Михаил Александрович Врубель
Третьяковская галерея, Москва
1906
His contemporary literary fate
was much happier than in posterity. A leader of Russian symbolist movement,
Brusov became an imposing figure for his generation. Yet, he suffered a
scathing re-appraisal of his literary significance, starting from a
mean-spirited and unjust essay by Marina Zvetaeva (which could be recorded during
her bouts with insanity), which largely defined his image for later
generations. I cannot attribute the universal posthumous hatred inspired by
Brusov to anything specific rather than his class origins. Certainly, he was
not politically correct: a Nietschean and ostentatiously atheistic in an
Orthodox country; he was close during the First World War to the Russian
People’s Union, a proto-fascist party, only to join the Communists after the
Revolution. He whored, wrote pornography and died from an overdose of morphine.
But other
Russian literary figures were hardly averse to different kinds of inebriation.
Morphine addiction brought no infamy neither to Michael Bulgakov, nor to Count
Alexei K. Tolstoy, XIXth century historic playwright, who also died
of the habit. Fellow symbolists Balmont and Blok drank tirelessly, as did
Venedict Yerofeev, the greatest Russian novelist of the second half of the XXth
century. Brusov’s own amorous misadventures were no match for Blok’s. Pushkin’s
and Lermontov’s atheism in the early XIXth century was much more
scandalous. Rabid anti-Semite, gluttonous, alcoholic, card-carrying Communist and
self-proclaimed Count, Alexei N. Tolstoy was a veritable monster, and a
Stalin’s crony. Yet, he was never despised to a degree, to which Brusov was
condemned in posterity.
What distinguished him were his humble class origins.
Sons and daughters of the Silver Age, who by birth either belonged to nobility
(Akhmatova, Gumilyov), or to academic elite of the highest caliber (Blok,
Zvetaeva, Pasernak) probably could not excuse Brusov, the head of the Symbolist
movement, his origins of a son of a prosperous lumber or clothing
merchant. Higher circles of St.
Petersburg intellectual elite, usually tolerant to commoners as long as they
pretended to be country bumpkins, simply could not stand Brusov who challenged
their intellectual superiority on their own ground. Their revulsion stuck.
Yet, the whole poetic development of the XXth century
would be impossible without him. Generation after generation, Russian poets
(with remarkable exclusion of Esenin, who was himself of the peasant stock)
were afraid to recognize Brusov’s influence on their work, so he remains a
Darwinian ape of Russian poetry in search of literary re-discovery by more
sympathetic commentators.
Cover
Your
Pale Legs.
From “The Departments of
Delirium”
II
Magic Mirror
All was going very-very normal
The houses stood up like hats
or clouds,
The tram banged like a
horse-cart of old
To scare away the pedestrians,
And the snowy-blizzard rush
Beat, before our very eyes, a
speed record.
But mine eyes of the
fifty-something
Are too old to follow the Party
line.
From the books, museums and
stage, the driblets (despite all my votes “Yeah”),
Like a mirror shards from the
fairy tale by Andersen
Are in my eyes again,
sore.
Over greenish-yellow lotus
columns
Over dynasties of Nineveh,
Finally rises gold and ebony
Of the Grecian Zeus.
And on the edges of Moscow
streets—zebu,
Small, caught in binoculars
“Zeiss”.
Why then the verse shouldn’t
stutter
Between Prick-or-Treaties of
Versailles,
If the Mars perihelion (oh,
science!)
Comes only once in fifteen
years!
Cannot one go to an ancient
travel agent
And book a trip to the Aegean?
What would be the poet’s
advice?
Bare one’s thoughts to the
bone,
Live by the counts of one’s own
pulse:
One, twenty and forty.
Even if according to some
learned calculus
Party will issue another
orders.
Till now—even if you are
unplugged and rewired,
Let’s go and collect some sap
On the shores of Global Amazon—
Where the Revolution just wakes
up
The Humanity. I blubber—
Gather the golden rubber.
Волшебное зеркало
Все шло—точь-в-точь обыкновенное;
были дома нахлобучены;
Трамвай созвонен с телегой,
прохожим наперекор;
И дождь мокроснежьего бега
Пред нами ставил рекорд.
Но глаза! Глаза в полстолетие
партдисциплине не обучены:
От книг из музеев со сцены—
Осколки (как ни голосуй!)
Словно от зеркала Г. Х. Андерсена,
Засели в глазу.
Над жёлто-зелеными лотос-колоннами,
над всякими Ассурбанипалами,—
Вновь хмурился золото-эбур,
Фидиев Zeus,
И на крае Неглинной—зебу,
Малы как в цейс.
Как же тут стиху не запутаться,
между Муданиями и Рапаллами,
Если оппозиции Марса (о наука!)―
раз в пятнадцать лет,
И в Эгейю у старого Кука
взять невозможно билет!
Поэту что ж посоветовать?—
настежь, до нéголо помыслы!
Отсчитывай пульс по минутам:
сорок, восемьдесят, сто!
Хотя бы по линзам, выгнутым и вогнутым,
иначе постановило СТО.
Доныне,—пусть проволоки перепутаны,—
мы—охотники по-смóлы!
Где Октябрь загудел впросонки
Человечества я учу—
Собирать вдоль мировой Амазонки
Золотой каучук.
19 ноября 1922
Cited according to: Валерий Брюсов. Избранные стихотворения. ОГИЗ, Гослитиздат 1945.
Wherever it is possible by the Blogger.com format, I try to preserve the authors' original orthography and placement of lines on the page.
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