М. Кузмин - простой и ясный художник.  Понятным можно было бы его назвать, если бы его понимали.  Но мало доступны постижению современников и самый род его творчества, и эта гармоническая согласованность многострунной души, радостно приемлющей жизнь и все ее `милые, хрупкие вещи' - в доверчивой покорности Богу,"¹ Viacheslav 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 Eikhenbaum still found it necessary to preface his evaluation of Kuzmin with a caveat: "Проза Кузмина еще не вошла в обиход - тем интереснее говорить о ней.  Его знают и любят больше как поэта".² The same might be said today, for while his poetry has been handso mely reprinted with extensive biographical and analytical articles by Malmstad and Markov, the prose, with the exception of Крылья, is still largely undervalued.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 Ausserung 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 "О прекрасной ясности" has taken his aesthetic position as applying directly to verse, without regard for the subtitle "заметки о прозе"; 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 berufsmassige Kunstprosa dieser Epoche eine typische Epigonens- produktion, eine mehr oder weniger erfolgreiche Reproduktion 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 central 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 Избранные стихи: "Прошлой зимой я перечитывал Вашу трехтомную прозу, и это было любимейшим чтением того года."⁷ Kuzmin's prose achieves its transcendence through its interplay with his poetry and its systematic interconnections with itself, in its best pages attaining those qualities which Doctor Zhivago strove for:

Всю жизнь мечтал он об оригинальности сглаженной и приглушенной, внешне неузнаваемой и скрытой под покровом общеупотребительной и привычной формы, всю жизнь стремился к выработке того сдержанного, непритяжательного слога, при котором читатель и слушатель овладевают содержанием, сами не замечая, каким способом они его усваивают.⁸

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 повести Крылья and "Картонный домик" or the novel Плавающие путесшествующие 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 Соглядатай and his 1931 short story "Уста к устам".⁹

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 "Чешуя в неводе", and the sterilized fragments which appeared 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 Крылья in 1906. With Gide Kuzmin shared an impervious indifference to Wagner, and an admiration for Dostoevskii 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 Тихий страж mimics Братья Карамазовы. 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 two excellent books outlining  that struggle 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 Зеленый сборник 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. Discussion of his later life will be reserved for presentation with his individual works.

K. N. Suvorova 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 Iaroslavl' to Saratov, where in a few years he began his education. His early reading included Shakespeare and E.T.A. Hoffman, then Don Quixote 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 "маленький синий чулок" 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: "Ганс Беккар".

From Saratov the family went to Saint Petersburg in 1885, where Kuzmin continued his education in the eighth gymnasium. Here he first met Georgii Vasil'evich Chicherin (later to become an important Soviet diplomat), who exercised a powerful influence 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 may have suffered from multiple personalities.

In 1891 Kuzmin entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied under Rimskii-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 Chicherin'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:

Чистое искусство зарождается и завершается в своем собственном, замкнутом, оторванном от всего мира круге с особыми требованиями, как мир больного безумца (хотя бы и идеальный, и стройный, но в своей обособленности и отвлеченности безумный).¹⁴

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.

Vladimir Markov has outlined the impact this trip had on Kuzmin's writing.¹⁵ It provided the background for the third part of Крылья and contributed to several cycles of poems. In Florence Kuzmin came under the influence of a Catholic 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 rather to an increasing desire for an unattainable system of absolute values, which found its reflection in his definition of art:

Не в том ли цель, чтобы пробуждать дремлющее творчество в каждом человеке?  И чем избраннее человек, тем глубже он воспринял, тем сильнее искусство?  Но тогда, кто знает, чем оно пробуждает?  Это уже совершенно неопределенно и менее осознательно, чем абсолютная красота, которая, раз постигнутая интуитивно, уже пребывает, хотя бы по воспоминанию...¹⁶

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 again. He also began writing lyrics to his songs, some in the form of sonnets, others, drawing on Egyptian themes, in free verse. In 1904 Chicherin introduced him to the Мир искусства group. It was in the congenial company of men like Sergei Diaghilev, Aleksandr 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 background in literature with the influences of two German writers, Johann Georg Hama nn and Wilhelm Heinse, as he began to write Крылья and the poems which were to become his first book of verse, Сети. Encouraged as well by the family of the young poet Iurii Verkhovskii he turned to literature in earnest, and in December 1904 the miscellany Зеленый сборник стихов и прозы published thirteen of his sonnets and his long poem "История рыцаря d'Alessio". They were not well received, but soon his Александрийские песни would attract the attention of Valerii Briusov, leading to their publicat ion in Весы and eventually to the scandalous success of Крылья.

