N.I. Bukharin: Poetry, Poetics and the Problems of Poetry in the U.S.S.R.
3. The Turning Point
We shall now consider poetry in our country. First, however, I must make one reservation. I
cannot here present a full picture (it should really be put more strongly) of the poetic work
of our country as
a whole. I am not considering here our tremendous and growing national literatures, our poetry
in the languages of national minorities. I am considering only Russian poetry. I do so, not
because I
underrate the importance of poetry in the languages of our national minorities - one could hardly
suspect me of doing this. But I am here following a certain rule laid down by Kozma Prutkov,1) who says
among other things: "Not knowing the Iroquois language, how can you express an opinion of it
which will not be superficial and stupid?" I know there are some amateurs who pass judgments on
everything. But if, as is said, the translations of Tajik and Ukrainian poets into our language
are bad translations, how can I judge the work of these poets? I can only say of them that they
have a
Soviet outlook, that they fight against nationalist deviations, but to pass judgment on their
verbal scoring is beyond my powers.
I repeat once again: An all-Soviet literature is growing up in our country, in which the
literature of national minorities possesses enormous significance. This significance will grow
greater and greater. I
had the honour to submit a proposal on this question at a special conference with Comrade
Gorky, but I will not be so rash as to express any opinions on poetry in the languages of
national minorities,
because, not knowing these languages, I cannot study such poetry. It is easier for me to
express opinions on German or French poetry, or even on English poetry, than, let us say, on the
poetry of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, because, as a curse of the historical past, I have not
studied these languages. We shall have to learn them, and this, most certainly, will be a very
good thing.
There can be no doubt that the giant nature of the revolution was bound to cause and did cause
radical changes in the psychology and mentality of all sections, classes and groups, as well as
tremendous emotional shocks and. new growths. Of the remarkable "old" poets who were touched,
in one way or another, by the wings of the genius of revolution, we must name three, entirely
different and unequal in value. They are - Blok, Yessenin and Bryussov.
In Alexander Blok we, of course, have a poet of tremendous power. His verse achieves a
chiselled monumentality, rising as it does to the scintillating heights of "Retribution," whose
rich images
envelop the whole period of the crisis, with the foreboding of the crash and all its tragedy. "The Twelve" will forever remain a monument of the revolutionary chaos of the first years of
seething
rebellion, and the very fabric of the verse, with its changing rhythm, serves to convey this
kaleidoscopic picture, unified by an invisible inner logic. His "Scythians" is written with an
acme of
expressive power and embraces a tremendous sphere of ideas and images. Blok is for the
revolution, and with his "yes," proclaimed to the whole world, he has earned this right to
stand on our side of
the barricades in history. And for all that, we can never say of him that he is the
standard-bearer of the new world. A skilled son of the old culture, he wanted to emblazon alien
symbols on the gates of
the new era. He is a poet profoundly philosophical and at the same time profoundly emotional. But his philosophy is descended from Vladimir Solovyev,2) from religious-erotic mysticism, from
purified
Greek orthodoxy with a Catholic tinge. There is
something, too, of the old Slavophile spirit, to which the huckster's trade has become
repugnant, and which has acquired a touch of Populism.3) From the evening's gory sunset and the
tense
atmosphere of gathering storm, Blok sensed the impending catastrophe with pain and anguish, and
hoped that the font of revolution would, perhaps, asperge mankind with new and brotherly
unction.
And that is why he "blessed" the revolution, and Katka, and the "Twelve," and made the tender
image of Christ march at the head of the revolutionary torrent with "stormladen tread." But can
we say
that this poetized ideology, these images, these searchings for an inner, mystic sense of the revolution, are on its plane? Is the "hidden meaning," the "dhvana" of Blok's poetic speech in
the least akin
to the proletariat? Is this a prelude to the new world? Of course not: it is rather the swan
song of the best members of the old, who had torn themselves away from the sombre shores of the
past, but
who did not in the least understand, did not see the new ways. The heroics of his "Scythians,"
where the sinewy strength of the images and the music of the verse blend into the measured
tread of
history, express in fact a fictitious history, the history which Blok awaited. This incantation
of a new race, of the Asiatic, of the primitive and the original, of a Scythian Messianism,
very closely akin to
Blok's philosophic position - does it not in some of its tones and odours remind one of the
flowers of Eurasianism?
