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Shelley in the Transition to Russian Symbolism

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Shelley in the Transition to Russian Symbolism SHELLEY IN THE TRANSITION TO RUSSIAN SYMBOLISM: THREE VERSIONS OF ‘OZYMANDIAS’ David N. Wells I Shelley is a particularly significant figure in the early development of Russian Symbolism because of the high degree of critical attention he received in the 1880s and 1890s when Symbolism was rising as a literary force in Russia, and because of the number and quality of his translators. This article examines three different translations of Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ from the period. Taken together, they show that the English poet could be interpreted in different ways in order to support radically different aesthetic ideas, and to reflect both the views of the literary establishment and those of the emerging Symbolist movement. At the same time the example of Shelley confirms a persistent general truth about literary history: that the literary past is constantly recreated in terms of the present, and that a shared culture can be used to promote a changing view of the world as well as to reinforce the status quo. The advent of Symbolism as a literary movement in Russian literature is sometimes seen as a revolution in which a tide of individualism, prompted by a crisis of faith at home, and combined with a new sense of form drawing on French models, replaced almost overnight the positivist and utilitarian traditions of the 1870s and 1880s with their emphasis on social responsibility and their more conservative approach to metre, rhyme and poetic style.1 And indeed three landmark literary events marking the advent of Symbolism in Russia occurred in the pivotal year of 1892 – the publication of Zinaida Vengerova’s groundbreaking article on the French Symbolist poets in Severnyi vestnik, the appearance of 1 Ronald E. Peterson, A History of Russian Symbolism (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1993), pp. 13-26. See also Avril Pyman, A History of Russian Symbolism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 1-2. 1 Dmitrii Merezhkovskii’s verse collection Simvoly [Symbols], and his lectures ‘O prichinakh upadka i o novykh techeniiakh v sovremennoi russkoi literature’ [The Reasons for the Decline and the New Currents in Contemporary Russian Literature]. They were followed very rapidly over the next few years by a series of works by Merezhkovskii himself, Zinaida Hippius, Fedor Sologub, Aleksandr Dobroliubov, Konstantin Bal′mont, Valerii Briusov and others, which changed the literary agenda beyond recognition. As with other revolutions, however, there was in reality no complete break between the old and the new. The literary education and backgrounds of representatives of the positivist tradition and early proponents of the ‘new art’ were often very similar. During the transitional period of the 1890s, indeed, writers not infrequently changed their allegiance from one side to the other. Several prominent literary figures began their careers as followers of the populist movement, later to become pioneers of Symbolism. At the outset of his career Merezhkovskii, for example, was strongly influenced by the populists Semen Nadson, Nikolai Mikhailovskii and Gleb Uspenskii.2 Merezhkovskii’s first book of verse, published in 1888 and informed by his extensive travels to rural Russia in the mid-1880s, substantially follows the civic tradition and was well received by positivist critics. Simvoly, his second book, as the title suggests, aligns itself very firmly with the emerging movement.3 Nikolai Minskii was another poet who, seeking to translate civic issues into a language of universal generalization, moved from a socially oriented to a metaphysical apperception of the world. During his student days Minskii was closely associated with populist and left-wing groups, and his attempts to publish a socially engaged volume of verse in 1883 were thwarted by the 2 K.A. Kumpan, ‘D.S. Merezhkovskii – poet (u istokov “novogo religioznogo soznaniia”)’, in D.S. Merezhkovskii, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, ed. K.A. Kumpan (St Petersburg: Akademicheskii Proekt, 2000), pp. 17-19. 3 See David N. Wells, ‘Merezhkovskii’s Simvoly and the Early Development of Russian Symbolism’, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, 23 (2009), pp. 57-67. 2 tsarist censorship.4 His later work takes on more mystical and religious overtones, and indeed his 1887 poem ‘Kak son, proidut dela i pomysly liudei’ [People’s deeds and thoughts pass like a dream], which contrasts the transitory nature of earthly affairs with a vision of a world beyond, was much valued by Aleksandr Blok and by Briusov, who went so far as to call it the first manifesto of Russian Symbolism.5 To an extent the career of Nadson himself was marked by a similar trajectory, as the Nekrasov school civic poet of his early work took on the dreamy reflexivity that made him so popular in the 1890s.6 The literary models to which Russian writers of the 1880s looked in order to promote positivist ideas to a striking extent survived the transition to the more idealistic frame of reference provided by Symbolism. A good illustration can be seen in the