From the beginning of his career Kuzmin made innovations in both poetry and prose. The Александрийске песни constitute the first sizable body of free verse in Russian, while the повесть Крылья represents the first sustained treatment of the theme of homosexuality. 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 (сети), they name his first book of poems; in another (невод), as part of the title he gave to the published 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, сети and невод, 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-referentiality of Kuzmin's texts, this complex interaction can be illustrated by analyzing two adjacent poems from the section of Параболы called "Стихи об искусстве". In addition to obtaining a plausible reading for the second poem, considered enigmatic by Malmstad and Markov, this analysis will serve to demonstrate how Kuzmin's texts depend on one another: 

Муза

В глухие воды бросив невод
Под вещий лепет темных лип
Глядит задумчивая дева 
На чешую волшебных рыб.

То в упоении зверином
Свивают алые хвосты 
То выплывут аквамарином 
Легки, прозрачны и просты.

Восторженно не разумея 
Плодов запечатленных вод 
Все ждет, что голова Орфея
Златистой розою всплывет.

1922.  Февраль.

В раскосый блеск зеркал забросив сети
Склонился я к заре зеленоватой,
Слежу узор едва заметной зыби, -
Лунатик золотеющих озер!
Как кровь сочится под целебной ватой,
Яснеет отрок на гранитной глыбе,
И мглой истомною в медвяном лете
Пророчески подернут сизый взор.

Живи, Недвижный! затрепещут веки,
К ладоням нежным жадно припадаю
Томление любви неутолимой
Небесный спутник мой да утолит.
Не вспоминаю я и не гадаю, - 
Полет мгновений, легкий и любимый
Вдруг останавливаешь ты навеки
Роскошеством юнеющих ланит.

1922. Апрель. 

As in "Чешуя в неводе", the net in "Муза" 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 "О прекрасной ясности":

И дальше - посредством разграничивания, ясных борозд - получился тот сложный и прекрасный мир, который, принимая или не принимая, стремятся узнать, по-своему видеть, и запечатлеть художники.²⁰

Он стыдился, краснел, чего впрочем не было особенно заметно при заре, и упрямо рассматривал рыб, которые подплывали, сонно раззевали рты, ожидая крошек, и опять опускались на дно, где нарисован был Гилас.²¹

The connection of Orpheus with Narcissus made by these two poems is a reconsideration of their oblique merger in the 1916 short story "Мачеха из Скарперии",²³ a stylized Italian tale of spurned passion and revenge, which combined numerous images Kuzmin l ater developed in the Gnostic poems of Нездешние вечера and in Параболы, 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 stepmother Valeriia. 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 Valeriia's confession of love. Her crime unearthed, Valeriia 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:

Опасность для его чести и жизни, о которой предупреждал его Никола, не затрагивала его воображения, не рисовала никаких картин, и нисколько не подходила на зерно, которое пускает росток в принявшую его землю, а скорей схожа была с камнем, брошенным в воду и образующим только на поверхности легкие скороисчезающие круги.²⁵

Когда ты был ребенком, не я ли вырезывал тебе дудки из тростника и доставлял птичьи гнезда с птенцами?  Я не мог тебя выучить верхом, но я тебе показал, как играть в шахматы, как удить рыбу и приманивать птиц.  Ты помнишь это, не правда ли?²⁶

Любовь расставляет сети из крепких шелков
Любовники как дети ищут оков.²⁹

The movement from "Муза" 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 глухие воды are replaced by the раскосый блеск зеркал, a substitution of a property of human artifice for nature. The adjective раскосый echoes the косые соответствия, the oblique correspondences thrown into the space of mirror spheres, found in the opening poem of Параболы.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 "Шар на клумбе".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 "Муза" with "В раскосый блеск зеркал..." 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:

Недвижно царственная, как статуя
Она держала, как двойной трофей,
Два зеркала и, ими негодуя,
Грозила мне; на том, что поправей,
Искусства знак, природы - тот левей,
Но как в гербе склоненные стропила,
Вязалися тончайшей из цепей
Для тех, кого повязка не томила.³⁴

For Kuzmin the mirror is the organ of memory, the human faculty which joins the past with the present:

О юность красная, смела твоя беспечность
Но память зеркала хранит,
И в них увидишь ты минутной, хрупкой вечность
И размагниченным магнит..³⁶

Держу невиданный кристалл
Как будто множество зеркал
Соединило грани.
Особый в каждой клетке свет:
То золото грядущих лет,
То блеск воспоминаний.³⁸

