Every fairy tale or saga, like every chess problem, must have what is called a pointe—in other words, some salt or spice. Reading Remizov’s sagas,1 one is astounded by how hopelessly flavorless they are, since they lack the very thing that alone might justify this literary genre. And it’s no justification that Remizov is supposedly imitating ancient Apocrypha, the legends of traveling pilgrims. Apocrypha and legends have an antiquarian charm, mystical perspectives on ancient thought, landscapes ennobled by distance, symbols which in their time were full of fragrancy and meaning. One would need an especially inspired imagination and an extraordinary mastery to compose such artless fairy tales as were composed in ancient times.
Neither special imagination nor special mastery is to be found in Remizov’s work. The fairy tales in this book create an impression of something unsteady, irresponsible, and accidental. When the author presents a sequence of images (and sequences, enumerations, and descriptions are endless), the reader fails to sense that internal law which, deeper than rhythm and truer than meaning, governs the quality and quantity of the given images. “Judas ran to the rivulet—the river flowed away; he ran to the forest—the forest leaned away.” The reader is overcome by a kind of mental tickle and doesn’t know why the author limited himself to forest, rivulet, and river, and didn’t add anything more—say, “He ran to the hill—the mountain flattened,” and so on. Or as here, when Remizov enumerates the parts from which God made man: “from the earth—the skeleton, from the sea—blood, from the sun—beauty,” and so on. One could add or subtract and the impression wouldn’t change. On top of all this, the author abuses astronomy, though he sins less against it than against taste when, as in one story, he talks of the star brought by the Virgin Mary, in another he maintains that the sun is “God’s tear,” and in a third has God taking beauty from the same sun so as to give it to man. Worst of all is that once again nothing would change if the Virgin Mary brought “the sun above suns” rather than “the star above stars,” and if the star and not the sun turned out to be “God’s tear.” For good measure, the author throws in, “Hell thunders with thunder, the tempest tempers” and the reader automatically adds: “the burn burns.” The author is playing a game of building blocks. The author is playing with lists. The author is playing a very boring game.
It would be one thing if Remizov’s style were faultless. But, alas, how careless, what an accidental combination of words, and what awkwardness of style at times…“The first days on earth gave way to the gloomy, eerie night,” or “The cruel twilight clothed the city in moonless silence.” But even better is “the shot-wounded insulted heart” and “The heart bled, searched for an exit” (the heart of the Virgin Mary, which “searches for an exit,” is, at least stylistically, somewhat blasphemous). And the following already belongs in the realm of impermissible oddities: “They got down on their knees, and the serpent with them.” No, this isn’t simple ignorance (the author knows that a serpent does not have knees on which it could stand), but nor is this sacred ingenuousness. It is, rather, a sign of the carelessness which marks the whole book.
* V. Sirin, “Zvezda nadzvezdnaya. Y.M.C.A. Parizh,” Rul’, Nov. 14, 1928, 4.