Michael Wachtel

Russian symbolism and literary tradition : Goethe, Novalis, and the poetics of Vyacheslav Ivanov

This work explores the art and development of Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), the poet and theorist who articulated a highly influential concept of Symbolism. The German writers Goethe and Novalis also played a central part in his vision, being precursors in the proto-Symbolist pantheon.

Cultural Mythologies of the Silver Age

In terms of culture, the perestroika years were marked by a jubilant rediscovery of late 19thand early 20th-century Russian culture, the period that has come to be known—perhaps erroneously—as the “Silver Age.” With each new publication, Russian readers marveled at the brilliance of poets and novelists whose work had been hidden from them, who had been forced into silence by emigration or persecution. Editions of Osip Mandel ́shtam, Nikolai Gumilev, and Boris Pasternak simply could not be printed quickly enough or in sufficient print runs. On the day it was supposed to appear in stores, the first substantial edition of Vladimir Solov ́ev’s philosophy sold briskly on the black market for ten times its cover price. Such enthusiasm even carried over

Kabul in Perspective

Gerry Smiths precise analysis of the prosody of On the Talks in Kabul helps us to situate the poem in Brodskys oeuvre and points our attention to specific lines, words, and phrases that stand out. However, it cannot prove the poem to be ironic or, on the contrary, serious. One may fairly ask: do we need to resolve this issue? After all, poetry thrives on ambiguity, often leaving us with two equally plausible yet mutually exclusive interpretations. On the Talks in Kabul, though, is not a poem about subtle emotions-it is a political poem. We as readers seek to resolve the apparent contradictions, to determine where the poet really stands. Before moving to these interpretive questions, Id like to turn to one of Gerrys formal observations. For the mature Brodsky, he argues, the rhymes of this poem are relatively unadventurous and even commonplace. It is true that few of the rhymes are anti-grammatical, but I would not disparage them for that reason. In fact, some of the grammatical rhymes seem to me unusually clever. I am thinking not only about enriched rhymes like ot Ararata/fotoapparata (where the preposition is drawn into the rhyme), but also internal rhymes that adumbrate the first word of a rhyme pair: gde mozhno sest v mersedes i na rovnom meste (which prepares the end rhyme meste/mesti) and mezhdu vami, kozlami, vospitannymi v Islame (which sets up the end rhyme Islame/poslami). More to the point is whether commonplace rhymes (if indeed they are commonplace) necessarily indicate a lack of seriousness. Rhyme is, of course, a cornerstone of Brodskys poetics (one of many points that link him to Mayakovsky, though he would have been the last to admit this). But I am not convinced that there is a one-to-one correspondence of the type: antigrammatical rhyme = high seriousness, grammatical rhyme = parody/irony/levity, particularly not in the collection Peizazh s navodneniem. After all, the final poem in that book, which surely is intended as a serious poetic credo (in the tradition of Russian pamiatnik poems), relies largely on the same sort of banal and grammatical rhymes as On the Talks in Kabul. And the obviously ironic Priglashenie k puteshestviiu of that same volume also uses unadventurous rhymes (albeit with one exception). In short, the type of rhyme does not seem to reflect the content or spirit of the individual poem. In the oral presentation of his paper (which differed somewhat from his written summary), Gerry seemed to suggest that the poem should ultimately be taken at face value, that, underneath its seeming irony, it truly is an indictment of the Afghans and, more broadly, of everything Eastern. Anyone who has read the essay Flight from Byzantium (cited in Gerrys notes) knows that Brodsky most certainly expressed some uncharitable-to put it mildly-views on the subject of the East. However, it should be remembered that Brodskys poetic voice (as against the voice of his essays) is astonishingly varied, from the first poems