The
Kuzmin
Collection
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Dalhousie University
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Halifax,
Nova Scotia,
Canada
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7 January 1999
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Introduction
"M. Kuzmin - prostoj i jasnyj xudoznik. Ponjatnym mozno bylo by ego nazvat', esli by ego ponimali. No malo dostupny postizeniju sovremennikov i samyj rod ego tvorcestva, i eta garmoniceskaja soglasovannost' mnogostrunnoj dusi, radostno priemljuscej ziz n' i vse ee `milye, xrupkie vesci' - v dovercivoj pokornosti Bogu",1 Vjaceslav Ivanov ruefully concluded in what remains one of the few sensitive responses to the early prose of this neglected author. Ten years later, in 1920, Boris Ejxenbaum still found it necessary to preface his evaluation of Kuzmin with a caveat: "Proza Kuzmina esce ne vosla v obixod - tem interesnee govorit' o nej. Ego znajut i ljubjat bol'se kak poeta".2 The same might be said today, for while his poetry has recently been handso mely reprinted with extensive biographical and analytical articles by Malmstad and Markov, the prose, with the exception of Kryl'ja, is still largely ignored.3
It is a curious case of critical myopia, and a further confirmation, if one were necessary, of Jakobson's axiom formulated in the 1935 article "Randbemerkungen zur Prosa des Dichters Pasternak": "Die vorderen Stellungen der russichen Wortkunst der erste n Jahrzehnte unseres Jahrhunderts gehoren der Dichtung, eben die Dichtung wird hier als merkmallose, kanonische Au erung der Literatur, als ihre reine Inkarnation empfunden."4 So strongly has the unconscious force of this truism governed critical thought , that discussion of Kuzmin's famous profession de foi "O prekrasnoj jasnosti" has taken his aesthetic position as applying directly to verse, without regard for the subtitle "zametki o proze"; Denis Mickiewicz goes so far as to suggest that this qualific ation was added "to diminish any possibility of controversy".5 It was poetry that mattered: "Bis auf wenige Ausnahmen ist die berufs- ma ige Kunstprosa dieser Epoche eine typische Epigonens- produktion, eine mehr oder weniger erfolgreiche Repro- duktio n klassischer Muster; das Interesse dieser Machwerke liegt entweder in der gelungenen Nachahmung des Alten oder in der grotesken Verwilderung des Kanons oder aber besteht das Neue in der schlauen Anpassung neuer Thematik an vererbte Schablonen".6 My cent ral purpose here is to demonstrate that Kuzmin's prose, while superficially an ideal embodiment of this Jakobsonian characterization of the prose of the age, in fact transcends it, so trans- figuring its constituent elements that Pasternak himself, one of Jakobson's "wenige Ausnahmen", was able to write in an inscription to Kuzmin on his 1926 Izbrannye stixi: "Prosloj zimoj ja perecityval Vasu trextomnuju prozu, i eto bylo ljubimejsim cteniem togo goda."7 Kuzmin's prose achieves its transcendence throug h its interplay with his poetry and its systematic interconnections with itself, in its best pages attaining those qualities which Doctor Zivago strove for:
Vsju zizn' mectal on ob original'nosti sglazennoj i priglusennoj, vnesne neuznavaemoj i skrytoj pod pokrovom obsceupotrebitel'noj i privycnoj formy, vsju zizn' stremilsja k vyrabotke togo sderzannogo, nepritjazatel'nogo sloga, pri kotorom cit atel' i slusatel' ovladevajut soderzaniem, sami ne zamecaja, kakim sposobom oni ego usvaivajut.8Behind its deceptive screens of casual banality, Kuzmin's is as much a poet's prose as Pasternak's. The economy of its form and the many-voiced purity of its diction demand a critical response which is both detailed in analysis and broad in focus. But the attention devoted hereafter to the minutiae of vocabulary and syntax, themata and characterization, literary antecedent and accidence of external circumstance is not meant to imply an exhaustive treatment. In view of the limited amount of study Kuzmin has received, description must come first and completeness cannot be hoped for. It should, however, be possible at least to suggest appropriate approaches to the texts and appropriate contexts in which to contemplate them.
Immensely erudite, adept at many forms of writing, composer and dramatist, wit and raconteur, Mixail Alekseevic Kuzmin (1872-1936) has always managed to evade the toils of the critics, who generally try to snare him somewhere between Symbolism and Acmeis m. It seems fitting that two of the best recent articles are entitled "Blok i Kuzmin" and "Axmatova i Kuzmin", headings which suggest his stature yet reveal by their conjunctions the limitations to which appreciation of his achievement has been subject. Although closer, perhaps, to Symbolism than to Acmeism, Kuzmin was neither the exclusive product of the first, nor, as has sometimes been implied, merely a forerunner of the second. His relations with the two movements and with their major representativ es were complex indeed. He caricatured Sologub in the povest' "Kartonnyj domik", but drew on his works for imagery and plot elements. He admired Brjusov but was careful to emphasize the differences in their approaches to historical themes. At first a r apt disciple of Vjaceslav Ivanov, he gradually moved away from him and came to an aesthetic stance strongly opposed to Symbolism and subtly critical of his mentor in "O prekrasnoj jasnosti". An early patron of the Acmeists, author of the preface to Axmat ova's first book of verse, Vecer, and the man who chose the title Tristia for Mandel'stam's second collection of poems, he was from the beginning curiously reserved when reviewing Gumilev, and later became more and more critical of Acmeism in such essays as "Parnasskie zarosli" and "Cesuja v nevode". His work, while laced by myriad threads to the creations of these writers and others, remains a fabric fundamentally his own.
Much of the best contemporary criticism of Kuzmin has sought to characterize the specific texture of this fabric by making reference to its autobiographical or philosophical underpinnings. It can be shown, however, that attempts to reduce the two pove sti Kryl'ja and "Kartonnyj domik" or the novel Plavajuscie putesestvujuscie to romans a clef or a these must fail. They cannot account for the systematic onomastic evolution of Kuzmin's characters from work to work, or for the kaleidoscopic recombination of their physical traits. These structural elements, along with the recurring and developing details of plot, setting, and even lines of dialogue, contribute to the creation of a Kuzminian world of archetypal figures performing quasi- mythical actions with both parodic and almost mystic significance, a world in which Kuzmin's biography and philosophic searchings are subordinated to the larger goal of artistic effect. In this he is akin to Nabokov, and it is not difficult to see why it was Kuzmin's self-generating and self-referential system of works which Nabokov chose to draw upon for important components of his 1930 novel Sogljadataj and his 1931 short story "Usta k ustam".9 It is only surprising that the extensive allusions and structural parallels have not been noticed before this.
In his use of autobiography Kuzmin is as close to Gide as to Nabokov. Like Gide, he kept an extended journal or diary which, judging by the comments of his contemporaries, the extract he published in 1922 under the title "Cesuja v nevode", and the sterilized fragments now appearing in the Soviet Union, must have been to his prose what Gide's Journal and Cahiers were to his.10 Both writers achieved notoriety for their frank handling of the theme of homosexuality, Gide in L'Immoraliste in 1902, Kuzmin in Kryl'ja in 1906. With Gide Kuzmin shared an impervious indifference to Wagner, and an admiration for Dostoevskij which found expression through parody: Gide's Lafcadio in Les Caves du Vatican can be seen as a mocking portrait of Raskolnikov, while Kuzmin's novel Tixij straz mimics Brat'ja Karamazovy. There is a striking similarity, finally, between Ivanov's remarks on Kuzmin cited at the beginning of this introduction and Curtius's comment on Gide to Klaus Mann that "in reality and at bottom there is nothing paradoxical about the man. On the contrary, he is more harmonious, in a sense, than anyone I've known. Harmonious in a complicated way, if you know what I mean. The way our grand old Goethe might have been -- all self- assured and serene, notwithstanding those notorious two souls dwelling together in his breast, alas. But why shouldn't a strong and intelligent fellow master half-a- dozen souls, if need be?"11
Kuzmin faced the task of mastering, if not half-a- dozen, then at least three souls of his own, in a struggle for self-integration that continued throughout his life. John E. Malmstad has produced an excellent preliminary outline of that struggle which will remain the most authoritative source on Kuzmin's biography until Soviet archival materials are made public, and which may be consulted for more detail.12 Here we need sketch only the main stages in his development until his literary debut in the Zelenyi sbornik which appeared in December, 1904. Since Kuzmin made his start in literature at the relatively late age of 32, many of the views important to an understanding of his art were formed in this period, before he took up writing as a career. Dis cussion of his later life will be preserved for presentation with his individual works.
Recent Soviet research has confirmed Malmstad's deduction that Kuzmin was born in 1872 rather than 1875, the date traditionally cited.13 Of mixed Russian and French ancestry (there was perhaps a connection with Theophile Gautier), he came from a family of Old Believers, a background which he was to draw upon in his work. Shortly after his birth the family moved from Jaroslavl' to Saratov, where in a few years he began his education. His early reading included Shakespeare and E.T.A. Hoffman, then Don Q uixote and Scott's novels, and later Greek literature, Moliere, and the fabliaux. Early exposure to music and the theatre fostered his lifelong interest in these areas. Under the promptings of a "malen'kij sinij culok" named Zina, he began to write as well, and the title of one of the three novellas he produced in imitation of Hoffmann has come down to us: "Gans Bekkar".
