Writings from the Golden Age of Russian poetry

After the publication of the Essays, Batyushkov wrote very little else, or at least very little that has survived. Later on, he described his subsequent “silence” as deliberate, but this seems unlikely, the more so in that it was not complete. Indeed he had many ideas for writing, and did in fact produce some of his most memorable work in these years, notably the brief and brilliant poems translated from or inspired by the lyrics of the Greek Anthology.

Once he had more or less finished work on the Essays, at Khantonovo in May 1817, he wrote down some thoughts in a notebook. He kept notebooks at other times, but apart from this one, the only comparable texts to have survived are some reading notes of 1810 (discussed in chapter 3). Many of the jottings of 1817 are also reactions to books read; indeed, they are given the title “Other People’s Stuff is My Treasure”—a form of words that points up the close links of reading and writing for Batyushkov and his contemporaries. But there are also notes that give a more direct insight into his inner world. The first of these reads:

I must never lose the beautiful passion for the beautiful, which so attracts one to the arts and literature, but I must not become surfeited with it. Moderation in all things. The works of Racine, Tasso, Virgil and Ariosto can captivate a fresh soul: happy the man who at thirty can weep, can shed tears of emotion. Horace asked that Zeus should end his life when he became impervious to the sounds of the lyre. I very much understand this prayer…

(Essays, 410)

This sounds a note that we often hear in his letters to friends: the weariness that makes it difficult for him to maintain old enthusiasms, to settle anywhere, or indeed to write. He continues, a little later, with a fascinating account of his attempts to deal with this:

My illness hasn’t gone away, but it has calmed down a bit. All around me is a gloomy silence, the house is empty, it’s drizzling, the garden is muddy. What can I do? I’ve read all there was, even the European Herald. Let me recall the old days. Let me write spontaneously, impromptu, without narcissism, and see what comes pouring out—write as fast as you speak, with no ulterior motive, the way few people write, since narcissism is always plucking at your sleeve and getting you to put a different word in place of the one you first thought of. But Montaigne wrote whatever came into his mind. True. But Montaigne is a quite exceptional man. I compare his mind to a spring that has been dammed up—open the sluice and the water comes rushing out, endlessly flowing, foaming and boiling, always clear and healthy—and why? Because there was a great reservoir of water. With a small mind, a weak or sluggish one, like mine, it’s very hard to write spontaneously, but today I’m in the mood, I want to perform a tour de force. My pen will dispel my melancholy a little. So then…But I’m stuck already. How to begin? What to write about? Recall the past, describe the present, plan for the future. But you have to admit that’s all very tedious. Speaking of the past is all right when you’re old and very important or rich, talking to your heirs, who listen out of kindness: “On en vaut mieux quand on est écouté.”1 What can you say about the present? It hardly exists. And the future?…ah, the future’s been very burdensome to me recently! So then, write about something: discuss something! I’ve tried discussing things, but it never seems to work; when I discuss something—as kind people tell me—it’s like when other people show off. That’s a painful thought. Why can’t I discuss things?

And he goes into a comic routine, listing eleven reasons (such as his short stature) for his inability to think, then carries on:

But I must write. I’m bored without a pen in hand. I’ve tried drawing, but it’s no good; what shall I do? help me, good people—but I’ve no one to talk to. I don’t know how to cope with my misery. Let’s see. As it happens, I recall someone’s words—Voltaire’s, I remember now: “Et voilà comme on écrit l’histoire!”² These words came back automatically, I don’t know why, and they set me off remembering events I have witnessed in my life and what I have subsequently read in descriptions of these events. What a difference, my God, what a difference! “Et voilà comme on écrit l’histoire.”

And he is off, telling stories of his wartime commander Raevsky and the gap between what actually happened and the legends that grew up around it, then moving on to a brief portrait of the general, “a great warrior and sometimes a good man, sometimes a very strange one.” And he concludes: “I’ve written all that without flagging. God be praised! An hour has flown past without my noticing it” (Essays, 410–16). Getting through the days could be a burden.

