Rendering the Sublime ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature 41 ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature 41 Rendering the Sublime A Reading of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Fairy-Tale Poem The Swain Tora Lane © Tora Lane and Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2009 ISSN 0346-8496 (Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature) ISBN 978-91-86071-26-4 Front cover: Natalya Goncharova, La Forêt [The Forest], 1913, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Layout: Larisa Korobenko Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice AB, Stockholm 2009 Distributor: eddy.se ab, Visby, Sweden Contents Acknowlegdements 7 Notes on References 10 Introduction 11 0.1. On The Swain and Tsvetaeva’s other Folkloric Writings 12 0.2. Research and Purpose of Study 14 0.3. Writing as Rendering 21 0.4. The Sublime 26 0.5. Performance and the Visitation of the Elements 29 Chapter 1 The Swain: Folk Art and the Sublime 34 1.1. The Two Tales 35 1.1.1. The Vampire 35 1.1.2. The Swain 36 1.2. The Return of the Myth 44 1.2.1. Inverting the Tale 44 1.2.2. Composition: the Course of the Elements 48 1.3. The Sublime Non-Tale 53 1.3.1. More than Art 53 1.3.2. The Theme of Obsession and Possession: Faust and Marusia 57 1.4. A Passage to Poetic Reality 58 5 Chapter 2 Poetic Performance 63 2.1. Performance 65 2.1.1. Performance through Folk Poetry 65 2.1.2 Polyphonic Performance 72 2.2. Sound Patterns 81 2.2.1. Leitmotiv and Repetition 81 2.2.2. Sound Presentation 86 2.3. Rhythmical Performance 89 2.3.1. Rhythmification of Metre 92 2.3.2. Graphic Form 96 2.3.3. Punctuation Marks 100 Chapter 3 Literal and Secret Writing 105 3.1. The Riddle and Hidden Reference 107 3.2. Syllabic Writing 113 3.3. Leitmotiv and the Birth of “Literal” Meaning 120 3.4. Parallellisms: Coincidence of Opposites 126 3.5. Appearance: Elements and the Name of Sublime Presence 129 Conclusion 132 Bibliography 135 Appendix 143 6 Acknowledgements I have had the good fortune to receive considerable guidance, support and advice from scholars at institutions around the world at different stages of my work on this book. I am deeply indebted to all who have helped me and made me go much further in this work than I expected. I would first of all like to thank my supervisor Anna Ljunggren at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stockholm University, for working closely and patiently with me throughout the course of this work, for sharing her knowledge, her feeling for poetry, and attention to detail. I owe certain central ideas in this study to my second supervisor Mar- cia Sá Cavalcante Schuback at Södertörn University College, who has been a constant source of inspiration, and in particular, has guided me in matters that concern the philosophical and poetological aspects of Tsvetaeva’s poetry. A grant from STINT, The Swedish Foundation for International Coope- ration in Research and Higher Education, enabled a visit at Princeton Univer- sity, where I was able to receive supervision from Olga Hasty. I am deeply grateful to her for working closely with me, generously sharing her time and erudition, and giving me decisive supervision at the crucial moment when the dissertation was about to take its form. I am also grateful to other members of staff and graduate students at Princeton University for letting me take part in their scholarly atmosphere. A grant from The Swedish Institute enabled a visit to Moscow and con- sul­­tations with Liudmila Aleksandrovna Sofronova at the Russian Academy of Scien ces, Moscow on questions concerning Russian folklore. I am very grate- ful to her for being a good mentor in matters of Russian culture, for her caring support and for our inspiring meetings. I thank Karin Grelz, Lund University, who has given me valuable and constructive guidance at different times of my work on the thesis. I am also 7 grateful to Olga Grigorievna Revzina at Moscow State University, whom I consulted at a very early stage of my doctoral studies, and James Bailey, University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has given me valuable advice on folkloric metre. I am deeply indebted to Irina Shevelenko, University of Wisconsin- Madison, for reading and commenting on the manuscript and providing me with decisive critique, and to Irina Sando mir skaja, Södertörn University College, for her thought-provoking comments on the ma nuscript. I am grateful to Ursula Phillips for editing the English of the final manu- script. I would also like to express my gratitude to the funds and institutions that have given financial support to this project over the years. Besides STINT and The Swedish Institute, I owe thanks to the Birgit and Gad Rausing