From Saratov the family went to Saint Petersburg in 1885, where Kuzmin continued his education in the eighth gymnasium. Here he first met Georgij Vasil'evic Cicerin (later to become the first important Soviet diplomat), who exercised a powerful influenc e on his life. Through him Kuzmin broadened his knowledge of philosophy, undertaking a study of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Renan, and Taine. The two shared as well their homosexuality, which is evidenced in Kuzmin's correspondence by 1893. His struggles to reconcile this aspect of his inner life with his religious upbringing led to a prolonged emotional crisis and eventually to attempted suicide by poison in late 1896. An entry in his 1905 diary (quoted below) suggests that he suffered from multiple per sonalities.
In 1891 Kuzmin entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied under Rimskij-Korsakov. He completed only three years of the seven year course, preferring to devote his time to his own compositions rather than to assigned ones, and making an intensive study of Italian music and literature. In late 1892 at Cicerin's suggestion he also began studying German. During this time mention of French and Russian literature grows infrequent in his correspondence (the names most often cited are Musset , Maupassant and Pierre Loti; Turgenev and Del'vig), but there is compensation in the abundant references to Italian and German writers: Dante and authors of the Italian Renaissance; Goethe, Heine and Schiller.
To the period 1895-6 belong Kuzmin's initial studies of Plotinus and his first formulations of his views on the nature of art. It was a time when Kuzmin oscillated between optimism and pessimism, between an acceptance of the Romantic idea of the tragic isolation of the artist and feelings of guilt and the need for expiation. In a letter from November, 1896 he formulated a first artistic credo:
Cistoe iskusstvo zarozdaetsja i zaversaetsja v svoem sobstvennom, zamknutom, otorvannom ot vsego mira kruge s osobymi trebovanijami, kak mir bol'nogo bezumca (xotja by i ideal'nyj, i strojnyj, no v svoej obosoblennosti i otvlecennosti bezumn yj).14As was to be the case throughout his life, he remained aloof from the social and political movements of the time: Populism might attract Cicerin, but it held no interest for Kuzmin.
Guilt feelings -- about his homosexuality and about his choice of music as career over the objections of his family -- led him to make a comparison of various religions and to involve himself in mysticism. A trip to Egypt in 1895-6, which provided the background for many of his works, failed to resolve his spiritual impasse. His health deteriorated, and doctors insisted that a second trip abroad was imperative. Following their advice, he set off for Italy in the spring of 1897.
In a recent article Vladimir Markov has outlined the impact this trip had on Kuzmin's writing.15 It provided the background for the third part of Kryl'ja and contributed to several cycles of poems. In Florence Kuzmin came under the influence of a Catho lic priest, Canon Mori, and may even have converted to Catholicism for a time. Although he soon became disenchanted with Mori, the Italian journey provided an impetus for the study of the early Church Fathers and the Franciscan poets, two interests which find reflection in his work.
The trip to Italy did not relieve Kuzmin's spiritual and emotional crisis, although it did improve his physical health. Nor was his study of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism able to alleviate his sense of isolation from the world around him. They led him ra ther to an increasing desire for an unattainable system of absolute values, which found its reflection in his definition of art:
Ne v tom li cel', ctoby probuzdat' dremljuscee tvorcestvo v kazdom celoveke? I cem izbrannee celovek, tem glubze on vosprinjal, tem sil'nee iskusstvo? No togda, kto znaet, cem ono probuzdaet? Eto uze soversenno neopredelenno i menee osja zatel'no, cem absoljutnaja krasota, kotoraja, raz postignutaja intuitivno, uze prebyvaet, xotja by po vospominaniju . . . 16What evaded him was a synthesis of the Christian with the Classical which would allow him to retain his religious beliefs while accepting those aspects of his personality which his religious faith condemned. Upon his return to Russia he travelled north, beginning a period of his life about which little is known at present. He apparently pursued his interest in the Old Believers, studying their music and collecting icons while living in several monastic communities around Kostroma and Niznyj Novgorod.
The stay in these religious communities, along with visits to friends and relatives and continued study of Plotinus, seems to have stilled Kuzmin's emotional disturbances. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in 1901 or 1903, he began to compose music agai n. He also began writing lyrics to his songs, some in the form of sonnets, others, drawing on Egyptian themes, in free verse. In 1904 Cicerin introduced him to the Mir iskusstva group. It was in the congenial company of men like Sergej Diaghilev, Aleks andr Benois, Leon Bakst, and especially Walter Nouvel and Konstantin Somov that Kuzmin began to develop his ideas of art into works of his own, synthesizing his broad back- ground in literature with the influences of two German writers, Johann Georg Hama nn and Wilhelm Heinse, as he began to write Kry'la and the poems which were to become his first book of verse, Seti. Encouraged as well by the family of the young poet Jurij Verxovskij, he turned to literature in earnest, and in December 1904 the miscell any Zelenyj sbornik stixov i prozy published thirteen of his sonnets and his long poem "Istorija rycarja d'Alessio". They were not well received, but soon his Aleksandrijskie pesni would attract the attention of Valerij Brjusov, leading to their publicat ion in Vesy and eventually to the scandalous success of Kryl'ja.
From the beginning of his career Kuzmin made innovations in both poetry and prose. The Aleksandrijskie pesni constitute the first sizable body of free verse in Russian, while the povest' Kryl'ja represents the first sustained treatment of the theme of h omosexuality. Yet another innovation is the extent to which these two poles of literary composition generate a single artistic universe in his oeuvre.
Kuzmin's prose and poetry are inextricably meshed, and he himself often used meshes to represent the product and process of his work. In one form (seti), they name his first book of poems; in another (nevod), as part of the title he gave to the publishe d selection of carefully arranged passages from his commonplace-book, they admit failure to capture some essence of art or life. They are an apt emblem, for if etymologically texts are something woven, then Kuzmin's are nets, in which the threads of sig nification are functionally no more important than the spaces of enigma they create and enclose. For Kuzmin, steeped in the complicated traditions of Gnostic thought, creation begins as a process of division, but at the same time it is a search for a syn thesizing resolution to the conflicts inherent in figure and ground, form and chaos, Christianity and Platonism. It is at once pilgrimage and odyssey.
In their two basic forms, seti and nevod, nets are a coordinate system sectioning and connecting the Kuzminian universe. They relate (in both senses of the verb) his major themes. Representative of the hitherto largely unremarked self- and inter-refere ntiality of Kuzmin's texts, this complex interaction can be illustrated by analyzing two adjacent poems from the section of Paraboly called "Stixi ob iskusstve". In addition to obtaining a plausible reading for the second poem, considered enigmatic by Ma lmstad and Markov, this analysis will serve to demonstrate how Kuzmin's texts depend on one another:
MuzaPlaced on facing pages, joined by contiguity and the parallel syntax of their opening lines, these poems thereby link Orpheus and Narcissus as tutelary deities of two stages in Kuzmin's art,19 drawing together his characteristic imagery of fishes, mirrors , meshes, and journeys. At the same time they establish a network of reminiscences, tapping Kuzmin's own work and that of Vjaceslav Ivanov, to produce a subtly polemical model of Kuzmin's "tvorceskij put'".V gluxie vody brosiv nevod, Pod vescij lepet temnyx lip, Gljadit zadumcivaja deva Na cesuju volsebnyx ryb.
To v upoenii zverinom Svivajut alye xvosty, To vyplyvut akvamarinom, Legki, prozracny i prosty.
Vostorzenno ne razumeja Plodov zapecatlennyx vod, Vse zdet, cto golova Orfeja Zlatistoj rozoju vsplyvet.
1922. Fevral'17
V raskosyj blesk zerkal zabrosiv seti, Sklonilsja ja k zare zelenovatoj, Slezu uzor edva zametnoj zybi, - Lunatik zolotejuscix ozer! Kak krov' socitsja pod celebnoj vatoj, Jasneet otrok na granitnoj glybe, I mgloj istomnoju v medvjanom lete Proroceski podernut sizyj vzor.
Zivi, Nedviznyj! zatrepescut veki, K ladonjam neznym zadno pripadaju, Tomlenie ljubvi neutolimoj Nebesnyj sputnik moj da utolit. Ne vspominaju ja i ne gadaju, - Polet mgnovenij, legkij i ljubimyj Vdrug ostanavlivaes' ty naveki Roskosestvom junejuscix lanit.
