its imprint on his thought and poetry. His language in verse combines archaisms and modernisms; his references are often obscure or darkly oracular. Ivanov was fascinated by Nietzsche's ideas on the Apollonian and Dionysian elements of poetry and by the links between tragedy and the Dionysian mysteries and rituals. His first published collection of poetry was Guiding Stars (Kormchie zvezdy), 1902, followed by Transparency (Prozrachnost'), 1904, Eros (1907), and Cor ardens, two parts (1909/1911). Ivanov's tragedy Prometheus, written in 1916, attempts to combine Nietzsche's Dionysian vision of Prometheus with the tradition of Christian mystery plays. Many of Ivanov's poems, both those written in Russian after 1915 and those written in emigration after 1924, appeared in scattered publications and were collected only later. Some of his later cycles are Winter Sonnets (Zimnie sonety), written in 1919; Roman Sonnets (Rimskie sonety), 1924-25; and a set of poems bearing various dates and entitled Evening Light (Svet vechernii), published in 1962. Ivanov is an extremely important critic and essayist. Some of his critical writings appeared in the collections Following the Stars (Po zvezdam), 1909, and Furrows and Borders (Borozdy i mezhi), 1916. Ivanov is the author of an important study on Dostoevsky, Freedom and the Tragic Life. Among the authors of Western Europe, Ivanov held Goethe in the highest possible esteem, most eloquently expressed in his collaboration with Gershenzon (see Note 29 above) on the series of essays entitled A Correspondence Coming from Two Corners (Perepiska iz dvukh uglov),1921.
34. German. "Oh let me be visible until I come into being! Do not withdraw my white garment!" From Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Almost any translation is inadequate. The contrast drawn here is between a person's apparent (i.e., earthly and bodily) existence, and the process of becoming, that is, of coming into a true, proper existence usually after death. Goethe expresses this notion by the contrast between scheinen, "to appear," and werden, "to become," but the two human conditions are not equally valuable, for the first limits and delays the second. Tsvetaeva's attitude toward "real" life-for her a mundane existence was less real than the felt possibility of a fuller, more all-encompassing self—and towards her bodily life on earth was very similar to the quotation from Goethe. She quotes the lines again in "The House at Old Pimen." The contrast between two sorts of existence appears also in Tsvetaeva's poetry. In the fourth poem in the cycle Poems on Moscow (Stikhi o Moskve),she imagines her deith as the occasion for the release of her true visage coming, as it were, out from under her real-life face:
...
I-dvoinika nashchupavshii dvoinik—
Skvoz' legkoe litso prostupit-lik.
And-when my double hasfelt out its double-
Through my light face will emerge—my visage.
O, nakonets tebia ia udostoius',
Blagoobraziia prekrasnyi poias!
Oh, at last I will have you conferred on me,
Beautiful girdle of comeliness!
...
Menia okutal s golovy do piat
Blagoobraziia prekrasnyi plat.
The beautiful garment of comeliness
Has enveloped me from head to foot.
The poem is untitled and is dated April 11, 1916. Tsvetaeva's strategy is to describe her own funeral in such a way as to justify the rather startling irony in the opening line about the day of her death: "Nastanet den'-pechal'nyi, govoriat!-" ("The day will come—a sad day, so they say!-").
35. In December 1910 Bely and Asya Turgeneva left Russia but without having been married. Asya refused to be married in a church, and there were no valid civil marriages provided for in Russian law. They went to Venice for a few days, then on to Sicily. At the end of December they traveled on southward to Tunis and then by boat to Egypt via Malta.