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ФИЛОЛОГИЯ И ИСКУССТВОВЕДЕНИЕ
YAK 821.161.1-191
Ulrike Jekutsch
AUTUMN AND WINTER: CONSTRUCTIONS OF OLD AGE IN NIKOLAJ ZABOLOCKIJ'S POETRY
By using images and metaphors which contradict in various and oblique ways the official Stalinist conception of man, the later poetry of Nikolaj Zabolockij (1903-1958) outlines an individual concept of old age. Most of Zabolockij's poems construct old age as heroic and male, and only a very few texts allow us glimpses at his very different concepts of old women and couples. His reading of old age concentrates on the male body, it's strength and illnesses, linking it to underlying questions of poetics and artistic creativity. Another layer of text hints at Soviet history and the individual biography of the author. The following paper will focus on the complex interaction of these three layers of text.
Keywords: Nikolaj Zabolockij, Old Age, metaphor.
The young Soviet Union adored youth and everything new. The new state understood itself as the world's only representative of socialism and as a new socialist society. This self-concept in particular implied a negative assessment not only of tsarist times, but of old times in general, and of old age and old people. The opposition "old age - new age", "old people - young people" became a distinctive feature of Soviet and Stalinist culture. In such a climate, old people were looked upon as representatives of bygone times and educational and ideological backwardness. Accordingly, they were suspected of hostility towards the new socialist order. Marigtta Cudakova even maintains that the term "pokolenie" (generation) tended to be identified with "class" - the old generation was looked upon as a special class, infected by having lived in pre-revolutionary times [1]. Therefore, I shall begin by outlining how, according to recent historical research [2], the semantics of "old age" developed in Soviet culture.
After the October Revolution and the Civil War, the term "old age" came close to being pejorative. In a society which praised youth, strength, and vigour, old people were marginalized in all kinds of ways. They were likely to be described as physically weak, and as "stubborn, superstitious, and poorly
© Jekutsch Ulrike, 2011 112
educated" [3]. However, at the end of the twenties, attitudes towards old age began to change. As Soviet society developed an interest in its own history, old people were detected as valuable witnesses and participants in the great historical changes_of the October Revolution and the shaping of the Soviet Union. If politically correct, the memories of old people became highly valued. It was acknowledged also, that old workers in particular had often proved themselves to be valuable members of production, and that old age was not necessarily bound to infirmity and decrepitude, but that they could compensate lesser strength with skill and experience. Thus, the process of_re-evaluation of old age and old people played an integral part in the great Soviet utopian dream, and in the plans of forming a new man and abolishing disease and death [4]. "Old age, death, and decrepitude represented a huge challenge for intellectuals professing a faith in voluntarism and world transformation." [5] The new man of the future was seen as a strong, healthy and rational human being who preserved his youth and vigour until a "natural death", which means death at the end of his biological time without illness or accident. Practical recommendations for diet and hygiene were issued to help people to live until their "natural death" [6]. If Soviet medical research in the twenties concentrated on means of rejuvenation, then the focus shifted to research on the conditions of longevity in the thirties. Old age, it was argued, should no longer be viewed as pathological, as an undesirable condition to be cured or alleviated by medication or surgical intervention. It was to be seen as a period in life that could be healthy and productive. Medical science - so it was assumed -would, in time, if not abolish death, then at least radically push_back the boundaries of human life expectancy. Soviet medicine claimed to postpone senescence to the 90 to 140 age range, and it maintained that, if the precepts of hygienic and rational living were followed, Soviet people might well expect to live to an age of 120. When the foundation of the first Soviet Institute of Gerontology was celebrated in Kiev in 1938, Bogomolec, the president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, declared as the aim of prospected research, to extend the life expectancy of Soviet people to somewhere between 125 and 150 [7]. In these years, great symbolic value was attached to feats of longevity, examples of which were presented and discussed in
the Soviet mass media. Scientific expeditions were carried out into several regions of the Soviet Union to conduct field studies on the years and number of old people and their way of living. The highest incidence of longevity was reported in the Caucasus. Soviet people were expected to preserve their health and abilities by hygiene, sports, rational living and by the help of medicine, in order to remain productive and valuable members of society even in old age. However, "productive" in relation to older workers was not understood as being "as productive as a young man": research on the work of young and old workers had proved that old people's work differed, from that of the young, that they had learned by experience to use just the right amount of strength for their given tasks, that they worked in another rhythm than young people, and that, above all, they proved to be more dependable and working more evenly than young people. Thus, by the second half of the thirties, old age was not longer viewed as a form of disability, but as a positive virtue. Especially after Stalin's "Cadres decide everything" speech (1935), the term "starik - old man" could be used synonymously with "kadrovik" (qualified, experienced worker). "Senior citizens were integrated into the prevailing vision of Soviet society as mature, harmonious and productive" [8]. Old age was seen as tantamount to professional and social experience and knowledge, and it came to be recognized as an age with its own virtues and its own values. But in contrast to earlier patriarchal understandings of seniority, it did not develop any constant association with authority or power. Experience_showed, that there were also many old people not confirming to the ideal picture of the vigorous old man. In general, however, this concept of old age and old people was maintained until the end of Stalinism, partly even until the end of the Soviet Union.