1922. Aprel'18
As in "Cesuja v nevode", the net in "Muza" fails in its task: the pensive maiden waits in vain for the head of Orpheus to surface as a golden rose, for she does not recognize its embodiment in the scarlet and aquamarine fish. Light, transparent, and si mple, they are the fruit of the final act of the creative process Kuzmin described with the same word in "O prekrasnoj jasnosti":
I dal'se - posredstvom razgranicivanija, jasnyx borozd - polucilsja tot sloznyj i prekrasnyj mir, kotoryj, prinimaja ili ne prinimaja, stremjatsja uznat', po svoemu videt', i zapecatlet' xudozniki.20The undulating motion of the fish, reflecting Orpheus's descent and return, is repeated in almost identical terms in the fragmentary novel Rimskie cudesa, where it, too, mirrors the cycle of death and resurrection prophesied for the protagonist:
On stydilsja, krasnel, cego vprocem ne bylo osobenno zametno pri zare, i uprjamo rassmatrival ryb, kotorye podplyvali, sonno razevali rty, ozidaja krosek, i opjat' opuskalis' na dno, gde narisovan byl Gilas.21In "Muza" realization of the Classical in the Christian, a constant function of art for Kuzmin, would be achieved regardless of the expectations of the muse, for both the fish and the golden rose are ancient Christian symbols,22 but her vatic preconception presumably prevents her participation in the creative process: the poem ends with her still waiting. It is a failure implicit in the very structure of the word nevod: ne + vod, hinting that the absence of the vozatyj, Kuzmin's enigmatic male muse, por trayed in the second poem as Narcissus but elsewhere depicted as Saint George, the Archangel Michael, Hermes or a naked youth, dooms his female counterpart to incomprehension.
The connection of Orpheus with Narcissus made by these two poems is a reconsideration of their oblique merger in the 1916 short story "Macexa iz Skarperii",23 a stylized Italian tale of spurned passion and revenge, which combined numerous images Kuzmin l ater developed in the Gnostic poems of Nezdesnie vecera and in Paraboly, forming a syncretion of diverse Classical and Christian elements.24 The hero of the story is Narcizetto (an Italian derivative of Narcissus), who arouses a Phaedra- like passion in his step-mother Valerija. When he spurns her, she orders a servant to kill him and bring her his head, which she buries in a potted shrub after caressing it for two days. The head is later revealed to her husband by the dwarf Nikola who, himself jealous of Narcizetto for outgrowing his affection, had initiated the fatal chain of events by delivering Valerija's confession of love. Her crime unearthed, Valerija is to be sent to a nunnery, but hangs herself in despair before she can be exiled.
By a foreshadowing comparison Kuzmin subtly identifies the burial of Narcizetto's head with the fate of Orpheus's head, cast into the waters of the river Hebros:
Opasnost' dlja ego cesti i zizni, o kotoroj preduprezdal ego Nikola, ne zatragivala ego voobrazenija, ne risovala nikakix kartin, i niskol'ko ne poxodila na zerno, kotoroe puskaet rostok v prinjavsuju ego zemlju, a skorej sxoza byla s kamn em, brosennym v vodu i obrazujuscim tol'ko na poverxnosti legkie skoroiscezajuscie krugi.25The indirect merging of Narcizetto with Orpheus in this way is illustrative, in an attenuated sense, of Kuzmin's own shift away from Symbolism. When Narcizetto abandoned Nikola he was, in effect, a pupil abandoning his teacher; in particular, he left th e means of music behind. Nikola asks plaintively:
Kogda ty byl rebenkom, ne ja li vyrezyval tebe dudki iz trostnika i dostavljal ptic'i gnezda s ptencami? Ja ne mog tebja vyucit' verxom, no ja tebe pokazal, kak igrat' v saxmaty, kak udit' rybu i primanivat' ptic. Ty pomnis' eto, ne pravda li?26This abandonment is paralleled by the shift from the aural orientation of the first two lines of "Muza" to the visual imagery in the beginning of the second poem. The intertextual movement from nevod to seti, just as the intratextual move of the nevod it self into the "gluxie vody" and away from the "vescij lepet", is motion away from the aural origin that Vjaceslav Ivanov posited for the Symbolist poets in general and Kuzmin in particular.27 `Glas' becomes `glaz'. Whether Orpheus's head is embodied as fish or rose, its new form is soundless, a departure from the Orphic imagery so important in Symbolism and reflected in Kuzmin's own article on Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, a shift to an art inspired by Narcissus and rooted in the silent visual, in what Kuzmin called "blagovestija samoj nemoj iz ryb" in his Gnostic poem "Ryba".28 There as well, waiting in vain was associated with the nevod, both in the form of the patched nets of Andrew and as the silver ones of the Naked Stripling trying to catch "blagov estija" in the gold-bottomed bucket of the sun; the word is changed to seti when the poet's own persona dives into the boy's nets in an act of surrender to creative love recalling the song from Kuranty ljubvi:
Ljubov' rasstavljaet seti iz krepkix selkov. Ljubovniki kak deti iscut okov.29It is a sinister love which spreads its nets (seti) in the short story "Ten' Fillidy",30 where the poor fisherman Nektaneb drags a drowned girl back to life, and an ironic one which brings the poor Chinese fisherman Ne-p'ju-caj his fortune when his patched nets (seti) give out, transforming him into the rich and noble Sam-cin in "Princ Zelanie",31 but in both cases the nets achieve their goals, and thus the distinction between the uses of seti and nevod is preserved.
The movement from "Muza" to the second poem is accompanied by a sense of restraint removed: the meter expands to iambic pentameter and the poem itself is four lines longer than its counterpart. At the same time, the gluxie vody are replaced by the rask osyj blesk zerkal, a substitution of a property of human artifice for nature. The adjective raskosyj echoes the kosye sootvetstvija, the oblique correspondences thrown into the space of mirror spheres, found in the opening poem of Paraboly.32 The image of the spherical mirror which thus infects the opening line of the second poem is found in Kuzmin's prose as well, forming the central object of the story "Sar na klumbe".33 Containing the universe within itself, joining beginning with ending, it is one of several symbols of a Parmenidean oneness which Kuzmin employs in his search for a reconciliation of Platonism with Christianity.
One of the functions of pairing "Muza" with "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . " and in particular their opening lines becomes clearer if they are considered in the light of another mirror poem, which provides a matrix or pre-structure for them:
Nedvizno carstvennaja, kak statuja, Ona derzala, kak dvojnoj trofej, Dva zerkala i imi, negoduja, Grozila mne; na tom, cto popravej, Iskusstva znak, prirody - tot levej, No kak v gerbe sklonennye stropila, Vjazalisja toncajsej iz cerej Dlja tex, kogo povjazka ne tomila.34Placed as they are in Paraboly, "V raskosyj blesk zer- kal . . . " bears the mark of art, "Muza" the mark of nature. The introduction of the mirror of art as a replacement for the mirror of nature has mythic significance in Kuzmin's path away from Symbolism and the Ivanov aesthetic system, for it parallels the role of the mirror which was given to the infant Dionysus to distract him before he was torn to pieces. This dismemberment was facilitated, paradoxically enough, by an instrument of integration . In just such a fashion Kuzmin's plea for harmony and simplicity in "O prekrasnoj jasnosti" helped facilitate the crisis in Symbolism in 1910.35
For Kuzmin the mirror is the organ of memory, the human faculty which joins the past with the present:
O junost' krasnaja, smela tvoja bespecnost', No pamjat' zerkala xranit, I v nix uvidis' ty minutnoj, xrupkoj vecnost' I razmagnicennym magnit.36Combining this quality with its catoptromantic properties,37 the mirror is thus an element which absorbs all space and time into a single here and now. Its function as a kind of orbus pictus is emphasized in the final poem of Novyj Gul':
Derzu nevidannyj kristall, Kak budto mnozestvo zerkal Soedinilo grani. Osobyj v kazdoj kletke svet: To zoloto grjaduscix let, To blesk vospominanij.38It is this aspect of the mirror which lies behind the line "Ne vspominaju ja i ne gadaju, -" in "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . ". Time itself has been stopped by the mirrored image of the youth.
The mirror, then, eliminates representations of the dualities which for Kuzmin were one of the most irritating features of Symbolism.39 In "V raskosyj blesk zer- kal . . . " it joins water with sky, a joining analogous to the function of the grammatical ambiguity of the first lines of the first poem in Paraboly:
Kosye sootvetstvija V prostranstvo brosit' Zerkal'nyx sfer, -40Here the interpositioning of the verb makes two readings possible: "To throw the oblique correspondences of mirror spheres into space" or "To throw oblique correspondences into the space of mirror spheres". The ambiguity is continued in the poem " Iskusstvo", which immediately precedes "Muza":
(V kolodce l' vidny zvezdy, v nebe l'?)41
Like the net, the mirror simultaneously joins and differentiates, sections and connects. When Kuzmin's persona or characters gaze into their looking glasses they generally see someone other than themselves, or else themselves as Other.42 The image in t he mirror in "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . ." can be more specifically identified. An initial clue is provided by the striking simile in line 5, for wounds in Kuzmin are always wounds of love:
Naprasno bes tverdit: "pridi: Ved' riza - drana!" No kak oxrana gorit v grudi Blazenstva rana.43The image of blood seeping under cotton wool, then, implies the renewed presence of the vozatyj who, one with Eros yet ultimately transcending him, marked Kuzmin with a permanent klejmo ljubvi.47 It is he whom Kuzmin's persona sees on the granite outcrop ping, for the mirror itself is an object intimately associated with the vozatyj. It was his gift to the poet to provide a constant reminder of the mystic vision in which Kuzmin was joined to him forever:Paljascij plamen' grud' mne zeg, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No k aloj rane ja privyk.44 In these two examples the wound was inflicted by the vozatyj as a sign of his love. The end of love is identified with a healed wound:
Svezim utrom rano rano Brosil vzor ja na rjabinu: - O, zapeksajasja rana!