We love the flesh - its taste, and hue, and smell,
Like to the stifling, deathly odour of flowers....
Are we to blame if your frail bones as well
Crunch in these heavy, tender paws of ours?
We do not know how Blok's work would have developed further. It is clear he took the revolution tragically, but it is
a big question whether this tragedy was revealed to him as an optimistic one. Blok had his
roots in the life of the landed noble's estate, and the filigree pinnacles of this culture,
with its roses and
crosses, had a fairly strong inner hold on him. Socialist machinism and the flourishing of a
new culture on this basis did not arise before his mind's eye. Rather he thought that with the
sign of the cross
he could bless and at the same time exorcize the image of the unfolding revolution, and he
perished at that stage without having spoken his final word.
More of the soil, considerably less cultured, with the nature of a peasant-kulak, Sergey
Yessenin, a full-throated singer and minstrel, a talented lyrical poet, strode across the
fields of the revolution. He
"accepted" the revolution in an entirely different way. He accepted only the first stages, or,
to be more exact, the first stage, when the power of the landlords crashed to the ground. The song structure
of his poetical speech, his harking back to the folksong rhythms of the countryside, to the
patchwork quilt of village imagery, the profoundly lyrical and at the same time the boisterous
dare-devil
timbre of his poetic voice were combined in him with the most backward shreds of ideas - enmity
to the city, mysticism, the cult of provincial bigotry and the knout. His fitful impulses in
favour of the
proletariat were to a great extent external reflexes. In his heart of hearts as a poet, he was
filled with the poison of despair when confronted with the new phases of the great revolution.
But deep within
him there also lurked a hope that history would take another course. The "confession of faith,"
the real credo of his poetical work, is contained in leis pamphlet, The Keys of Mary - a work
remarkable in
its own way. We shall find "socialism" here too. But what sort of socialism? It is "socialism"
or heaven, for in peasant lore heaven is a state where there are no taxes to be paid, where
"huts are new
and covered with cypress hoards," where "decrepit time, wandering over the
meadows, invites all tribes and peoples to the world's great table and serves each with mellow
homebrew out of a golden ladle." This "socialism" is directly hostile to proletarian socialism.
"The raised
hands of Marxian guardianship over the essential ideology of art are repugnant to us. With the
hands of the workers they build a monument to Marx; the peasants want to build one to the cow."
Yessenin raises a veritable rebellion against the "persecutors of the Holy Spirit - Inysticism,"
and prophesies the fate of the coming culture in the poetic speech of the biblical prophet:
"That which now
appears before our eyes in the building of proletarian culture, we call: 'Noah sending forth a
crow.' We know that the wings of the crow are heavy, its way is not long, it will fall, not
only without
reaching the land, but without even having seen it; we know that it will not return, know that
the olive branch will be brought back only by the dove, whose wings are knit of human faith,
not of
classconsciousness but of the consciousness of the temple of eternity which surrounds it." The
prophecy proved false in all its component parts. It was the "dove" which became entangled in
the
toils of its eternal spiritual clashes, while the "crow" has turned into a mighty eagle and
watches alert from its stupendous world-historical tower....