Batyushkov did have ideas for further writing. We have seen in the previous chapter his plans for a long poem on a theme from Russian folklore (“Rusalka”) and for a collection of translations from the Italian. The notebook of 1817 adds an unexpectedly ambitious outline for an “agreeable and useful book,” a very full history of Russian literature designed for a society readership who knew their own literature less well than those of Western Europe. Batyushkov had written earlier to Gnedich of his problems with the Russian language, but now, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, he is pursuing the patriotic agenda he had suggested in “An Evening at Kantemir’s.” It is not clear whether he had any intention of embarking on this venture himself, but he develops his scheme in some detail, starting with the old Slavonic language and the literature of the Middle Ages, but devoting the vast majority of the volume to post-Petrine writing. He lists a huge range of writers, including his contemporaries, under twenty-eight different headings, and suggests a number of topical themes and questions:

The influence of the newborn German literature—and in part that of English literature. What have we achieved? Why has the lyrical genre [i.e. the ode] flourished and why must it decline? What is most characteristically Russian? The richness and poverty of the language. Can a language thrive without a philosophy, and why can it thrive, but not for long? The influence of church language on that of civil society, and the influence of civil eloquence on spiritual eloquence…

(Essays, 422)

It could have been a fascinating and timely book, but none of it was ever written.

Another aspect of this notebook is the new concern for morality that we saw also in the essays of 1815. It is here that we find the remarkable double self-portrait that is cited at length in the introduction. Batyushkov’s key value in these notes seems to be sniskhozhdenie, which can be translated as tolerance or indulgence. He sees this—somewhat contrary to his earlier satirical practice—as an essential value in literary life:

From whatever angle you look at man in himself and in society, you find that tolerance must be the first of virtues. Tolerance in speech, in deed, and in thought—that is what gives an attractiveness to goodness, which is almost more appealing than anything in the world. To frown and pick up Juvenal’s big stick is not very difficult, but to jest with life, like Horace, that’s the true philosopher’s stone…

Simplicity and tolerance are the signs of a mind made for art…The Savior’s words on the poor in spirit who inherit the kingdom of heaven can be applied to the literary world too.

(Essays, 418, 428)

This expresses the thirty-year-old poet’s new outlook, more Christian, more quietist, more conservative. It tended to separate him from his younger, more radical, more combative friends, those who would go on to form the Decembrist conspiracy against the autocracy that the poet was content to serve.

And indeed government service of some kind was becoming a pressing need for Batyushkov in 1817. His finances, already shaky, were dealt a further blow when his father died in November, leaving Konstantin as head of the family, responsible for paying his father’s debts and looking after his siblings, including two children of his father’s second marriage. He didn’t attempt to duck these responsibilities, taking out new loans and selling off some of his own property to prevent the sale of his father’s house. In particular his letters show his extreme concern for the welfare and education of his little half brother Pompey, born in 1811, who was to help with the edition of his works seventy years later. His income was barely adequate for all this. The success of the Essays brought in little money. In the light of his newfound fame, he was made an honorary librarian of the Imperial Public Library where he had served as a younger man—this gave him honor, but not cash. Consequently, he kept coming back to his old plan of obtaining a diplomatic post in his poetic homeland, Italy. As well as cultural riches, this would have the advantage of a warmer climate, which he found himself needing more and more as his various ailments continued to harass him. In June 1817, he had written to Zhukovsky: “Winter is the death of me. Even when I was quite healthy, I froze like a cabbage-stalk in France…imagine what it’s like for me here in Russia, with our killing frosts! Let’s go to the Crimea, ‘wo die Zitronen blühn’ ” (SP, 409).3

In fact, the following summer he went nearly as far as the Crimea, bathing assiduously in the sea at Odessa, while fulfilling his role as honorary librarian by studying the antiquities of southern Russia. But Italy was the real dream. In June 1818, on the persuasion—and with the help—of Zhukovsky and other friends, he plucked up his courage and submitted his case in a letter to the tsar. Describing his life, his campaigns, and his illnesses, he wrote of his desire to use his modest knowledge and abilities for the good of the Fatherland, while profiting from a climate “necessary for the restoration of my health which was shattered by my wound and the hardships of the Finnish campaign” (WP, 260–61). The following month he received an appointment to the Russian mission in Naples, with a modest salary.