The mirror, then, eliminates representations of the dualities which for Kuzmin were one of the most irritating features of Symbolism.³⁹ In "В раскосый блеск зеркал... " it joins water with sky, a joining analogous to the function of the grammatical ambiguity of the first lines of the first poem in Параболы:

Косые соответствия
В пространство бросить
Зеркальных сфер, -⁴⁰

(В колодце ль видны звезды, в небе ль?)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 "В раскосый блеск зеркал..." 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:

Напрасно бес твердит: "приди: 
Ведь риза - драна!"
Но как охрана горит в груди
Блаженства рана.⁴³

Палящий пламень грудь мне жег,
........................................................
Но к алой ране я привык.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:

Свежим утром рано рано
Бросил взор я на рябину:
-O, запекшаяся рана!
Мальчик, выбрав хворостину,
Пурпур ягод наземь бросит -
А куда я сердце кину?⁴⁵

The return of love is marked by the reopening of the wound:

По струнам лунного тумана
Любви напев летит.
Опять, опять открылась рана,
Душа горит.⁴⁶

Взойдя на ближнюю ступень,
Мне зеркало вручил Вожатый;
Там отражался он как тень,
И ясно золотели латы;
А из стекла того струился день.⁴⁸

Коснели мысли медленные в лени,
Распластанные кости спали в теле,
Врезать лазурь голубки не хотели,
И струй живых не жаждали олени.

Во сне ли я, в полуденном ли плене
Лежал недвижно у недвижной ели?
Из купола небес, как из купели,
Янтарь стекал мне сонно на колени.

Вдруг облак золотой средь неба стал
А горлицы взметнулись тучкой снежной
С веселым шумом крыл навстречу стрел.

Сквозь звон и плеск, и трепет, как металл,
Пропел "живи" мне чей-то голос нежный, -
И лик знакомый в блеске я узрел.⁴⁹

The poem"Муза" thus constitutes a template for reading "В раскосый блеск зеркал... ", just as Kuzmin's work as a whole is a necessary background to interpreting both poems. As the pensive maiden of "Муза" 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 отрок 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 "Стихи об искусстве" is to be understood properly), the dichotomy is seen to be only an illusion, produced by the inherent limits of human perception. When "В раскосый блеск зеркал... " and the sonnet to Kniazev are read together, persona and отрок become one.

This implicit unity is strongly opposed to the dualities of Kuzmin's early mentor, Viacheslav 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:

Тебя зовут у волн, где солнце пел Орфей,
Над розой плачущие Музы!⁵²

A more complicated reminiscence is established between "В раскосый блеск зеркал... " 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, and the vault of the sky, which is likened to a prison ceiling. The poem's first person plural persona identifies itself with nets:

Не знаем счастья мы, как невод золотого
Что, рыбарь, кинул Ты в эфир, - ⁵⁴

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 commentaries. More obviously, many of Kuzmin's prose works have poetry embedded in them (e.g. "Тень Филлиды", "Повесть об Елевсиппе, рассказанная им самим", Нежный Иосиф and Приключения Эме Лебефа), or are associated with parallel poem cycles (e.g. "Картонный домик" with the cycle "Прерванная повесть"). 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. Evgenii Znosko-Borovskii Kuzmin's first biographer and perhaps most systematic critic, points out that "есть большая близость и в построении, и в настроениях между тремя большими вещами Кузмина, которые не один раз цитируются нами, именно: `Нежный Иосиф', `мечтатели', и `Тихий страж'.  Борьба, которая идет вокруг героев, защищаемых несколькими `тихими' стражами от посягательств дельцов, сближает эти романы до отдельных частей одной большой эпопеи".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 недосказанность, the enigmatic incompleteness which pervades individual works such as "Повесть об Елевсиппе","Тень Филлиды", "Флор и разбойник" and "Золотое небо", or Крылья, "Двойной наперсник", "`Высокое искусство'",  Нежный Иосиф, "Мечтатели", Плавающие путешествующие, and Тихий страж, to name two of the central clusters. It imparts as well a deeper significance to seemingly superf icial and second-rate stories like "Дама в желтом тюрбане" (an elaboration of a single detail in Плавающие путешествующие) or "Петин вечер" (a treatment of the problem of perspective, corresponding to a more subtle treatment in the сказка "Высокое окно" ). 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 Eikhenbaum 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 Eikhenbaum labels Kuzmin's only Russian teacher. "Так сразу определились две линии в прозе Кузмина - изящного, забавного рассказчика, каким он остается в своих мелких вещах, имеющих иногда вид простых анекдотов ("Реплика", "Машин рай", "Предрассудок"), а иногда заразительно-смешных, озорных, как "Антракт в овраге" или "Шар на клумбе", и загадочного, несколько сумбурного бытописателя, не лишенного тенденциозности - линии, кстати сказать, характерные и для творчества Лескова.⁵⁶ Markov indicates that in his poem "Мои предки" Kuzmin himself fostered this idea of двойственность, 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 Viacheslav Ivanov's lecture of 14 April 1907 "Пути и цели современного искусства", printed in Золотое руно as "О веселом ремесле и умном веселии". Duality as a schema for classifying Kuzmin into русский and нерусский 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 oeuvre, but it serves as a useful starting point. As Kuzmin pointed out many times in his poetry and prose, "Где двое связаны, третье рождается".⁵⁸