Having in mind this context of general Soviet conceptions of old age, I would like to discuss the different constructions of old age in the poetry of Nikolaj Zabolockij. He is one of the leading poets of the twentieth century, though he is little known outside of Russia. Since Zabalockij's later poetic works, in particular, are to be read in the context of his biography, I_will give a short survey of his life, before turning to his poetry on ageing and old age.
Zabolockij came from a peasant familiy, he was reared in the country and lived there during Revolution and War Communism [9]. In 1921, he came to Petersburg, where he studied at the Herzen Institute and came into contact with avantgardist circles of art and literature. In 1928, he was a founding member of the last avantgardist circle, Oberiu (Society for Real Art), which was quickly forced to cease its activities. Zabolockij was the only member of the circle who could publish a volume of verses in 1929, which, however, was followed by severe attacks
of semi-official critics, accusing him of slandering the Soviet Union. Turning to the writing of children's literature and literary translation in the thirties, he tried to avoid publishing the official praises of Stalin's Soviet Union, demanded by cultural politics. He was arrested in 1938 and sentenced, and spent eight years in forced labour camps and exile in Siberia. In 1946, he was allowed to return to Moscow and to work as a poet and translator again. The remaining years of his life - until 1958 - he concentrated on translations. In 1957, Zabolockij arranged the corpus of his own poetry in the way he wanted it to be presented to the public, destroying all texts which he thought not good or not characteristic. Before and after his death small selections of his poetry were published, other editions followed later. In 1983, an edition of his Collected Works appeared, which contained almost all of his own poetry. During Perestrojka, the few still unpublished texts were edited. On the whole, his poetry - accredited by himself - consists of 178 poems, among them six verse tales or long poems [10].
His early poems (published as Stolbcy/ Columns in 1929) present a world of distorted dimensions and equally distorted, crippled people, among them youths of the modern age who are developing far too quickly and are therefore not maturing. His poetic world is almost exclusively male, there are only a very few references to women. Only rarely, old people appear, and then often in a distinctly gendered view - old men as slow-thinking human beings, inquisitive about questions of life and death, old women as witches and whores. The poem "Novyj byt" ("The new way of life", written 1928) [11] ridicules the career of the Soviet new man, who here is characterized by constant youth or -rather - childishness: After having been baptized by the pope at the request of his elders, the baby joins the Komsomol, starts working, marries, rejecting the services of the church and celebrating in the company of his working brigade. In a short statement, the status of the older generation is pointed out: They have been banned to the margins of the new world, upon which they look with horror, and which they can only hope to leave soon.
A different picture of an old man is presented in the long poem Pticy (Birds), written 1934 to the memory of his father. It conveys a monologue of an old man and teacher, addressing his pupil, to whom he demonstrates the wonders of the living world by dissecting a dove. By this, he shows the power and knowledge of man, which is gained by cutting up the body of the bird. At the same time, he points out the powerlessness of man, who destroys the bird without being able to reawaken it to life. The old man is preparing for his own death. He appears to be in harmony with his own life and to readily accept his imminent death. In the following years, death and
the eternal circle of life, feeding on death, became the main topic of Zabolockij's poetry on nature.
In the early fifties, the motif of ageing - and the feeling of old age coming nearer - begin to play a role in Zabolockij's poetry. Old age, and old men, become elements connected with the gradual withdrawal from life, with physical decay, and ultimately with death, but also with love and partnership. In the following, I will present the unfolding of these topoi by analysing the relevant poems of the years 1952 up to 1957.
