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Four Ways of Writing the City“: St. Petersburg-Leningrad As A

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Four Ways of Writing the City“: St. Petersburg-Leningrad As A SLAVICA HELSINGIENSIA 23 Maija Könönen “Four Ways of Writing the City”: St. Petersburg-Leningrad as a Metaphor in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky Helsinki 2003 SLAVICA HELSINGIENSIA 23 EDITORS Arto Mustajoki, Pekka Pesonen, Jouko Lindstedt © by Maija Könönen ISBN 952-10-0977-2 (paperback), ISSN 0780-3281 ISBN 952-10-0978-0 (PDF) Published by Department of Slavonic and Baltic Languages and Literatures P.O. Box 4 (Unioninkatu 40 B) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki FINLAND Printed by Helsinki University Press ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I began this work on Joseph Brodsky as a postgraduate student at the Department of Slavonic and Baltic Languages and Literatures of the University of Helsinki under the supervision of Professor Pekka Pesonen. I am very grateful to Professor Pesonen for his tireless help and encour- agement. His lectures on the myth of St. Petersburg in Russian literature served as the impetus for subsequent scholarship. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Department for all the support they gave me and, in particular, Professor Arto Mustajoki for providing me with facili- ties needed for my research work. As for the financial support I have re- ceived, I am much indebted to the Helsinki University Research Fund and the Finnish Konkordia Foundation. I have benefited greatly from the generous attention paid to my manu- script by various readers at different stages of the work. I would espe- cially like to thank Professor Mikhail Lotman for his penetrating reading and inspiring suggestions. I am also deeply grateful to Professor Alexan- der Dolinin, who provided generous commentary that significantly im- proved this study. Their encouraging comments helped to clear the dark- est clouds. My thanks also go to Henry Fullenwider for his meticulous copy- editing. All remaining errors are my own. In the final stages of the text editing, I received much encouragement from my colleague Jussi Hei- nonen, whose patience I tested on a daily basis. The support of friends was invaluable throughout the writing of my work. My greatest thanks, however, are reserved for my parents. Without them this work would never have been completed. M. K. Helsinki February 2003 CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................7 1.1 Theoretical Terminology .........................................................13 2 ST. PETERSBURG AS “THE COMMON PLACE” OF THE PETERSBURG TEXT.............................................................17 2.1 The Petersburg Text as a Myth................................................17 2.2 The Petersburg Text as a Code................................................22 2.3 Brodsky and The Petersburg Text ...........................................26 2.4 St. Petersburg as a Setting .......................................................29 2.4.1 St. Petersburg as a Locus of Parting.................................30 2.4.1.1 “Прачечный мост” ..................................................31 2.4.1.2 “Мы вышли с почты прямо на канал...”................40 2.4.2 St. Petersburg as a Locus of Death...................................45 2.4.2.1 “Еврейское кладбище около Ленинграда...”..........45 2.4.2.2 “Бессмертия у смерти не прошу...”, “Стансы”, “Стансы городу”................................................50 2.4.3 St. Petersburg as a Locus of Fictional Heroes (Fictional vs. Actual Chronotope) ...............................................57 2.4.4 St. Petersburg as a Locus of Struggle between Nature and Culture.......................................................................72 2.4.4.1 “Отрывок” ...............................................................74 2.4.4.2 “Почти элегия” ........................................................79 2.4.4.3 “С февраля по апрель”.............................................84 3 ST. PETERSBURG AS “PARADISE AND/OR HELL” ...................92 3.1 ”Декабрь во Флоренции” - A Postcard from Florence?........93 3.1.1 “Florence - St. Petersburg” Parallel .................................98 3.1.2 The Constellation “Dante - Mandel’shtam - Brodsky”..114 3.1.2.1 Speech vs. Scripture.................................................125 3.2 St. Petersburg as Paradise Lost..............................................133 3.3 “Пятая годовщина” - The Lost Paradise or the Lost Hell? 140 3.3.1 “ Пятая годовщина” as a Generalised Image of Soviet Life .............................................................................158 3.3.2 Language as Homeland ..................................................167 3.4 Other Insights into “Hell” and “Paradise” - “Похороны Бобо” ........................................................................179 