Meanwhile he had continued to play his part in the literary life of the capital. As already noted, his Essays in Verse and in Prose were received with great acclaim, and no dissenting voices, in the autumn of 1817—Batyushkov must have felt at least partly reassured by this success. Arriving in St. Petersburg not long before publication, he was at long last able to attend meetings of Arzamas. In fact, by this time the society was beginning to change—but also to decline and disperse. Since Derzhavin’s death in 1816, Arzamas’s old adversary, the Circle of Lovers of the Russian Word, was no longer active, so there was no obvious literary fight to be fought. Some members were departing from St. Petersburg—Zhukovsky to Moscow, Vyazemsky to Warsaw, others on foreign missions. At the same time, new members were seeking to inflect it more toward radical politics. In order to breathe new life into Arzamas, there was a proposal to found a new literary-political journal. In the end nothing came of this, but Batyushkov did produce one outstanding contribution, which was later published separately (and semi-anonymously). This is a group of translations of poems from the Greek Anthology, the famous collection of several thousand short Greek poems by a great variety of authors from the seventh-century BCE to the tenth-century CE.

Batyushkov knew no Greek, and the translations were done from French versions of the Greek produced by his Arzamas colleague Sergey Uvarov, a classical scholar who later played an important educational role in the reactionary government of Nicholas I. Indeed, Batyushkov’s poems were intended originally to provide illustrations for Uvarov’s article on the Anthology. They are for the most part love poems, a lot of them in the erotic mode that Batyushkov had earlier found in Parny. In many of them, love is threatened, and one or two, including the first one (taken from Meleager), are poems of loss and mourning. The very short final piece strikes a different note, celebrating courage in the face of death. In all cases, though, there is a memorable concision, a striking richness of imagery, a beauty of orchestration and a fluidity of construction characteristic of their author. As usual with his translations, they show a freedom that allows the poet to express his own vision and his own feelings, in his own voice. The meter is a characteristically Russian iambic, with lines of varying length, and there are irregular rhyme schemes mixing masculine and feminine endings (though my translations are largely unrhymed). Here is the full collection of thirteen poems:

FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY

In nothingness’s gloomy mansion

O woman unforgettable! accept from me

Tears and despairing cries on your cold tombstone,

Roses ephemeral as you!

All is in vain. Eternal darkness

Will not give up your ever-grieving shadow;

We cannot call you back from envious Hades.

Here all is dumb and cold; here nothing speaks.

My funeral torch only reveals the blackness…

What have you done, you governors of heaven?

Say, why does beauty have so short a life?

But mother earth, take these my bitter tears,

Take her who sleeps, the faded flower of spring,

And may she rest in hospitable shade.

Witnesses of my love and sorrow,

Youthful roses, damp with tears!

Deck with your wreaths the modest cottage

Where my beloved shuns our eyes.

Remain, sweet wreaths, and do not wither!

But if she comes, pour out on her

All your sweet odor, and once more

Water with tears her lovely tresses.

May she stand wondering, and sigh;

And you, flowers, with your fragrant breath,

Water with tears my dear one’s tresses.

III

At last! Nikagor and fire-breathing Eros

With Bacchus’ cups have vanquished Aglaya…

O joy, that here they have unloosed the girdle,

Once the proud bulwark of her maidenhood!

See all around the room carelessly scattered

The gorgeous clothing of disdainful beauty,

The floating vestments of light, snowy gauze,

The shapely shoes, the flowers freshly picked.

All these, the ruins of her rich apparel,

Proclaim her love, Nikagor’s happiness.

THE SYCAMORE TO THE PASSERBY

See how the vine entwines me in its tendrils!

See how it loves my half-decaying trunk!

Once I cast over it a grateful shadow;

Now I have withered…but the vine stays true.

So pray to Zeus,

If you are made for friendship, passerby,

That your friend too will one day be like mine

And love your dust while he remains alive.

Where is the fame, the beauty that undid you?

The busy streets, the happy citizens?

Where are the sumptuous halls, the noble temples,

The gold, the tessera that shone in them?

Alas, great many-pillared Corinth, gone forever,

Your very ash is scattered through the fields,

All is a void, we only cry to heaven,

The halcyon alone grieves in the mist!

“Where are you going, my beauty?—Business, none of yours.

—And can I hope?—For what?—You know quite well.

—I haven’t time!—But look here, count this gold.

—And is that all? You’re joking! So, farewell.”

