Introduction

INTRODUCTION DAVID BETHEA y the time he was forced into exile by the Soviet regime B in June 1922, the Moscow-born Vladislav Khodasevich (1886–1939) was already an important poet and literary figure. He had written four books of verse, two of which,Grain’s Way (1920) and The Heavy Lyre (1922), established his status among the cognoscenti as indisputably “major.” Indeed, with its startling fusion of Symbolism and post-Symbolism, Pushkinian lapidary simplicity and ever-questioning irony, The Heavy Lyre would go down as one of the truly great poetry collections in the modern Russian tradi- tion. The musical instrument that is handed out of nowhere to the poet to give the collection its title (in the poem “Ballad”) is weighty because he, a modern Orpheus, still manages to make mesmerizing sound out of the direst existential circumstances. Moreover, Kho- dasevich’s prosodic conservatism (e.g., his use of the iamb as a kind of classical amphora for the storage of semantic vitriol); his strange visions of a fiercely privatepsikheia , or “psyche”; his willingness to weigh his own words “on Pushkin’s scales”; and his impeccable taste and stern standards in matters of artistic conscience were all quali- ties that set him apart in the swirling context of revolutionary and postrevolutionary literary trendsetters. In this respect Khodasevich was never a joiner; he was always “sam po sebe,” “all by himself.” Sim- ilar things can be said of the poet’s many-faceted service to Russian x \ Introduction literature in the years leading up to his exile: whether the words belonged to the critic, translator (especially of Polish classics and modern Hebrew poets), literary historian, or Pushkinist, Khodas- evich’s verbal traces were always of a piece, deeply organic, emanat- ing from the same integral source. Andrey Bely helped to make his reputation with important articles on him in 1922 and 1923. Other accolades, from sources as varied as Maxim Gorky and Osip Man- delstam, followed. This, for example, is how Nabokov recalls the Khodasevich of his émigré years in Speak, Memory: I developed a great liking for this bitter man, wrought of irony and metallic-like genius, whose poetry was as complex a marvel as that of Tyutchev or Blok. He was, physically, of a sickly aspect, with contemptuous nostrils and beetling brows, and when I conjure him up in my mind he never rises from the hard chair on which he sits, his thin legs crossed, his eyes glittering with malevolence and wit, his long fingers screwing into a holder the half of a Caporal Vert cigarette.1 Necropolis, the book of memoirs published by Khodasevich on the eve of his passing, is a gift to historians and scholars of the so-called Silver Age of Russian literature for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it is written in the words of a poet who has turned to prose and who is remembering figures that in several cases he knew inti- mately (Valery Bryusov, Bely, Gorky, Mikhail Gershenzon, Muni [Samuil Kissin], Nina Petrovskaya). This simple statement of fact conceals layers of meaning that require their own unpacking. Like no one else before or after, Khodasevich was putting the Symbol- ist epoch in high-resolution historical perspective and explaining to the reader the causes of its rise and fall. He was doing so both as a participant/actor, as we see in his memoir of Muni, and as a survivor/audience, as we see in his memoir of Bryusov. The goal was sobriety after the literal and figurative madness of the period. Speaking procedurally, Khodasevich’s business was to present eye- witness accounts that did not ignore his own role in the proceed- ings but still placed the accent on his subject’s actions and (to the extent that they became obvious) motives, and in the final reckon- ing attempted to capture the very core of each individual’s personal- ity. And to do this the memoirist had to, if not remove himself, then at least bracket any tendency toward personal animus. Thus, despite the author’s reputation for tetchiness, none of the portraits in Necropolis is about score-settling, even the history of Khodasevich’s complicated relations with Bryusov, of whose domineering affect and cynical manipulation of younger poets such as Viktor Gofman, Nina Petrovskaya, and Nadia Lvova he clearly disapproved. To get a clearer picture of Khodasevich’s approach to memoir writing, let us perform a brief experiment comparing like sources. First, there was the passing of the baton between generations: inasmuch as poetry writing was the Silver Age’s privileged genre, and inasmuch as the poet embodying “life creation” (zhiznetvorchestvo) was the era’s cultural hero par excellence, it was