Mal'cik, vybrav xvorostinu, Purpur jagod na zem' brosit - A kuda ja serdce kinu?45
The return of love is marked by the reopening of the wound:
Po strunam lunnogo tumana Ljubvi napev letit. Opjat', opjat' otkrylas' rana, Dusa gorit.46
Vzojdja na bliznjuju stupen', Mne zerkalo vrucil Vozatyj; Tam otrazalsja on kak ten', I jasno zoloteli laty; A iz stekla togo struilsja den'.48"V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . " also focuses attention on Kuzmin's characteristic concern with the function of point of view, and on his habit of examining a single event from various stances. The merger of sky and water imagery in the poem's first fou r lines in fact hints that the poem as a whole is narrated from an inverted viewpoint. This becomes clear when it is compared with the following sonnet dedicated to Vsevolod Knjazev, one of the figures from Kuzmin's biography who embodied the ideal of th e vozatyj, a hussar-poet whose suicide was chosen by both Kuzmin and Axmatova as leitmotif in Forel' razbivaet led and Poema bez geroja:
Kosneli mysli medlennye v leni, Rasplastannye kosti spali v tele, Vzrezat' lazur' golubki ne xoteli, I struj zivyx ne zazdali oleni."V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . " reverses the position of the speaker in the two poems, a reversal which affects both space and time.50 From the upward-looking perspective of the sonnet it is noon; the gold is a cloud in the sky. This contrasts with the zarja and gold lakes in "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . ", where perspective focuses downward. The sonnet is filtered through the otrok of "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . ", while this latter poem assumes the point of view from which the voice says "zivi" , but in both cases the Vozatyj is Other. This Other performs the function of the Muse in its most literal sense: inspiration as life-giving, a point which is emphasized in the sonnet by the use of the phrase "golos neznyj", inevitably evoking Puskin's "Ja pomnju cudnoe mgno- ven'e . . . ".Vo sne li ja, v poludennom li plene Lezal nedvizno u nedviznoj eli? Iz kupola nebes, kak iz kupeli, Jantar' stekal mne sonno na koleni. Vdrug oblak zolotoj sred' neba stal, A gorlicy vzmetnulis' tuckoj sneznoj S veselym sumom kryl navstrecu strel.
Skvoz' zvon i plesk, i trepet, kak metall, Propel "zivi" mne cej-to golos neznyj, - I lik znakomyj v bleske ja uzrel.49
The poem "Muza" thus constitutes a pattern for reading "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . ", just as Kuzmin's work as a whole is a necessary background to interpreting both poems. As the pensive maiden of "Muza" misperceives as a duality the underlying uni ty of the fish and the golden rose, so the reader initially accepts the dichotomy of persona and otrok in the second poem. However, when viewed against the background of Kuzmin's artistic universe (as it must be if the title of the section "Stixi ob isku sstve" is to be understood properly), the dichotomy is seen to be only an illusion, produced by the inherent limits of human perception. When "V raskosyj blesk zer- kal . . . " and the sonnet to Knjazev are read together, persona and otrok become one.
This implicit unity is strongly opposed to the dualities of Kuzmin's early mentor, Vjaceslav Ivanov. The point can be illustrated by two echoes of Ivanov used polemically in these poems, but can be demonstrated on a wider body of material as well.51
The image of the head of Orpheus surfacing as a golden rose merges two adjacent images from the prologue to Ivanov's "Rosarium", the fifth book of Cor Ardens:
Tebja zovut u voln, gde Solnce pel Orfej, Nad rozoj placuscie Muzy!52In Kuzmin's poem the Muses have been reduced to a single silent representative. This is a typical device in Kuzmin's use of imagery polemical with Ivanov's: the synecdoche used for concretization. In "Muza" the goddess is confined to the title; within the poem itself she is only a "zadumcivaja deva".53
A more complicated reminiscence is established between "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . " and the epilogue to "Rosarium" entitled "Eden". In this poem Ivanov draws a sharp line between God the Father, who is identified with the depths of love and ocean, a nd the vault of the sky, which is likened to a prison ceiling. The poem's first person plural persona identifies itself with nets:
Ne znaem scast'ja my, kak nevod zolotogo, Cto, rybar', kinul Ty v efir, - 54Whereas for Ivanov God is a pre-existing Other who created Man out of nothing, for Kuzmin, as will become clearer after an analysis of his theoretical statements on the nature of creation in "O prekrasnoj jasnosti" and "Cesuja v nevode", Man comes into be ing along with the rest of creation through a process of self-division. In contrast to Ivanov, who has a nevod cast into the sky and is thus in Kuzminian terms doomed to failure, Kuzmin uses seti thrown into the glittering unity of sky and water to indic ate the ultimate success of his quest to obtain integration through self-contemplation. His allusions to Ivanov draw together the beginning and ending of "Rosarium" to form a circle characteristic of Kuzmin's art as a whole. If in Kuzmin Orpheus's singi ng head becomes in potential the silent golden rose which never actually appears, Narcissus through interplay with the sonnet to Knjazev becomes a virtual nightingale whose tender voice cries out "zivi".
The example just presented, starting from the image of the net and intended to show how it unites Kuzmin's other imagery, has illustrated as well some of the ways in which his poetry and prose interact, serving as mutually revealing and completing commen taries. More obviously, many of Kuzmin's prose works have poetry embedded in them (e.g. "Ten' Fillidy", "Povest' ob Elevsippe, raskazannaja im samim", Neznyj Iosif and Prikljucenija Eme Lebefa), or are associated with parallel poem cycles (e.g. "Kartonny j domik" with the cycle "Prervannaja povest'"). But if the complex interplay that results from such juxtapositions forms the warp of Kuzmin's texts, then their woof is the interaction among the prose texts themselves. Evgenij Znosko-Borovskij, Kuzmin's first biographer and perhaps most systematic critic, points out that "est' bol'saja blizost' i v postroenii, i v nastroenijax mezdu tremja bol'simi vescami Kuzmina, kotorye ne odin raz citirujutsja nami, imenno: `Neznyj Iosif', `Mectateli', i `Tixij stra z'. Bor'ba, kotoraja idet vokrug geroev, zasciscaemyx neskol'kimi, `tiximi' strazami ot posjagatel'stv del'cov, sblizaet eti romany do otdel'nyx castej odnoj bol'soj epopei".55 However, it has never been shown to what extent many of Kuzmin's other prose works are so inter- linked that it makes sense to speak of single, complexly articulated works of art, constituent members and appendages of which -- short stories, novellas, and novels disparate in both actual and narrative time and space -- are joined by shared images, themes, plots and characters.
The fact that portions of Kuzmin's prose combine to form these larger artistic wholes helps to explain the sense of nedoskazannost', the enigmatic incompleteness which pervades individual works such as "Povest' ob Elevsippe", "Ten' Fillidy", "Flor i razb ojnik" and "Zolotoe nebo", or Kryl'ja, "Dvojnoj napersnik", "Vysokoe iskusstvo", Neznyj Iosif, "Mectateli", Plavajuscie putesestvujuscie, and Tixij straz, to name two of the central clusters. It imparts as well a deeper significance to seemingly super- f icial and second-rate stories like "Dama v zeltom turbane" (an elaboration of a single detail in Plavajuscie putesestvujuscie) or "Masin raj" (a treatment of the problem of perspective, corresponding to a more subtle treatment in the skazka "Vysokoe okno" ). Analyzing the mechanics of such intertextual relationships reveals that the change in style between those post-revolutionary prose works which have survived and Kuzmin's pre-revolutionary prose, a change perhaps too simply labelled a move towards Expr essionism, is motivated by elaboration of techniques already developing in his earliest works, and represents an organic evolution rather than an abrupt break with his past.