VII

Let’s hide forever from men’s envious eyes

The ardent raptures and the swoon of passion.

How sweet a kiss in the unspeaking night,

How sweet love’s hidden pleasures!

VIII

I love the smile playing on Laisa’s lips,

Her talk that captivates the heart, but dearer

Than everything to me are her shy looks

And in her eyes the tears of sudden sorrow.

Last night at twilight, overcome by passion,

I knelt again before her, spoke of love:

My kisses led her on to pleasure

On the soft couch laid out for us…

I burned with love, she stood unmoving…

But suddenly grew pale, despondent

And tears came flooding from her eyes!

Taken aback, I pressed her to my bosom:

“What’s troubling you, my dear, what’s troubling you?”

“Don’t worry, it is nothing, God’s my witness;

Just one thought troubles me,” she said:

“You men are faithless, and…I feel afraid.”

Is it for you to mourn your young days gone?

You are as beautiful as ever

And with the passing years

Ever more captivating to your lover.

I do not prize an inexperienced beauty,

Unskilled in all the mysteries of love;

Her bashful gaze is lifeless and unspeaking,

Her timid kisses by no feeling moved.

But you, love’s empress, could awaken

An answering passion in a stone

And in your autumn days the flame still burns

That through your bloodstream flows.

Alas! these eyes bedimmed by weeping,

The hours of suffering in these hollow cheeks,

They don’t awaken your compassion—

A cruel smile plays on your lips…

These are the bitter fruits of passion,

Sad fruits of passion that no joy relieves,

The fruits of love, worthy of favor

And not the fate that so benumbs the heart…

Alas! like sudden lightning up in heaven,

Passions eat up our early years,

Perfidiously, they leave us cheerless,

Afflicted by never-ending tears.

But you, my beauty, you whose love is dearer

To me than all my youth and happiness,

Take pity on me…and I will recover,

Younger and brighter than I was.

An eloquent look, a passionate smile,

Which, like a mirror show the soul

Of my beloved…She

By a harsh Argus is kept away from me!

But passion’s eyes can see through walls:

You jealous man, beware the love in eyes!

Love showed me the mysteries of happiness,

Love will show me the way to my beloved,

Love did not teach you how to read our hearts.

XII

Life is exhausted in my frozen heart:

An end to struggle and to everything!

Eros and Aphrodite, you tormentors,

Hear my last words, my melancholy!

I fade away, yet undergo new tortures,

Half dead, but not consumed,

I fade away, my love is still as ardent,

And without hope I die!

So on the altar, round the sacrifice,

The fire grows pale and dwindles,

Then, flaring up before it dies,

Is quenched amid the ashes.

XIII

With courage in my looks, fire burning in my blood,

I sailed, but suddenly cruel death stormed the horizon.

Young sailor, don’t forget how beautiful your life is!

Trust to your boat! Sail on the flood!

(Essays, 344–48)

Together with their even more striking sequel, Imitations of the Ancients, these poems are a high point in Batyushkov’s writing and quickly came to be seen as a major contribution to Russian poetry, establishing a new genre, the “anthological poem.”4 Batyushkov was only identified by his Arzamas initial (A for Achilles) in the first publication, but his young contemporary Wilhelm Küchelbecker wrote that from the delight felt in reading them, from their beautiful melody, the skill of the translation and the perfection of the prosody, they could only be the work of Batyushkov or Aleksandr Pushkin—but more probably the former (WP, 258).

In the late summer of 1818, having learned of his appointment to Naples, Batyushkov returned to St. Petersburg. Soon after his arrival he sent to the wife of the historian Karamzin a little poem in praise of her husband’s work. The eighth volume of his History of the Russian State had appeared earlier that year, and Batyushkov, who had always admired and loved Karamzin, was distressed that it was receiving too little attention; to make up for this, in a typically self-deprecating way, he composed these “poor lines.” “They just poured out from my soul,” he wrote to Aleksandr Turgenev:

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN STATE

When once at the Olympic Games,

In hopes of sweet applause, the father

Of history pronounced the names

Of Greeks who crushed the kings of Asia

And shattered all their proud batallions,

The people, all athirst for glory,

Forgot their games and entertainments

And stood enraptured by his story.

But in the midst of the great crowd

The noble young Thucidydes,

Beloved of the muses, stood