textual history of Merezhkovskii’s verse drama Vozvrashchenie k prirode [Return to Nature], which was based on Calderón’s play La Vida es Sueño [Life is a Dream]. Two versions of Merezhkovskii’s play are extant. In the original 1888 version, the quest for the meaning of life played out in the main character, Silvio, is resolved in a commitment to hard work for social reform. When Vozvrashchenie k prirode was published in Simvoly, however, Silvio (and Merezhkovskii) no longer saw this outcome as satisfactory, and the revised version ends with a mystical revelation. Silvio acknowledges the power of the divine after he has been persuaded to exercise mercy towards his enemies. The instrument of this persuasion is the character of Estrella, who foreshadows later embodiments in Symbolist poetry of the principle of the ‘eternal feminine’.7 Calderón, valued initially for his insights into the operation of power by Merezhkovskii the civic poet, came to be esteemed more for his focus on the disjunction and 4 S. Sapozhkov, ‘Poeziia i sud′ba Nikolaia Minskogo’, in Nikolai Minskii, Aleksandr Dobroliubov, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, ed. S.A. Sapozhkov and A.A. Korbinskii (St Petersburg: Akademicheskii Proekt, 2005), pp. 8-10. 5 See Minskii, Dobroliubov, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, pp. 152-3; Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Moscow: Ogonek, 1971, vol. 5, pp. 225-6; P.P. Pertsov, Literaturnye vospominaniia, 1890-1902 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002), p. 176. 6 See A.M. Bikhter, ‘Demokraticheskaia poeziia 1870-1880-kh godov’, in Poety-demokraty 1870-1880-kh godov, ed. A.M. Bikhter (Moscow, Sovetskii pisatel′, 1962), pp. 15-16, 50. 7 For a detailed comparison of the two versions of Merezhkovsky’s drama, see Kumpan, ‘D.S. Merezhkovskii – poet’, pp. 39-43. 3 conflict between appearance and reality by Merezhkovskii the Symbolist. For the same reason, Calderón was later to become a source of inspiration in the theatrical productions of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Nikolai Evreinov.8 A similar pattern can be seen with the treatment of the Prometheus myth in the writing of transitional authors. In works of the 1880s Prometheus often appears as the champion of oppressed humanity, supporting it through the gift of fire and defending it against the wrath of Zeus, who is portrayed as a tyrannical master. This, for example, is the starting point for Semen Frug’s 1885 poem ‘Prometeiu’ [To Prometheus], in which the lyric persona asserts that the sufferings he himself has to endure in obeying God’s command to bring enlightenment to the people are far greater than those of Prometheus, who acted against the wishes of his god.9 In 1884 Merezhkovskii wrote a poem, ‘Poroi, kak obraz Prometeia’ [At times, like the image of Prometheus], in which the speaker contrasts Prometheus’ courage with his own cowardice in his approach to social reform.10 Merezhkovskii remained interested in this theme and completed a translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound in 1891. When he included the drama in Simvoly, however, the context of the larger work gave this translation a broader significance in asserting the necessity of private space for the cultivation of independent thought separate from the concerns of the mundane world. Treatments by later Symbolists, and in particular Viacheslav Ivanov, extended this metaphysical vision, using Prometheus to point to the redemptive mission of the suffering Christ.11 Percy Bysshe Shelley represents another, parallel, meeting point in the literary history of the old and new models of thought. He first became known in Russian translation in 1849, 8 Edward Braun, The Theatre of Meyerhold; Revolution on the Modern Stage (London: Methuen, 1986), pp. 101, 122, 135; Spencer Golub, Evreinov; The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984), pp. 126-36. 9 Poety 1880-1890-kh godov, ed. L.K. Dolgopolov (Leiningrad: Sovetskii pisatel′, 1972), p. 302. 10 D.S. Merezhkovskii, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy (St Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2000), pp. 121-2. 11 See Robert Bird, The Russian Prospero: The Creative Universe of Viacheslav Ivanov (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp. 153-6. 4 and continued to receive critical and literary attention in Russia throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Awareness of Shelley’s work was thus a constant in the literary culture of the period.12 Major early contributions to Shelley scholarship in Russia include an 1864 essay by G. Blagosvetlov, which situated the English poet in his literary context and highlighted his significance as an artist and reformer. This essay was followed in 1873 by two articles by M. Tsebrikova which appeared in the populist journal Otechestvennye zapiski and focused particularly on the social and revolutionary aspects of Shelley’s writing.13 The extensive critical and translation work produced later by Bal′mont in particular¸ whose rendition of the complete poetical works of Shelley was published in instalments between 1893 and 1899, was fundamental to the interest shown in the English poet in Russia during the 1890s.
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