It was in a paper read at the "Бродячая собака" 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 Весы. All three are reflected in his own work: the path of simplicity (Pushkin), the path of Russian colorfulness and extravagance (Gogol' via Leskov) and the path of the filtered language of the intelligents ia (Turgenev via Chekhov). Any true innovation in prose would be simple; novelties of device were transitory. Kuzmin expanded on this point in his preface to Iurii Iurkun's novel Шведские перчатки:

Роман может быть нов по сюжету, освещению, языку и методу творчества, к которому относится и язык, как частичное, дробное проявление.  Новизна сюжета, к которой снова стали склоняться ленивые люди, уверяя, что они устали от обобщений и психологии, - самая дешевая и опасная новизна.  Она похожа на погоню за редкими рифмами и очень истощима.  Пройден круг - и неизбежны повторения и неестественность, бросающаяся в глаза.⁶⁰

Stylization' is what is present in a work of art precisely when an artist does make the by no means inevitable distinction between matter and manner, theme and form.⁶¹

In a discussion of Brjusov's novel Огненный ангел Kuzmin revealed a principle crucial to understanding this aspect of his own work:

Нам кажется, что мы не ошибемся, предположив за внешней и психологической повестью содержание еще более глубокое и тайное для `имеющих уши слышать' но уступим желанию автора, чтобы эта тайна только предполагалась, только веяла, и таинственно углубляла с избытком исполненный всяческого содержания роман.⁶²

Рассказ становится загадочным узором, в котором быт и психология исчезают - как предметы в ребусе.  Современность использован как фон, на котором резче выступает этот узор.  Когда кажется, что Кузмин "изображает" - не верьте ему: он загадывает ребус из современности.⁶³

Заглавие: "Чтения к назиданию светским, благочестивым же к развлечению людям.⁶⁴

It was Znosko-Borovskii, 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:

И вот - если принять основой стихией Кузмина - любовь, а он сам говорит: `Любовь - всегдашняя моя вера' (`Сети' - `Радостный путник') и в этом более прав, чем в любом другом утверждении, - то эволюция этого чувства в его произведениях представляется очень значительной.⁶⁵

Можно подобрать рассказы о рабочих, о духовенстве, о студентах, о сановниках, о сектантах - что я знаю? - наконец, ненависть, скупость, гордость, все семь смертных грехов могут служить таким об"единяющим мотивом, но любовь - кто же не пишет о любви? не все ли написано ею и о ней?.. Тема так широка и обща, что под ее флагом можно было бы пустить почти все выходящие в свет книги.⁶⁶

In one of his last surviving stories, "Златое небо", Kuzmin seems to be making a final statement on the fundamental role of Eros in his oeuvre:

Эрос - божество благое и мудрое. Многие считают его древнейшим разделителем хаоса, отцом гармонии и творческой силы. И действительно, без соединяющей любви многое в мире распалось бы на части... Бог не виноват, что люди его свойства, его дары обращают во зло и называют любовью беспорядочные и гибельные страсти.⁶⁹

Главным образом меня интересуют многообразные пути Духа, ведущие к одной цели, иногда не доводящие и позволяющие путнику свертывать в боковые аллеи, где тот и заблудится несомненно. Мне важно то место, которое занимают избранные герои в общей эволюции, в общем строительстве Божьего мира, а внешняя пестрая смена картин и событий нужна лишь как занимательная оболочка, которую всегда может заменить воображение, младшая сестра ясновидения.⁷⁰

Не тайна ли Троицы?  Бог - Полнота, Творчество, Единство.  Как только творчество - сейчас же два: Творец и творимое.  Разделение.  Сейчас же - любовь как соединение и деятельная полнота.⁷¹