Nearest, in fact very close, to the proletarian revolution came Valery Bryussov, once "king of
symbolists," the ideologist of the upper circles of the radical industrial bourgeoisie, crowned
with all the
laurels and chrysanthemums of fame in the Mæcenas salons of the cultured bourgeois aristocracy
- perhaps the only real man in that literary world, to judge by Andrey Biely's last works with
their
deadly character studies. How are we to explain the historical paradox that precisely this
commanding figure of bourgeois literature should have come over to us and died a member of the
Communist
Party, upon which all the powers of the old world lavished their abuse? Why was it he and no
other
who, at a time of devastating social crisis, broke away from his class and came over to the
camp of the triumphant "rabble"? This is to be explained by the profound intellectuality of the
poet, his subtle
sense of the period, thinking in categories of continents, centuries and millions. He was
himself a colossus of culture. He was interested'' in Cretan culture, in the Middle Ages, in
the lost Atlantis, in
the later Latin poets. He listened eagerly to the iron tread of history, exulted in the heroics
of great events, and the drama of the rugged heights of humanity was forever fanning the cold
blue flame of
his remarkable and. avid mind. That is why he could not but perceive the rift in the bourgeois
world, and, while singing of this world and still believing in its permanence, in its lasting strength, he
nevertheless wrote about the coming Communist "Huns," whose "cast-iron tramp" "over still
undiscovered Pamirs" was already audible to his sensitive ear. His "Coming Huns," for which the
epigraph was written: "Trample their Eden, Attilal" ended with the pathetic lines:
And you, who are to destroy me,
I meet you with welcoming anthem!
It is also not by chance that it was Bryussov and no other who introduced into our literature such a mighty revolutionary poet as Emile Verhaeren with his Uprising, his "octopus-cities," his
Blacksmith, Tribune, Dawns, with his wrath and thought, his prophetic glimpses of the
manycoloured revolutionary spring-floods, his rebellious spurts into the future, girt around
with a precious
woof of brilliant images and rhythms. Bryussov was attracted by all that was majestic and
grandiose, historically splendid, universally significant. And as soon as the helm of history turned, and the
triumphant avalanche of the revolution began to rumble over all the plains of the former
empire, Bryussov abruptly broke with the old and lived to the end of his days with
the revolution, suffering stoically through the grimmest, most agonizing years, when we were
being buffeted from all sides by the deathly storm-winds of intervention, famine, conspiracies,
cold,
diseases - woeful, barbaric, truly "troglodyte" poverty. Earlier yet, when the intelligentsia
turned its back on October, Bryussov wrote a bitingly sarcastic "invective" addressed to the
"comrades
intellectuals"
You were in love with doom and drama,
And dreamed of the Deluge coming back,
Conjectured whether old Europa
Would perish in fire or on the rack.
That which you glimpsed in dream from afar
Has leapt to life in smoke and thunder....
Why then do your false eyes gleam with fear,
Like a startled fawn in timorous wonder?
He fully understood the historical necessity of the new order, and how inevitable was its
triumph:
Though losses drive us for a little
To darkness, cold, defeat and dearth:
No, not in vain the Hammer and Sickle
Blazons its emblem o'er the earth.
Through the powerful lens of his keen mind he saw this victory coming, and, with a premonition
of his own death, he wrote:
Days will shine forth with matchless May-time lustre,
Life will be song; a red and golden cluster
Of flowers will bloom on all the graves that be.
Though black the furrow, though the wind be stinging,
Deep in the earth the sacred roots are singing -
But you the harvest will not live to see.
The poetic thread leading from "Coming Huns" winds itself into a compact hall in "The Torch of
Thought," where
Bryussov, in terse lines, tries to present a picture of the fundamental stages of the world's
history.
The poet's purely socialist glimpses of the future are scattered with a lavish hand over the
pages of his works.
His "Central Palace of Machines" is tremendous:
From gloom, from chasm of other ages,
Like Titan rises from those scenes,
Majestic in the unquivering æther,
The Central Palace of Machines.
Remarkable is the picture of the coming change in the countryside - a change not consummated
until many, many years after the death of this tirelessly searching poetic mind. ßryussov
bewails the
inevitable doom of the old, but raises his goblet to pledge the glory of the future:
What then? The future will lovelier render
Earth renascent in living attire.