an event when a leading poet from a younger generation paid tribute to a departed poet from an older generation. Second, the reason that “life creation,” the urge to translate the arc of one’s life into a plot that appeared shaped “from beyond,” was such a crucial theme in Necropolis was that the dynamics surrounding this urge constituted the very essence of Symbolist overreach, and the figures it destroyed, among them Alexander Blok and Bely, were Symbolism’s greatest heroes— virtual brothers, spiritual extensions of each other. Khodasevich’s book of memoirs tells this story through primary and secondary characters, keeping the focus all the while on the body count, the lives drawn into Symbolism’s powerful undertow and then drowned and left behind on the shore. Introduction \ xi xii \ Introduction Now for the experiment. The only poet equivalent to Khodasev- ich in stature who occupied the same exilic status (and thus was free of Soviet censorship) and who penned analogous valedictory pieces on departed colleagues was Marina Tsvetaeva. Recall, for the sake of comparison, her farewell to Bely (“Captive Spirit,” 1934), which was dedicated to Khodasevich. Here, for example, is a well-known passage describing Tsvetaeva’s meeting with Bely: “And so, you are kin? I always knew you were kin. You are the daughter of Professor Tsvetaev. And I am the son of Professor Bugaev. You are a daughter, I am a son.” Overcome by irrefutable fact, I remain silent. “We are professors’ children. Do you understand what that means, professors’ children? After all it means an entire circle, an entire credo. (A deepening pause.) You can’t understand how happy you’ve made me. I don’t know why but all my life I alone have been a professor’s son, and for me that was like a label. O, I don’t want to say anything bad about professors—but still, it’s lonely, no? [. .] But let’s leave aside professors’ children, let’s leave aside just the children themselves. We’re, as it turns out, children (in an elevated tone)—it’s all the same whose! And our fathers have died. And we’re orphans. And you also write verse, don’t you? Orphans and poets, wow! And such happiness that we’re at one table, and that we’re able to order coffee, and that they’ll bring it to us both, coffee from the same pot, in two identical cups. Well, doesn’t that make us related?2 Bely’s manic speech patterns, his associative leaps and febrile wordplay, come through as if transcribed. Tsvetaeva follows up her description of the meeting with documentary evidence reinforcing the older and younger poets’ kinship: a letter left behind by Bely after he had spent the night reading Tsvetaeva’s poetry collection Parting (1921) and showing him to be profoundly struck by the book’s melodics (melodika)—the contrast between rhythm and meter that very much interested Bely at the time. The point is that Tsvetaeva keeps the essence of Bely’s “captive spirit” and her poetic reaction to the encounter within the frame. Now, the opening paragraphs of Khodasevich’s memoir of Bely: In 1922 in Berlin, Andrei Bely presented me with a new edition of Petersburg, inscribed: “With feelings of concrete love and lifelong connection.” In ideology, in literature, and in life, fate pushed us along in opposite directions—if not for our entire lives, then for nineteen years at least. I did not share the greater part of Bely’s views, but he exercised a greater influence over me than any other person I have known. I didn’t belong to the same generation as Bely, but I first came into contact with his generation when it was still young and active. Many people and circumstances that played a conspicuous role in Bely’s life turned out to do the same in mine. For various reasons, I cannot relate everything that I know and believe to be true about Bely at this time. But even in the context of this short narrative, I would rather preserve a few truthful sketches for the benefit of literary history than satisfy the curiosity of the contemporary reader. After all, literary history has already begun to demonstrate an interest in the era of Symbolism in general and in Andrei Bely in particular—with time, this interest will only grow more acute. I feel compelled to be exceptionally fussy with the truth. I consider it my (far from easy) obligation to omit any hypocritical thoughts or euphemistic language from this account. You mustn’t expect me to offer up an iconic or canonical image of my subject. Such images are harmful to history. I am certain that they are immoral as well, since only a complete and truthful image is capable of revealing the finest attributes of a truly remarkable person.

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