The motif of old age and getting old appears in
1952, and though it is to be encountered until 1957, it most prominently occurs in the years 1952 and
1953. However, this is not only the time, when Zabolockij is nearing his fiftieth birthday, but also the last years of Stalin's rule, which brought a return of the terror of the thirties. In order to protect himself from the growing threat of impending arrest and renewed imprisonment, Zabolockij gave up writing poetry in 1949 [12]. It seems that he was not able to write under this renewed threat, and as later research proved, his fear was well founded [13]. He knew from experience what imprisonment and forced labour camp meant. Nonetheless, in 1952, he began to write again, apparently_unable to_be silent any longer. The poems of these two years concentrate upon the aforementioned threats and anxieties.
The first of them, the poem "Obletajut poslednie maki" (The last poppies are flying away, 1952), is constructed as a soliloquy of the lyrical persona walking down autumnal park lanes. It focuses on the knowledge of being threatened: the persona and autumnal nature are described in similar terms, they correspond to each other: Nature, "in morbid darkness", is not like herself, just as the lyrical persona is not his usual self: with uncovered head, not taking care of himself, he wanders aimlessly down an empty and naked tree-lined walk, where the fallen leaves rustle under his feet. The life of the plants, described as now hidden "v •tich strannych obrubkach vetvej" ("in these strange logs / cuttings of wood"), recalls the mutilated life of the author [14]. The persona is equally withdrawn in himself, entrapped in his anxieties. His wanderings mirror the wanderings of his soul in doubt and in fear of coming darkness. The last stanza exposes the cause of the persona's wanderings and inner arguments by presenting the final conclusion:
Пусть непрочны домашние стены, Пусть дорога уводит во тьму, -Нет на свете печальней измены, Чем измена себе самому [15].
Let the walls of houses be no protection,
Let the way lead into darkness -
There is not a more wretched treason in this world
Than the treason of one's self [16].
The threat of imprisonment awakens depression and fear of a past which the persona had imagined to be forever gone, it awakens the memories of GULag and death in the snow-laden deserts of Siberia. The poem "Vospominanie" (Remembering, 1952) continues the argument, beginning to portray the persona as weary of life, while his memory has been recalled into his past, which may be also his possible future. The poem is built as a succession of two separate pictures: The first portrays the persona as troubled by tiredness, doubting, and fear of the end of life:
Наступили месяцы дремоты... То ли жизнь действительно прошла, То ль она, закончив все работы, Поздней гостьей села у стола [17].
The months of tiredness have come. Life is either really gone already, Or, having completed all labours, It sat down at the table like a late visitor.
Life of this sort - personified as a late visitor -means not speaking any more, loosing one's self in doubts and fears, being able only to listen to the song of a bird outside the window. The second half of the poem displays the fearful memories of the persona as the content of the bird's song. It is a song about a far away land, where there are almost no distinctive signs which help to distinguish the lonely grave-hill from the white, cold landscape, where there are no words, no communication between hill and frozen trees, where even the "blood-stained moon" is caught in a ring of frost.
In this poem, Zabolockij creates a double, if not triple distance between himself and the persona of the poem: The persona speaks in pictures, he anthropomorphizes the last term of life as a person, a visitor, whose worries are not described directly, but presented in the pictures of a song, attributed to the bird before the window. By contrast, the lyrics of the song accentuate the present situation of the persona: He is not yet in a snowy desert, but in a house, at a table, in a surrounding where nature communicates with man. All this is lacking in the far-away land of the bird's song, where there is only death, whiteness and frost.
After presenting a future which one must be afraid of, the following poem of the same year can be read as an attempt to overcome this fear. "Proscanie z druz'jami" / "Farewell to friends" (1952) is dedicated to the friends of the poet's youth, to his colleagues of the Oberiu group, who had died in prison, and labour camps, in the early forties. The poem combines the memories of youth with the memory of death; the persona as the only surviving member addresses the "comrades," and describes their figures
as they appear before his eyes, carrying booklets of their verses which, at the time this was written, were still unpublished and believed to be lost [18]. The comrades have gone into the realm of death, which is depicted in negative terms as "land beneath the earth". There are no fixed or stable forms. Insects sing soundlessly in an unintelligible language, while the friends cannot speak any more. For them, sky and moon have been replaced by the vault of the grave-hill they are lying in. This contrasting counter-world, however, contains the seeds of new beginnings of life in every possible form: Amidst the nameless insects, a beetle-man welcomes newcomers with a lantern. The beetle had been a prominent image of Oberiu-poetry, where it is linked to the Skarabaeus, symbolizing the ending and beginning of life at the same time. By turning to the memories of the companions of his youth, the lyrical persona builds up an image of death as "rite of passage" into another form of life.