Я должен быть искренен и правдив, хотя бы перед самим собою, относительно того сумбура, что царит в моей душе, но если у меня есть три лица, то больше еще человек во мне сидит, и все вопиют, и временами один перекрикивает другого, и как я их согласую, сам не знаю. Мои же три лица до того непохожи и до того враждебны друг другу, что только тончайший глаз не прельстится этою разницей, возмущают всех любивших какое-нибудь из них, суть: с длинной бородою, напоминающее чем-то Винчи, очень изнеженное и будто доброе и какой-то подозрительной святости, будто простое, несложное; второе с острой бородкой несколько фантовское, французского корреспондента, более грубо тонкое, равнодушное и скучающее, лицо Евлогия; третье самое страшное: без бороды и усов, не старое и не молодое, пятидесяти лет, старика и юноши, Казанова, полушарлатан, полуаббат, с коварным и по-детски свежим ртом, сухое и подозрительное.⁷²

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 the analysis given here. 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 "творческий путь" and, together with the "Стихи об искусстве" and a scattering of other poems on art, form a basis for understanding how his writing works.

"О прекрасной ясности", with its classical symmetries, architectural metaphors, and subtle polemics with Viacheslav 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 "Nagrodskaia" period (what Markov has called h is "халтурный период"),⁷⁵ which begins with "Покойница в доме" and the сказки and culminates in Тихий страж.

"Чешуя в неводе", 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 time, this second consideration of the nature of creation formulates the collage of Gnostic and mystic elements so characteristic of Чудесная жизнь Иосифа Бальзамо, графа Калиостро 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' "Капитанские часы" and 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 Книга о святых воинах, may have existed only in the mind of the author; others, such as the novel Пропавшая Вероника or the remaining chapters of Римские чудеса or Златое небо, rumoured to have been lost with the Kuzmin archive in Berlin during World War II, may yet be discovered in private collections in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and 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 that Anna Akhmatova drew upon in producing the "open text"⁷⁶ of Поэма без героя, that Mandel'shtam responded to in works as diverse as "Сестры - тяжесть и нежность'" and "Египетская марка", and that Nabokov used to produce both the fragmented, intentionally deceptive narrator of Соглядатай and the subversion of the roman a clef in his 1928/30 short story, "Уста к устам".

Perhaps even if faced with these affinities for (if not influences of) Kuzmin's work, Ivanov would still claim that "М. Кузмин - простой и ясный художник". But as Valery once wrote of Mallarme, "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a de plus mysterieux que la clarte?"

1 (Return to text) Вячеслав Иванов, "О прозе М. Кузмина", Аполлон No. 7 (1910), с. 46. 

2 (Return to text) Борис Эйхенбаум, "О прозе М. Кузмина", Сквозь литературу (Ленинград: Academia, 1924), с. 196.

3 (Return to text) An 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 (Return to text) Roman Jakobson, "Randbemerkungen zur Prosa des Dichters Pasternak", Slavische Rundschau, 7 (1935), p. 357. Kuzmin had reached the same conclusion in "Парнасские заросли", Завтра No. 1 (1922), p. 114, and perhaps Briusov expressed the sentiment best of all: "Быть может, все в жизни лишь средство / Для ярко-певучих стихов?".

5 (Return to text) Denis Mickiewicz, "Apollo and Modernist Poetics", Russian Literature Triquarterly No. 1 (1971), p. 245.

6 (Return to text) Jakobson, pp. 357-8.

7 (Return to text) George Cheron, "B. Pasternak and M. Kuzmin, (An Inscription)", Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 5 (1980), p. 67.

8 (Return to text) Boris Pasternak, Доктор Живаго (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), pp. 451-2. Perhaps it is only a coincidence that immediately following this passage Zhivago composes the poem "Сказка", combining Western European and Russian traditions about St. George and the Dragon, a favorite theme of Kuzmin.

9 (Return to text) See John A. Barnstead, "Nabokov, Kuzmin, Chekhov, and Gogol': Systems of Reference in 'Lips to Lips'", in Connolly, Julian W. (ed.); Ketchian, Sonia I. (ed.). Studies in Russian Literature in Honor of Vsevolod Setchkarev.
 (Columbus : Slavica, 1986), pp. 50-60.