This past is rooted in a highly complex and original conglomeration of literary traditions, which, as Ejxenbaum points out, combines the Latin West (Henri de Regnier and Anatole France among the moderns, Sorel, Lesage and Prevost among the masters of the picaresque) with old Russian exoticism, drawing primarily on Leskov, whom Ejxenbaum labels Kuzmin's only Russian teacher. "Tak srazu opredelilis' dve linii v proze Kuzmina - izjascnogo, zabavnogo rasskazcika, kakim on ostaetsja v svoix melkix vescax, im ejuscix inogda vid prostyx anekdotov ("Replika", "Masin raj", "Predrassudok"), a inogda zarazitel'no- smesnyx, ozornyx, kak "Antrakt v ovrage" ili "Sar na klumbe", i zagadocnogo, neskol'ko sumburnogo bytopisatelja, ne lisennogo tendencioznosti - linii, ks tati skazat', xarakternye i dlja tvorcestva Leskova".56 Markov indicates that in his poem "Moi predki" Kuzmin himself fostered this idea of dvojstvennost', which was picked up by Blok and Diks, eventually finding its way into many of the standard referen ce works,57 but ultimately the formulation must be traced back even further, beyond Kuzmin to Vjaceslav Ivanov's lecture of 14 April 1907 "Puti i celi sovremennogo iskusstva", printed in Zolotoe runo as "O veselom remesle i umnom veselii". Duality as a s chema for classifying Kuzmin into russkij and nerusskij thus arises in the earliest period of his work, when he was still in thrall to Ivanov. It takes no account of his own later pronouncements on aesthetics, nor of the basic configuration of his oeuvr e, but it serves as a useful starting point. As Kuzmin pointed out many times in his poetry and prose, "Gde dvoe svjazany, tret'e rozdaetsja".58
It was in a paper read at the "Brodjacaja sobaka" that Kuzmin provided the triple approach best suited to discussion of his own writing.59 Here he outlined three paths for contemporary Russian prose following the triumph of the modernism of the 1890s an d the subsequent closing of its special organ Vesy. All three are reflected in his own work: the path of simplicity (Puskin), the path of Russian colorfulness and extravagance (Gogol' via Leskov) and the path of the filtered language of the intelligents ia (Turgenev via Cexov). Any true innovation in prose would be simple; novelties of device were transitory. Kuzmin expanded on this point in his preface to Jurij Jurkun's novel Svedskie percatki:
Roman mozet byt' nov po sjuzetu, osvesceniju, jazyku i metodu tvorcestva, k kotoromu otnositsja i jazyk, kak casticnoe, drobnoe projavlenie. Novizna sjuzeta, k kotoroj snova stali sklonjat'sja lenivye ljudi, uverjaja, cto oni ustali ot obob scenij i prixologii, - samaja desevaja i opasnaja novizna. Ona poxoza na pogonju za redkimi rifmami i ocen' istoscima. Projden krug - i neizbezny povtorenija i neestestvennost', brosajuscajasja v glaza.60In both the paper and the preface Kuzmin challenged writers to be simple in form, sincere and complex in content, while differentiating the two to their uttermost extreme. This glorification of a dichotomy almost ritually denied to exist by contemporary criticism is the underlying assumption of the stylization that Kuzmin's critics have traditionally considered the most typical feature of his prose. As Susan Sontag has written:
Paradoxically, this same dichotomy is a symptom of Kuzmin's most characteristic trait as an artist in society; his refusal to participate in schools, movements, or any other organizations functioning to disguise the individual in art. It is fundamental, moreover, to the way Kuzminian texts signify.
In a discussion of Brjusov's novel Ognennyj angel Kuzmin revealed a principle crucial to understanding this aspect of his own work:
Nam kazetsja, cto my ne osibemsja, predpoloziv za vnesnej i psixologiceskoj povest'ju soderzanie esce bolee glubokoe i tajnoe dlja `imejuscix usi slysat'' no ustupim zelaniju avtora, ctoby eta tajna tol'ko predpolagalas', tol'ko vejala, i ta instvenno uglubljala s izbytkom ispolnennyj vsjaceskogo soderzanija roman.62In just such a fashion the spaces of enigma and nedoskazannost' in Kuzmin's prose generate by their shapes virtual images, implicit contents which considerably enhance its aesthetic effect. Ejxenbaum came tantalizingly close to this realization when he w rote of what on first glance seem to be Kuzmin's lesser efforts:
Rasskaz stanovitsja zagadocnym uzorom, v kotorom byt i psixologija iscezajut - kak predmety v rebuse. Sovremennost' ispol'zovana kak fon, na kotorom rezce vystupaet etot uzor. Kogda kazetsja, cto Kuzmin "izobrazaet" - ne ver'te emu: on zag adyvaet rebus iz sovremennosti.63In his final entry in "Cesuja v nevode" Kuzmin summarized the effect he sought:
Zaglavie: "Ctenija k nazidaniju svetskim, blagocestivym ze k razvleceniju ljudjam.64While the passage of time and the death of culture may prevent us from solving all his puzzles, the principles by which they are constructed can usually be recovered.
It was Znosko-Borovskij, himself a chess master and therefore well-equipped for solving rebuses, who first pointed out that the theme of love was a basic building block of Kuzmin's work:
I vot - esli prinjat' osnovnoj stixiej Kuzmina - ljubov', a on sam govorit: `Ljubov' - vsegdasnjaja moja vera' (`Seti' - `Radostnyj putnik') i v etom bolee prav, cem v ljubom drugom utverzdenii, - to evoljucija etogo cuvstva v ego proizvede nijax predstavljaetsja ocen' znacitel'noj.65Of course, in pursuing this line of inquiry it would be well to keep in mind one of Kuzmin's other remarks on the subject:
Mozno podobrat' rasskazy o rabocix, o duxovenstve, o studentax, o sanovnikax, o sektantax - cto ja znaju? - nakonec, nenavist', skupost', gordost', vse sem' smertnyx grexov mogut sluzit' takim ob"edinjajuscim motivom, no ljubov' - kto ze ne piset o ljubvi? ne vse li napisano eju i o nej? . . Tema tak siroka i obsca, cto pod ee flagom mozno bylo by pustit' pocti vse vyxodjascie v svet knigi.66And yet . . . "Ljubov' - nas vernyj rulevoj".67 To conclude with Znosko-Borovskij that love yields its place as the central theme of Kuzmin's work to other general ideas in the second half of his output would be to miss the lesson of the two poems analyz ed earlier. Love does not yield place but is transformed, and even this transformation turns out to be a return. The progression of love in Kuzmin's prose moves in a direction opposite to the development of form. If form tends toward fragmentation, lov e aspires to integration, beginning from the essentially egocentric, Narcissistic position of Kryl'ja, "Kartonnyj domik", and the stylizations of the picaresque, through the searching of the first major novels, to the perfected, self-denying love of Tixij straz, Cudesnaja zizn' Iosifa Bal'zamo, grafa Kaliostro, and the novel fragments. It is this path which Kuzmin symbolizes in his poems on Orpheus's descent into Hell to retrieve his beloved Eurydice, and in this context it is highly significant that for Kuzmin the iconic form of the Orpheus myth is not Ovid but Gluck.68
In one of his last surviving stories, "Zlatoe nebo", Kuzmin seems to be making a final statement on the fundamental role of Eros in his oeuvre:
Eros - bozestvo blagoe i mudroe. Mnogie scitajut ego drevnejsim razdelitelem xaosa, otcom garmonii i tvorceskoj sily. I dejstvitel'no, bez soedinjajuscej ljubvi mnogoe v mire raspalos' by na casti . . . Bog ne vinovat, cto ljudi ego svoj stva, ego dary obrascajut vo zlo i nazyvajut ljubov'ju besporjadocnye i gibel'nye strasti.69Here the God who hovered over the primordial ylem at the beginning of "O prekrasnoj jasnosti" has been recognized as Eros as well as Jehovah. This is the final reconciliation of the Platonic and the Christian, the last stage in the journey Kuzmin describ ed in his introduction to Cudesnaja zizn' Iosifa Bal'zamo, grafa Kaliostro:
Glavnym obrazom, menja interesujut mnogoobraznye puti Duxa, veduscie k odnoj celi, inogda ne dovodjascie i pozvoljajuscie putniku svertyvat' v bokovye allei, gde tot i zabluditsja nesomnenno. Mne vazno to mesto, kotoroe zanimajut izbrannye geroi v obscej evoljucii, v obscem stroitel'stve Boz'ego mira, a vnesnjaja pestraja smena kartin i sobytij nuzna lis' kak zanimatel'naja obolocka, kotoruju vsegda mozet zamenit' voobrazenie, mladsaja ses tra jasnovidenija.70It is a stage admirably summarized in a passage from "Cesuja v nevode":
Ne tajna li Troicy? Bog - Polnota, Tvorcestvo, Edinstvo. Kak tol'ko tvorcestvo - sejcas ze dva: Tvorec i tvorimoe. Razdelenie. Sejcas ze - ljubov' kak soedinenie i dejatel'naja polnota.71But it is present in one form or another throughout Kuzmin's work, and must trace its roots to the basic structure of his psyche as he himself perceived it in a diary entry from the autumn of 1905:
Ja dolzen byt' iskrenen i pravdiv, xotja by pered samim soboju, otnositel'no togo sumbura, cto carit v moej duse, no esli u menja est' tri lica, to bol'se esce celovek vo mne sidit, i vse vopijut, i vremenami odin perekrikivaet drugogo, i ka k ja ix soglasuju, sam ne znaju. Moi ze tri lica do togo nepoxozi i do togo vrazdebny drug drugu, cto tol'ko toncajsij glaz ne prel'stitsja etoju raznicej, vozmuscajut vsex ljubivsix kakoe-nibud' iz nix, sut': s dlinnoj borodoju, napominajuscee cem-to V inci, ocen' iznezennoe i budto dobroe i kakoj-to podozritel'noj svjatosti, budto prostoe, nesloznoe; vtoroe s ostroj borodkoj neskol'ko fatovskoe, francuzskogo korrespondenta, bolee grubo tonkoe, ravnodusnoe i skucajusee, lico Evlogija; tret'e samoe stras noe: bez borody i usov, ne staroe i ne molodoe, pjatidesjati let, starika i junosi, Kazanova, polusarlatan, poluabbat, s kovarnym i po-detski svezim rtom, suxoe i podozritel'noe.72The linear concepts of "progress", "development", or "evolution", then, while they may prove useful in describing individual aspects of Kuzmin's work, are inappropriate to an appreciation of his artistic achievement as a whole. They have continually dis torted critical response to his writing. On the one hand, they force it into pre-conceived systems of classification aimed more at justifying a generalized theory than at understanding individual artists. An example of this is Zirmunskij's perceptive ye t ultimately misleading characterization of Kuzmin as the "third wave" of Symbolism.73 On the other hand, they produce the impression that Kuzmin is somehow static: "As the years pass there is no discernable development of ideas but rather a repeated re turn to the familiar",74 as Granoien formulates it. The assumption behind these two points of view is that schools are significant to Kuzmin's art and that ideas are its essential product or goal. In fact Kuzmin responded to individuals, and ideas were the raw material for the production of aesthetic effect, an appeal to the emotions rather than to the mind.