New men will come - they whose strength and skill
Will force the stormclouds to rain at will,
Compel the ploughland its yield to tender,
And ocean's bosom span at desire.
A man of encyclopedic knowledge, of tremendous culture, who had imbibed all the sap of its vital springs, Bryussov suffered not a little from eclecticism. But he was dominated by one central idea :the idea of an inherent law in
everything - a law which he sought for everywhere, in all
directions, drawing upon his astounding store of erudition.
This splendid stranger from alien shores contributed a vast
heritage of choice ideas and imagery to socialism's common
treasury of poetry and thought. An assiduous master of
culture, he is now undeservedly forgotten, and we have
deemed it our duty to rescue this remarkable figure from
oblivion.
Quite different in aspect are the two other poets whom we shall now deal with; both, again, are entirely dissimilar, and each has had an enormous influence on the entire development of poetic culture in our country. These are Demyan Bedny and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Demyan Bedny is a genuine proletarian poet. The fundamental principle of his poetic work is its mass appeal, its profoundly popular character, its influence on the millions. In this respect the position
he holds in Soviet poetry is quite unique. His popular character has no ideological connection
whatever with the "populism" of the Narodniki, in which classes are essentially
indistinguishable, being,
merged in the general concept of "the people." To adopt a political terminology, one can speak
here of a "union of the working class with the peasantry under the hegemony of the
proletariat." This is
the intellectual axis, the dominant key, the regulating principle or "social meaning" of his
poetry. But his wide influence among the masses is the result of the whole diverse complexity of component
elements in his work. He takes as his material the "latest news." The forms he employs are
those suited to the level of the millions - the song, the fable, the short repartee, the satire,
the poem. His
imagery does not suffer from ornateness; it is simple and at the same time keen, readily
understandable, taken from the thick of life, breathing its flavour. His language, indissolubly
linked with it, is
strong popular language, that spoken by the millions, the apt language of the proverb and
adage, striking hard at the opponent, having its roots in folklore. In comparison with
so-called literary
language, it is, if you wish, primitive. But this is not the studied, artificial primitiveness
affected by the refined and spiritless representatives of a tired culture, which, from
wearisome complexity and the
pretentiousness of hypertrophied artificiality, is attracted to a caricature-like reproduction
of bushmen drawings, Negro dances, etc., reminding one of the idiotic lispings of grown-ups in
the presence
of babies. It is the healthy, relative primitiveness of the mass itself which finds its
expression
in the poetic works of Demyan Bedny. His rhythm, the lilt of his verse, has its roots in the
heart of the people, and that is why many of his poems have become folksongs and are sung in
town and
country, in the army and navy, in the great centres as well as in the most outlying regions.
His somewhat crude, simple humour, always a little sly, evokes an involuntary smile. Charged
with a healthy
inner cheerfulness, strong as oak, his verses, which wing their way like swallows to all ends
of our vast country, acquire the force of keen suggestion and of faith in the lasting strength
and
invincibility of the revolution. Demyan rises at times to great heights of poetic
generalization. Remarkable and unforgettable is his "Main Street," where the story of the
struggle and victory of the
working class is woven around the theme of the Nevsky Prospect in full-blooded and stirring
imagery. But even here there is no literariness: the expressive simplicity of the poem stands out as a model
of mature and self-assured craftsmanship. The work of Demyan Bedny is a living refutation of
the prejudices against so-called "tendencious" poetry - prejudices which were once widely held,
notwithstanding Freiligrath and Heine, Barbier and Béranger.
At the same time, we must make one critical remark, which, in its turn, will probably call
forth a critical remark from my friend, Demyan Bedny. It seems to us that the poet is not now taking into account
all the tremendous changes, the incredible growth of culture, its growing complexity, its
richer content, the heightened tone, the changed dimensions of all our social life. He takes
new subjects, but
everything else remains almost as of old. For this reason he is becoming out-of-date, and here
lies a manifest danger for him.