The description of death as a realm of dissolving, unstable forms is continued and specified in other poems, for example in "Son" ("Dream" or "Sleep", 1953), which depicts a dream of the persona. He describes himself as "inhabitant of the earth, aged fifty", who undertakes a dream-journey into a realm, which is gradually seen as the other world. In this other world, the persona is floating in the universe without effort. He is now without name, without either will or wish, he seems not to exist as an individual any more. Rejecting the vanishing light of the distant earth, his soul does no longer want to realize itself, but wants to become a particle of the universe. This realm is equally a place without love or fear, without form or labour, without individual existence; the persona feels himself dispersing into the multitude of dissolving and evolving forms, out of which new forms shall arise. Motion, perpetual motion between being and not-being, between stable and unstable forms is the only positive characteristic of this realm of the other world. Here, Zabolockij returns to his nature poems on the character of life and death, on mortality and immortality, on the problem of life after death. Darra Goldstein interpreted this poem as manifesting a "deep resignation of the dreamer" and a general "sense of surrender" [19].
The poem "Neudacnik" (written in the following year, 1953) strikes another tone. The title can be translated as "The Unlucky One" or "The Unsuccessful One". The poem's dominant theme is a review of past life's misfortunes and miscarriages. It is built as an apostrophe addressed to an aged man, wandering about and lost in his worries. The persona plays the role of the spectator looking at that man from a distance and arguing inwardly with him about the reasons for his estrangement from life. As one of these reasons is named old age,
externalised_as a "ved'ma glazastaja" (big-eyed witch), watching him the whole day long, while hiding behind an old willow. The silent discussion of the past life of the man in the mind of the spectator is centred around the crucial decision the man once took, namely, always to behave with the utmost caution and prudence. This he did, but the outcome of it was, the spectator-persona assumes, that he missed his life, that he squandered his spirit on mediocre, unworthy things, that for him all sense of living was lost. The final judgement is conveyed in the last two stanzas:
Вот теперь и ходи и рассчитывай, Сумасшедшие мысли тая, Да смотри, как под тенью ракитовой Усмехается старость твоя.
Не дорогой ты шел, а обочиной, Не нашел ты пути своего, Осторожный, всю жизнь озабоченный, Неизвестно, во имя чего? [20]
Now you go and calculate,
While hiding your mad thoughts,
And look, see how old age is laughing at you
In the shadow of the willow.
You did not walk in the street, but on the verge of it, You did not find your way, Being cautious, you worried all your life, Without knowing, in the name of what!
In the biography of his father, Zabolockij's son Nikita pointed out that Zabolockij often felt sad, worried and angry in these days thinking about the damages which the Stalinist regime had inflicted on himself and his friends. He thought not only of himself, but also of his companions, especially of his life-long friend, the literary scholar Nikolaj Stepanov, who had often advised Zabolockij how to behave towards official institutions when publishing his verses [21]. Stepanov had often dissuaded his friend from politically reckless behaviour, and Zabolockij knew that he had to be grateful to him, but he could not help discerning this way of life as a failure. At the same time, the text can be read as a reference to Zabolockij's own biography, for he also adopted for his own life the rules of caution and reasonable behaviour. Especially after his return from the GULag, Zabolockij deliberately chose to declare the translation of Georgian poetry into Russian as his future work. He was eager to edit a representative anthology of classical and modern Georgian poetry in his own translation - and with the help of his Georgian friends he realized it in the course of the following years. On this project he could work with pleasure, and he was able to publish his translations
without great difficulties, whereas his politically cautious advisers often warned him off from giving his own verses to print. In these years, the number of translations he made exceeded by far the number of his own verses - published and unpublished .Even before his arrest Zabolockij had deliberately reduced the writing of poetry in favour of translations and -as we know - he totally refrained from it between 1949 and 1952.