3.4.1 “Мы жили в городе цвета окаменевшей водки...” ...189 4 ST. PETERSBURG AS “UTOPIA”..................................................195 4.1 “Развивая Платона”...........................................................195 4.2 The “Audenesque” Realm of “Развивая Платона” ...........202 4.2.1 “Memorial for the City”.................................................207 4.2.2 “Under Sirius” ...............................................................219 4.2.3 “Horae Canonicae” .......................................................225 4.3 Location and Existence of “The Ideal City” .........................233 4.4 Time and Its Direction...........................................................240 5 ST. PETERSBURG AS “VOID”.......................................................251 5.1 “Полдень в комнате”..........................................................251 5.1.1 Space as a “Place”...........................................................252 5.1.2 Space as a “Void” ...........................................................262 5.1.2.1 The “Void” as Absolute Time and Absolute Space 268 6 CONCLUSION..................................................................................277 LITERATURE........................................................................................284 Works by Joseph Brodsky .............................................................284 Other Works...................................................................................285 APPENDIX.............................................................................................315 ABSTRACT............................................................................................340 1 INTRODUCTION The present study is devoted to the theme of St. Petersburg-Leningrad in Joseph Brodsky’s works. The chosen approach to the evolving vision of the city in Brodsky’s poetry is a close examination of four metaphors: St. Petersburg as ”the common place” of the Petersburg Text, St. Petersburg as paradise and/or hell, St. Petersburg as utopia and St. Petersburg as void. All four metaphors are connected to the native city of the poet - ei- ther explicitly or in an implicit manner, mainly in the form of intertextual allusions - in his texts. Furthermore, spatial and temporal characteristics can be assigned to each of the selected metaphors - hypostases of the poet’s native city. City texts as such occupy a central position in Brodsky’s literary realm. The theme of the city emerges frequently both in his prose works as well as in his lyrics. In this study the emphasis will be put on his po- etry on St. Petersburg.1 The poetics of space and time serves as a starting point for the exami- nation of the city-image. Methodologically, this study engages in close readings of Brodsky’s lyric works with an emphasis on semantic inter- pretation rather than on linguistic examination. One essential aspect of Brodsky’s poetics is its pervasively literary nature, for it is imbued with allusions to other, for the most part, literary texts. In addition to investi- gating the spatio-temporal features of Brodsky’s St. Petersburg the study will focus on exposing and analysing the intertextual relations of the scrutinised texts with other texts from Russian as well as Western belles lettres. The chosen approach, underlining the spatio-temporal aspects of the city-image, is based on the fact that space and time are the central catego- ries on which Brodsky builds his worldview, which is manifested in most of his works. He defines his position in the world first and foremost in terms of spatio-temporal dimensions, which becomes apparent in one of his interviews: Главное - спросить себя, выяснить /.../, что тебе интересно на этом свете, понимаешь ли ты то пространство, в котором находишься; чувствуешь ли ты идиотичность этой геометрии, 1 I will refer to the city as St. Petersburg, which Brodsky prefers to employ in his autobiographical essays on the city. The name Leningrad (or St. Petersburg-Lenin- grad) will be used when the examined text is rendered with clear associations with the Soviet reality, or when the poet uses that name himself. 8 абсурдность... чувствуешь ли ты движение времени, замеча- ешь ли, что время с тобой делает, как оно тебя обтачивает. 2 The list of the metaphors selected to illustrate Brodsky’s image of St. Petersburg is not meant to be exhaustive. It would have been equally ap- propriate to examine the city as a metaphor of empire, for instance. At any rate, notwithstanding the fact that the poet attaches to his city of birth attributes which testify to its imperial origin, the theme of empire is not treated separately here, but in connection with each analysed text, when necessary. Besides, several studies have been devoted to the theme of empire in Brodsky’s poetics. I refer the reader to the enlightening
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