10 (Return to text) Lidiia Chukovskaia, in Записки об Анне Ахматовой, том 1: 1938-1941, (Paris: YMCA Press, 1976), pp. 150-1, reports that Akhmatova compared Kuzmin's diary to Vigel''s and considered it, as did Ol'ga Glebova- Sudejkina, "нечто чудовищное". Kuzmin was in the habit of reading intimate passages from the diary out loud to friends. Viacehslav Ivanov describes such readings in his own diary; see Вячеслав Иванов, Собрание сочинений, том 2, с. 784, 793 (entries for 6 and 21 August 1909). The excerpt Kuzmin published is in Стрелец no. 3 (1922) с. 96-109. K. N. Suvorova  published fragments from the diary dealing with Aleksandr Blok in "Письма М. А. Кузмина к Блоку и отрывки из дневника М. А. Кузмина", Литературное наследство 92 (Москва: "Наука", 1981): Александр Блок: Новые материалы и исследования, Книга 2, с. 143-174. Unfortunately, extensive cuts were made, many of them obviously intended to obscure Kuzmin's relationship with the painter Sergei Sudeikin. Moreover, in her introduction to the diary Suvorova misrepresents its nature by selective quotation of Kuzmin himself (p. 147). See also Malmstad, Собрание стихотворений,  том 3, с. 306-7, for a discussion of the diary after 1930.

11 (Return to text) Klaus Mann, Andre Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought (New York: Creative Age Press, 1943), p. 16.

12 (Return to text) John E. Malmstad, "Mixail Kuzmin: A Chronicle of his Life and Times", Собрание стихотворений,  том 3, с. 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 (Return to text) К. Н. Суворова, "Архивист ищет дату", Встречи с прошлым.  Сборник неопубликованных материалов ЦГАЛИ СССР, выпуск 2 (Москва: "Советская Россия", 1976), с. 118-119.

14 (Return to text) Cited according to Malmstad, Собрание стихотворений,  том 3, с. 33.

15 (Return to text) 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, "В пустыне" (GPB, f. 400, op. 1, ed. xr. 9),  dates from 1897.

16 (Return to text) Cited according to Malmstad, Собрание стихотворений,  том 3, с. 51.

17 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, Параболы (Петербург-Берлин: Petropolic, 1923), с. 14.

18 (Return to text) Там же, с. 15.

19 (Return to text) 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 "Муза" 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:

В жизни каждого человека наступают минуты, когда, будучи ребенком, он вдруг скажет: `я - и стул', `я - и кошка', `я - и мяч', потом, будучи взрослым: `я - и мир'.  ("О прекрасной ясности").

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 "Вот после ржавых львов и рева..."(written before the poems being considered here but placed after them in Параболы, in the section "Пути Тамино") Kuzmin portrays Orpheus leading Eurydice through a swampland to the blessed groves of grace; from the poem "Конец второго тома" 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 "В раскосый блеск зеркал..." 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 Viacheslav 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 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "О прекрасной ясности", Аполлон No. 4 (январь, 1910), с. 5. Note also the use of запечатлеть in the poem "Мой портрет", Сети с. 33, строки 5-6:

Клеймом любви навек запечатленны
Черты мои под Вашею рукой;

It is also interesting to note in this regard that one of Kuzmin's favorite Leskov stories was "Запечатленный ангел" (see Malmstad, SSIII, p. 210); Eikhenbaum's use of this story as an example in his article on Kuzmin's prose is probably not accidental.

21 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Римские чудеса", Стрелец 3 (1922), p. 16. The image of the drowned youth appears in various forms in Kuzmin, beginning with Narcissus in Куранты любви, and including Antinous and Hylas. It is intimately connected with Kuzmin's self-im age: Antinous was his nickname in the mock literary society Кабачок Гафиза. The image later acquired new significance with the drowning of Kuzmin's friend, the painter Sapunov, but its meaning was already well- established in Крылья, where the hero Vania 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 "Муза" is connected to the sun in Форель разбивает лед via the aquamarine:

Тебе надоело ведь
Солнце аквамарином

              (с. 9, "Первое вступление", строки 6-7)

22 (Return to text) It is an ancient custom for the Pope to bestow a golden rose on Christians who have earned his particular esteem.

23 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Мачеха из Скарперии", Девственный Виктор (Петроград: М. И. Семенов, 1918), с. 79-94.

24 (Return to text) A more detailed discussion of these elements is reserved for discussion of the story itself.

25 (Return to text) "Мачеха из Скарперии", p. 84.

26 (Return to text) Там же, p. 85. Capture or control over birds also symbolizes creation in Kuzmin; see the title poem of Глиняные голубки.