The second context, in which the motif of old age appears, is in combination with love, or more precisely, with old love, that has endured the test of time. The poem "Staraja skazka" (An Old Fairy Tale), addressed to the persona's beloved, also dates from the year 1952. It may be read as another way of coping with the threat of these years. The poem creates the atmosphere of a fairy tale. The word "skazka" not only appears in the title, but also in the first stanza, describing the situation of the couple and characterizing the process they are going through: "we are growing old together, like the king in a fairy tale". In the first two stanzas the speaker uses only the first person pluralis, thus he includes the addressed one in his description. The second stanza describes ageing as growing nearer death: "'our' life is burning down like a candle in a shielded place, 'we' are patiently meeting 'our' inevitable fate". The third stanza belongs to the persona alone, who now turns to his beloved with promises for the future: "when your hair will show strands of silver, I will destroy my manuscripts and part with my verses." The allusion to the author is clear. This promise is also the confession of the persona, that it is his profession as poet, to endanger their life and love. The last stanza describes a strange image of the soul, of their souls:
Пусть душа, словно озеро, плещет, У порога подземных ворот И багровые листья трепещут, Не касаясь поверхности вод [22].
Let the soul be lapping like a lake At the threshold of the gates to the underworld, And let purple leaves be trembling Without touching the surface of the water.
Individual elements of this imagined landscape of the soul echo the nearness of death: the lake not yet overflowing the threshold; the purple leaves not yet falling down, not yet touching the surface of the water beneath them. The gates of the underworld mimetically enhance this threatening closeness [23]. The couple is near to yielding to death, but still burning with life. The reference to the fairy tale hints at the happy ending, which is usually connected with the genre. It points to an eternity of love and life, which is encapsulated in this last moment of
life. The assumed eternity of love opposes the grim reality of ageing and dying in the end.
The second poem which combines love and old age is titled "Starost'" (Old age, 1956). It starts describing an old couple from an outside perspective:
Простые, тихие, седые, Он с палкой, с зонтиком она, -Они на листья золотые Глядят, гуляя дотемна [24].
Plain, silent, grey -He with cane, she with umbrella -They look upon golden leaves, Walking until darkness.
Zabolockij's couple does not need to talk to each other any more, they remain silent, while their souls are communicating with each other in perfect understanding. Turning back to the couple's past, the spectator-persona characterizes it as inconspicuous: they were tested by sorrow and yielded to their weaknesses like cripples, now their souls are united into one. In the last period of their lives they have been enlightened by the knowledge that their present happiness is only a far reflection of evening light. Now, when everything terrible is gone, they can live with more ease, their souls can give out their last light "like candles". Thus, Zabolockij is rewriting the traditional combination of love and death, recalling the idyllic myth of the old couple, of Philemon and Baucis, living and waiting for death in harmony. In addition to that, the description of the couple recalls "The Lady with the dog", one of the most famous stories of Anton Cechov. This tale about a love affair between two married people ends with a description of them both living their genuine, deep love to each other in secret hiding-places. In socialist times, these private hiding-places turned into politically motivated ones.
In 1953, after Stalin's death, the motif of old age recedes to the background of the texts. However, it returns in some poems written in 1955 and 1957, where old age is combined with pictures of nature, especially of trees. The first example of this is "Pri pervom nastuplenii zimy" (At the First Approachment of Winter, 1955). The initial stanza presents people's usual reactions to the beginning of winter: they tend to see the last golden leaves of autumn as reminders of the summer's warmth, whereas the persona professes to prefer old poplars, which try to preserve their "dry rust-infected armour" until the onslaught of winter's first blizzard. In contrast to this picture of the old poplars shielding themselves in armour, the last stanza is set, in which the male persona reflects how to describe his own likeness to them:
Как между нами сходство описать? И я, подобно тополю, не молод, И мне бы нужно в панцире встречать Приход зимы, ее смертельный холод [25].
How can I describe our likeness?
Like the poplars, I am not young,
And I also would need an armour to meet
The arrival of winter, and its lethal cold.
The comparison underlines both their similarity and their difference: The persona has to meet winter without armour.
The next poem, also presenting a comparison of man and tree, is "Odinokij dub" (The Lonesome Oak, 1957). The first two of the three stanzas describe the oak as gnarled and devoid of grandeur. The oak (he in Russian) seems to be clothed in dirty rags and shreds. The reason for its/his deformity is made explicit in the very beginning: "Bad soil: Far too gnarled is this oak...". But he has developed his "mortally tortured limbs" in a striking way - so that he sings like a bell of glory, while amber is dropping out of his trunk. The verses allude to questions of aesthetics, of the poetics of the sublime, the tree is coded as an image of the tortured poet. The last stanza points out the tree to the spectator/ reader:
Вглядись в него: он важен и спокоен
Среди своих безжизненных равнин.