The modes of Kuzmin's work are characteristically global, self-containing and self-generating, while its goal is integration rather than differentiation, contemplation (in the old sense of the augur marking a vantage point with his staff) rather than ide ation. This is the quality which determines the structure of my study. Setting into motion the "colored spiral in a small ball of glass" which Nabokov chose as an emblem for his life in Speak, Memory, it takes the form of a double helix, apparently ret urning to the same points again and again, but each time at a higher level of understanding. Its spiral arms are the twin concerns of the relationship of the prose to the poetry and of the prose to itself. Within such a geometry, Kuzmin's major formulat ions of his theory of creation will be convenient vantage points from which to survey his prose as a whole. Their structures isomorphic with the views they propound, they are microcosms of his "tvorceskij put'" and, together with the "Stixi ob iskusstve" and a scattering of other poems on art, form a basis for understanding how his writing works.
"O prekrasnoj jasnosti", with its classical symmetries, architectural metaphors, and subtle polemics with Vjaceslav Ivanov, is not a programmatic but a summarizing essay when considered in the context of Kuzmin's prose. It formulates the principles unde rlying the stylization he employed in many of his early works, but at the same time it marks the transition from the predominance of stylization for its own sake to the parodic and self-parodying works of his "Nagrodskaja" period (what Markov has called h is "xalturnyj period"),75 which begins with "Pokojnica v dome" and the skazki and culminates in Tixij straz.
"Cesuja v nevode", taking the form of a commonplace book, adopts thereby the fragmented, kaleidoscopic shape which, although implicit in Kuzmin's earlier works, becomes their most prominent structural feature only after the revolution. At the same tim e, this second consideration of the nature of creation formulates the collage of Gnostic and mystic elements so characteristic of Cudesnaja zizn' Iosfa Bal'zamo, grafa Kaliostro and of the novel fragments.
Finally, the manifestos on Emotionalism, with their collective voice propounding an individualistic artistic stance, with their explicit criticism of formalist approaches to literature in the face of the susceptibility of Kuzmin's own work to such analys es, proclaim a complex and even self-contradictory position which is sketchily apparent in the few surviving post-revolutionary prose pieces, but which can be traced in the later poetry.
Throughout, we will be concerned to demonstrate the essential unity of Kuzmin's work and the role of the implicit in it, the virtual images it leaves on the retina of our mind's eye. Like Gogol', whom Kuzmin parodied in the povest' "Kapitanskie casy" an d with whom he has more affinities than have been suspected, Kuzmin is a writer in whose best works figure can become ground, and syntax sense. Like Gogol', he is a writer whose unwritten works form a portion of his oeuvre essential to an understanding o f the whole. Some, like Kniga o svjatyx voinax, may have existed only in the mind of the author; others, such as the novel Propavsaja Veronika or the remaining chapters of Rimskie cudesa or Zlatoe nebo, rumoured to have been lost with the Kuzmin archiv e in Berlin during World War II, are now thought to be in private collections in Leningrad and Moscow, and will one day be available for study. But others come into being at the interstices of his surviving works, and it is this property of his writing t hat Anna Axmatova drew upon in producing the "open text"76 of Poema bez geroja, that Mandel'stam responded to in works as diverse as "Sestry tjazest' i neznost'" and "Egipetskaya marka", and that Nabokov used to produce both the fragmented, intentionally deceptive narrator of Sogljadataj and the subversion of the roman a clef in his 1928/30 short story, "Usta k ustam".
Perhaps even if faced with these affinities for (if not influences of)
Kuzmin's work, Ivanov would still claim that "M. Kuzmin - prostoj i jasnyj
xudoznik". But as Valery once wrote of Mallarme, "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a de
plus mysterieux que la clarte?"
Notes to the Introduction
1 Vjaceslav Ivanov, "O proze M. Kuzmina", Apollon No. 7 (1910), p. 46.
2 Boris Ejxenbaum, "O proze M. Kuzmina", Skvoz' literaturu (Leningrad: Academia, 1924), p. 196.
3 A recent exception, Neil Granoien's 1981 UCLA dissertation Mixail Kuzmin: An Aesthete's Prose is in its author's words "an interpretation that draws upon inner biographical realities and the external sources that comprised his interests, leaving aside a close analysis of style and structure." (p. 7). It thus complements my work, which is concerned primarily with this latter task.
4 Roman Jakobson, "Randbemerkungen zur Prosa des Dichters Pasternak", Slavische Rundschau, 7 (1935), p. 357. Kuzmin had reached the same conclusion in "Parnasskie zarosli", Zavtra No. 1 (1922), p. 114, and perhaps Brjusov expressed the sentiment best of all: "Byt' mozet, vse v zizni lis' sredstvo/ Dlja jarko-pevucix stixov?".
5 Denis Mickiewicz, "Apollo and Modernist Poetics", Russian Literature Triquarterly No. 1 (1971), p. 245.
6 Jakobson, pp. 357-8.
7 George Cheron, "B. Pasternak and M. Kuzmin, (An Inscription)", Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 5 (1980), p. 67.
8 Boris Pasternak, Doktor Zivago (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), pp. 451-2. Perhaps it is only a coincidence that immediately following this passage Zivago composes the poem "Skazka", combining Western European and Russian traditions a bout St. George and the Dragon, a favorite theme of Kuzmin.
9 See Appendix 1, "Nabokov, Kuzmin, Cexov and Gogol': Systems of reference in `Usta k ustam'".
10 Lidija Cukovskaja, in Zapiski ob Anne Axmatovoj, tom I: 1938-1941, (Paris: YMCA Press, 1976), pp. 150-1, reports that Axmatova compared Kuzmin's diary to Vigel''s and considered it, as did Ol'ga Glebova- Sudejkina, "necto cudoviscnoe". Kuzmin was in the habit of reading intimate passages from the diary out loud to friends. Vjaceslav Ivanov describes such readings in his own diary; see Vjaceslav Ivanov, Sobranie socinenij, vol. 2, pp. 784, 793 (entries for 6 and 21 August 1909). The excerpt Kuzmin published is in Strelec no. 3 (1922) pp. 96-109. K. N. Suvorova has recently published fragments from the diary dealing with Aleksandr Blok in "Pis'ma M. A. Kuzmina k Bloku i otryvki iz dnevnika M. A. Kuzmina", Literaturnoe nasledstvo 92 (Moscow: "Nauka ", 1981): Aleksandr Blok. Novye materialy i issledovanija. Kniga 2., pp. 143-174. Unfortunately, extensive cuts were made, many of them obviously intended to obscure Kuzmin's relationship with the painter Sergej Sudejkin. Moreover, in her introduction to the diary Suvorova misrepresents its nature by selective quotation of Kuzmin himself (p. 147). See also Malmstad, SSIII, pp. 306-7, for a discussion of the diary after 1930.
11 Klaus Mann, Andre Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought (New York: Creative Age Press, 1943), p. 16.
12 John E. Malmstad, "Mixail Kuzmin: A Chronicle of his Life and Times", SSIII, pp. 7-319. My summary of Kuzmin's life to December 1904 on pages 7-10 is drawn entirely from his account. For the later period I sometimes disagree with Malmstad's chronol ogy and evaluations, and these cases will be indicated in the notes. 13 K. N. Suvorova, "Arxivist iscet datu", Vstreci s proslym. Sbornik neopublikovannyx materialov CGALI SSSR, vypusk 2 (Moscow: "Sovetskaja Rossija", 1976), pp. 118-119.
14 Cited according to Malmstad, SSIII, p. 33.
15 Vladimir Markov, "Italy in Mikhail Kuzmin's Poetry", Italian Quarterly vol. 20, nos. 77-78 (Summer-Fall, 1976), pp. 5-18. An early unpublished story, "V pustyne" (GPB, f. 400, op. 1, ed. xr. 9), unavailable to me, dates from 1897.