27 (Return to text) Cf. Вячеслав Иванов, "О веселом ремесле и умном веселии",  Золотое руно No. 5 (1907), с. 54: "И даже М. Кузмин, эстет и парнасец, подлинный отпрыск александрийской культуры, живой анахронизм среди нас, стилист, невольно делающий - не думая по-французски - очаровательные галлицизмы и в своих небрежнейших произведениях хранящий печать истинного латино-французского классицизма, - и он половиною своей души принадлежит нашей варварской стихии, - у себя дома в мире старообрядчества и слагает первые опыты простодушных мистерий.  Все эти художники родились `из духа музыки', под знаком музыкально-оргийного, варварского Диониса." [My emphasis.] This passage was omitted when the article was printed in book form in Ivanov's По звездам. For an interesting survey of Orpheus in Russian Symbolism, see Зоя Юрьева, "Миф об Орфее в творчестве Андрея Белого, Александра Блока и Вячеслава Иванова", American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists (Columbus: Slavica, 1978) vol. 2, pp. 779-799. Mandel'shtam's vision of Orpheus is particularly close to Kuzmin's (see note 70).

28 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Рыба", Нездешние вечера, (Берлин: Слово, 1923) с. 88-9. The ordering of critical articles in the collection Условности 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 Akhmatova: 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 Е. Аничков, "Последние побеги русской поэзии", Золотое руно No. 2 (1908), с. 53-54.

29 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, Куранты любви,  Собрание стихотворений,  том 1, с 13.

30 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Тень Филлиды", Золотое руно No. 7-9 (1907), с. 83-87.

31 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Принц Желание", Покойница в доме, (Петербург: М. И. Семенов, 1914) с. 113-122.

32 (Return to text) Параболы, p. 9.

33 (Return to text) In Зеленый соловей (Петроград: М. И. Семенов, 1916)), с. 71-98.

34 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Мне снился сон: в глухих лугах иду я...", Глиняные голубки (Петербург - БерлинЧ "Petropolis", 1923), с. 59, строки 9-16.

35 (Return to text) 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 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Нет, не зови меня, не пой, не улыбайся...", Осенние озера (Москва: Скорпион, 1912),  с. 68, строки 8-12.

37 (Return to text) An example of using mirrors for divination is provided by the Александрийские песни:

Ты - как у гадателя отрок:
все в моем сердце читаешь
..............................
но знанье тут не велико
и не много слов тут и нужно
тут не надо ни зеркала ни жаровни:

             (Сети, с. 146, строки 1-2, 5-8)

38 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, Новый Гуль (Петербург: "Academia", 1924) с. 29, строки 1-6. Cf. also "В один сосуд грядущее и прошлое стекло", line 12 of "Вожатый", part 6, in Сети, p. 117.

39 (Return to text) See, for example, his comments on расщепленность духа  and расколотая душа in "О прекрасной ясности", Аполлон No. 4 (январь, 1910), с. 5. His poem "О плакальщики дней минувших" in the cycle "Мудрая встреча" dedicated to ViacheslavIvanov, may be chiding Ivanov for this fault: its line 18 "Не сожалей и не гадай" anticipates line 13 of "В раскосый блеск зеркал...".

40 (Return to text) Параболы, с. 9, строки 1-3.

41 (Return to text) Параболы с. 13, строка 14. The process of merger begins with the section "Лодка в небе" in Нездешние вечера.

42 (Return to text) 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 Крылья 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 Плавающие путешествующие, Тихий страж, "О совестливом лапландце и патриотическом зеркале", and "Шелковый дождь".

43 (Return to text) Сети, с. 116, строки 5-8.

44 (Return to text) Сети, с. 128, строки 5, 13.

45 (Return to text) Глиняные голубки, с. 46, строки 1-6.

46 (Return to text) Глиняные голубки, с. 120, строки 1-4.

47 (Return to text) This phrase is taken from "Мой портрет", Сети, с. 33, строка 5.

48 (Return to text) Сети, с. 114, строки 1-5.

49 (Return to text) Осенние озера, с. 32.

50 (Return to text) The phrase "юнеющих ланит" in line 14 of "В раскосый блеск зеркал... " is evidence that in the inverted world of this poem time itself flows backwards. Space inversion is further evidenced by comparing line 8 of "В раскосый блеск зеркал... " with line 9 of "Невнятен смысл твоих велений...": "Твой взор, пророчески летучий".

51 (Return to text) 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 (Return to text) Вячеслав Иванов, Собрание сочинений (Brussels: Foyer Oriental Chretien, 1974) том 2, с. 450.