Кто говорит, что в поле он не воин?
Он воин в поле, даже и один [26].
Look at him! He [27] is distinguished and tranquil
In the midst of his lifeless surroundings.
Who says that he is not a warrior in the field?
He is a warrior, even when alone.
In this poem, the persona totally recedes behind the description of the object, which is fore-grounded; he seeks not to talk of himself. The first two stanzas concentrate on the oak, in the third stanza, the persona appears as the interpreter requesting the reader to see the oak from his perspective as a mighty, majestic tree. The rhetorical question with its explicit answer allows the persona to speak the last word. He looks upon the lonely oak as a warrior on the battle field, though there are no adversaries and no surrounding armies to be seen - to present a warrior as part of an army would have been the officially acknowledged version. Zabolockij's oak is alone on the field, its/his enemy - can be implied -is the soil on which it stands. Thus, the poem opens a number of contexts beside the meta-poetical: the Marxist discussions on the relation between foundation and superstructure, on the relation between the individual and the collective, on the
cult of the soldier after World War II. At the same time, the poem again alludes to the author's biography and his reputation as a far too individualistic writer. Now, in 1957, during the thaw, the poet dares to name the main adversary in the battle of his life - he would not have dared to do so before.
Conclusions. If we compare the concepts of old age and ageing, developed in Zabolockij's poetry, we realize that his description of old age supports and at the same time contradicts the official reading of the term. While the official interpretation prefers the healthy, vigorous old man as experienced worker and soldier, as a valuable part of the collective of Socialist society, Zabolockij's describes troubled and crippled old age, which he endows with heroic qualities. At the same time, he denounces the living conditions in the Soviet Union as bad soil not only for poets. Instead of finding his goal, his fulfilment in active social life, Zabolockij's persona at the end of his life seeks harmony and fulfilment in the individual work of creating poetry and in family life, in the individual union with his beloved. Pictures of nature, of trees and seasons, are used to present the human tragedy of the times the poet lived trough. Old age, as presented by Zabolockij, is the time to look back on one's life and failures, reassessing one's past in the context of historical time.
Примечания
1. Чудакова M. Заметки о поколениях в советской России // Новое литературное обозрение. 1998. № 30. С. 75.
2. S. Lovell's article (Lovell S. Soviet Socialism and the Construction of Old Age // Jahrbücher fur Geschichte Osteuropas. 2003. S. 564-585) analyzes the development of the meaning of "old age" during the early history of the Soviet Union, that is during the twenties, thirties and forties of the 20th century, focussing on two aspects, first on old age and soviet medicine and then on old age and the establishment of the Soviet welfare system.
3. Lovell S. Op. cit. P. 565.
4. For further information see: Masing-Delic I. Abolishing Death: A Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth Literature. Stanford, 1992.
5. Lovell S. Op. cit. P. 566.
6. Lovell S. Op. cit. P. 567
7. Lovell S. Op. cit. P. 569.
8. Lovell S. Op. cit. P. 583; Pat Thane. Das 20. Jahrhundert: Grenzen und Perspektiven // Pat Thane (ed.). Das Alter: Eine Kulturgeschichte. Aus dem Englischen von D. Oetzmann und H. M. Langer. Darmstadt, 2005. P. 275-278.
9. For more detailed information about Zabolockij see the biography, written by his son Nikita: Zabolotsky N. The Life of Zabolotsky / ed. by R. Milner-Gulland. Cardiff, 1994.
10. The numbers are given after the numeration of the texts in: Заболоцкий H. А. Полное собрание стихотворений и поэм. СПб., 2002.
11. The poem "Novyj byt" is cited by Lovell as a "statement of generation hierarchy of the 1920s", see: Lovell S. Op. cit. P. 565.
12. Zabolotsky N. The Life of Zabolotsky. P. 291.
13. Ibid. P. 298f.
14. Шилова К. А. О сюжете в лирике Н. Заболоцкого // Проблемы русского романтизма и реализма: сб. ст. Кемерово, 1973. С. 171-173.
15. Заболоцкий Н. А. Указ. соч. С. 244.
16. All translations from the texts of Zabolockij are my own, U. J.
17. Заболоцкий Н. А. Указ. соч. С. 245.