16 Cited according to Malmstad, SSIII, p. 51.
17 Mixail Kuzmin, Paraboly (Petersburg-Berlin: Petropolis, 1923), p. 14.
18 Ibid., p. 15.
19 The figures of Orpheus and Narcissus were linked before Kuzmin, of course. An early example is to be found in the Flamenca romance, dating from the third quarter of the thirteenth century, where the stories of the two are listed consecutively:
L'us diz com neguet en la fon Lo belz Narcis quan s'i miret; L'us diz de Pluto con emblet Sa bella mollier ad Orpheu;
One tells how the fair Narcissus drowned in the well when he admired himself in it; one tells how Pluto robbed Orpheus of his beautiful wife.
A second still vaguer linking is given in Marsilius Ficinus's Commentarium in Convivium Platonis, 1469:
Hinc crudelissimum illud apud Orpheum Narcissi fatum.
Hence Narcissus's cruel fate with Orpheus."
See Louise Vinge, The Narcissus Theme in Western European Literature up to the Early 19th Century, (Lund: Gleerups, 1967), pp. 88-89, 123-127. It is important to note that the figures of Orpheus and Narcissus are linked rather than merged by the two p oems being considered here. They are only partially amenable to the analysis given by Herbert Marcuse in "The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus", chapter 8 of his Eros and Civilization. They cannot be viewed as reconciling Eros with Thanatos, nor can thei r telos be described as "just to be what they are", "being there", existing: Orpheus in "Muza" is the essence of the metamorphosed; Narcissus in the second poem is the essence of potentiality, of becoming rather than of having become. Freud's concept of primary narcissism is, however, a perfectly satisfactory description of the state prior to creation in Kuzmin; for Freud:
Originally the ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inse parable connection of the ego with the external world. (Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 13)
and for Kuzmin:
V zizni kazdogo celoveka nastupajut minuty, kogda, buduci rebenkom, on vdrug skazet: `ja - i stul', `ja - i koska', `ja - i mjac', potom, buduci vzroslym: `ja - i mir'. ("O prekrasnoj jasnosti")
Marcuse's conclusion that the Orphic-Narcissistic images ultimately aim to reunify what has become separated is also compatible with Kuzmin's usage: in the poem "Vot posle rzavyx l'vov i reva . . . " (written before the poems being considered here but placed after them in Paraboly, in the section "Puti Tamino") Kuzmin portrays Orpheus leading Eurydice through a swampland to the blessed groves of grace; from the poem "Konec vtorogo toma" in the same collection this swampland may be seen to represent the universe before the division of the dry land from the waters. The goal of Orpheus, then, is a return to the pre-creational state of undifferentiation. A similar goal is implied for Narcissus in "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . " by the merger of water with sky in its first four lines. For Kuzmin the linkage of Orpheus with Narcissus can be seen as a rejection of Vjaceslav Ivanov's Dionysus and the overt dualism which lay at the roots of Russian Symbolism. In this Kuzmin departs from the Orphic tradition linking all three. For deta ils on this triple linkage see Walter A. Strauss, Descent and Return. The Orphic Theme in Modern Literature (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971), pp. 5-8, 18-19.
20 Mixail Kuzmin, "O prekrasnoj jasnosti", Apollon No. 4 (January, 1910), p. 5. Note also the use of zapecatlet' in the poem "Moj portret", Seti p. 33, lines 5-6:
Klejmom ljubvi navek zapecatlenny Certy moi pod Vaseju rukoj; It is also interesting to note in this regard that one of Kuzmin's favorite Leskov stories was "Zapecatlennyj angel" (see Malmstad, SSIII, p. 210); Ejxenbaum's use of this story as an example in his article on Kuzmin's prose is probably not accidental.
21 Mixail Kuzmin, Rimskie cudesa, Strelec 3 (1922), p. 16. The image of the drowned youth appears in various forms in Kuzmin, beginning with Narcissus in Kuranty ljubvi, and including Antinous and Hylas. It is intimately connected with Kuzmin's self-im age: Antinous was his nickname in the mock literary society Kabacok Gafiza. The image later acquired new significance with the drowning of Kuzmin's friend, the painter Sapunov, but its meaning was already well- established in Kryl'ja, where the hero Van ja is confronted with a drowned boy bearing the same name, producing an emotional crisis which leads to his acceptance of the homosexual way of life. Derek Harris points out that this image has strong homosexual connotations, giving examples from Hart Cr ane, Lorca and Luis Cernuda. See Derek Harris, Luis Cernuda: A Study of the Poetry (London: Tamesis Books Ltd., 1973), p. 50, n. 42. For a discussion of the fish as a self-contained image and complex element of traditional symbolism in Kuzmin's work see John E. Malmstad and Gennady Shmakov, "Kuzmin's `The Trout Breaking through the Ice'" in George Gibian and H.W. Tjalsma, Russian Modernism (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1976), pp. 143-4. The image of the fish in "Muza" is connected to the sun in Forel' razbivaet led via the aquamarine:
Tebe nadoel ved' Solnce akvamarinom (p. 9, "Pervoe vstuplenie", lines 6-7)
22 It is an ancient custom for the Pope to bestow a golden rose on Christians who have earned his particular esteem.
23 Mixail Kuzmin, "Macexa iz Skarperii", Devstvennyj Viktor (Petrograd: M.I. Semenov, 1918), pp. 79-94.
24 A more detailed discussion of these elements is reserved for discussion of the story itself.
25 "Macexa iz Skarperii", p. 84.
26 Ibid., p. 85. Capture or control over birds also symbolizes creation in Kuzmin; see the title poem of Glinjanye golubki.
27 Cf. Vjaceslav Ivanov, "O veselom remesle i umnom veselii", Zolotoe runo No. 5 (1907), p. 54: "I daze M. Kuzmin, estet i parnasec, podlinnyj otprysk aleksandrijskoj kul'tury, zivoj anaxronizm sredi nas, stilist, nevol'no delajuscij - ne dumaja po-fran cuzski - ocarovatel'nye gallicizmy i v svoix nebreznejsix proizvedenijax xranjascij pecat' istinnogo latin- francuzskogo klassicizma, - i on polovinoju svoej dusi prinadlezit nasej varvarskoj stixii, - u sebja doma v mire staroobrjadcestva i slagaet pervy e opyty prostoduxnyx misterij. Vse eti xudozniki rodilis' `iz duxa muzyki', pod znakom muzykal'no-orgijnogo, varvarskogo Dionisa." [My emphasis.] This passage was omitted when the ar- ticle was printed in book form in Ivanov's Po zvezdam. For an interesting survey of Orpheus in Russian Symbolism, see Zoja Jur'eva, "Mif ob Orfee v tvorcestve Andreja Belogo, Aleksandra Bloka i Vjaceslava Ivanova", American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists (Columbus: Slavica, 1978) vol. 2, pp. 779-799. Mandel'stam's vision of Orpheus is particularly close to Kuzmin's (see note 70).
28 Mixail Kuzmin, "Ryba", Nezdesnie vecera (Berlin: Slovo, 1923), pp. 88-9. The ordering of critical articles in the collection Uslovnosti is significant in this regard: it begins with drama, goes to opera, then prose, followed by poetry, ending wit h painting. Contrast this with the opposite ordering in Axmatova: Haight reports that she told the poet Anatoly Nayman, "When I was young I loved architecture and water, now I love music and earth." (Anna Akhmatova, a Poetic Pilgrimage. NY: Oxford, 1 976, p. 183.) I must also point out here the close similarity of this progression to the interpretation of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus given in Jeffry Mehlman "Orphee Scripteur: Blanchot, Rilke, Derrida", Structuralist Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1979 ), pp. 42-75. On Kuzmin as a "visual" poet see the anticipation in E. Anichkov, "Poslednie pobegi russkoj poezii", Zolotoe runo No. 2 (1908), pp. 53-54.
29 Mixail Kuzmin, Kuranty ljubvi, SSI, p. 13.
30 Mixail Kuzmin, "Ten' Fillidy", Zolotoe runo No. 7-9 (1907), pp. 83-87.
31 Mixail Kuzmin, "Princ Zelanie", Pokojnica v dome (Peterburg: M. I. Semenov, 1914), pp. 113-122.
32 Paraboly, p. 9.
33 In Zelenyj solovej (Petrograd: M. I. Semenov, 1916), pp. 71-98.
34 Mixail Kuzmin, "Mne snilsja son: v gluxix lugax idu ja . . . " Glinjanye golubki (Peterburg-Berlin: "Petropolis", 1923), p. 59, lines 9-16.
35 See John A. Barnstead, "Mikhail Kuzmin's `On Beautiful Clarity' and Viacheslav Ivanov: A Reconsideration", Canadian Slavonic Papers 24 no. 1 (March, 1982), pp. 1-10.