53 (Return to text) 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 Кабачок Гафиза to his preaching about "mystical energetism" with the following significant commentary: "Они сердятся на ,моралиста' и думают, что это одно из моих девяти противоречий.  ("В чем мудрость Муз?" спросили меня.  Я сказал: "В том, что их девять: поэзия - девять противоречий").  Между тем, это - мое настоящее и верное."

54 (Return to text) 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 (Return to text) Евгений Зноско-Боровский, "О творчестве М. Кузмина", Аполлон No. 4-5 (апрель-май, 1917), с. 36-56; Эйхенбаум, с 198-199.

57 (Return to text) Vladimir Markov, "Поэзия Михаила Кузмина", Собрание стихотворений,  том 3, с. 402. Note also Сергей Маковский, На Парнаце "серебряного века", с. 22.

58 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Лесенка", Параболы, с. 105, последняя строка.

59 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Как я читал доклад в `Бродячей собаке'", Синий журнал No. 18 (1914), с. 6.

60 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, preface to Юрий Юркун, Шведские перчатки (Петербург: С. И. Семенов, 1914), с. 4.

61 (Return to text) Susan Sontag, "On Style", Against Interpretation (New York: Dell Publishers, 1966), p. 19.

62 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Художественная проза `Весов'", Аполлон No. 9 (1910), с. 39.

63 (Return to text) Эйхенбаум, с. 199. Here Eikhenbaum may be drawing on a passage from Kuzmin's introduction to Iurii Iurkun's novel Шведские перчатки: "Ю. Юркун считает читателей за людей сообразительных и не тупых; конечно, эта доверчивость и любезность обусловливаются возрастом автора, но может оказать ему и плохую услугу.  Я не хочу сказать, что он сознательно пишет ребусы, но внимания требует." (с. 5). As with Kuzmin's discussion of Огненный ангел, much in this preface may be taken as applying to Kuzmi n himself.

64 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Чешуя в неводе", Стрелец No. 3 (1922), p. 109.

65 (Return to text) Znosko-Borovskii, p. 33.

66 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Заметки о русской беллетристике", Аполлон No. 6 (1910), p. 43.

67 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Пуститься бы по белу свету . . . ", Глиняные голубки, с. 75-76, строка 28.
 

68 (Return to text) 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 "Орфей", published in Литературный современник No. 4 (апрель, 1941), с. 59, and omitted from Malmstad and Markov's Собрание стихов. Gennady Shmakov  published a vari ant of the poem in Часть речи No. 1 (1980), pp. 98-99, dedicated to L. Rakov and dated "1924(?)"; the version in Литературный современник is dedicated to Kuzmin's illustrator and friend A. Ia. 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 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Златое небо", Абраксас No. 3 (февраль, 1923), p. 10.

70 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, Чудесная жизнь Иосифа Бальзамо, графа Калиостро (Петроград: "Странствующий энтузиаст", 1918/19), с. 8-9.

71 (Return to text) Михаил Кузмин, "Чешуя в неводе", Стрелец No. 3 (1922), с. 107.

72 (Return to text) Cited according to Геннадий Шмаков, "Блок и Кузмин", Блоковский сборник 2 (Тарту: Издательство Тартуского государственного университета, 1972), p. 348.

 73 В. М. Жирмунский, "Преодолевшие символизм", вопросы теории литературы (Ленинград: Academia, 1928), ц. 278. Zhirmunskijiis correct in placing Kuzmin with the Symbolists because of his mystical experiences as reflected in his poetry, but he exaggerates the Pushkinian line in the poems and places too much emphasis on "О прекрасной ясности" as a programmatic work. Already in the "Духовные стихи" of Осенние озера it was clear that Kuzmin was more than just the poet of "милые, хрупкие вещи".

74 (Return to text) Neil Granoien, Mixail Kuzmin: An Aesthete's Prose, (unpublished UCLA dissertation, 1981), p. 10.

75 (Return to text) Vladimir Markov, "Беседа о прозе Кузмина". 

76 (Return to text) This term is used by V. N. Toporov to describe that property of Поэма без героя "который лишает текст окончательности, законченности смысловых интерпретаций, наоборот, делает его `открытым', постоянно пребывающим in statu nascendi и поэтому способным к улавливанию будущего, подстраиванию к потенциальным ситуациям." В. Н. Топоров, Ахматова и Блок(Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1981), с. 8. In this regard a quote from Kuzmin's play Комедия о Алексее, человеке Божьем used by Markov as epigraph to his article "Беседа о прозе Кузмина" is particularly appropriate: --Я не совсем понимаю последних слов.  - Песня еще длинна, и из дальнейшего яснеет смысл предыдущего.  Само по себе ничто не бывает понятно.