18. For more details see: Эткинд E. Прощание с друзьями // Поэтический строй русской лирики. Л., 1973. С. 307.
19. Goldstein D. Nikolai Zabolotsky: Play for Mortal Stakes. Cambridge, 1993.
20. Заболоцкий Н. А. Указ. соч. С. 252.
21. Zabolotsky N. The Life of Zabolotsky. S. 300.
22. Заболоцкий Н. А. Указ. соч. С. 244.
23. Денисова E. Л. Философско-эстетические искания в поэзии Н. Заболоцкого. К вопросу о художественной преемственности. М., 1980. С. 10.
24. Заболоцкий Н. А. Указ. соч. С. 271.
25. Там же. С. 261.
26. Там же. С. 283.
27. The Russian word "dub" (oak) is a masculine word.
УДК 821.161.1-191
У. Екутч
ОСЕНЬ И ЗИМА: КОНСТРУКЦИИ СТАРОСТИ В ПОЭЗИИ НИКОЛАЯ ЗАБОЛОЦКОГО
Пользуясь образами и метафорами, которые прямо и косвенно противоречат официальному сталинскому концепту «человек», поздняя поэзия Николая Заболоцкого (1903-1958) очерчивает индивидуальное понятие старости. Большинство стихотворений Заболоцкого создают концепт «старость» как героический и мужской, и только очень малое число текстов позволяет нам взглянуть на его совершенно отличные концепты «старуха» и «семейная пара». Его прочтение «старости» концентрируется на мужском теле, его мощи и немощи, таким образом, связывая его с вопросами поэтики и художественного творчества. Прослеживается и другой подтекст, намекающий на советскую историю и личную биография автора. Данная работа сфокусирована на взаимодействии этих трех слоев текста.
Ключевые слова: Николай Заболоцкий, старость, метафора.
Недавно образованный Советский Союз обожал молодость и всё новое. Новое государство воспринимало себя как единственного представителя социализма в мире и как новое социалистическое общество. Такое самовосприятие отражалось, в частности, не только в негативном отношении к царизму, но и в целом к старым временам, старости и старикам. Противопоставление «старое время - новое время»; «старики -
© Екутч У., 2011
молодые люди» стало отличительной чертой советской и сталинской культуры. В такой ситуации старые люди рассматривались как представители ушедшего времени, отсталые в смысле идеологии и образования. Соответственно, они подозревались во враждебности к новому социалистическому порядку. Мариэтта Чудакова даже утверждает, что термин «поколение», имеющее тенденцию ассоциироваться с термином «класс» -старое поколение, рассматривался как специальный класс, зараженный, отравленный жизнью в дореволюционные времена [1]. Поэтому я начну с того, что обрисую, как в соответствии с последними историческими исследованиями менялась семантика концепта «старость» в советской культуре [2].
После Октябрьской революции и гражданской войны термин «старость» стал близок к пренебрежительному. В обществе, где ценились юность, сила и бодрость, старики притеснялись всеми способами. Их описывали как физически слабых, «упрямых, суеверных и плохо образованных» [3]. Тем не менее к концу 1920-х гг. отношение к старости начало меняться. Советское общество заинтересовалось собственной историей, и обнаружилось, что старики являются ценными свидетелями и участниками великих исторических изменений Октябрьской революции и формирования Советского Союза. Будучи политкорректными, воспоминания стариков получали высокую оценку. Стало общеизвестным, что старые работники, в частности, оказывались наиболее ценными участниками производства, и что преклонный возраст совсем не обязательно связан со хилостью и дряхлостью, и что старики умеют компенсировать меньшую энергию навыками и опытом. Так процесс переоценки старости и стариков сыграл важную роль в великой советской утопической мечте и в планах формирования нового человека и уничтожении болезней и смерти [4]. «Старость, смерть и дряхлость являли собой огромную задачу для интеллигентов, провозгласивших веру в духовную силу и мировые изменения. Новый человек будущего представлялся как сильная, здоровая и рациональная особь, сохраняющая юность и задор до «естественной смерти» [5], подразумевающей смерть в конце биологического времени без болезни или несчастных случаев. Выпускались практические рекомендации по диете и гигиене, чтобы помогать людям дожить до их «естественной смерти» [6]. Если в 1920-х гг. медицинские исследования в СССР концентрировались на средствах омоложения, то в 1930-х гг. они сместились в сторону увеличения продолжительности жизни. Теперь утверждалось, что старость не следует рассматривать как патологическое состояние, как нежелательное последствие, требующее лечения, облегчения