36 Mixail Kuzmin, "Net ne zovi menja, ne poj, ne ulybajsja . . . ", Osennie ozera (Moscow: "Skorpion", 1912), p. 68, lines 8-12.
37 An example of using mirrors for divination is provided by the Aleksandrijskie pesni:
Ty - kak u gadatelja otrok: vse v moem serdce citaes' ......................... no znan'e tut ne veliko i ne mnogo slov tut i nuzno, tut ne nado ni zerkala ni zarovni:" (Seti, p. 146, lines 1-2, 5-8)
38 Mixail Kuzmin, Novyj Gul' (Peterburg: "Academia", 1924), p. 29, lines 1-6. Cf. also "V odin sosud grjaduscee i prosloe steklo", line 12 of "Vozatyj", part 6, in Seti, p. 117.
39 See, for example, his comments on rassceplennost' duxa and raskolotaja dusa in "O prekrasnoj jasnosti", Apollon No. 4 (January, 1910), p. 5. His poem "O, plakal'sciki dnej minuvsix" in the cycle "Mudraja vstreca" dedicated to Vjaceslav Ivanov, may be chiding Ivanov for this fault: its line 18 "Ne sozalej i ne gadaj" anticipates line 13 of "V raskosyj blesk zerkal".
40 Paraboly, p. 9, lines 1-3.
41 Paraboly, p. 13, line 14. The process of merger begins with the section "Lodka v nebe" in Nezdesnie vecera.
42 This theme, which Jacob Stockinger suggests as a distinctive feature of homosexually-oriented texts in his article "Homotexuality: A Proposal" in Louie Crew (ed.), The Gay Academic (Palm Springs: ETC Publications, 1978), pp. 135-151, has been explor ed in detail for Kuzmin's Kryl'ja by Donald C. Gillis, "The Platonic Theme in Kuzmin's Wings", Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 22, no. 3 (1978), pp. 336-347. Other works which use the mirror in this way include Plavajuscie putesestvujuscie, Tixi j straz, "O sovestlivom laplandce i patrioticeskom zerkale", and "Selkovyj dozd'".
43 Seti, p. 116, lines 5-8.
44 Seti, p. 128, lines 5, 13.
45 Glinjanye golubki, p. 46, lines 1-6.
46 Glinjanye golubki, p. 120, lines 1-4.
47 This phrase is taken from "Moj portret", Seti, p. 33, line 5.
48 Seti, p. 114, lines 1-5.
49 Osennie ozera, p. 32.
50 The phrase "junejuscix lanit" in line 14 of "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . " is evidence that in the inverted world of this poem time itself flows backwards. Space inversion is further evidenced by comparing line 8 of "V raskosyj blesk zerkal . . . " with line 9 of "Nevnjaten smysl tvoix velenij . . . ": "Tvoj vzor, proroceski letucij".
51 See my article "Mikhail Kuzmin's `On Beautiful Clarity' and Viacheslav Ivanov: a Reconsideration", Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 24, no. 1 (March, 1982), pp. 1-10.
52 Vjaceslav Ivanov, Sobranie socinenij (Brussels: Foyer Oriental Chretien, 1974) vol. 2, p. 450.
53 The synecdochic relationship established between Ivanov's muses and Kuzmin's single representation is not random but polemic. Ivanov records the sceptical reaction of the members of Kabacok Gafiza to his preaching about "mystical energetism" with the following significant commentary: "Oni serdjatsja na ,moralista' i dumajut, cto eto odno iz moix devjati protivorecij. ("V cem mudrost' Muz?" sprosili menja. Ja skazal: "V tom, cto ix devjat': poezija - devjat' protivorecij"). Mezdu tem, eto - moe n astojascee i vernoe."
54 Ibid., p. 531. For Kuzmin "Rosarium" had served to characterize Ivanov earlier. He makes reference to it in a poem for Ivanov's nameday from March, 1911:
55 Evgenij Znosko-Borovskij, "O tvorcestve M. Kuzmina", Apollon No. 4-5 (April-May, 1917), p. 36. 56 Ejxenbaum, pp. 198-199.
57 Vladimir Markov, "Poezija Mixaila Kuzmina", SSIII, p. 402. Note also Sergej Makovskij, Na parnase "serebrjanogo veka", p. 22.
58 Mixail Kuzmin, "Lesenka", Paraboly, p. 105, last line.
59 Mixail Kuzmin, "Kak ja cital doklad v `Brodjacej sobake'", Sinij zurnal No. 18 (1914), p. 6.
60 Mixail Kuzmin, preface to Jurij Jurkun, Svedskie percatki (Peterburg: S. I. Semenov, 1914), p. 4.
61 Susan Sontag, "On Style", Against Interpretation (New York: Dell Publishers, 1966), p. 19.
62 Mixail Kuzmin, "Xudozestvennaja proza `Vesov'", Apollon No. 9 (1910), p. 39.
63 Ejxenbaum, p. 199. Here Ejxenbaum may be drawing on a passage from Kuzmin's introduction to Jurij Jurkun's novel Svedskie percatki: "Ju. Jurkun scitaet citatelej za ljudej soobrazitel'nyx i ne tupyx; konecno, eta dovercivost' i ljubeznost' obuslovl ivaetsja vozrastom avtora, no mozet okazat' emu i ploxuju uslugu. Ja ne xocu skazat', cto on soznatel'no piset rebusy, no vnimanija trebuet." (p. 5). As with Kuzmin's discussion of Ognennyj angel, much in this preface may be taken as applying to Kuzmi n himself.
64 Mixail Kuzmin, "Cesuja v nevode", Strelec No. 3 (1922), p. 109.
65 Znosko-Borovskij, p. 33.
66 Mixail Kuzmin, "Zametki o russkoj belletristike", Apollon No. 6 (1910), p. 43.
67 Mixail Kuzmin, "Pustit'sja by po belu svetu . . . ", Glinjanye golubki, pp. 75-76, line 28.
68 The chief difference in the two stories is that in Gluck's opera, after Orpheus has lost Euridice by looking back at her before reaching the upper world, Love appears and returns her to life. This ultimate escape from tragedy underlies all Kuzmin's t reat- ments of the theme, but is felt especially strongly in the poem "Orfej", published in Literaturnyi sovremennik No. 4 (April, 1941), p. 59, and omitted from Malmstad and Markov's Sobranie stikhotvorenij. Gennady Shmakov has recently published a vari ant of the poem in Cast' reci No. 1 (1980), pp. 98-99, dedicated to L. Rakov and dated "1924(?)"; the version in Literaturnyj sovremennik is dedicated to Kuzmin's illustrator and friend A. Ja. Golovin, and dated 5 June 1930 (i.e. shortly after Golovin's death). Given the nature of the poem and its mention of Golovin, I am inclined to accept this latter text as authoritative. Mandel'stam's Orpheus also draws on Gluck: see Steven Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam and His Age (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975), pp. 83-86.
69 Mixail Kuzmin, "Zlatoe nebo", Abraksas No. 3 (February, 1923), p. 10.
70 Mixail Kuzmin, Cudesnaja zizn' Iosifa Bal'zamo, grafa Kaliostro (Petrograd: "Stranstvujuscij Entuziast", 1918/19), pp. 8-9.
71 Mixail Kuzmin, "Cesuja v nevode", Strelec No. 3 (1922), p. 107.
72 Cited according to Gennadij Smakov, "Blok i Kuzmin", Blokovskij sbornik 2 (Tartu: Izdatel'stvo Tartuskogo universiteta, 1972), p. 348.
73 V.M. Zirmunskij, "Preodolevsie simvolizm", Voprosy teorii literatury (Leningrad: Academia, 1928), p. 278. Zirmunskij is correct in placing Kuzmin with the Symbolists because of his mystical experiences as reflected in his poetry, but he exaggerate s the Pushkinian line in the poems and places too much emphasis on "O prekrasnoj jasnosti" as a programmatic work. Already in the "Duxovnye stixi" of Osennie ozera it was clear that Kuzmin was more than just the poet of "milye, xrupkie vesci".
74 Neil Granoien, Mixail Kuzmin: An Aesthete's Prose, (unpublished UCLA dissertation, 1981), p. 10.
75 Vladimir Markov, "Beseda o proze Kuzmina". (To appear).
76 This term is used by V. N. Toporov to describe that property of Poema
bez geroja "kotoryj lisaet tekst okoncatel'nosti, zakoncennosti smyslovyx
interpretacij i, naoborot, delaet ego `otkrytym', postojanno prebyvajuscim
in statu nascendi i poetomu spos obnym k ulavlivan'ju buduscego, podstraivan'ju
k potencial'nym situacijam." V. N. Toporov, Axmatova i Blok (Berkeley:
Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1981), p. 8. In this regard a quote from Kuzmin's
play Komedija o Aleksee celoveke Boz'em used by Markov as epigraph to his
article "Beseda o proze Kuzmina" is particularly appropriate: --Ja ne sovsem
ponimaju poslednix slov. --Pesnja esce dlinna, i iz dal'nejsego jasneet
smysl predyduscego. Samo po sebe nicto ne byvaet ponjatno.
Copyright © 1999 by John Barnstead