Founda- tion and to the Ad Infinitum Foundation for giving me funding to work on the completion of the script. I am also grateful to the Vera Sager Foundation for funding a visit to archives in Moscow. I wish to express my most profound gratitude to all colleagues at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stockholm University, for making it such a wonderful place in which to work. People who have played an important role in the formation of my thesis are Peter Alberg Jensen, who led the graduate seminars and whose perspicacious critique, inspiration and warmth have provided me with motivation to continue to develop; Per-Arne Bodin, whom I thank not only for the interest he has taken in this work, and the beneficial comments he has made, but also for his great kindness and the support he has given since my time as a student at the department, and Leonard Neuger, who has always been there to develop any thoughts in the most unexpected and joyful direction, and who has always been a wonderful friend. I would also like to thank Elisabeth Löfstrand for the keen interest she has shown and for always being so good. Thanks also to doctoral students and other senior researchers, who have participated in seminars and other formal or informal discussions of the book. I thank in particular Mattias Ågren and Fabian Linde for comments, critique and friendship, in short, for being such good fellow travellers in the troika that we constituted during our years of doctoral studies. I owe special thanks to Fabian for his reading of the final manuscript. I would also like to thank 8 Natalia Ringblom for her participation in seminars on this work, and last but not least, Larisa Korobenko for her enthusiastic support, substantial help with the final redactions, and for doing the layout. I also owe thanks to Susanna Witt for reading and commenting on the bibliographical part. Finally, I cannot imagine having written this thesis without friends and relatives, and I am especially grateful to all those who have shown manifest interest in the work over the years. I would like to particularly thank Howard Goldman for contributing with careful editing at different stages, Maja Thrane and Carl-Filip Brück for reading and commenting on the manuscript, and Evgenij Wolynsky and Alisa Ilmenska for advice on the oral and rhythmical qualities of the poem. Some thanks seem to be beyond mention, but I owe so much to my mother, Karin Rodhe, who has given me great and vital support throughout the years. Last I thank my husband, Oleg Iliyuyshchenko, for his constant inspira- tion and, for sharing everything, and my daughter Hilda, for everything. 9 Notes on References Tsvetaeva’s writings are quoted in Russian and in English translation, see Primary Sources, page 135 for full bibliographical note. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine. I will quote the poem The Swain (Mólodets) in Russian, but also give translations and transliterations of the lines that I discuss, with the sole purpose of making my argumentation accessible to the reader who is not or little acquainted with Russian. I have used the Library of Congress system for transliteration. However, Russian names are given in their familiar spelling (Bely, Gogol) in the English text. They are accurately transliterated (Belyi, Gogolʹ) in the Russian entries of the bibliographical part. 10 Introduction he reader of the Modernist poet Marina Tsvetaeva’s writings is often Tstruck by the vehement intensity of her poetic intonation, which can seem to be on the verge of an outburst. In a critical remark, Osip Mandelstam asserts that the women’s poetry of his times, including Tsvetaeva’s, “vibrates at the highest pitch”1, and Joseph Brodsky echoes him, albeit as a sign of praise, with the assertion that it is typical of her poetry to begin on “high C”.2 It has already been remarked that the characteristic fervour of her poetic voice should not be mistaken for a mere expression of the poet’s personality, but that it is related to the central artistic questions of Russian Modernism.3 In both her poetic and prose writings, she experiments with potential meanings, rhythms, tonalities and forms of speech. In a remark on a poem in a letter to Pasternak, she asks if he noticed how: “I cry, leap, roll myself to meaning” (“dokrikivaiusʹ, 1 Quotation in English is from Svetlana Boym, Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991, p. 192. Mandelshtam writes in the essay “Literaturnaia Moskva” (1922): “[…] женская поэзия продолжает вибрировать на самых высоких нотах, оскорбляя слух, исто- рическое, поэтическое чутье.” (Osip Mandelʹshtam, Sobranie sochinenii v dvukh tomakh (ed. P. Nerler). Tom 2. Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1990, p.