Россия и Запад

The present discussion treats Akhmatova and Pasternak in tandem because, as I will argue, it was their poetic rivalry that helped to keep religious themes and, to a degree, the Orthodox high culture of the Russian Renaissance alive in the deadly 1920s and 1930s, when Orthodox institutions and believers were severely persecuted. Moreover, this rivalry worked creatively toward more than each rival’s diminishing of the other. Poets make their distinctive voices heard, and they develop their own signature style through creative and sometimes rivalrous dialogue with contemporary poets. This dialogue — hidden in the depths of their poems and invisible to most readers — might directly address the poetic rival or it might just mention obliquely a specific image strongly identified with that poet. The conversation between Akhmatova and Pasternak has been relatively little studied in the literary commentary, in contrast to more obvious, years-long creative dialogues between, for example, the two great Moscow poets, Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva, on one hand, or the two great Petersburg poets, Akhmatova and Osip Mandelshtam, on the other.

What is the gist of this poetic conversation between Akhmatova and Pasternak? Although Pasternak is supposed to have proposed to Akhmatova — even a number of times — their relationship was relatively distant[333]. Each a principal figure in one of Russia’s two capital cities, Akhmatova and Pasternak became trusted allies who helped to protect one another. They were co-survivors of a hellish time. Respected and admired poetic colleagues, neither was a genuine poetic soulmate of the other. At the end of their lives they became quite fierce competitors vying for poetic laurels and poetic legacy. What is important about this relationship in the context of the Cu

A brief review of the two poets’ biographies shows several parallels in the quite different trajectories of their careers. They were bоки within months of each other, Akhmatova — in June, 1889 and Pasternak in February, 1890. Both were allegedly Orthodox Christians. Akhmatova was baptized in the Orthodox Church and, even after the revolution, was broadly acknowledged to be «the last and only poet of Orthodoxy»[334]. Even in the 1920s, when it was risky to do so, Akhmatova occasionally went to church. And when Stalin died in early March of 1953, Akhmatova made a personal pilgrimage in spring 1953 to Russia’s holiest shrine at Sergiev Posad[335].

Pasternak’s situation was more complicated. He was born into the family of one of Russia’s leading pre-revolutionary painters, Leonid Pasternak, and one of its most talented young pianists, Rosalia Kaufma

Although the poets occasionally converge in a style marked by a tendency to write in fresh, conversational language about everyday subjects, their poetic projects diverge in many points. The young Akhmatova came from the classical Russian and European traditions. Pasternak, in contrast, was to start his career in close proximity to the poets of the avantgarde, who threw the classics «from the ship of modernity»[338]. He was particularly taken with Maiakovsky, though avoided the «in-your-face» irreverence of a Maiakovsky.

Early on, Akhmatova’s themes were private life and love relationships. She was the first Russian woman to develop the large following of a poetic celebrity and to make a distinctive woman’s voice really audible a wide audience. No longer merely the male poet’s muse, now the beloved knows her own mind, speaks for herself, and responds with wit and passion to the male other. Pasternak focuses less directly on human relationships than on embracing and transfiguring the objects of everyday life. Ecstasy at the ordinary things of life illuminates Pasternak’s verse. Weather, rain, sun, window frames, or a train schedule — each of these things can become an active, energetic being, enlivening both natural and built environments.

Both Akhmatova and Pasternak as mature poets would agree with a view of lyrical art as the creation of the «miraculous»: the inspired transfiguration of the ordinary things of this world through a singular voice and poetic persona that allow the reader or listener to perceive in a fresh way. The goal of poetry for both of them is to transform the quotidian and to see and let others see the miracles of the everyday. Although from her earliest poetry on Akhmatova’s poetic idiom was imbued with references to Orthodox life, Pasternak would begin to immerse himself in the Christian tradition only at the end of the 1920s. Then, I will argue, he would actively compete with Akhmatova for the status of the moral voice of his epoch, building his authority in part on an appropriation of crucial Christian themes absorbed both from from Akhmatova, as well as other poets of the Russian renaissance.

The use of biblical themes and archetypes by both poets would eventually contribute to the state’s relegating both poets to the status of «i

The typical interpretive argument about Pasternak’s engagement with the Orthodox heritage and Scripture stresses the strong influence of another of the four great poets of this generation, Marina Tsvetaeva Though after 1921 Tsvetaeva lived in exile in Europe, Pasternak carried on what can euphemistically be called a creatively passionate relationship with her in letters and poems throughout the mid — 1920s. Tsvetaeva’s cycle of three very sensuous poems devoted to Mary Magdalene, written in 1923, show a Christ resurrected through Magdalene’s love. These poems made a deep and well-demonstrated impression upon Pasternak[340].

The goal of this essay is to show that the much longer-lived but more subtle creative rivalry between Pasternak and Akhmatova was vitally important for the development of Pasternak’s art, as well sustaining the legacy of the Russian religious renaissance during Stalin’s terror. Akhmatova’s and Pasternak’s poetic conversation converges in two of the poets’ greatest works, both written in deepest secret, Akhmatova’s cycle, «Requiem», composed in the late 1930s, and Pasternak’s Nobel-prize-wi

333

Naiman A. A Guest upon the Earth / Trans. I. C. Katz // The Complete Poems of A

334

Чуковский К. Ахматова и Маяковский (1921) // Анна Ахматова: Pro et contra СПб.: Изд. Русского Христианского гуманитарного института. Т. 1. С. 210.

335

Chukovskaia L. The Akhmatova Journals. Vol. 1. 1938–1941. Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 2002. P. 16–17.

336

Fleishman L. Boris Pasternak: The Poet and His Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. P. 5.

337

Fleishman L. Boris Pasternak… P. 19.

338

http://www.silverage.ru/poets/posch_obsch_vkusu.html.

339

Мандельштам H. Об Ахматовой. М.: Новое издательство, 2007. С. 109.

340

See, for example, Knapp L. Tsvetaeva’s Marine Mary Magdalene // Slavic and East European Journal. 43:4 (Winter, 1999). P. 597–620; Ciepiela C. A. The Same Solitude: Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva Ithaca: Cornell, 2006. P. 244–245.

341

For a good overview of the personal aspects of the Akhmatova — Pasternak relationship, see: Ivanova N. Peresekaiuschiesia paralleli. Boris Pasternak i A