Another great - and from a poetic viewpoint, strikingly innovational - figure of our poetry is
Vladimir Mayakovsky. This turbulent, thorny and tremendous talent, with his thunder-like voice, broke through to the proletariat from the Bohemia of the semi-bourgeois
literary world, and, through futuristic revolt against all rules and canons, against the dry
commandments of the
past, crashed his way with mighty fists into the camp of proletarian poetry, achieving one of the first places in it. In the seething cauldron of the revolution, when the masses came out on
the city
squares, when all the ancient bastions crashed to the ground., when all customary conceptions
went by the board, and the roar of the millions filled the whole country, Mayakovsky stood out
as the
mighty voice of the street. "Headstrong turbulence," the tense drama of destruction, the
semi-anarchist fringe of the revolutionary process, unrestrained as yet by the iron
disciplining will of the
proletarian vanguard, were native to this impetuous nature which - with all its passions - broke
out to freedom from the prison cage of bourgeois society. Angular and ungainly, this roaring
poetic lion of
the revolution began, lo the crackle of the machine-guns in the Civil War, to pour out the
lines of his stanzas, which themselves sounded like volleys of machine-gun fire. Their rapid
strokes rained
down like real blows, and his whole ebullient, choppy, short-worded system of rhythms, bold and
self-assured, which seemed brazen and almost ruffian rudeness to the admirers of classical
musical
melody, was really an apt reflection of the rhythm of the street and the square, of the
headstrong dynamics of the revolutionary semi-chaos, within whose womb was gradually maturing the chiselled,
organized force of the new-born society. His imagery and metaphors surprised one with their
unexpectedness and novelty. His great, long, hairy arm reached down to the very depths of
shattered life,
and dragged up from thence paradoxical prosaic details, which suddenly started to poetic life
in his audacious verse. He was not afraid to exalt and glorify that which sober minds
considered to be "the
end of creation." His "street" muse thundered forth the triumphant "Left
March," which will stand forever as a splendid poetic monument to this heroic period. Everyone
knows it, and everyone can feel in it the menacing beat of the pulse of revolution:
Fall in in column of march!
No place for quibbling this...
Silence, you speakers!
Comrade
Mouser,
You have the floor, sir!
Enough of the laws of the bosses
Adam and Eve have left.
History, hustle your horses!
Left!
Left!
Left!
The poetry of Mayakovsky is poetry in action. It is poles asunder from the "contemplative" and
"disinterested" concepts contained in the æsthetics of idealist philosophers. It is a hailstorm of sharp
arrows shot against the enemy. It is devastating, fire-belching lava. It is a trumpet call that
summons to battle.
During the war of intervention Mayakovsky became famous for his "agitational" poems, and in
proportion as construction work was developed, the notes of construction began to resound ever
more
clearly in his mighty voice. The poetry of labour became the basic content of his work. While toiling untiringly at problems of language ("spendthrift and squanderer of priceless words"),
Mayakovsky
let loose all the dramatic power of his indignation against the life of the philistine, against
the "canary," which in his hands grew into a veritable symbol of yellowness in life, against
the suffocating
mustiness of bureaucracy, against the mental muzzle of the respectable citizen. Enemies fled
headlong before him, and he pressed grimly on; his poetry thundered and
mocked at them, raising still higher the pyramid of the creative efforts of this mighty,
stupendous poet, the drummer of the proletarian revolution. Mayakovsky gave Soviet poetry so
much that he has
become a Soviet "classic." Such are the dictates of historic "fate." He "lives on" in almost
every young poet, and his poetic method's have become a permanent part of our literature.
Notes
1)
Kozma Prutkov - a pen-name under which several authors of clever satirical works wrote in
the 'eighties, so that the pen - name became identified with clever satire. Ed.
2)
Solovyev, Vladimir Sergeyevich (1853 - 1900). Russian poet and mystical philosopher.
3)
The Populist, or Narodnik, revolutionary movement of the 'sixties and 'seventies in Russia, advocating a peasant socialism. Ed.